How to Tune your Brain to Look for Breakthroughs

Breakthroughs aren’t automatic.

If they were, they wouldn’t be the sudden, dramatic and usually important quantum leaps that they can be.

Our brains aren’t tuned for breakthroughs, they’re tuned for survival — surprise! You probably already knew that. But there is a way to tune them — just like you tune an instrument — to look for breakthroughs personally or professionally. 

I played several instruments when I was younger. Violin, cello, and then guitar, mostly because that’s what the cool kids were doing. Hey, I tried. I recall, whenever I would take the instrument out of its case to practice, it was almost always out of tune. Maybe it’s obvious, but when the instrument is out of tune, there’s no way you can play a decent song. 

Our brain starts out the same way — out of tune with breakthrough results. It’s typically just looking for how to just survive another day. And it’s easier to “survive” — personally or professionally — by adjusting down your goals, turning down your dreams and ratcheting back your ambitions based on what’s happening. There’s no shortage of circumstances in the world that serve as very fair excuses, but leave you without results. Unchecked, this downward spiral of survival can mark the decline of a company or a career.   

An instrument needs to be tuned first. I remember whenever I would tune any of the string instruments, a tuning fork would give us the note to match. That was a long time ago — most tuners are digital these days. Without that tuning fork, I was at a loss. There was nothing for me to aim at. 

Here’s how that translates for all of us.

There’s a small but important part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) that’s essentially the tuning fork for our brains. It quite simply filters out all unnecessary information to get you to focus on what you need. It’s why you can walk into a busy conference space with people, displays, music, lighting — and if someone calls out your name you immediately pick it out of all that noise. Or if you buy a new car, suddenly you may notice that car everywhere. The RAS takes what you’re focused on and creates a filter so only those things are presented to your conscious mind.

Without tuning the RAS, the survival instincts that are pre-programmed look for reasons, justifications, excuses, and distractions to keep you from achieving what it is you want to achieve. It literally is looking for why you cannot do it! When properly tuned though, it constantly filters looking for a breakthrough. 

The million dollar question is how do you tune it, right?

Not by snapping your fingers and hoping for magic. It requires the equivalent of the tuning fork marking the note the instrument needs to be tuned to. You do that by making a commitment to where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Intending, sharing, declaring what those dreams, goals or visions are — the more specific the better. I call it Getting a Tattoo, making a commitment where there’s no going back. Once you know where you’re aiming, the RAS is tuned to help get you there, no matter how audacious “there” might be. 

I recommend doing this first in small ways. And then in larger and larger situations. You might first commit to one small task a day. Then a larger goal for the week. Before you know it, you’ll be able to commit to larger goals and longer term dreams and use your RAS to follow through on actually realizing them. 

Just knowing how the RAS works doesn’t make it work for you.

So let’s take action to learn how to make it work for you. Right now, I invite you to share one of your commitments with me right HERE. Don’t worry, it’s private so make it as big and life changing as you want. By writing it down you’re already starting to tune your brain to look for how to make it happen. 

Breakthroughs don’t happen every day, but we can start to create them intentionally and much more frequently. 

It’s commitment that aids in retraining your RAS away from feeding into reasons, circumstances and doubt to refocus towards your goals. Transformations and breakthroughs happen when you tune the filter through which you look at the world not to look for reasons why you cannot do something, but rather to discover tools, pathways, shortcuts and resources to go the direction you want to go.

If you’re not tuning your brain for breakthroughs, don’t be surprised if you don’t have them.