A Concept I didn’t understand until now (RAS), and how it changed my life.

Familiar with the Reticular Activating System?

When my wife lost her job at Pfizer as a Ph.D. level scientist, we were devastated. This was the time when the tech sector laid thousands of workforces due to a bad economy after the pandemic.

Losing a job can be one of the most stressful and challenging experiences in life. It can shake our sense of stability and security, leaving us feeling uncertain and vulnerable.

This is what happened to my wife and me when we both lost our jobs around the same time. To make matters worse, my wife was let go from her position at Pfizer, where she had been working as a Ph.D. level scientist for several years.

At first, we were both devastated by the news. It felt like our world had been turned upside down, and we didn’t know what the future held. However, my wife’s reaction to the situation surprised me. Instead of giving up or dwelling on the negative, she decided to focus on the positive aspects of the experience.

One of the things that helped her shift her perspective was the fact that she was able to start working on projects that she was passionate about again. As a scientist, she had always been interested in solving basic fundamental problems, but her job at Pfizer had become more focused on managing people and projects. Now that she had more time and flexibility, she was able to dive back into the research and development work that she loved.

Another factor that contributed to my wife’s positive outlook was her ability to reframe the situation. Instead of seeing her layoff as a setback, she saw it as an opportunity to explore new possibilities and grow in different ways. She started to look for jobs in related fields that would allow her to use her skills and expertise in different ways, and she began to see the layoff as a chance to reinvent herself and her career.

As we went through this challenging time together, I realized the power of a positive mindset and the importance of focusing on the good, even in difficult situations. By training our minds to look for the positive, we can find opportunities where others only see obstacles. And by using the Reticular Activating System to filter in information that supports our goals and beliefs, we can create a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

can you include tony robbin’s exercise too

One tool that helped us both maintain a positive mindset during this challenging time was an exercise we learned from Tony Robbins.

The exercise involves looking for a specific color or object in your environment, then closing your eyes and trying to recall all the things you saw that were a different color or object.

For example, Tony might ask you to look for everything in the room that is brown. Once you’ve identified all the brown objects, you close your eyes and try to recall everything in the room that is red. By doing this exercise, you’re training your Reticular Activating System to be more aware of your surroundings and notice things that you may not have otherwise seen.

My wife and I decided to use this exercise as a way to focus on the positive aspects of our situation. Instead of looking for a specific color or object, we would look for positive things or opportunities that we might have overlooked. For example, we would look for job listings in related fields or research areas that my wife was interested in, or we would focus on the fact that we now had more time to spend together as a family.

By consciously looking for the positive and using the Reticular Activating System to filter in information that supported our goals and beliefs, we were able to maintain a sense of hope and optimism during a difficult time. And, in the end, my wife was able to find a new job that she loves, doing research that she’s passionate about.

Overall, the Reticular Activating System is a powerful tool that can help us focus our attention and create a more positive outlook on life. By consciously looking for the good in every situation and training our minds to notice opportunities and possibilities, we can create a more fulfilling and meaningful life, even in the face of adversity.