Your Brain Is Wired to See Threats Instead of Opportunities. Here's Why - and How to Train It to Do the Opposite.

The reticular activating system is a brainstem network that acts as an attention filter. Attention determines what evidence becomes visible and what opportunities remain hidden. Focusing on avoiding failure causes the brain to surface failure-related information while blocking opportunity. Choosing what to look for directs the RAS toward specific inputs worth promoting to awareness. The solution is not optimism or affirmations, but selecting a different target for attention. Priming the RAS helps desired outcomes pass through the filter. A business founder describes early struggles after leaving a medical career, relying on consultants and strategists, and repeatedly questioning whether to give up until realizing the brain was responding to the focus being provided.

"The reticular activating system (RAS) is a network of neurons in the brainstem that functions as an attention filter. We tell the brain what to notice and where to focus by where we put our attention. If you focus on avoiding failure, for example, your brain surfaces evidence of failure and blinds you to opportunity. When we choose what we look for, we're telling our RAS which specific bits are worth promoting to our awareness."

"The fix isn't optimism or affirmations; it's giving your RAS a different target - the target you choose. The key is priming your RAS to let the things you desire pass through the filter. "

""I don't want to give up now." This thought plagued the early years of my business. Here I'd left my successful medical career and directorship to follow my life's Why - to create great impact, to change the world - and the visible results took longer than I expected. I was trained as a doctor. I didn't know anything about marketing, sales, or building a personal brand. Initially, I hired consultants to do all the things I didn't know how to do. That felt wise - I stayed in my zone of genius and outsourced the rest - but the results still didn't come."

"Next, I hired strategists and advisors to show me what I didn't see. Honestly, most of that work took me further off course. In medicine, there is a saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Each one believed that their specific methodology was ideal for every business - it wasn't. Every time I hit a roadblock or had a revenue shortfall, I wondered if this was it. Would I have to return to the practice of medicine? Would I have to give up on my dream? And if I did, would I lose everything I'd built until now?"

Read at Entrepreneur