Your Reticular Activating System (RAS) – Program it wisely

The Reticular Activating System (RAS)

This is important – that’s why I want to spend a bit of time explaining why this happens and the positive consequences of harnessing this inherent capability in new ways.

Deep within the old part of our brain is a region called the Reticular Activating System, the RAS.

Its function is key in controlling three things:

• Our attention

• Goal achievement

• Keeping us alive

So, this is a crucial part of the brain to retrain – especially if you have anxiety and OCD – because:

Your attention is in the wrong place, you are not achieving your goals, and although it is keeping you alive, it does it by imprisoning you rather than helping you to safely step out into the world!

Now, you can do your own research on the RAS, but I want to give you the headlines and show you how to effectively harness its incredible power to your advantage.

Put simply, the RAS is what monitors every single one of the hundreds of millions of inputs received through your senses from the external world every second.

It then decides (for you) what IT thinks is important to you and feeds that particular information to your conscious mind – where you think YOU had that thought.

Now, to help convey the power and relevance of this unconscious part of your brain, let me remind you that the unconscious brain is a million times faster and a million times more powerful than the conscious brain.

And to add even more perspective – consciously, we can only process about one hundred pieces of information each second.

In contrast, unconsciously, we receive ten million bits of information per second just from our eyes! Then, huge volumes of information from our hearing and the plentiful data from the million or so nerve endings in our skin, which capture data on pressure, temperature, and location every second.

That is a monstrous shedload of data easily being handled by our unconscious brain – and we can only consciously handle a feeble one hundred bits per second! And yet we are so addicted to it!

So, the role of the RAS is to drastically reduce all that data into something relevant to you – in line with controlling your attention, your goal achievement, and your safety.

It’s a rapid, harsh, and laser-focused paring down of data (done completely unconsciously) and then fed to your conscious mind in a fraction of a second.

And this “tiny piece of data” you use to consciously make decisions and live your life from!

So, a good question to ask at this point might be:

How does the unconscious RAS know what is good for you or what goals you want to achieve?

Well, some of it is from learned programmes, core animal responses, like responding to your name being called out, reacting to a loud noise, or becoming aware of a sexual opportunity.

However, for the majority of the time, it takes its cue of where to place ITS focus from where YOU are consciously placing your focus, your attention, your awareness, what’s on your mind.

It ‘assumes’ that what you are consciously focusing on is important, therefore will filter accordingly all the reams of incoming data down into that which aligns with what you are consciously focusing on.

Let me put this another way: If you are consciously focused on all the things that could go wrong, like worrying about being liked or being perfect, then your RAS will filter for that and present you with evidence of all the things that are going wrong in and around your life.

This then is the world you “virtually” see and will form the beliefs you have about yourself and the world, and those beliefs will influence what actions you take (or don’t) which, of course, affects what goals you achieve (or don’t achieve).

So, where you place your attention drives what the RAS serves up for you. It’s like when you buy a new car, suddenly you see them everywhere, or when you learn a new word, you hear it used the same day, or you learn about a new artist, then see their work everywhere.

It’s really quite simple – and it’s just how the brain works.

So, it would make a lot of sense to get your RAS consciously working for you, rather than unknowingly have it working against you.

Let me give you a couple of exaggerated examples:

Person one thinks the world is a scary place, doesn’t have any clear goals (or the goals are stated in the negative, like “I DON’T want to be anxious,” which, of course, is not saying what they DO want), and perhaps they spend lots of time each day contemplating all the bad thoughts they have.

The RAS will have a field day, just blindly responding to that person’s unknowing requests from it. They will be flooded with examples of the world being a scary place, their goals won’t be achieved as they are not known, and they will be shown every example of their worst thoughts that their RAS can find each day.

Contrast that to person number two, who is a glass-half-full optimist, so good events are filtered and passed up from the RAS into her consciousness.

She has a clear goal held in mind about changing jobs and becoming self-employed, so the RAS makes her aware, consciously, of any opportunities it sees.

And because this person likes themselves, any evidence of others liking her, too, is passed up from the unconscious RAS into her conscious awareness, which further confirms her self-worth and increases the chances of her taking action.

This is life-changing information I am giving you here…

Can you see why I have been asking you to placebo yourself with more positive statements?

Can you see why I have been asking you to consider what you want from life?

Can you see why I have been asking you to speak nicer to yourself?

Like I have been saying from the beginning, if left unchecked, your unconscious brain will just do whatever it has been programmed to do.

Therefore, we need to consciously reprogramme the unconscious in the best way that the unconscious responds to being programmed – which is NOT through logic or reason (that’s just how the conscious mind works)!

I hope I’m explaining this clearly enough, but it’s hard, and it’s almost unbelievable that we’re not taught this in school!

Practical Steps for Reprogramming

So, let’s get more practical. What can we do now to make changes that could bear fruit within a month or two?

Well, here’s what I would suggest:

Consciously keep talking yourself into what it is you want from life, stated in the positive, with the outcomes you desire and the mindset you want to use.

Then, if any thought arises in your mind that is not in line with those goals, ignore them by consciously talking over the top of them with what it is you want from life, stated in the positive, with the outcomes you desire and the mindset you want to use.

Basically, you keep talking yourself positively into what you want and disregard any thought or belief that opposes it.

It’s actually quite simple, just very hard to do in the beginning.

So, let me give you some examples of what this type of inner dialogue might look like:

Old story: Moving house is so stressful.
New story: I am so excited about the next phase of my life and the project of creating a wonderful new home for my family.

Old story: I have the bother of clearing out my garage and going to the waste tip.
New story: I’m so looking forward to my garage being orderly.

Old story: There are no jobs around due to the recession.
New story: There is always an opportunity when change happens; how can I let people know I am available?

Old story: My goal is to not have anxiety.
New story: My goal is to retrain my brain and use life as a form of exposure therapy; this will allow me to get back to work within three months with an optimistic mindset and a kind, playful inner dialogue.

Old story: Oh no, I spilt the wine; that stain will never come out.
New story: That was lucky; it was just a glass and not the whole bottle.

Old story: Why do I have so much inner conflict?
New story: My Settler, Nomad, and Warrior are slowly becoming friends; they are starting to realise they are on the same team and beginning to support each other’s skills and differences – how can I remember to only be one at a time to reduce conflict?

Now, it really doesn’t matter whether you consciously believe these things to be true or not. We are just running the new inputs that will reprogramme how our brain works for more positivity, calmness, and creative action.

Can you see now why knowing what you want from life is so powerful?

And even if you don’t ultimately know what you want, you can use intermediate smaller goals until you do.

That’s why I made my vision board video, and I watch it every morning and evening, not because I consciously forgot what I wanted, but because I want my unconscious mind to be focusing on where I want to go, not where it wants to take me!

If you haven’t seen that video yet, I will put the link in the notes below this video. In fact, I need to make a new one as I have completed most of the goals in this current one!

This stuff works – but you have to put the effort in. You have to spend the time and the repetition, reprogramming and telling your unconscious mind what you want.

Repetition retrains the unconscious mind – here is a picture of the home screen on my phone… (insert picture)

Each time I turn on my phone, I am greeted with the top three or four things I know I need to do; I keep reminding myself consciously and unconsciously where I am going and what I want. Why? Because it works!