Reprogramming Your Mind
June 29, 2009
Dear Friends,
We can’t always control our thoughts though we can program them to a certain extent. This wonderful gift of God for the ability to preprogram our thoughts gives us amazing amount of power if we will only take the time to understand it and pursue it.
There is a small part of our brain which is called the reticular activating system (or RAS). Think of the RAS as basically the traffic cop for our conscious mind. The RAS determines which thoughts make it from the subconscious to the conscious part of the brain.
Our bodies are constantly bombarded with sensory data such as sight, sounds and feeling. The RAS acts as a filter for the all of stimulus that your nervous system sends to the brain determining what is and is not important. For example, we are hearing things all the time, but only a fraction of that sound data actually registers beyond our subconscious. Imagine walking through a crowded place and all of the conversations that are going on around us. Most of it is blocked, yet as soon as we hear our own name, we suddenly “listen.” We are always hearing, but not always listening. Sounds are always making it to our ears, but we are not always aware of them.
The interesting thing is that we can preprogram this to a certain extent. Think of this like a computer program where we have submitted a list of certain phrases, visual cues and so forth that we have told our brain are “important” so that we can become conscious of them. On our family drives, we would often play the “flag game” to pass the time. The object of the game was to be the first one to find ten flags. The first one to see a flag and yell “flag” (usually at volumes entirely inappropriate for a confined space!) would get a coveted point. I can tell you that after you play this game about ten times in a row; it is hard to turn off your mind from noticing flags. Days and even weeks later I would still find myself noticing flags. This is our RAS at work.
Now let’s say we didn’t focus on flags, but used our God-given RAS to focus on godly things as suggested by the Apostle Paul when he said:
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things. (Eph. 4:8 NIV)
We decide we are going to play the “service game.” During the course of the day, we are going to see how many times we can spot opportunities to serve people and perform random acts of kindness. We keep playing the game until we can’t really turn it off in our minds. The next game we play is the “praise game” where we look for opportunities to admire God’s creation and design of this world and praise Him for it. We keep playing these little games with ourselves (or even other people) until our mind gets reprogrammed to “think about such things” and let those things past our RAS with enough frequency to change us for the better.
So let’s actually play a round this week. Below I will list the day we will dedicate ourselves to these games and you write your “points” down and post your findings on the TFTW blog. The days and topics are as follows:
- Monday & Tuesday – Service – Find as many ways you can serve people and perform random acts of kindness. You only get points if you act on it. “By love serve one another.” (Gal. 5:13)
- Wednesday & Thursday – Praise – Look for things to praise God about including His creation, His working in your life and His small gifts to us. You only get points if you actually do praise Him not matter how short. “Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.” (Ps 22:23)
- Friday, Saturday & Sunday – Good in Others - Look for commendable things in other people and let them know. “Let each esteem other better than themselves.” (Phil. 4:8)
Have a great week,
