Why You Can't See What You've Been Praying For…

Your brain filters millions of pieces of information every second and only shows you what it believes is relevant, safe, and true based on your existing programming. This filtering system, called the reticular activating system (or RAS), is why you can be doing all the "right things" and still feel like nothing is shifting. When you learn to give your brain new instructions through embodiment, emotional specificity, and nervous system regulation, you stop filtering out the very opportunities, connections, and abundance you've been calling in.

This blog post is adapted from Episode 10 of the Evolving Into Her podcast. Listen Below.

If you've been doing the mindset work, setting the intentions, saying the affirmations, and still feel like nothing is shifting, the issue probably has nothing to do with your effort. Your brain has a built-in filtering system that decides what you notice, what you dismiss, and what you're even capable of receiving. And right now, that system is still running instructions from an old version of you.

Your Brain Is Hiding Things From You (And It Thinks It's Helping)

Here's a truth that might reframe everything: you are not experiencing the full picture of your life right now. In this very moment, your brain is receiving millions of data points. Sound frequencies, temperature shifts, colors, body language, emotional cues, ideas, possibilities. But your conscious mind can only process roughly 40 bits per second out of all that incoming information.

So your brain has to make choices. It has to decide, in real time, what to surface and what to suppress. What gets your attention and what stays invisible. And it makes those decisions based on one thing: what it already believes to be true, safe, and relevant to your survival.

The system responsible for this is called the reticular activating system, or RAS. It sits at your brainstem and acts as a bridge between your subconscious beliefs and your conscious awareness. Think of it as a gatekeeper that decides which pieces of reality you get to see, and which ones get filtered out before they ever reach your conscious mind.

This is happening all the time, in every area of your life. And it's not neutral. Your RAS doesn't filter for what's true. It filters for what's familiar. Which means if your deepest programming says "women like me don't get that" or "it's not safe to have more" or "I'm not ready," your gatekeeper hears those instructions and starts building your visible reality around them. It will literally hide evidence of possibility from your conscious mind, not because it's sabotaging you, but because it genuinely believes it's keeping you safe.

This is why you can be praying for aligned love while your brain filters out every green flag because it doesn't match your old template for relationships. It's why you can set an intention to grow your business while your mind dismisses the opportunity sitting right in your inbox because your subconscious doesn't believe you're ready for it yet. The abundance, the connection, the next step. It's often already in your orbit. Your filters just aren't calibrated to let it through.

Your Brain Works Like a Social Media Algorithm

Here's a way to think about this that makes it click immediately. Your RAS works exactly like a social media algorithm. When you linger on a few healing posts, you double tap a couple of quotes about alignment, save a video on feminine energy, what happens? Your feed starts serving you more of it. The algorithm says, "this is what she's into, let me give her more of that."

Your brain does the exact same thing. It's constantly asking: what does she focus on most? What emotions keep repeating? What does she keep reinforcing through her thoughts, her words, her environments, her relationships? And whatever you're feeding it most consistently, that becomes the algorithm your reality is built on.

If you're constantly reinforcing fear, self-doubt, scarcity, or unworthiness, even subtly, even unconsciously, even through the environments you stay in or the relationships you tolerate, that becomes the filter. And your brain starts surfacing proof that matches it. Not because life is against you, but because your internal algorithm is doing exactly what it was designed to do: show you more of what you've told it matters.

This is why you can be doing all the "right things," setting intentions, buying the courses, repeating affirmations, and still feel stuck. The actions are new, but the internal filters haven't caught up yet. And those filters are what ultimately determine what you see, what you notice, what you feel safe enough to reach for, and what you're capable of receiving.

Understanding this is the difference between wondering why nothing is working and realizing that everything might already be available to you. You just need to update the algorithm.

Why Positive Thinking Alone Won't Rewire Your Filters

This is where most personal development advice falls short, and it's worth going deeper than what you'd typically hear in a podcast episode. There's a critical distinction between what your RAS responds to and what most people think it responds to.

Your reticular activating system does not filter based on positivity. It filters based on significance. It pays attention to whatever you've been emotionally and mentally invested in, and that includes the things you worry about, obsess over, or feel strong negative emotion around. Your brain responds to emotional weight, not to whether the emotion is "good" or "bad."

So if you're constantly worrying about whether you're behind in life, whether your body is good enough, whether you'll ever find love, whether your business will grow, your brain flags those concerns as high priority. And it starts surfacing information, people, conversations, and even "coincidences" that confirm those fears. Not to hurt you. Because you've told it, through repetition and emotional intensity, that these are the things that matter most.

This is why affirmations alone don't always create change. You can say "I am abundant" every morning, but if your body is carrying the felt experience of scarcity, if your nervous system tightens every time you check your bank account, if your stomach drops when you think about raising your prices, your RAS is reading the body's signal, not the words coming out of your mouth. The emotional truth in your body will always override the intellectual intention in your mind.

Real subconscious reprogramming happens when the emotion matches the declaration. When your body feels the truth of what you're saying, not just thinks it. That's embodiment. And that's what your RAS actually listens to.

How to Start Giving Your Brain New Instructions

So how do you actually shift what your brain is filtering for? Here's a framework that works with your neurobiology instead of against it.

Get specific about what you want to see more of. Release the abstract language. Words like "abundance" or "growth" or "alignment" are too vague for your brain to act on. Your RAS needs specific, sensory, heart-based details. What do you want to experience when you wake up? What kind of women do you want in your circle? What kind of clients do you want to attract? What pace do you want to live your life at? What does your morning feel like? What does your body feel like when you're in alignment? Your brain cannot scan for what you haven't clearly named. Get specific, and specificity becomes the signal.

Let your body feel it, not just your mind. This is the embodiment piece, and it's where most people fall short. Your brain responds powerfully to emotion. So when you speak your affirmations, when you visualize, when you write your future self journal entries, don't just think them. Let your body drop into the felt experience of living as her, even if it's only for 20 seconds. Feel the ease in your chest. Feel the confidence in your posture. Feel the softness of a morning where you wake up without anxiety. That emotional imprint is what tells your RAS, "this matters to her now, start showing her more of this." Without the felt experience, your brain reads the intention as intellectual noise, not as a real update to the operating system.

Be relentlessly consistent with the new signal. Consistency is what rewires your default settings. One visualization session won't overwrite decades of old programming. But daily repetition, done with emotional truth, teaches your brain that this is the new normal. Let it feel like brushing your teeth. Not something you do when you're inspired, but something you do because it's part of who you are now. Every day you send that signal, you're strengthening a new neural pathway and weakening the old one. Over time, the new filter becomes your default, not something you have to force.

Change what surrounds you. Your brain is always listening. Your subconscious is always recording. The voices you consume, the content you scroll through, the conversations you sit in, the rooms you choose to be in, they're all training your filtering system. If you're consistently around people who are stressed, playing small, doubting themselves, or reinforcing scarcity, your brain will assume that's what's safe and normal for you. But if you place yourself in communities, conversations, and environments that reflect who you're becoming, your filters shift. And it starts to feel more natural to see as her, to act as her, to receive as her. Your environment is not just a backdrop for your life. It's active programming.

What Changes When Your Filters Change

Here's what most women don't realize: you do not have to build a completely new life from the ground up. You don't have to struggle and strive and force the future to arrive on your timeline. Sometimes the peace you're craving isn't a million miles away. It's in the margin. It's in the stillness. It's in the invitation you keep ignoring because your old identity doesn't recognize it as valid.

The opportunities, the relationships, the clarity, the abundance. They're often right in front of you. But your filters are set to an old frequency. A frequency that was built in a season of survival and self-protection. And that frequency served you then. It kept you safe when safety was the priority. But this is a new season. This season is about expansion, about becoming, about evolution.

When your filters change, your choices change. And when your choices change, your entire experience changes. You start noticing things you used to dismiss. You feel braver in spaces that once made you shrink. You stop entertaining distractions that don't reflect who you're becoming. You move with more clarity because you're finally seeing what was hidden in plain sight.

This is what embodied transformation looks like. Not just knowing better, but perceiving your life through a completely different lens. Living as someone whose internal algorithm is calibrated to receive what she's been calling in, instead of filtering it out.

So if you want to evolve, don't just change what you're doing. Change what you're noticing. Train your brain to recognize alignment, abundance, ease, and support. Because once you start seeing it, you can start choosing it. Once you start choosing it, you can start expecting it. And once you start expecting it, you can start building your entire life around it.

The woman who feels free, supported, confident, abundant, aligned, and safe is not always a future version of you that you have to earn your way to. Many times, she's just a perspective shift away. And that shift starts the moment you decide to update the instructions you've been giving your brain.

Reflection Questions

Sit with these this week:

What specific details can I give my brain about the life I want, so it knows what to start scanning for?

What environments, conversations, or content am I consuming that might be reinforcing an old algorithm?

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— Ashlee Hope
Creator & Host of Evolving Into HER
Website: www.AshleeHope.co
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