The Reticular Formation
Stuart Ginbey | January 11, 2009
Inside our brain stem is a mass known as The Reticular Formation. It is the connection point for the millions of different neural pathways between the various parts of our brain and the rest of our body. This whole system was named ‘The Reticular Activation System (RAS)’ by physiologist H. W. Magoun, who discovered that by stimulating it, he could wake someone from their sleep. Every second, 10-11million bits of information pass through this system and it’s the role of the Reticular Formation to process everything. However, because our conscious mind cannot cope with this much information, it acts as a ‘Filter’, according to our beliefs, habits and self image. Therefore out of all the information the we receive every day, the only parts that will actually make it to our brain is the information that lines up with what we believe. This is why two people can attend the same event yet have completely different memories of the experience.
But the point is this: You have complete control over the way you think!
If you believe that making money is hard; if you believe becoming slim is hard; if you believe finding the right partner is hard; if you believe investing is hard; guess what, it’s going to be hard!
Your neural pathways are only doing their job. They are taking the emotional attachment, linking it to the action and joining them together. ‘Loose weight’-‘This is hard’ or ‘Start Investing’ – Too hard’. The more you say it, think it, feel it and apply emotions to it, the stronger the neural pathways between these two associations become. Your RAS then picks this up and finds it a priority to use in the filtering process. All of a sudden you have talked yourself into a bad habit that will be difficult to break. Your brain has an emotional hook associated with what you want to achieve and you will never be able to do it.
Of course, the next question we must ask is, ‘What happens when we contest a belief, raise our own self-image or try and break a habit? Why is that so hard to do?’
Yours sincerely,
