Use Intention-Setting to Ignite your Reticular Activating System and Get What You Want

Our lives are very much a product of our beliefs. Our beliefs drive our actions and we, or better said, our lives, become the sum of our actions. Who and where you are today are in a very large part the result of the actions you have taken up until this point. Makes sense when you think about it, right? Starting now, and in every present moment, you can begin again because your future is unwritten and will unfold to become what it will be, largely because of your actions going forward. What this means is that you hold a lot of power over your destiny. Back to this idea that our beliefs drive our actions….Do you believe that you are capable? I can tell you with certainty that you are more capable than you know. It is your will, determination and intention that defines your capability, not your talent. Yep, you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that your talent has very little to do with your success….this is also backed by science. Malcolm Gladwell shines the light on this in his book,The Outliers, and his work is always impeccably researched and Angela Duckworth backs this argument with research in her book, Grit.

It's quite common for people to feel powerless up against a dream or goal when no true path to reach that goal seems to exist - it just seems too big - too out-of-reach.

You see, many people secretly, or not-so-secretly, believe that only super-smart, privileged, gifted/uber intelligent, gorgeous, talented (etcetera) people are capable of that amazing thing we wish we could do with our lives. It's quite common for people to feel powerless up against a dream or goal when no true path to reach that goal seems to exist - it just seems too big - too out-of-reach. We can get stuck in old patterns of thinking and behaviour that can keep us from making progress or feeling fulfilled. We talk ourselves out of a lot of things for a lot of reasons. We tell ourselves, “I can’t do that”, “I can’t afford it”, “I’m not smart enough”, “It’s not the right time”, “I’m too old”, “I’m too young”, and “I’m not good enough”, the latter of which is probably the most common limiting belief that disguises itself in our lives in A LOT of ugly ways. We let the idea slip away - we don’t move on to Intention. When we do this we overlook this powerful resource and ally we all have called our Reticular Activating System (RAS).

The truth is, we all have the capacity to achieve the extraordinary and live our best lives. Everything we need to succeed is within us, not outside of us. In fact, you’d be shocked to learn what you’re truly capable of. Our human capacity to succeed is quite remarkable. I think we can all recount a time when we made a decision and took decisive action. We zeroed in on what we were going to do and we did it. Think all the way back, I know you’ve got a story. In many cases, we knew how we were going to do it, we planned it out and we went for it. We did it with intention. When we set an intention, we activate our RAS.

Well now, I’m happy to have the honour of introducing to you this fancy bundle of nerves at the base of your brain called your Reticular Activating System. In layman's terms, the RAS works very much like a gatekeeper of the data in your environment. At any one time, your RAS is receiving and sorting about 11 million bits of information just streaming into your brain — most of this data you cannot attend to, nor should you attend to. Your RAS filters out most of this data, letting into your awareness only those signals that you have deliberately and intentionally decided are important to you AND of course, those that can help you survive. Here’s the kicker: it lets in anything that will help you achieve the goals you set and continuously apply intention to. The more effort you put into intention, the more your RAS will support you to succeed. It does this by bringing to your attention things in your environment you might have otherwise overlooked, like opportunities, advertisements, or even people to name a few, that can help you reach your goal. This is why you don’t need to know how you’re going to do something to just start. By intending on achieving that thing and taking decisive action on those things that come to your attention via your RAS, even without knowing how you’ll get there, the path starts to unfold before you, much like the headlights of a car on a winding road at night.

Isn’t that fascinating! Your brain’s RAS is like a secret inner GPS (or I like to fondly think of it as my personal assistant) that will do everything it can to figure out how to bring your strongest intentions into reality! It’s safe to say that the RAS, at least in part, is how it is that so often people who we might say start out at a “disadvantage” can achieve things so extraordinary that it leaves us with our jaws on the floor and utterly inspired. Think Tony Robbins and actor Jim Carey...and the list is loooong.

Now we can spend an entire day together in workshop-style delving deeper into the RAS and other associated strategies for manifesting (and I hope one day we do!!!) but this is simply an introduction for you, which I hope, at the very least, will leave you a little bit curious about how you might put your RAS to work for you. But, I’m not going to end it here and leave you hanging. Let’s now take a look at how you can start putting this amazing bundle of nerves to work for you in life by doubling-down on this business of intention-setting.

Intention is what Oprah refers to as, “The number one principle that rules my life”. In her book, The Wisdom of Sundays, she talks to Gary Zukav about his book, The Seat of the Soul (which I highly recommend you read) and how it changed her life forever. She recounts with so much passion and gratitude a line in his book when she says, “Just hearing, ‘Intention rules every outcome’ makes me want to stand up and cheer!”. I couldn’t agree more.

Intention is the use of your will and your determination to create. While very much based on the principles of cause-and-effect, intention is actually about more than this. Intention is also the essence of why you do what you do, say what you say, think what you think, and choose what you choose. Intention is the unseen reason behind why you choose your actions. I’ve heard Gary Zukav say, “Intention is the cause.” Meaning, the true desires motivating you will create the outcome. So, the key is making sure that your truest and deepest desires are motivating you so that your intentions are aligned with what you really want.

Intention-setting is you practicing and applying what can be referred to as your Authentic Power - your will and your determination. Intention-setting is how you serve your Soul. It is really about letting go of resistance, letting go of the past and any ideas or stories about yourself that don’t support or align with what you want to do, then placing unwavering laser-focus on the outcome that you want. You start living your life with intention the moment you decide not to passively allow your life to just happen to you. Become aware of this and you will start to see how cause-and-effect impacts your own life.

Gary Zukav says in The Wisdom of Sundays, “...entertain the possibility that you are a powerful, creative, compassionate, and loving spirit. Now, that may seem a lie but, try that on for size and if you find that doesn’t fit; if you find there is a distance between who you are and what you say and what you do and the way you behave and, a powerful, creative and compassionate loving spirit, then also consider that that distance is the distance that you have to travel. That is your spiritual path. That’s your curriculum in the Earth’s school.” I love this. He’s saying that the distance between who you are now and who you aspire to be is the journey you must take in this life.

Take some time now if you can, or schedule some time with yourself, and get to a place in your mind with imagination where you can fully accept that the possibilities for you and your future are endless. Don’t skimp on this step - this is important. Ponder this: It is both the circumstances in your life that were out of your control, AND the sum of your choices and actions to date that were within your control, that have brought you to this very point in time, yes? So, take a moment……….and take some ownership of this. Become open to the ‘what ifs’ for you. The truth is that you are very much in control in your life. Choice by choice, action by action, you are co-creating your life. Please read this last bolded part again slowly and carefully so it can worm its way into your brain. Your entire life’s story is not written for you. It is the consequences of your choices that create your future - cause-and-effect. You are the Captain of your ship. If you can get to a place where you are ready to take bold and decisive action in your life - igniting your RAS is your next step. Even if you don’t feel “ready”, don’t get hung up on this, most people never feel ready to do big things or hard things, but doing them anyway is the key. Every successful person will tell you that taking action is the key to success and this is where your RAS comes in. Your RAS, along with your intuition/intuitive guide/your inner GPS/your higher self - or whatever you want to call the essence of You - expressed through you as intention, can show you the way and here’s how:

Many of our limiting beliefs are adopted at some point in our young lives when we didn’t have the understanding or the context that we have now as adults.

When there is something that you want to do, you can leverage intention by taking the following steps at a pace that works for you. First, check in with yourself to understand what is stopping you and isolate your limiting beliefs. For each limiting belief, ask yourself, “Is this really true without a shadow of a doubt?”. Really ponder it and with a birds-eye view (hover above your life objectively), ask yourself, “Is there an iota of possibility that an alternate perspective exists?”. Many of our limiting beliefs are adopted at some point in our young lives when we didn’t have the understanding or the context that we have now as adults. When you take the time to understand why you feel stuck and trace that limiting belief all the way back to its roots, you can deconstruct it and provide new context and understanding that can help to neutralize or minimize the harmful effects of the limiting belief. You can do this on your own with journaling using prompting questions like, “Why” over and over, keep answering why to get to the root, followed by questions like: When was the first time I felt this way? What happened? Who was there? What was said?” and most importantly, “What does it all really mean?”. Limiting beliefs are not actually Us, they are concepts that we carry inside of us by choice and usually we adopt beliefs about ourselves that actually have nothing to do with us and everything to do with someone else. Once you have worked to understand where your limiting belief is coming from and have shifted your perspective, you can then acknowledge it for what it is then lovingly and confidently choose to set it aside as it is not serving you. Next, you can let go of resistance by fully leaning into where you want to go, knowing that action is intention and being uncomfortable doesn’t mean you’re not meant to do it. Feeling uncomfortable about taking action means you’re about to do something that really matters to you that you’ve never done before. Place your focus repeatedly and consistently on where you want to go and move toward it by essentially staying just beyond your comfort zone. As you push outward and take action, you learn, you adapt and your comfort zone grows - Eventaully you expand.

In simpler terms, get comfortable being uncomfortable and take hell-bent action on your dreams - drop the rest.

Ok, lets end it here. Lucky you , I didn’t even get into universal forces, vibrations, the law of attraction and the law of replacement because….well... I don’t want to overdo it and this will become #TLTR (too long to read) ….but, just know, there are a lot of things working in your favour when you live with intention and you embrace the practice of intention-setting. This help is...ahem ...FREE!...and available to you… so let the help in and get out of your own way whydoncha? I encourage you to give your RAS, this special part or yourself that wants to support you, the attention and the kudos it deserves because it can work hard on your behalf if you want it to. As for me, I’ve got my RAS hard at work helping me turn my vision of helping to elevate others into a business and without a doubt it is also why I keep showing up for this dream today and every day.

I’d love to hear from you - leave a comment below.

Share this with someone you want to see succeed.

Follow me on instagram @put_em_high_

Subscribe to my blog to receive them by email.

....And....Stay tuned for my next blog where I’ll outline two daily practices that will strengthen your intention-setting and further enhance the activation of your RAS.