Why You’re Seeing What You Believe

Life Coaching Tip: Your thoughts shape your reality, and your brain has a built-in filter that decides what you notice and what you don’t. In this post, I introduce the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and explain how it works alongside confirmation bias to quietly reinforce your beliefs. When your focus changes, your experience changes — even if your circumstances stay the same. This is how awareness turns into intentional, empowered living.

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Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about mindset: how your thoughts create your reality, how your brain looks for evidence to prove your stories right, and how awareness changes everything.

Today, I want to introduce one final (and incredibly empowering) piece of the puzzle: The Reticular Activating System (RAS).

Before we get a little science-y, let me start with a real-life example.

One of my clients, Ann, loves the RAS exercises we’ve done in the Shine On program. She recently shared how, whenever she sets her mind to it, she sees her favorite kind of car, Dodge Challengers, everywhere.

She posted in our Shine On community: “Like the Roy Kent chant — Dodge Challengers, they’re here, they’re there, they’re every f**ing where!* Whenever I’m driving and I’m a little down, I look for Dodge Challengers . . . and I always, ALWAYS see them.”

Here’s the thing: Nothing magical happened. Dodge Challengers didn’t suddenly flood the roads.

What changed was Ann’s focus.

You’ve likely experienced this, too. You think about something, and suddenly you see it everywhere.

This is how the RAS works.

At any given moment, millions of bits of information are streaming into your brain: sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts. There’s no way you could consciously process all of it, so your brain has a built-in filtering system.

That filter is the Reticular Activating System: a network of neurons in the brainstem that plays a role in things like attention, alertness, and sleep.

But for our purposes, here’s the most important thing to know:
The RAS decides what gets your attention . . . and what gets ignored.

It allows into your awareness:

• Information related to safety and survival
• Information that matches your existing thoughts, beliefs, stories, goals, and expectations

Everything else is filtered out.

And here’s why this matters so much.

Your brain is always conserving energy.  It doesn’t want to waste time noticing information it has decided is irrelevant, unlikely or impossible.

So, if you believe something is “not possible” for you, your RAS stops looking for opportunities to make it possible. If you believe something will “never work out,” your brain filters out ways that it could.

Your brain is practical and efficient.

Now here’s where this moves from interesting . . . to life changing.

I once worked with a client whose dominant story was: “I’m always behind.”

Behind on work.
Behind on life.
Behind compared to everyone else.

That thought wasn’t just an opinion. It was the lens she lived through.

Her RAS highlighted unfinished tasks.
It noticed what wasn’t done yet.
It compared her progress to others in a negative light.

Her wins barely registered.

Completed tasks passed right through. Not because they weren’t there. But because her brain decided they didn’t matter.

So, instead of trying to “fix” her life, we ran a simple experiment.  For one week, she chose a new focus: “I am making steady progress.”

That was it.

Almost immediately, her reality shifted.

Her RAS began flagging things it had previously filtered out:

• Tasks she had completed
• Decisions she’d already made
• Moments where she handled things well

Her workload didn’t change.
Her responsibilities didn’t disappear.
But her experience of her life did.

She felt calmer. More capable. Less behind. Not because her circumstances changed, but because her filter did.

Now, let’s tie all this mindset magic together:

Confirmation bias reinforces your stories by collecting “evidence” to support them.

And your RAS decides what “evidence” you’re able to see.

Together, they quietly shape your reality.

You’re not seeing “objective truth.”

You’re seeing filtered reality.

But the empowering part?

You have the power to choose both the story and the filter.

Not, let’s have some fun and make this tangible with a simple activation game you can try this week:

• Choose a number, object, or word.
• Spend a few minutes visualizing it once or twice a day.
• Then, go about your day and notice when it enters into your awareness.

 
Just like Ann with her Dodge Challengers. Not because you created something out of thin air, but because you directed your brain to its mission..
 
This is how you stop living on autopilot and start living on purpose.
 
Change your story.
Change your focus.
Change your reality.
 
And over time . . . you change your life.

xo Tracy