Have you ever noticed something curious? The moment you buy a new car—let’s say a BMW—you suddenly see them everywhere. They’re on every corner, in every parking lot, cruising past you on the highway.
Did BMW’s sales suddenly spike in your neighborhood? Of course not.
Those cars were always there. So why do they seem to appear out of thin air the moment you make your purchase?
The Bouncer of Your Mind
At the base of your brainstem sits a bundle of nerves called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). Think of it as the bouncer of your mind—deciding what gets into your conscious awareness and what gets left outside.
Here’s why you need one: Every second, your senses are bombarded with approximately 8 million bits of information. Your conscious brain can only process about 40 bits of that information at any given moment.
If you tried to process everything at once, you would go insane instantly.
So the RAS acts as a filter, deleting 99.9% of reality and only letting in what matches your internal search parameters—what you’ve flagged as “important.”
Programming Your Reality
This is where things get fascinating from a positive psychology perspective.
The RAS doesn’t just filter random information. It actively searches for evidence that confirms your beliefs about the world. If you believe “the world is against me,” your RAS will hunt for proof of persecution. You’ll spot the rude cashier. You’ll hear the insult hidden in the compliment. You’ll walk right past open doors because they don’t match your filter settings.
Your brain literally edits out opportunities that don’t align with your worldview.
This is why someone with a victim mindset consistently feels victimized—not because the universe is conspiring against them, but because they’re neurologically fixated on the negative. Their RAS is programmed to find problems, so that’s exactly what it delivers.
Changing Your Search Parameters
The good news? You cannot change the external world, but you can absolutely change your search parameters.
When you program your RAS to look for opportunity, something remarkable happens. You begin to see deals, connections, and possibilities where others see nothing. You’re walking through the exact same physical space as someone who feels stuck, but you’re living in a completely different reality.
This aligns beautifully with the Be-Do-Feel-Good Phenomenon. When you train your mind to focus on positive possibilities, you create a upward spiral. Positive focus leads to positive emotions, which promote prosocial actions, which reinforce positive beliefs—and the cycle continues.
A Practice in Awareness
Be mindful of what you focus on. You’re not just “thinking” about something—you’re giving your brain explicit instructions about what to keep and what to delete from your reality.
Focus on problems, and you’ll find them everywhere.
Focus on solutions, and you’ll create them naturally.
The truth is simple but profound: You do not see the world as it is. You see the world as you are.
This understanding has powerful applications in positive psychology and social psychology, helping us cultivate kindness, empathy, and cooperation by intentionally directing our attention toward what builds us up rather than what tears us down.
Your RAS is always working, always filtering, always searching. The question is: what have you programmed it to find?
