Have you ever researched a car to buy and suddenly start seeing it everywhere? Have you ever been in a noisy crowd of people where nothing seems audible until you hear your own name clear as a bell? This is your brain's Reticular Activating System at work, charged with filtering out the unimportant stuff so you can notice what is important--or what you think is important at the time. Some of these filters are based on survival instinct (food=good!), but others have come about from beliefs you may not even realize you have (always looking for an exit because you have a belief about being trapped, for example). 

Exciting news! You can intentionally program the RAS to seek and find evidence of anything that you want! In the example of the titular game "Looking for Hearts," which I learned about from author/speaker Mel Robbins, one simply decides to look for heart shapes in the world wherever they go and begins to find them--in clouds, in rock formations, in imprints on toast, or in a reflection off the person-near-you's hair.  

When you give your brain a job, it goes to work faithfully for what you have told it is important.

But after a time, maybe your brain notices that hearts aren't actually that big of a deal to you because you can't eat them or they're just not really getting you out of the bed in the morning and that's okay! If you want them to be a priority to you, just leave a reminder to keep looking for them. Keep re-deciding to keep telling your brain they are important.

OR...pick something that actually matters deeply to you, but is not looking the way you want: your romantic partnership, your business's success, your connection with your kids, your home environment. Put your brain on the job of finding the good and beautiful in one of these areas. The more you decide to look for it, the more you will find. The more attention you give it, the more you will create examples of it through your own connectedness and loving attention. 

You create more of what you focus on.

That ALSO means...if you're determined to find evidence of negativity, frustration, disharmony, hostility, resentment, etc, you can do that, too. Does it feel good to you to focus on those things? Probably not. You don't have to convince yourself that you love things you don't love; your mind will not believe this at all! Just slowly, intentionally, consciously: look for the good and hopeful and bright. 

Look for the hearts! They're everywhere. You'll see.

Last fall, I attended a coaching conference in Phoenix, with about 1000 (or more) mostly women. On the first day, the keynote speaker Brooke Castillo, who had two new Chanel purses with her, complete with beautiful boxes, on-stage from the first session, offered them to the large audience for $10. 

$10 for a multi-thousand dollar purse. 

Most of us stayed in our seats, confused, or letting our brains spin with all the reasons our brains offered us of why she did not mean us. 

"I don't have any cash on me." 

"This is a joke." 

"There's a larger lesson here...right?"

 "There are too many people between me and the stage." 

"I can't stand up and just ASK for a purse in front of all these people."

"I don't want to look greedy/materialistic/like I care about purses."

A few, however, stood up--borrowing cash from people in neighbor seats, offering to Venmo, etc. and the very fastest of those got Chanel purses…for $10. The entire gigantic hotel resort ballroom was electrified and staring at the stage in astonishment. Even the online attendees (who were also eligible for the purses) were furiously chatting messages we could see on the wall projector all amounting to: 

What. The Heck. Is Happening Right Now?!

Yes, some people acted faster than others, but at the rate the purses were claimed, there wasn't a single person in the audience who couldn't have claimed a purse if s/he had immediately believed it was available and meant for them. It hit me: I could have had a Chanel purse. For $10. All I had to do was ask (and in this case, claim it).

What opportunities are being presented to you every day that you are convinced are not for you? That you are closed to because of some sentence in your brain telling you that you can't. It's only true if you believe it!

What if everything was available to you--Chanel purses, travel, strong relationships, meaningful work, a beautiful garden, a cold drink on a hot day, a kind word? Decide that it is and let it outlast your doubt until you have it. Want some help figuring out how? Book a free discovery call with your favorite coach! I specialize in helping you tap into your own perfect wisdom to turn desires into decisions that activate and release your power. Let's goo!

I grew up in a small town with a historic movie theater built in the 1920s and the projector there wasn't much newer, meaning that occasionally there would be unintentional intermissions during the show because a light bulb exploded or the film reel was stuck or broken or put in upside down, or in one memorable instance, loaded in the wrong order. I believe this theater now has modern trappings of the digital age, but in the free-wheeling 80s and 90s, going to the movies was its own adventure, never mind the feature!

The first time I saw the greatly anticipated third and final installment in the Back 2 the Future franchise, for example, the reels were loaded into the projector out of order. As the very subject of the movies is time travel, it took us, the confused audience, quite awhile to figure out what was happening. The theater finally offered a complete ordered showing of the movie following the complete disordered mix-up and we all got home very late that evening and thoroughly confused.

But what do the adventures of Marty and Doc have to do with self-help, the semi-cohesive theme of this blog?

We (the audience of the Select Theater in the summer of 1990) thought we were just watching a very confusing movie. "This is just how it is," we thought as we crunched our popcorn. But it wasn't the movie at all; it was the projector that was messed up. At the movies, as in life, we think we're seeing everything playing out in front of us just as it is, but it's really the projector that's running the whole show.

In the movie of our life, the projector is our mind and our thoughts are the lens through which we experience every emotion beamed onto the background of the world. What's really going to bake your noodle is the fact that the majority of craftsmanship of our projector lens is completed by the time we reach the sophisticated and informed age of 7*, honed by our interpretations of inputs we received from our families, our cultures, our backgrounds, and our experiences. The brain mostly operates in theta and alpha frequencies in these early years--the same as in hypnosis or deep meditation.

While your experiences before age 7 could have created a very positive view of money and healthy self-esteem that may be serving you well to this day, that is unfortunately not always the case. So if you saw your parents fighting over money just before they got divorced when you were 5, are you doomed to live a lonely, bankrupt life and have an adversarial relationship with money? Of course not! Though your lens was formed in those early years creating the foundation of your subconscious mind, you can make changes to it anytime you want to. In many cases, life does this for us as a new experience challenges an old belief that makes the old one less useful. 

But you can be the cause of changes, too--not just the effect. You can wipe down the lens. You can get a totally brand new one! You can buff out a scratch. You can swat the fly that keeps landing on it. The only trick is, you have to do this intentionally if you want to create an intentional result. The way you create intention is with your thoughts. And the shortcut to creating and believing the thoughts that you want is with a life coach.

And scene.

Are you are ready to change the movie on the screen, uplevel your life, and give your poor, painful, doomed thoughts the heave ho?! Let's work together and let's go! It would be an honor to be your coach! Click to go to my appointments page to schedule your free 20 minute consult call.