Understanding Your Brain’s Reticular Activating System 🦣
To understand this part of our brain, consider the story of the elephant and the rope...
🦣 When elephants are young, a rope is tied to their ankle so that they don’t run away
🦣 These same elephants grow to become the strongest animals in the animal kingdom
🦣 Yet, if you tie a rope to the mighty elephant’s ankle, they still do not run away
🦣 The strongest animal in the animal kingdom, yet a tiny rope makes them powerless
🦣 All because, for the first year of its life, the elephant was told “This rope is stronger than me. I can’t break this rope.”
Many of us have metaphorical ropes tied to our ankles.
👶 Many of us have things we believe we can’t do, simply because we were told we can’t do them as a child
🧠 All of these "can'ts" get stored in our reticular activating system (RAS), a network of neurons that influence how we perceive the world (source)
👀 The RAS tells us what is real and what is not; what we can and cannot do.
💭 But the RAS is not an accurate view of reality... it was trained by our parents and their misunderstandings… whose brains were programmed by their parents and their misunderstandings… all the way back to the beginning of time.
🔒 So in our minds, we have an infinite space of time telling us what we can't do.
But All It Takes is One Action
💥 All it takes is one action to break through the reticular activating system
🔓 When we do something that the RAS didn't think we could do… all of a sudden the RAS goes “Oh, maybe I was wrong”
🎨 And you literally start seeing the world differently
"Instead of being something that holds you hostage, your brain becomes a drawing board that you can paint your dreams on." - Jason Estes
Leaving this email, we invite you to
✍️ Write down your limiting beliefs
🔓 Take one action to disprove that belief today
Here are 5 journal prompts that may help you uncover your limiting beliefs
💭 I’m not good enough to…
💭 I am too young to…
💭 I am too old to…
💭 I don’t have enough time to…
💭 I don’t have enough experience to…
From here, we invite you to circle the limiting belief that is speaking most loudly to you, and decide on one nation you can take to disprove that belief today.
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