What you focus on expands in your world. Here is the reason why. A key player in the brain is the Reticular Activating System (RAS). Our environment is filled with stimuli. Four billion of bits of information (Learn more details in the video
What The Bleep Do We Know.) fly by us each minute. The RAS allows us to screen out all that is not important to us and to focus just on what we care about.
The RAS lets us switch back and forth between our phone conversation and the conversation in the room, for example. Your RAS will continually draw your attention to whatever you think about.
When my daughter was auditioning for conservatories as a dancer she suffered an excruciatingly painful back injury. Suddenly every place I looked I found books, articles, furniture, information and products for natural back care. All that information was always there but since I had no need for it I never saw it. Since I was thinking about her back my RAS zeroed in on all information relevant to back care.
Okay... so the RAS zeros in on what we think about, what is important to us. Here is an interesting statistic: 90% of self talk is negative. (Internationally known trainer Chet Holmes notes that number on his DVD The Power Of Goals And How The Brain Works) The RAS hones in on what is not working, what is wrong, what is missing—everything that is bad gets noticed!
What do you think happens when you worry? A bugle call sounds to awaken the RAS to your worry! So you worry even more. The brain says , ”Oh. Attention is going here. It must be important. Let’s focus on it and find all the evidence in the environment to prove it.” In that moment awful scenarios build in your mind and they get worse with each passing minute! Now you really have something to worry about!
What is your child thinking about most of the time? Is he thinking he is not good enough? not smart enough? tall enough? thin enough? strong enough? cute enough? popular enough?
So long as my daughter focused on the pain of her back injury it got worse. In fact it got so bad there were times she could barely move and she usually cried herself to sleep. Then she learned about how her mind was running her life with that pain.
She told me she could not get better as long as she was going for physical therapy and focusing on the pain. She asked if we could cancel her physical therapy appointments. And so we did.
And my daughter went on to a great conservatory and even to the Broadway stage singing AND DANCING! That accomplishment, after her doctor had said she needed to find another career because she could not be a dancer after that
injury! Thank goodness she did not buy into the paradigm of that doctor.
The RAS serves us in many ways. The other day I was in New York City’s Penn station. My bus had not come and I was deciding whether to wait for another one or take a train. Have you ever been in Penn Station in NYC on a Saturday afternoon in the summer? It was mobbed. I have no idea how many thousands of people and noises filled the space. I was wandering around looking for the information booth when suddenly I heard “Culpeper” over the PA sytem. There is only one train a day to my small town and here it was being announced as I was walking through the place! Without the RAS I would have missed it as I didn’t hear the names of the other stops on the line. Powerful system, yes?
What does the RAS of your teen focus on? What do you notice in your busy environment? Notice any overlap? There are no coincidences.
