Awareness
- justcalljenna2025
- Feb 18
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Awareness is the hidden force shaping what you notice, what you miss, and ultimately how you experience your life. Today, Jenna Williams breaks down how awareness works through your brain’s reticular activating system—and why what you focus on is exactly what your mind learns to show you.
Through powerful stories like the “invisible gorilla,” the red car effect, and real-life recovery after a stroke, this conversation reveals how awareness acts as a mental filter, determining whether life feels heavy or hopeful, limiting or expansive. You’ll learn how training your awareness—just five intentional minutes a day—can rewire your perspective, build resilience, and help you see more of what’s already working in your favor.
If you’re ready to understand awareness not as a concept, but as a daily practice that changes outcomes, this episode is your starting point.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Awareness
How Awareness Works In The Brain (The RAS Filter)
In this episode, I'm talking about awareness. The number one thing to understand in awareness is the reticular activating system. I call it the RAS. It's how your brain filters in things. Remember, your brain is neutral. It's going to give you a lot more of what you asked for. Your brain will filter in what you asked it for. Your subconscious, which you don't see, has so much information coming into it. Your brain would explode if you had to process every bit of information going into it. Your conscious mind can only take so much, and so your subconscious will filter it through the reticular activating system, so that what you see is what you get.
Perception Is Shaped By Focus
It's at the base of your brain stem. It's a big filter. Psychologists refer to it as the attentional filter. It notices some things and filters others out. I figured the best way to explain this to you without the science is the stories. There's a story about the invisible gorilla. It's a 60-second video where they brought in some people and said, “Count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball.” There were players in white shirts and black shirts.
Almost everybody counted the exact right number of passes, but about halfway through the video, for about 10 seconds, somebody comes out in a 6-foot-tall gorilla suit, pounds on its chest, and walks off-screen. The shocking thing is that most people didn't even notice the gorilla. In fact, about 25% of them were like, “That's crazy. It never happened.” Literally, your brain will filter in what you want it to do. The attentional focus of focusing on the passes made their brains completely filter out the invisible gorilla. It's a psychological study. If you want more details, go find them online. It's a fabulous way to understand how the brain works.
There is another story about what they call the red car study. They asked people, “You're going to go buy a red car. Go find a red car.” Everybody started noticing red cars everywhere they went. It was incredible how many red cars there were. Guess what? All the red cars were there before. Your brain just filtered them out, because again, your brain can explode with all of that stuff.
Let's talk about another story of the two travelers. Two travelers went walking through the woods. They walked the same path together. At the end, they asked them, “How was it?” One says, “It was horrible, dark, and dreary. There were bugs,” whatever. The other one was like, “It was so beautiful. Sunlight, the woods, nature, all of that.”
They both walked the same path. The reason they're experience was different is what they noticed, and what they tell themselves to filter. The one who thought it was bad, his brain showed him all the reasons why things are bad, why it was dreary, why it was unpleasant, and why this was not preferred. The other decided that it was beautiful, magical, and wonderful, so the experience was more beautiful, magical, and wonderful. Why? Because he told his brain, “This is great,” and his brain filtered in more of what was great.
Training Awareness Through Daily Practice & Gratitude
Let's go back to healing from a stroke. I did not worry about getting to the end of the block. It was every day, I'm getting better. I did not go, “I'm healed, brain. I'm healed,” because I had to be a different version of me. If the focus was “Every day, I'm getting better,” my brain filters in more of getting better. If I said, “This is hard,” my brain showed me all the reasons why it was hard. If I went, “I can do this.” I'm going to go back to the story of Bethany Hamilton. My brain said, “If she can surf without an arm, I can certainly lift a spoon.”
Literally, your brain filters in what you want it to.
Again, I asked my brain to filter it for me. I choose to filter what I'm good at. It helps me by having the confidence to go about my life. Going, “I can do hard things. I've done this.” I trained the filter in my brain. It was training. This was not easy. Remember my situation, life or death. Training myself to say, “Every day I'm getting better,” training myself to be grateful for my life, training myself to be grateful that I get to only hit the golf ball 25 yards instead of 200. I trained myself to be grateful for those things.
Was it something I started at? No. If you got up and told a professional golfer, “I hit the golf ball at 25 yards,” do you think he would be proud of you? Probably not. He would look at you like, “Okay.” That's it. You train yourself to be through those. Some of the things we will talk about in this journey are gratitude, consistency, and compounding effect. They all work together, but they are all stopped by the filter.
I want you to remember that awareness is a gift. We're going to start this journey together, asking you to take five minutes a day to be aware of things. It might be your five minutes alone in the shower. Maybe it's five minutes in the car where you turn the radio off. Maybe it's five minutes in the morning when you're by yourself. Maybe it's five minutes before bed. It doesn't matter. You're going to make a commitment to yourself, not me. I would love you to make a commitment to me, but it's important that you make the commitment to yourself. You're going to start with five minutes.
During these five minutes, you will only have three rules. No phone, no other frequencies, so no other humans, TVs, or activities. Just allow yourself to make it simple on yourself. If you break it down to five minutes, I'm sure you can find five minutes a day for the next week and only follow three rules. No phone, no other frequencies, and just observe. Remember, until next time, karma is real. Your energy is contagious. Check your vibes.
Comments