Retraining the RAS: Taking Back Control of What Your Brain Notices

Anxiety does not simply disappear while you remain the same person. One of the most practical ways to change the relationship with it is to stop treating it as an enemy that attacks you and start treating it as a process you can deliberately influence.

A useful technique for this is the “Bring it On” method. When anxiety or intrusive thoughts arise, you sit down, soften the body, and place your attention on the physical sensation — racing heart, sweating, trembling. Then, in a calm, almost playful tone, you ask for more.

“Is that the best you can do? 120 beats a minute? I’d like 140. Come on, make the hands sweat properly. Let’s see some real trembling. Give me better intrusive thoughts than that.”

You stay as the Observer. The body is running its old programme. You are not fighting it and you are not identifying with it. You are simply requesting that it do a thorough job. When the intensity eventually drops (it always does), you invite it back: “Where are you going? I’m not finished yet.”

With repetition the power dynamic shifts. Anxiety no longer feels like something that happens to you. You are leading and it is following. Once that switch occurs, the old story — “I can’t do X because it makes me anxious” — loses its force. The new version becomes: “I can feel anxious and still act.” That is enough to open doors that previously stayed closed.

This technique is only one part of a larger process. The deeper mechanism involves the Reticular Activating System — the RAS. This part of the brain filters the millions of pieces of sensory data arriving every second and decides what is important enough to bring into conscious awareness. It takes its main cues from where you place your conscious attention and from the belief systems already running.

If you spend the day focused on everything that could go wrong, the RAS will keep serving up evidence that the world is dangerous and that you are falling short. If you repeatedly state clear, positive intentions — what you actually want rather than what you do not want — the filter begins to change. Opportunities, solutions and confirming evidence start appearing more readily.

Negative statements are almost useless to the unconscious. “I don’t want to feel anxious” gives it nothing actionable. “Calmness and purposeful action are important to me” is a clear instruction it can work with. Beliefs act as the night-time filter that decides which experiences get stored as long-term evidence and which get discarded. A belief that you are unlovable will keep every critical remark and delete the five times someone said they loved you. The opposite belief does the reverse.

The practical work is therefore straightforward, even if it feels awkward at first. Speak to yourself in the language of the person you are becoming. Keep stating what you want in clear, positive terms. When the old negative commentary appears, talk over it rather than arguing with it. Use small, intermediate goals if the larger ones are still unclear. Put the key intentions where you will see them repeatedly — phone lock screen, notebook, morning and evening review.

None of this requires you to believe the new statements immediately. You are simply feeding the RAS new instructions. Over time the filter updates, the evidence base shifts, and the old protective programmes lose their grip.

Anxiety will still arise in moments of genuine vulnerability — first dates, new jobs, saying no, stepping into the unknown. That is normal. The difference is that it no longer stops you. You have practised welcoming it, observing it, and continuing anyway. That is the practical meaning of reprogramming the brain: not the elimination of all discomfort, but the recovery of choice.