How I Manifested an Abundance...(of yellow cars)
Use Science and Brain Training to Get What You Want
Storytime
SCORE!
On a road-trip from MN to FL in 2011, my nephew introduced me to the game SCORE. The goal was simple, count how many yellow cars you can spot, and the person with the highest number for the duration of the trip wins.
While driving in Minnesota and Iowa, our Score tallies were relatively low, in the single digits for a 2-3 hour stint. But, as we covered more states, the tallies increased.
By the time we got to FL, we were scoring well into the 30s in a 2-3 hour stint.
Yellow cars were EVERYWHERE, an abundance of them!
I started to realize that if I could “manifest” (aka notice) a Yellow car on the road within 10 minutes of looking for one, I could probably train my brain to notice other things in my life as well. But how?
Lesson
In the game SCORE, my nephew and I trained our brains to decide that yellow cars were important enough to NOTICE. We became very mindful of the color yellow on vehicles. There were never any more or fewer yellow cars on the road. We just got better at noticing them.
This phenomenon is explained by a part of your brain called the RAS - the Reticular Activating System.
The RAS is a filter in your brain that determines what data coming in through your senses is important for you to notice and pay attention to consciously vs what data coming in can be filed away in your memory banks or brain dump.
You see, in the course of a single moment, your five senses take in an immense amount of data and information. Way too much for you to consciously comprehend. I’m talking astronomical amounts of data and information. Like, you brain is a universe in itself.
Right now, as you read this your senses are processing the words on the page, their connotation and meaning, as well as the colors, images, and visions on your screen and in your environment. You are smelling and even tasting the air, feeling the textures of the clothing on your body, and hearing the multitude of sounds around you. All of this information is impossible to process consciously. There is simply too much data to compile and process and understand.
Your RAS filters out the unnecessary information from the pertinent stuff. Your RAS decides what needs to be brought to the forefront of your awareness, and what can be saved for another time, or just kept in the database to be compared against other data in future moments of time.
Perception is KEY.
Take-Away
Many of the manifestation teachers like to say “what you focus on you create.”
Let’s adjust that affirmation…”What you focus on, you NOTICE.”
When you want to “manifest” something in your world, it isn’t about “creating it” out of thin air. (do you remember that law of physics from fifth grade science? energy is neither created nor destroyed…which means nothing “manifests” out of thin air, rather, it’s all just recirculated in different forms and perceptions).
Manifestation is not an act of creating, it is an act of perceiving.
It’s about noticing what has always been there, hiding in plain sight.
The good news is that the world is ABUNDANT. Everything you desire is available to you, perhaps in a form you don’t recognize. If I can “manifest” an abundance of yellow cars, I can certainly train my RAS to “manifest” an abundance of anything else.
The not-so-good news is that if you aren’t “manifesting” your deepest desires, it is probably because your perspective isn’t open to noticing it, receiving it, perceiving it, or being fully aware of its potential. Your RAS needs a re-training.
Your RAS is trained by several factors, including:
how you were conditioned as a child
your DNA and the coding in your genetics
what you have been doing, practicing, believing, and reinforcing your whole life
In order to change and re-train how your RAS works, you need to do two things.
change your perspective and perception of your childhood conditioning and genetic coding.
change your current practices, habits, behaviors, and beliefs about your current experience.
What you focus on, you NOTICE.
What you notice becomes your reality.
Take the First Step
How do you do that? In short, BE MINDFUL.
There’s no short-cut, magick pill, or get-rich-quick scheme that will train your RAS and open your HEART. It takes diligent, consistent, and disciplined practice. What’s worked for me is a practice in mindfulness.
To change your RAS is more easily DONE than SAID.
(yes, that’s the inverse of the common adage “easier said than done”).
Training your RAS works best when you get out of your over-thinking head and actually DO actions with your affirmations.
This Mindful Manifestation Mini-Course (available to paid subscribers) gives step-by-step and video instruction on several of my easy-to-do mindful manifestation practices. I’ve been doing them and teaching them for years. They work. Except when I don’t do them, then they stop working.
This week’s Mindful Manifestation Exercise trains your RAS by getting your manifestation out of your over-thinking head and into your body through simple actions that re-train your RAS and nervous system.
Here are the other lessons in this course.
June 3 - 1. Wash Off Unconscious Self-Limiting Beliefs That Block Your Desires
June 11 - 2. Write Manifestation Affirmations THAT REALLY WORK
June 18 - 3. Stop Over-Thinking and Start Mindfully DOING Manifestation
June 25 - 4. Gratitude Your Way to Growing Abundance (in 3-min a day)
BONUS POST June 26 - 5. Shaman Rituals for Prosperity & Abundance
Mindful Manifestation Coaching
Do you want help with creating your perfect mindful manifestation affirmation? Or a personalized exercise to retrain your RAS?
Substack Resource
wrote an awesome short article about her “inner critic” and how that voice inside her head turned into negative affirmations she repeated to herself through her childhood. Her perspective on shifting that in her life in 2013 is brilliant. Comment
I love to hear from you. What “yellow cars” are you “manifesting” in your life? Are they things you want? Or are you unconsciously playing a game of SCORE with things you don’t want?
A great dive into RAS, its great to see some practical er... practices for improving or recognizing mindfulness and science, biology, what?
Thanks for sharing, I sometimes balk at talking too Mindful centric since it's still kind of woo woo for some folks, this is a great reminder if it's use for non-meditation people too.
Oh my goodness, you make my nerdy woo woo neuroscience heart so happy. And thank you so much for sharing my post!