RAS stands for reticular activation system. It’s the part of your brain that senses the things happening around us and focuses on the things we find important. It controls eating, waking up, attraction, and the sleep cycle. It also acts as a conscious filter to the things we find important. For example, if there is a rambunctious lawnmower and a movie on you are most likely going to focus on the movie and block out most additional sounds. We do this all the time without thinking about it. Another example is how your putting you’re attention on me instead of the other people sharing their WRGs even though they might be as loud as me.

Doing well in school has a direct correlation to your reticular activation system. Just because you don’t do well in school doesn’t mean you’re not intelligent. It most likely just means your RAS is functioning. You’re told your whole life that education is key to success when really you see no purpose in math since there’s calculators, no point in English because there’s spellcheck, no point in History since it’s the past, no point in a foreign language since we live in America. See, this is your RAS coming into play, if you don’t care for any of these subjects you won’t obtain knowledge and do well in them. This is where one needs to trick their RAS in a way. Since we are here and it’s inevitable why not embrace it and convince our minds into thinking we are craving knowledge in all these subjects? When one does this they will find it much easier to embrace learning and will have a much better time in school.

This can be seen in a social aspect too. When someone you respect introduces something of his or her interest we naturally find this of significance and adopt his or her principles and ideas involuntarily. Let’s say your best friend starts getting into hip hop dance classes and saying how it’s great, fun exercise. You could been appalled by the thought of sweating and dancing but since you have respect and look up to that person your RAS will come into play and implement the same thoughts. Confidence is linked with attraction. Since they are comfortable with themself, your RAS will block out most of their flaws.

One can embrace their RAS and use it to their advantage. An example right now is that I generally pick a topic of interest for my writing topics so that I don’t dread doing it and am at ease. I recommend blocking out things that bother you and strive to find positive things in your life. So science isn’t so bad after all.