How to Work with Your Brain’s Reticular Activating System to Shift Negative Thinking

The mind works like a Google search engine

Ask your mind a negative question and it can only return negative data. It works like this, you worry to yourself , “What if I get sick?” Your mind can only search for answers to “what if I get sick”… so it scans your memories and experiences and comes back with data to show you what it’s going to be like when you get sick.

Ask “What will happen if I lose my job?”, it’s going to search your mental data base and come back with a whole bunch of answers that will show you what it’s going to be like when you lose your job. It typically only shows you the negative possibilities because your mind-set at the point of question was one of fear …so it returns only fearful or similar energetic data.

The Reticular Activating System (RAS) runs our mental search engine

The reason the mind does this is because of a thing called the Reticular Activating System or RAS for short. RAS is a bunch of nerve cells at the base of the brain that are responsible for filtering information. It’s a gatekeeper whose job is to filter out things that aren’t important to us. Without this filter, we’d go nuts trying to processing all the incoming sights, sounds, and sensations (except for smell) that we’re exposed to in any given moment. RAS is what enables us to hear our baby’s muffled cry in the next room while disregarding the sound of the waste management truck picking up our trash.

Additional Reading

Additional resources at: https://nataliemarquis.com/ask-better-questions/