Goal Setting Success - Your Reticular Activating System Can Make You Blind

By: Rick Seymour
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:45
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Right now, stop feeling your shoes. (If you don’t have any shoes on it doesn’t count!) But, if you do have shoes on right now, you can’t stop feeling them – you are very aware of them. Before you read this paragraph, you were probably not aware of your shoes at all, but as long as you continue to try not to think about them, you are very aware of them. Why? Because all of the sudden I “made it important” by talking about it and as long as we continue to talk about your shoes, you will continue to be very aware of them. However, before I brought it up, you were totally unaware of your shoes. Your Reticular Activating System knew that those stimuli were not important and thus, filtered out the information so that your conscious mind would not have to deal with it. And, a few minutes from now, after we have stopped talking about your shoes, your Reticular Activating System will once again filter out that information because it knows it isn’t important and you will again be unaware of your shoes.

Think about where you are sitting right now. Can you hear a refrigerator motor running, the hum of fluorescent lights, the fan from the heating or air-conditioning system, traffic outside, city noises or any other background noise that is common in your home or office. Until I just now asked you to stop and focus on it, it was unimportant and your Reticular Activating System filtered it out. The vast majority of the time you never consciously hear or pay attention to any of those types of noises, because they are “not important”.

For those of you that read a daily, big-city newspaper, can you tell me how many stores had ads for dishwashers on sale in Friday or Saturday’s paper? I’m sure you have no idea whether anybody was even advertising dishwashers at all. But let’s suppose you walk into your kitchen today and find two inches of water because your dishwasher has blown up – how many ads for dishwashers on sale will you see now? EVERY ONE. They will jump off the pages at you. Why? Because all of the sudden it is important information to you. (By the way, Sears has had at least one model of dishwasher on sale every weekend for the last 40 years!)

A few years ago our niece and her husband bought a beautiful, expensive home high on Point Loma in San Diego. From their back deck there was a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean, San Diego Bay and downtown San Diego. Interestingly enough, however, it sat right in the take-off pattern of the San Diego airport. When a 747 would take off with all the burners cooking, it would rattle the windows, dishes in the china cabinet would dance on the shelves and there was no way that you could continue a conversation until the plane had passed over head and the roar had ended.

My wife and I went to visit them about a year after they had moved into this home. I’m a pilot. I’ve spent a lot of time around airports. I love airplanes. There is nothing about planes or flying that scares me. We walked in their front door for the first time (not knowing that there was an airport out their back door!) and as we stood in the living room, a 747 took off. It sounded like it was going to come right through the house. I literally ducked! As I ducked, I said, “Whoa – what was that?!!!!” For a moment my nephew had this blank look, like ‘what the heck is wrong with you?’ And then with perfect equanimity, not understanding why I reacted the way I did, he said, “A 747.” I noticed during the three days that we were there, that whenever a plane took off, the family would stop in mid-sentence, pause until the plane passed over, and then pick up the conversation as though nothing unusual had happened. They had been there long enough that they no longer heard, registered or reacted to 747’s flying over the house. Why? Because the Reticular Activating System knew it wasn’t important information – so they literally were deaf to the noise. By about the third day I wasn’t paying any attention to 747s either.

That’s the same reason that people that live next to railroads or highways never ‘hear’ what would drive someone else crazy (until they too had lived next to it long enough). Once your Reticular Activating System knows that the stimuli are not important, it filters it out so that you don’t have to “deal with it.”

For future reference, there is a huge clue here. The information, data, stimuli or opportunities that you are exposed to must satisfy the question “Is it important?” before your Reticular Activating System will let you become aware of it. The key is to learn how to make your goals “important” so that you can see the opportunities that are all around you.

For more information about the Reticular Activating System and related topics, go to: http://www.godinyourgoals.com

Article source: Expert Articles