How A Filtering Process In Your Brain Can Be Preventing You From Achieving Success

Have you ever wondered how some people seem to find all the opportunities, they have the Midas touch, everything they touch seems to turn to gold, they have the perfect partner and great health? Why is this? What are they doing that everyone else isn't.

For one, they act, but that's half the process; the other half of the process is that they are able to see opportunities where others can't, and this is thanks to an organ in our brain called the Reticular Formation.

Inside our brain stem lies a formation about the size of our pinky finger, called the Reticular Formation. This connects to other parts of the brain and our body via millions of communication pathways. This whole system was named 'The Reticular Activation System (RAS)' by physiologist H. W. Magoun. Its job is to filter out information.

Every second of the day we receive over 10 million bits of information through our 5 senses. This is a lot of information and it should come as little surprise that if we had to consciously deal with all this information we'd simply explode. So it is the job of the reticular formation to filter out what is unimportant, and this is where it gets interesting.

We have at both a primal level (evolution, passing on of genes etc), and the self-image (and belief) level a list of importance, and our reticular formation filters out information according to this list. To demonstrate this at the more primal level, I once witnessed my wife sleep right through a siren that had gone wailing down the street at 5am in the morning, yet 20 minutes later she awoke to the cry of our daughter who paled considerably in comparison to the volume of the siren.

At the self-image level, the process is exactly the same. We have a list of importance based on our self-image which is based on our own belief systems. If your self-image and belief system is one of someone who thinks they attract bad luck, you'll have this ranked very high on your importance list. You reticular formation then filters out any information contrary to that belief.

A test was done in the UK where 100 people were gathered and assessed for their general outlook in life. They were listed into extremely optimistic, optimistic, pessimistic and extremely pessimistic and were then asked to walk down the road and around the block.

Along the route was left a 100 pound note. Of all the 100, only 6 found the 100 pound note, and not one of these six came from either the pessimistic or extremely pessimistic groups. I might add at this point, the optimistic and extremely optimistic groups made up only a small minority of the whole 100.

So the reticular formation is allowing those that believe in themselves to see what others can not. Whether it's money, health, relations, attracting the ideal mate, finding great opportunities, or simply being able to make better decisions, you can only be privy to the information you want if you believe it exists, and if you believe you are worthy of receiving it.

And this all comes down to your self image and your beliefs at the sub conscious level. If you reprogram your self image you attract your desired results.