Wednesday, December 21, 2022
"Setting Goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."
TONY ROBBINS
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is something I first learned about from Tony Robbins. I was intrigued by how he explained what it was, how it worked, and how we could use it in our lives. As I learned more about my RAS I began to experience the impact it has on my life and how it helps me to achieve more of the things that I want in life.
I’ve talked a lot about our RAS with clients and on my podcasts and have had many people give me great feedback after they’ve implemented things into their lives to take advantage of the power of their RAS.
In this article I want to help you to gain a better understanding of what your RAS is, what it’s capable of, and how you can use it yourself from my perspective and experience.
Every second of the day our senses are picking up a staggering amount of input. Your RAS is the only thing keeping you from being completely overwhelmed by the 2 billion bits of information passing through your sensory organs each second. Your RAS is the filter that decides what’s important and what you will consciously give your attention to.
In real-time, your RAS decides what is important and is allowed to enter your conscious mind.
The reason that this is so important is that you can train your brain to focus on what is important to you.
This is huge because when you know what is important to you, your brain can filter the world so you see more of what you want to see.
You will get what you focus on.
In Common Denominators For Success, Kenny J Anderson made the following points:
“Life is what we make of it, so why not make it positive?… We find exactly what we are looking for, good or bad. If we look for faults in others, we will find all those things that annoy us; however, if we look for the strengths of an individual, that is what we will see. We get exactly what we are looking for. Find the best in everything around you, and your life will be full of passion and peace.”
This is how your RAS can help you to achieve your goals, live a happy life, attract great people and circumstances into your life, and so much more.
As soon as you think that something is important, your RAS will let it into your conscious mind.
When we moved from Alberta to Arizona in 2016 my daughter, Tia, was driving through Montana on her way down a couple days before I had planned to start the trip with the UHaul. She got about an hour into Montana and had some car problems. Luckily she wasn’t that far away and I drove down to help her. But unfortunately, those were the last miles that car ever drove.
So when we all finally got to Arizona I took her car shopping. We ended up buying a Mitsubishi Spyder Convertible.
I had never seen one of these cars before, but it was a pretty cool little vehicle for her.
The funny thing was that even though I thought that I had never seen one of these cars before, I started to see them everywhere!
Was it just by chance that I bought this car for Tia and at the same time a bunch of other people in our area bought the same type of car?
No, this is how our RAS works. Those cars had always been there. I’m sure that I had seen them before. But they weren’t important to me and I didn’t notice them.
Once I bought Tia her Spyder, it was something new to me. My RAS picked up on it as being something important to me and I started to notice the other similar cars on the road.
“Just like a computer, your brain has a search function — but it’s even more phenomenal than a computer’s. It seems to be programmed by what we focus on and, more primarily, what we identify with. It’s the seat of what many people have referred to as the paradigms we maintain.”
DAVID ALLEN
When you think of it, I’m sure you have had similar experiences. Maybe it was a new item of clothing you bought. You bought a new dress and then all of a sudden you see other people wearing the exact same dress.
The sound of our name being called works the same way. You can be walking through a crowded, noisy area and then all of a sudden hear someone say your name from across the room.
When your RAS thinks something is important to you, it will be filtered and brought to your attention.
Right now you are missing out on opportunities because you haven’t trained your brain to help you recognize them.
Things are happening around us every single day that our mind is blocking out because we have not shown our RAS that they are important to us.
Once you train your RAS to look for these things, the more you will begin to see them.
Your mind is designed to help you to get everything you want in life.
Once you understand how your RAS works, you can start using it to achieve the goals that are important to you.
The first step is to have a clear understanding of what you want. If you don’t have clearly defined, written out goals, go to https://jeffheggie.com/peakperformance and go through my Bigger Future Goal Setting program for free.
Once you have your goals figured out, make it a habit to write them out every single day. This simple habit will tell your RAS that these goals are important to you and in turn your RAS will immediately begin searching for ways to achieve them.
Another strategy that I use along with writing out my goals every day is going through my list of Mindset Questions. These are some simple questions that I answer every day to help prime me for the day, but also to tell my RAS the things that are important for me that day.
"What you focus on grows... where focus goes, energy flows."
TONY ROBBINS
Your Reticular Activating System is a powerful tool you can use on your path to success.
Implement these strategies into your routine and watch what happens.
Success is not a matter of chance, but a matter of choice. Writing out your goals and answering your Mindset Questions every day isn’t a difficult thing to do and it could create some amazing results. But you have to make the choice to do it. Some of the most powerful success habits we can implement into our lives are easy to do, but they are also easy not to do.
What are you going to do?
Success Coach