Your brain is a calorie counter. It’s designed to habituate things to reduce energy consumption.
The RAS – reticular activating system – is a bundle of nerves in our brainstem, which creates habits.
The functions of your RAS
1. It filters out unnecessary information, so the important-to-you stuff gets through. The RAS is why you learn a new word and then start hearing it everywhere. It’s why you buy a car and start seeing that brand of car everywhere.
It sifts through trillions of bits of information from all your sensors (what you see, hear, taste, touch, smell) and presents only those that you focus on and/or repeat, consciously or unconsciously.
2. Your beliefs determine one framework of that filter. If you believe you are ‘bad at doing something’, that’s what it keeps showing you. If you believe you are ‘good at something’, it keeps showing you that. Your RAS is designed to seek information, people and situations that validate your beliefs.
3. It also habituates your repetitive body language, facial expressions, gestures, posture, tone of voice and the way you behave.
4. It helps you see, hear and experience what you repeatedly do and/or tell yourself. It’s the ultimate mirror.
Much of who you are, how you are, how you live and operate happens unconsciously. Until you choose to become ‘conscious’ and take charge!
Did You Know…
The more you repeat healthy, happy, positive thoughts, beliefs, emotions, body language, facial expressions, gestures, posture, tone of voice and behaviours, the more they become automated habits. All of which are stored in a part of your brain, called the basal ganglia.
Bonus 1
This improves your ability to gather information, insights, concentrate, focus and memorise things, because you no longer need to consciously remember to do this or that, being a function of a different part of your brain, called the frontal lobe.
Bonus 2
Through repetition of positive, productive ways of thinking, believing, feeling, speaking, choosing and behaving, you are training your RAS filter system to move, from a conditioned negative bias, to a positive bias. Once automated (habits created), it knows how you want to operate in the world and does the work for you.
In the science world, this is called neuroplasticity.
Bonus 3
This new consciously chosen and trained, positively biased filter, actively ‘finds’ you the people, information and opportunities, that help you be the person you would like to be, living the life you want to live and achieving the goals you wish to achieve.
Your RAS is a power house worth harnessing.
Enjoy the difference!
x Judy
