Have you ever noticed this wonderful thing in your life that whatever you keep on priority, you somehow just tend to achieve and accomplish? This is almost always the case. All the priority work somehow just gets completed. This is a phenomenal process. Keep something on priority, and it’s done.
Think about a situation when you had to finish a project with a deadline, or when you had to deliver a product or service to your customer, or when you had to deposit your child's school fees or may be the electricity bill, phone bill or to do something which was challenging initially. You had several obstacles to face. Difficulties and procrastination left no possible way of how to get the work done, and then came the deadline and boom you just got it done, miraculously.
What happened? How did you suddenly get the insight, idea, solution or the way for it? What happened inside your little but powerful brain which ultimately led you to the solution. There is something very simple but very interesting which takes place inside your brain. Once you understand this, you can really leverage your brain for your use and benefit rather than become a victim of your brain.
Your brain is an extremely powerful gift that Nature has given to you. It contains approx. 80-100 billion nerve cells which are continuously connecting with each other to make sure you are able to live comfortably and do all that you intend for consciously. Your brain operates like a goal seeking device. This is similar to a target-seeking missile. The missile, once the target is set, it will keep travelling till it finds the target and hits it.
The same principle is what our brain follows as well. Once the goal is clear to the brain, it gets into action and gets the particular work done for you. The question that comes to mind then is how does the brain perceive what is a goal for us? And the answer is very simple: whatever you keep on priority. Every priority or something you focus on significantly is considered by the brain as an important goal.
Our brain has got a small pencil size organ called Reticular Activation System or RAS, which starts close to the top of the spinal column and extends upward to two inches. It is primarily the gate of your conscious mind. All the sensory data (except smell which directly goes directly to the brain emotional centre) gets filtered through here and goes to your conscious mind or awareness. It’s a miraculous little organ about the size of your little finger.
Some recent scientific findings highlight that our subconscious mind can process around 400 billion bits of information every second but our conscious mind is only aware of 2000 bits of those. The 2000 bits that we are aware of, primarily involve information about our body, survival and things which are important to us.
All the ideas, insights, radical positive thoughts, breakthroughs, solutions come to the conscious mind in these 2000 bits which are filtered through the 400 billion bits of information. In this way, every human being gets his insights or ideas in this similar fashion, be it a great business leader or a politician, or a scientist or a manager.
RAS is the tiny part of the brain responsible for these 2000 bits of information. Now the question is: why do some people get amazing ideas, insights, solutions easily, while many of us are not able to achieve this or when we keep things on priority, why do we just find a way to get it done? And the answer is what’s the program being installed in the RAS, the filter mechanism of your brain or the search function of your brain.
The RAS Program simply means whatever you keep on priority or on top focus for you, your RAS considers that’s to be important and it just filters out from the environment all that information you need to get your work done or problem solved. This is one of the most amazing brain functions you can leverage for your growth. This is nature’s inbuilt mechanism to help you succeed in anything you do.
The key to having breakthrough ideas, ideas to create a revolutionary product or service, or get a new job opportunity, or start your own business, multiply your income or salary or have a personal breakthrough, or healing oneself is to keep these on priority or having the top focus for a significant period of time. That’s how great leaders, scientist, authors, and other successful people create miraculous results. You see, they are completely immersed in their work for long.
This is how your brain operates. The moment you keep something on priority, the brain (RAS) puts all its energy and resources to work on it, it uses all data, information, knowledge available to help you get what is on priority for you. So, the secret to achieving anything is to keep it on priority or focus on it massively.
Reflect now, what is a priority for you normally? For masses today, browsing on Facebook, chatting on WhatsApp, sending forwards, going for a party, outing, smoke, movie, shopping, gossiping, cracking jokes and talking endlessly without any objective, paying the bills, installments, completing the projects, meeting office deadlines are the priorities and they keep completing all this every day. Becoming a great, successful person, genius in their field, multi-millionaire or a billionaire is not a priority and hence most people never become.
The secret of highly successful people, or world class champions is that they have different priorities than what we have. They were in the same situations as we are but they kept having different priorities. They continuously kept mastering their art, craft, improving themselves, building new skills, practice their tools, developing their competencies, focusing on their ultimate goals, creating breakthrough ideas, how to create abundance, how to become the greatest version of themselves.
That's the secret. You will always achieve what's on priority for you. The secret is keeping the goals, habits, system, schedule which will give you top most results as your top most priority.
Four specific ways to put something on priority and to make sure your RAS takes it as a priority:
1. First thing you see in the morning and last thing at night – Set goals which are important to you and read them every morning and before you sleep at night. Do this every day for the next few months with sincerity, and your brain starts filtering information which guides you or helps you to achieve them easily. Your brain starts reorganizing your entire thoughts and emotions to prepare you to accomplish what is on priority.
2. What you imagine – Whatever you focus on or imagine, your RAS takes this as important. The more you do it, the more it considers it to be important. We have heard the saying, “What we focus on, expands”. Reflect what you imagine more often – your success or failures, a good thing which can come in your life or things which can go bad? Most people practically have no control over this aspect. They haven’t spent time training this amazing faculty nature has given to them. There is a reason why Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions”
3. Outcome - One of the fastest ways of communicating to the RAS about what you want to get done or get results is to think of the outcome clearly. In any situation think, what is the final outcome you want. Don’t see how the outcome shall come, trust your brain intelligence, and give it a picture of the outcome you want. Once you know the outcome, your brain just shows you the way as well. It’s like driving to a city you have never been to, but you just know the destination, and somehow asking, you reach the city. This happens because the outcome is crystal clear to you. Your brain in the entire day accomplish millions of small and big outcomes without even your conscious awareness.
4. Massive Involvement - Whatever is important to you, you spend the most time on it. So, if becoming a millionaire, or being the top performer, creating a billion-dollar business or creating a breakthrough product is important to you, then you need to spend massive amount of time every day on it. You need to keep your attention on it, read about different ways, stories of people who have gone there, concepts to masters, books and much more. When your brain finds you spending so much time on it, it automatically understands the importance of it in your life and works with all its resources to achieve it. You can’t say I want to be a billionaire and then not do a single thing in your day towards it, this is like fooling oneself. Your action should be towards that direction continuously.
Use one of the greatest gifts you have got, a super powerful brain. Once you learn to start using it properly, life will get much easier. Achieving big goals will become possible, no problems will be so big that they cannot be solved.
Everyone is a genius, unexplored and untapped. You are born with all the potentials. Don’t die without unleashing them.