The Dirty Chai Podcast discusses the science behind visualization and vision boards. The host explains how the brain automates certain activities in the first brain, while second brain activities require focus and effort. The brain's filtration system, known as the reticular activating system (RAS), filters out irrelevant information and aligns with our beliefs and thoughts. The RAS plays a role in achieving goals and can be harnessed through visualization and intentional personal development.
Hello, hi. Welcome to the sixth installment of the Dirty Chai Podcast with me, your host, the podcast where we focus on holistic professional and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics because, you know, my favorite thing is collecting data, collecting information, distilling it into usable format for everybody, and sharing it.
And one of my favorite discoveries was the science behind visualization and vision boards. Every year we hear people talking about making vision boards. Every year we hear about goals and plans for the year. Every year we hear about journaling. Lately it's been quite the social media wave, encouraging journaling, encouraging mental health. But I find that a lot of the people who talk about these things don't go further to explain why it works. The first time I heard about the secret, for example, I thought it was complete hogwash.
You put a picture on a wall and you look at it 20 times and all of a sudden it makes it manifest. What is this manifestation stuff? What is it? Why does it work? If you know anything about me, you will know that if you tell me to do something but you're not able to articulate why I'm supposed to do it, you're not able to back the suggestion that I do something with sensible information that I can research and correlate to what you are saying will be the outcome, I'm not doing it and I don't believe you.
I really just am not. So it took going on a course given or via my employer maybe with the Pacific Institute of Canada where they taught and the course is called Investment in Excellence and they finally explained to me why these things work. They finally set me on the path to finding and understanding the science behind all of it and now that I have it, of course I must share it with you. So let's talk about it.
I'm going to break down some really complex concepts into easy information so I'm going to leave it with you to research into the deeper aspects of it but what I would like to do now is give you an overview that sets you on the path to fully understanding this. So your brain is a mean machine. The capacity of the human brain is not even fully understood after so many years of science and so many years of discovery and the fact that we're making AI.
We still don't have a full understanding of our own brain but what we do know is this. It is a very complex organism. Now the brain can, the brain's functions can be divided very simplistically into first brain and second brain activities. First brain activities are all the things that your brain has managed to automate. What your brain does because it's a mean machine is it's always looking for ways to make your life easier. It's always looking for something that it can quickly automate.
You drop your bag by the door every time you come into the house, fine, we stop thinking about it. The hand just does it, right? The signal is sent. We bypass the second brain. We don't even need to talk about it. We automate the activity. You drive to work the same way every day. Of course, we don't need to think about this anymore. We now know exactly which way we're going. Your mind can wander a little bit while you drive.
Just don't kill yourself. That's the brain automating. Everything that the brain automates we'll say is kept in the first brain. The first brain is you check the same place for your keys. The first brain is you know what's in your handbag and you always reach for it there. The first brain is me knowing that my gym card is always in the inner pocket of my gym bag. My first brain is knowing that I stop at a particular shop to pick up bread on the way home for the people at home.
My first brain is knowing that on Tuesday I do the school run. It's things like that. I don't have to think about it anymore. It's just stuff that I do. Your second brain deals with the stuff that requires you to focus, stuff that you don't do every day. So if at work a first brain activity for you is running journals in a financial ledger, when you are given an essay to write, an article to write for the company, that's a second brain activity.
Second brain activity is stuff that requires particular focus, something that you don't do yet, something that you don't do regularly yet and something that your brain doesn't have a map for, something that your brain hasn't automated yet. Your brain doesn't enjoy second brain activities because they're disruptive and they're difficult. When you start, for example, when you're installing a new habit, when you start running, let me speak about myself. When I started running, it was hard. I had to think long and hard about what to wear.
I had to think long and hard about what time would work. It took a lot of brain power and a lot of physical power to get the deed done. It would take me easily 45 minutes to an hour to get myself sorted, to actually run the 5Ks and to come back. Now that it is no longer a second brain activity. So after a while, my brain starts to understand, okay, this is what we're doing. Okay, this is what we're doing.
So we're running now. Okay, right. And this is what we like to wear. Okay, cool. Then it starts to automate those processes. When I'm ready to go running, it's going to tell me what we're going to wear without me having to think about it. It's going to tell me what time is the best time without me having to think about it. In other words, I've successfully installed the habit. The habit has moved from second brain to first brain.
Now, how do we do that? In order to install the habits that we talked about in atomic books back then, and to install the habits that would make us the success that we envisage when we put out our ideas or our vision for the future on the vision board, how do we take the activities that are so difficult for us to do, let's say saving money, and move them from second brain to first brain? Here comes the science.
Your brain, right, your brain receives so much data on a daily basis, that its ability to sift from first to second and many other things is also a function of keeping you sane and saving you from having to process every little piece of information that you receive. Just because you're not actively processing information that you're receiving does not mean that your brain is not seeing it and putting it somewhere. So, for example, if your brain didn't have a filtration system or the ability to do what I'm describing here, you would go outside, you would have to feel the wind, you would have to have a thought about the sun, you'd have to think about fuel, you'd have to think about the car, you'd have to think about opening it, you'd have to think about opening the gate.
We already had a chat about how you have a finite amount of willpower on any given day, right? If you actually had to use your willpower in second brain to process every little bit of data that your body actually receives on a daily basis, in short, you would go insane. And your brain just thought, we're not going to do that. And evolution created the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system, commonly referred to as the RAS, is at the base of your brain.
And what it is, is a filtration system. It's a filter system that keeps you sane. How does it keep you sane? It keeps you sane by filtering out any information that it knows to be irrelevant to you. How does it know that this information is irrelevant to you? It's inside your brain. It knows all your conscious and unconscious thoughts. It aligns exactly with what you think and truly believe, not necessarily what you say. So even if I say, oh, I am super confident, right? But actually deep inside, I am deeply insecure.
My RAS will align with the deep insecurity. And I'll explain to you how that will affect you later on. First, let's understand the mechanics of it. So what the RAS does is, when you step outside, in the exact same scenario, you know where your car is? Everything that's first brain, it bypasses your sensory, quickly moves it on, move along, move along, move along, we don't need you. If you then go to start your car and it makes a strange sound, hello, second brain activity, something's different, right? Your RAS will let that information through because that information needs to be processed by the second brain.
The second brain then needs to decide what to do. Automation is not going to work here. But where automation will work, the RAS will filter information that operates with the automation and we shall automate and go. I hope all this is making sense because I am so enjoying talking about it. But anyway, so now, and the most dangerous thing, the most dangerous thing for me is to lose my train of thought when I am in the depths of explaining this, because I can really spiral.
So let's see if I've still got this under control. So now, your RAS is filtering the information according to what it knows of you. This is important because all the things that we are saying we want to do, the things that we want to achieve on the vision board, so let's say on the vision board, you want to achieve, you want to save a million dollars, a million Rand by the time you're 40. That is the goal on your vision board.
Now, the goal, everyone has goals. So James Clear has a quote that I love, that winners and losers have the exact same goals. Everyone has goals. It's the systems that you have in place to get to the goal that makes the difference. So we have this goal to have a million Rand in our bank account by the time we turn 40, right? Deep down, we come from a poor family. Now we're talking psychology of money, a book that we're yet to discuss.
We come from a poor family. We don't truly believe that we are deserving of the million. We've always thought that only other people can get it. We've always only thought that some people are luckier than others. Putting that goal on the vision board does not change your RAS' ability to filter information, because the RAS still knows how you truly feel about the subject. So it will still seek out information that preserves your sanity. You see, when you put something, when you say something out there to the universe, that doesn't align with what you truly believe of yourself.
And this is where the self-worth and self-esteem and that kind of personal development work comes in. If you say or try to do things that do not align with what you truly believe, you create something called a cognitive dissonance. So there is a misalignment between you saying, I'm super confident and what you truly believe. There's a misalignment between you saying you want to have a million dollars and your philosophy of money, and you're not doing anything to close the gap.
That creates something called a cognitive dissonance in your brain. There's a mismatch of the information that requires processing, and your brain will quickly resolve that in any number of ways. One of those is self-sabotage. When you ask yourself how you really thought you were going to get this opportunity, you had psyched yourself up. You had told yourself, I'm going to get this. This is the one. This is the one. And yet when you got there, you self-sabotaged in spectacular fashion.
You must know the cognitive dissonance created in your brain was quickly resolved by your brain going with what you subconsciously believe. That's the power of the subconscious mind over the rest of you. Now, why is this important? Why do all these pieces of information come together? The RAS, your subconscious mind, the first and second brain activity. How do these things work together? This is how they work together. When you journal, you allow yourself to process subconscious thoughts.
You allow subconscious thoughts to surface so you can see them, so you can recognize them, so you can deal with them. In other words, it allows you to grow the self that is hidden in the subconscious, the one who truly believes that maybe you're not confident. Maybe you're not deserving of the million dollars. The journaling is a way of coaxing that version of you out and saying, come, let's talk about it. Let's fix it. Let's figure out why we think like this.
And maybe let's break it down and come to a true belief that this can be done even for someone like me. What do we need to do in order to achieve that? You've coaxed this person out, you, a different version of you, and now to create or to eliminate the cognitive dissonance between your first person, your first brain, the person off your first brain and the person off your second brain, you now need the vision board and you now need the affirmations.
Very key. The vision board is by definition a visual board. It's a visual board of the things that you wish to achieve. There is a lot of data out there, notwithstanding the fact that there are 10,000 apps that do this. There's a lot of data out there about why it's important to have an actual physical vision board where you have actual pictures of the things that you want to achieve. I'll explain that now. Accompanied by affirmations that you say out loud daily to yourself.
We'll speak about the content of the affirmations shortly, but let's first speak about the vision board and the affirmations together. What do the vision board and the affirmations together do? When you look at this vision every day and you say, this is what I'm going to achieve. When you affirm yourself every day and say, this is who I am. I am a millionaire. I am wealth. I attract wealth. I am confident. I love myself. When you say these things daily, what you do is you give your subconscious a new map.
You start creating a first brain activity via the second brain. Where your first brain does not know this business of dreaming big and achieving, the automated brain knows what it has always known, how we have always thought, the way we've always done things. When you create affirmations and a vision board, it starts out as a second brain activity. That's why you have to look at it every day. It's a second brain activity and you're giving your brain the time that it needs and the amount of consumption that it needs in order to automate that thinking system, in order to automate the affirmations, in order to internalize the affirmations.
Now they move from second brain to first brain by virtue of the fact that you are repeating them every day, by virtue of the fact that you're seeing the vision every day. Do you know that this idea of the vision board is biblical too? It's Habakkuk 2 verse 2 actually. It says, make the vision plain so that a person on the run can see it. I've paraphrased slightly. I'm Christian, so I don't know if a variation of this appears in other religions.
If it does, please tell me. I would love to hear about it. But make the vision clear so that a person on the run can see it. The Bible tells you that. It's shocking how many self-help elements have biblical roots actually. There is nothing new under the sun. So now you tell yourself every day, I am this. I am a runner. I am athletic. I am fit. I am healthy, right? And you follow this up with the effort to do this thing.
And your brain, your subconscious brain, first, your second brain starts to automate this belief system. Your subconscious brain, and this is where a lot of us get this thing wrong. I'm patting the floor because I'm actually feeling super passionate about this. This is where a lot of us get this thing wrong. What is a trust relationship between you and your friend? A trust relationship is we've been friends for a long time, and I know that when this person says this, that is what they mean.
I know that when my friend says they're going to do this, that is what they're going to do. What we don't understand is the complexity of our brain is such that we also have that type of relationship with ourselves whether we know it or not. You have to have a trust relationship with yourself. Your brain needs to believe the things that you are saying about yourself. You need to build up evidence for it to believe that this is who you are, and that is how you change your subconscious mind.
Once your subconscious mind has been changed, hello achievement of vision because the RAS is reprogrammed to show you the things that align with the vision. The RAS is a filtration system that lets through things that it understands to be relevant to you. As long as you don't truly believe that a thing is relevant to you, the RAS will not show you those things. An easy example of how powerful your RAS is, is when you buy a new vehicle.
Step into a Mazda dealership and buy a red Mazda. You will step out of there and your subconscious, this is a thing from evolution that's left over in your brain, where your brain is always seeking people that belong to your tribe, people who are like you. The minute you step out of that car dealership driving your brand new red Mazda CX5, what you will see is a red Mazda CX5 at every turn. Like you have never seen this car before, all of a sudden it is everywhere.
What that is, is your RAS pointing out information that it now realizes is pertinent to you. That is what happens when you give your RAS a map to work with. The map doesn't fall out of the sky. You create a new map by journaling to connect with your subconscious, by creating a vision to give your subconscious a new map, by creating a new script for how you speak to yourself and of yourself and of your future.
That then changes what the RAS knows to be relevant to you to align with the vision. This is why they say to you, look at the vision board every day, say your affirmations every day, curate your Instagram feed, curate your social media feed. The things that your RAS understands are important to you are the things that it will show you. And once it starts showing you how to make a million dollars, once it starts showing you, once you start believing that you can make a million dollars and that you can have a million rand in your account by 40, and this is not an airy-fairy belief, understand that changing your subconscious mind is you doing the actual work.
You figuring these things out. You're building a trust relationship with yourself. When your subconscious begins to believe that when you say I'm going to do this, you're going to do this, it starts to trust you. You start to trust yourself. And when you start to trust yourself and to believe in yourself because you're doing the actual work, not wishing with your wishbone that doesn't exist. You are doing the actual work. Then all this stuff aligns and somebody writes it in a book and calls it the secret.
Right? Mind-blowing. Absolutely mind-blowing. If you don't have a journal, go and buy one. Go and buy one and start talking to yourself. Start listening to yourself. You don't need to write 10 pages every day. Half a page, three sentences, it's enough. Talk to yourself. Listen to yourself. You don't have a vision? Give yourself something to aim for. You see, we talked about atomic habits a few weeks ago, but one of the particularly important pertinent thoughts from that book that comes to mind right now is the idea that a plane leaving, where is it leaving? I think it's Los Angeles.
Yes, a plane leaving Los Angeles that is meant to land in New York at LaGuardia Airport. If it is off directionally by three degrees, it will land in Washington, D.C., a completely different city, miles and miles and miles away. Give your brain, give your RAS a very clear vision of where you would like to go. Then create the systems that will get you there. Create the systems that will allow you to build trust in yourself in your mind, but also fortify your mind by giving it the vision for it to reshape what we have always known is what we believe.
Give it enough information for it to say, oh God, she has changed or he has changed. The map that we are using, the reference points that we are using are different. Give it enough information for the RAS to say, uh-oh, we don't need to look at this situation like that anymore. It is no longer relevant. What is now relevant is data that points to how to get to a million Rand by 40. When you do that, you will be amazed by your RAS ability to filter through information, to point out opportunities to you, to point out the red cars, to point out your tribe.
Your brain is a mean machine, a mean machine, and all you have to do is really connect with it and really empower yourself to understand how it works. It has done, understanding this thing has done incredible things for me. It is how I rebuilt my life post-divorce. It is how I curated my life post-divorce, and it has been nothing short of magical. If I had understood this when I hit 30 or earlier, good God, I don't know where I would be now, but now that I understand it, I already can't believe how far I've come, and I know that I'm going somewhere more because I understand how to make my brain believe me.
I hope that this has been useful to you. I hope that this information will help you become the best version of yourself. I hope that this information is something that you listen to and you think, goodness me, I need to share it with somebody else, and if that thought occurs to you, please share it with someone. Please like, please subscribe, please comment. I truly appreciate your feedback. It's been amazing to hear back from the people who listen to the podcast.
I never get tired of receiving the DMs. I never get tired of seeing the comments. I am ever so grateful. Please like, subscribe, share, comment. Thank you so much, and I hope this adds value to you. Have a beautiful week.
