B ME Bites 12: Leverage the Power of Your Reticular Activating System (RAS)

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This week’s B ME Bites Trivia Question:

Welcome to edition #12 of B ME Bites! This week's edition explores the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and how understanding this brain system can help you achieve your goals and change your behaviour.

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Featured Topic: Leverage the Power of Your Reticular Activating System (RAS)

Ever wondered why certain things catch your attention while others go unnoticed? The answer lies in your Reticular Activating System (RAS), a powerful network in your brain that influences your behaviour and goal achievement. By understanding and utilising your RAS, it's possible to make impactful changes in your life.

What is the Reticular Activating System (RAS)?

The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a bundle of nerves located in your brainstem. It acts like a very efficient receptionist making sure that only the most necessary and important people get through to the boss, your brain, by filtering the vast amount of information received by your senses and determining what gets noticed and what gets ignored. This system helps focus attention on what is deemed important, based on your personal goals and interests.

Think of the RAS as your brain's sorting mechanism. It sifts through sensory data, allowing only relevant information to pass through to your conscious awareness. This selective attention is crucial for managing the constant stream of stimuli you encounter every day.

Imagine that your brain is a massive postal delivery centre full of millions of packages. It’s night time, the power goes out, and everything is pitch black. To be able to find the packages that need to be loaded onto their trucks, the workers have to use torches. The torch light can only illuminate a very small section of the parcels in the delivery centre at any one time, and the workers can only see the parcels that are in the direct light of their torch. The postal delivery centre full of packages is your brain full of information and the torch light is your RAS. Your brain will only “see” what is in the direct light of your torch. It brings a whole new perspective to the phrase, “and let there be light”, doesn’t it?!

How Your RAS Impacts Your Behaviour

Your RAS significantly influences your behaviour by prioritising information that aligns with your existing beliefs, goals, and desires. For instance, when you set a new goal, such as buying a particular type of car, your RAS starts highlighting that specific type of car everywhere, even though it was always present.

Have you ever played the game “Spotto” where you look for yellow cars and the person that “spots” the most yellow cars wins? You start seeing yellow cars everywhere because you are actively looking for them. You’re “pointing your torch” at yellow cars, whereas when you aren’t actually looking for yellow cars, you won’t notice them as much, even though they are there.

This selective focus helps you make decisions, form habits, and reinforces beliefs. By filtering out distractions, your RAS directs your attention toward actions and opportunities that support achievement of your goals.

Using Your RAS to Change Your Behaviour and Achieve Your Goals

Understanding how your RAS works opens up opportunities to utilise its power for positive change. Here are some practical steps to use your RAS for changing your behaviour and achieving your goals:

1. Set Clear Goals: Clearly defined goals give your RAS specific targets to focus on. Writing down goals and visualising them regularly can help embed them into your subconscious mind, making them a priority for your RAS.

2. Positive Affirmations: Repeating positive affirmations reinforces your desired beliefs and behaviours. This practice helps your RAS focus on positive outcomes, increasing your likelihood of noticing opportunities that align with these affirmations.

3. Visualisation: Regularly visualising your goals as already achieved helps programme your RAS to seek out and highlight relevant information and opportunities. This mental rehearsal prepares your mind and body for success. There will be a B ME Bites edition dedicated to visualisation in the very near future, as this is an immensely powerful tool.

4. Stay Focused: Consistency is key. Continuously focusing on your goals and avoiding distractions ensures your RAS remains tuned to what matters most. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your goals can keep them fresh and relevant.

5. Surround Yourself with Reminders: Placing visual reminders of your goals in your environment can keep your RAS engaged. This could be in the form of vision boards, notes, or symbols that represent your desired outcomes.

Conclusion

Your Reticular Activating System plays a pivotal role in filtering information and shaping your behaviour based on what is deemed important. By understanding and consciously directing your RAS, it's possible to enhance your focus, change your behaviour, and achieve your goals much more effectively.

How can your Reticular Activating System be utilised to achieve your next big goal?

Reader Spotlight

Big shoutout to Michelle who left a comment on YouTube after watching the Self Sabotage video that was included in Edition #6:

Look at you go Michelle! Love it!

Weekly Challenge

Your mission for this week, if you choose to accept it, is to do the following:

Think about a goal that you set for yourself that you haven’t succeeded in achieving yet, and go through steps 1-5 above to identify how you can utilise the power of your RAS to help you achieve it.

If you need some help, feel free to hit reply - let’s help you get started if you’re stuck!

B ME Bites is deliberately sent on a Friday morning (Aussie time) so that where ever you are in the world, you have the weekend to give yourself the gift of implementing a small change towards a better you. What will that small change be? Is there a change that you have been trying to make and haven’t yet succeeded? Give it another go, applying the above - you can do it!

Resource Roundup

Here’s a great Ted Talk given by Blaine Oelkers on the topic of your RAS:

Jim Kwik is also an expert on the subject of course!:

You can check out Jim Kwik’s best selling book Limitless on Amazon here.

Below is a resource list that has been created with you in mind. Whenever something new that could be helpful is discovered, it’s added to the list, so check it out from time to time. If you’re strapped for time, once you open the page below, scroll down to the Resource List section and click on the “Health Tools” link for a list of items that could be helpful on your path to a better you.

The answer to this week’s trivia question is:

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Until next week, keep taking one S.T.E.P.S step at a time! (If you missed the issue explaining The S.T.E.P.S Formula, you can check that out here)

Warm regards,

Shari Ware Chief Encouragement Officer at B ME Bites

PS - Here’s a little Friday funny for you!

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