Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

Training Your Brain to See Opportunity

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 8 • Episode 29

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Unlock Your Hidden Luck: Train Your Brain to See Opportunities Everywhere (Living Lucky® Podcast)

Ever wonder why some people seem to attract good fortune while others constantly face obstacles? In this episode of the Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason & Jana Banana, we're pulling back the curtain on the science of luck and revealing how you can train your brain to see opportunities you've been missing.

We're diving deep into the reticular activating system (RAS)—your brain's personal filter—and how it's shaping your reality. Are you unconsciously programming your mind to see problems and limitations, creating a "doom loop of despair"? We'll show you how to break free and reprogram your RAS for success.

Here's what you'll discover:

  • The Science of Luck: Your RAS Explained: Understand how your brain filters information and why you see what you expect to see.
  • The Doom Loop of Despair: Breaking Free from Negativity: Learn how to recognize and dismantle the unconscious patterns that keep you stuck.
  • Lofty Questions: Your Brain's Opportunity GPS: Discover how asking powerful questions can redirect your focus and attract positive experiences.
  • Win Celebrations: Building Your Evidence Chain of Good Fortune: Learn how to track and acknowledge your wins to reinforce positive thought patterns.
  • The Parking Spot Miracle: Beliefs Shape Reality: Hear the charming story of how positive expectations can literally create "magical" experiences.
  • Micro Moments of Luck: Training Your Brain for Everyday Opportunities: Discover how to shift your perspective and see the luck that surrounds you.
  • The Power of Belief: Choosing Your Reality: Understand how your beliefs create your reality, and how to choose a reality filled with miracles.

This episode is your roadmap to transforming your mindset and creating a life of abundance and opportunity.

Key Nuggets:

  • How to reprogram your reticular activating system.
  • The power of asking "lofty questions."
  • How to build an "evidence chain" of good fortune.
  • The impact of beliefs on your reality.

Ready to train your brain to see opportunities everywhere? Tune in to the Living Lucky® Podcast and discover how to unlock the extraordinary luck that's been waiting for you!

Keywords: reticular activating system, RAS, law of attraction, positive thinki

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®. Good morning, I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

You are, too, we're talking today about training your reticular activating system. What Now? If you are not familiar with that phrase, the whole idea comes down to have you ever been in the market for a new car? And all of a sudden you say you know what I really would like a white Eagle Talon. That's the kind of car I want to buy. Taking it back, and then I know that was my high school car, and then all of a sudden you start seeing white Eagle Talons everywhere.

Jana Shelfer:

You start seeing them on the highway. You start seeing them in the grocery store parking lot. You start seeing them at the school. You start seeing your best friend driving them. You're like I never knew my best friend drove one.

Jason Shelfer:

It looks like the world is flooded with white eagle talents.

Jana Shelfer:

And all of a sudden, you start thinking, huh, did I just not notice this before? Or have I all of a sudden tuned into something that I didn't realize? Well, what you're really doing is you're talking to your subconscious mind.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, and your reticular activating system has now said white eagle talons are important to me. I value them, find them.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, and why this is important is because when you want to start Living Lucky®, you start tuning in to the things that are important to you. Most people start tuning in to what's missing in their life. Most people start tuning in to their fears, their doubts, the uncertainties in life.

Jason Shelfer:

Their problems, the obstacles, what's missing? Yeah. And when you really want to start Living Lucky®, you consciously start tuning in to your opportunities, connections, ways to realize the luck that is happening already for you.

Jana Shelfer:

The people who are like you.

Jason Shelfer:

You say it all the time. When you say what you appreciate, appreciates, like that's an old saying and we don't. A lot of times we don't dive into it and say what does that really mean? And what it is is, it's, it's training your reticular activating system to say when I appreciate this, I'm telling my brain that it's important to me, I want more of it. Seek it out. There's so much information that happens like billions of bits of information all over around you at any given moment.

Jason Shelfer:

It is not possible to take it all in at once, so your brain filters it using your reticular activating system and it says, okay, what's important. And so many people are folk Like. If you're watching the news constantly, you're focused on a lot of times what's going on, what are what the problems are, not solutions. They're focused on a lot of times what's going on, what the problems are, not solutions. They're not talking about solutions on the news. I can't think of a time when I've heard them talk about solutions. But they are pointing out the problems, they are pointing out the obstacles.

Jana Shelfer:

Well, it depends on which channel you're tuned into right. Sometimes one solution might be the other channel's problem yeah, oh yeah.

Jason Shelfer:

They might be saying what we need to do, but they all they hammer in the problem like they. They're just constantly hammering in the problem and we get focused on the problem, the problem, what's going?

Jana Shelfer:

wrong? What's missing? The?

Jason Shelfer:

fear yes and so that's what our brains start finding in the world we become conditioned to look for the fear, because that's what keeps us safe.

Jana Shelfer:

If we can look for the fear, then our lizard brain says oh, fear over there. Warning, warning, warning, stay away, stay away. And eventually, as we get older, there's so much fear in the world that we start living this very small life. Oh, that's so big. Right yeah.

Jason Shelfer:

So we're living this small life and our soul is saying I'm meant for more. It's probably because you have chosen to shelter, and subconsciously chosen to shelter yourself. In the way you've shown up in the world, the way you've acted in the world, based on where you were focused and the things that you took notice of and said. This is important to me.

Jana Shelfer:

So how? How do we go about training our reticular activating system? Well, one hack that I want to teach everyone, because it has been so life-changing for us, is to ask ourselves better questions, and in Jason's Mindvalley, in which he is one of the teachers, they actually call it lofty questions. Yes, and I think that this whole technique, this tool, is so important because it starts training your brain, your subconscious mind, to look for the opportunities, and it simply is just asking a different question. Life is really about asking better questions.

Jason Shelfer:

It so is Like one of the things. So I remember in the time there was a time, probably 15, 20 years ago, where I was thinking like things weren't working out and I would wake up in the morning and I would think, what kind of crap am I gonna have to put up with today, like literally Now, when you ask yourself that question.

Jana Shelfer:

guess what you're going to experience that day.

Jason Shelfer:

So that was a time in my life where I didn't sleep well. It was chaotic, it was very I was digging a hole. I was digging a hole for my soul, like putting my soul in a hole. And when you mentioned lofty questions, the new question is what's one amazing opportunity that could show up today?

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, if you wake up in the morning and you ask yourself that question.

Jason Shelfer:

Different life. It changes your life.

Jana Shelfer:

Now it may take a while and that's where people start to get a little frustrated because they say okay, janna, I've been asking your question and I'm still experiencing the same life. It might take a while.

Jason Shelfer:

But this is the thing If you've asked yourself what's one thing that's going to be lucky, what's one lucky opportunity that's going to happen for me today, at the end of the day, even if you weren't focused on it, you come back to that question and then you look back and say you'll find those pieces of luck, you'll find those things to be grateful for quote, unquote grateful for, quote, unquote grateful for and then make a list of those things so that you have proof and it shows okay, this is happening. Instead of what kind of crap am I going to have to put up with today? Then now you're building your evidence chain of the wonderful things that happen.

Jana Shelfer:

And I'm telling you it works. It works. Just last night before we went to bed, I asked Jason Just last night before we went to bed, I asked Jason hey, let's just talk about some of our wins. This week. And that was a great way to go to bed because, as we started listing them off, it was really incredible some of the wins that we've had in just the last five days.

Jason Shelfer:

It was also interesting in just listening to what each of us kind of defined as wins. Considered wins. Then we could recognize the win where we didn't.

Jana Shelfer:

Because my win was much different than yours.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

And so getting each other's perspective. Now we have doubled the amount of wins.

Jason Shelfer:

Hello.

Jana Shelfer:

Right, and that's a different conversation than I, kid you not 10 years ago we would go to bed and go. Oh my God, you'll never believe what happened to me today A competition contest, and it was a complaining competition is what it was, and the momentum would start to go in a different direction.

Jason Shelfer:

The doom loop of despair.

Jana Shelfer:

And we were creating something entirely different.

Jason Shelfer:

We were creating that type of reality and I would say so. I want to fix that time frame because it was more like 15 years ago.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, it's like we've been doing this now for so long, but it's taken a while, and so we just want to put that in everyone's brains too, that it's taken a while to stop the momentum, shift it and get it going in the other direction, other direction. And now it's so exciting to know what's to come, because we know what questions we are asking ourselves now and what the talk track is and what we have trained ourselves to look for on a daily basis, on a second minute basis.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, in the micro moments of life, and it's never too late to start doing that.

Jana Shelfer:

I also want to share one more thing. So when we talk about how do we train a reticular activating system, there's a thing called lofty questions. It simply is asking yourself look at all these opportunities that are all around me, Look at all the amazing people I attract. It's asking yourself the questions of what you want to create. Is that how you would define it?

Jason Shelfer:

100%.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, so I just want to share one little quick story and then we're going to wrap it up because we're getting a little long winded. When I was little, my father would pull into a parking lot and he would say Jana, look at this parking spot that's opening up for me Now. There was never a parking spot that was open until he would say this, and then, all of a sudden, a parking spot would open. Now, sometimes he would drive around and he would say the universe just wants me to be here. And he would drive slowly until the universe just wanted him to be here and he would say just watch, Jana, Someone's just going to leave and a parking spot's going to open up.

Jana Shelfer:

It's going to magically open up.

Jana Shelfer:

And he would just keep talking until all of a sudden, someone would just pull out and it was almost like magic happening right in front of our eyes and in our car. There was this little piece of belief that happened Right.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

And we all believed it, and we all talked about it. We all talked about it Like oh my gosh, dad is magical. Like he can make parking spots.

Jason Shelfer:

Dad's got good luck.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, dad can make parking spots.

Jason Shelfer:

We've got good luck.

Jana Shelfer:

Then the next time we would go into any parking lot, whether it be a fast food restaurant or a mall or anywhere we went, the you know the home goods store, wherever we went the same thing and we talked about how dad could make a parking spot open up. Now, there might have been a couple times where we had to drive around that parking lot for a long time before it actually happened. We didn't really talk about that.

Jason Shelfer:

Right.

Jana Shelfer:

We never talked about the time we had to drive around for 10 minutes.

Jason Shelfer:

You cement those pieces in your brain where it's like, as soon as the words come out, someone's pulling out and the parking spot opens up. We talked about that and you create that word track and memory in your mind like it was incredible.

Jana Shelfer:

And how it always happened.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

We just had to believe. It always happened.

Jason Shelfer:

That becomes your new absolute. Yes, we just had to believe. It always happened.

Jana Shelfer:

That becomes your new absolute yes.

Jason Shelfer:

And if you can hold on to these types of beliefs, you will show up differently in every area of your life, and when you show up differently, you will get different results.

Jana Shelfer:

Because you're training your brain to look for different things. Yes, and here's the thing is. You know jace and I were talking about this many times people who go to the mall. They're looking for parking spots.

Jason Shelfer:

They're looking for oh my gosh, that person just took my parking spot yeah, they're looking at all the other cars that are going in and out of the parking parking area at the missed opportunities. And the competition between someone else and that becomes a different energy. So much Right, like I'm going to fight for a parking spot instead of a parking spot is available for me. It's opening up. Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

The universe wants me to be here.

Jason Shelfer:

I have to beat someone to a parking spot and you see this a lot, and that energy exchange is so different than the person that says the universe is going to open up a parking spot for me watch how this is about to happen and their mind will find ways that that's true it's just a small, subtle shift.

Jason Shelfer:

However it is, it is so powerful yeah, and then you take a note like journal, down where these opportunities, where these areas of luck happen in your life and recognize that it's everywhere. It goes back to Einstein saying you see, everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. You see everything is great luck or nothing is good luck.

Jason Shelfer:

And you get to decide right, you get to create what you want in the world, and it's through that momentum that the, the belief system that you're, that you're looking at, through that reticular activating system, I love it.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you next time. Keep Living Lucky®, bye-bye. Okay, thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you next time.

Jason Shelfer:

Keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

Bye-bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.