I’m now a firm believer in the law of attraction. If you want to achieve something in life, no matter how impossible it seems, you can achieve it by believing in yourself and staying positive about it. Self-belief and positivity will attract good fortune. And I’m going to tell you about the fascinating mechanism behind the law of attraction.
Before you think I’m talking superstitions, let me tell you I don’t believe that the law of attraction works by way of magic. There is a perfectly logical and scientific explanation behind it. Read on to find out what it is.
What is the Law?
On Wikipedia, the law of attraction is described as follows:
The Law of Attraction is the belief that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, people can bring positive or negative experiences into their life.
Different people have different understanding or interpretations of the law of attraction. Some people believe that it works by way of magic, some believe it’s God. Some new-age spiritualists explain it by saying when you earnestly desire something and concentrate your positive energy on it, the universe conspires to give you what you desire.
I’m not going to argue against the different explanations of the law. People are free to believe what works for them. But since I’m scientifically oriented, I’m going to present to you the scientific explanation of the law of attraction.
The scientific reason why the law of attraction works lies in something called the Reticular Activating System in our brains. You’ll see that there’s no external law as such. It’s all in our brains.
Reticular Activating System (RAS)
Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a tool inside our brains that filters the information coming into our conscious mind from the subconscious mind.
Every waking hour, we receive a ton of data into our subconscious mind as we go about our day navigating through the world around us. Everything that we see, hear, touch, or smell is essentially information/data that is entering our subconscious mind.
We don’t require most of that information. For example, when you go out on a street, every vehicle that you see makes its way into your subconscious mind, along with everything else that you perceive through all of your senses. But how many of those vehicles would you remember after just two minutes? Likely none. Because that data is irrelevant to you. It just enters your subconscious mind and stays there, never coming into your conscious mind.
The job of RAS is to send the relevant information from your subconscious mind to your conscious mind.
Let me give you a few examples to show how it works.
Example #1
Let’s say you decided to buy yourself a pair of sunglasses and you go out to shop for them. What you experience now is that you’re noticing all the people who are wearing sunglasses.
On other days you didn’t notice people with sunglasses because your RAS didn’t send that data to your conscious mind, but now because you are focused on sunglasses, your RAS decides that people wearing sunglasses may be relevant to you and sends that data to your conscious mind.
Example #2
You started your day by listening to a very melodious song.
Now you’re at a party, talking to a group of people. There are many groups of people at the party. While you’re talking with your group, you hear a person in the group behind you. He’s trying to remember a line of the very song that you listened to in the morning. So you turn back and help him out with the line, and resume your conversation.
Out of all the talking in that party hall, the voice of this person made its way to your conscious mind. That’s because your RAS decided that that data may be important for you based on your conscious mind’s recent history—that you listened to the song in the morning.
Example #3
You’re in a crowded place that’s also very noisy. You can only hear various sounds and see people’s lips moving, but can’t make out what anyone is saying.
Then suddenly someone says your name and it catches your attention. Do you see what just happened? Because it’s your name, your RAS decided to let that piece of data into your conscious mind while filtering out all the noise.
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Experiences like these are very common and we have them all the time.
Here’s what all these examples mean: What we notice or don’t notice around us is determined by RAS in our brain. RAS looks at the contents of our conscious mind and determines what information/data to let in.
RAS and the Law of Attraction
When you are focused on achieving something, your RAS will let in all the information that is relevant to what you’re focused on.
For example, if you focus on learning guitar, you will start seeing other people playing guitar, you’ll find books and YouTube videos with guitar lessons, you will find mentors, and so on. Not that all of it didn’t exist before, but when your RAS gets a clear message that learning guitar is what your conscious mind is focused on, only then does it present these opportunities to help you. Isn’t that fascinating?
RAS and Self-Belief
RAS also works with your self-belief. Whatever you believe about yourself, RAS will provide information to support that belief. If you think your life sucks, RAS will provide information that confirms that your life sucks. If you think your life is good, RAS will provide information that confirms that your life is good.
RAS does not think. It can’t decide what is good for you and what is bad. It’s merely a mechanism that just lets in the information/data based on what is going on in your conscious mind at the time.
Now you understand why staying positive is so important. By staying positive, you bring more positivity into your life. It would feel as if you’re attracting more positivity toward yourself.
Train Your RAS to Achieve Dreams
RAS is like a secretary who works for the conscious mind. RAS decides what enters your conscious mind. So you want to train your RAS to bring all the useful information to you that’s going to help you achieve your dreams.
Think about your dreams and what you want to achieve in life. Then use the following methods to deepen your focus and train your RAS to help you:
Frequently visualize yourself achieving it
Do affirmations every day
Check out my post about affirmations to learn more about it. It’s one of the most important things you’ll learn about achieving success. The idea is to keep your mind focused on your long-term goals. By keeping your mind focused, you will ensure that your RAS brings you all the useful information and opportunities you would otherwise miss.
When you focus on achieving something, you will find ways to achieve it. When you keep a positive attitude, you will stumble upon more positive things in your life. That essentially is the law of attraction.