You know that life-changing question?
“If you could do something for the rest of your life, all day, every day – what would that be?”
For me it’s studying how the brain works. Less from a theoretical perspective, and more how its design influences the way we experience everything around us, how it influences our actions. The subconscious. The Reticular Activating System.
It all started a long time ago, when, in a previous adventure as a health coach focused on sugar addiction, I realized that there is something way more impactful than conscious decision and willpower. And I will probably never stop.
My thoughts and searches took me to vision boards. Then manifestation practices. Affirmations. Mantras. The whole ecosystem of “create your reality” techniques that saturates our culture.
And then another question arose : are these all forms of prayer?
Not in the formal, religious sense. Functionally they’re identical. Someone creating a vision board covered with images of their dream life is doing the same thing as someone praying for provision. Someone repeating affirmations in the mirror is doing the same thing as someone speaking declarations of faith. Someone visualizing their desired outcome is doing the same thing as someone praying with expectation.
The common denominator? They are all attempts to align internal reality with external desire.
But there was a question that won’t let me go: Why do some of these “work” while others don’t? Why does one person’s vision board seem to manifest while another’s collects dust and disappointments? Why does one person’s prayer fill them with a sense of happiness, empowerment, beauty, even, while another’s brings fear, doubt, and questions to the forefront?
How Your Brain Actually Works
The brain is designed to filter out information. Constantly. Ruthlessly. Imagine what would happen if you were to consciously store every single bit of information available at the same given moment in time: To be aware of every single tiny move you make when driving, while being totally tuned to every sound, the temperature, how the fabric of your clothes feels on your skin….
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) acts as the gatekeeper, deciding what gets through to your conscious awareness and what gets filtered out. The part that matters the most and makes the difference: your RAS filters reality based on what your subconscious mind believes is true and important.
It works like this:
If you believe you’re always overlooked, your brain will filter reality to show you evidence of being overlooked (and filter out evidence of being seen)
If you believe opportunities are scarce, your brain will highlight scarcity and overlook abundance.
Your subconscious beliefs literally shape what you perceive as reality.
And there is a part that counts in every attempt to change your reality: your brain cannot process negation.
When you think “I don’t want to be broke,” your brain hears “broke.”
When you pray “Please don’t let this fail,” your brain focuses on “fail.”
When you affirm “I am not stuck,” your brain registers “stuck.”
If you are not sure this is right, don’t think of a pair of red socks. I bet you instantly tried to see those red socks. Why ? Your brain only understands the image, the feeling, the state you’re focusing on, whether you want it or you’re trying to avoid it.
The Vision Board Paradox
So you create a vision board. Images of the house, the relationship, the body, the bank account, the achievement. You create an entire practice around it: hang it where you can see it daily, or multiple times a day. You set affirmations for daily repetition.
And nothing happens.
Why?
Because while your conscious mind is looking at images of abundance, your subconscious mind is struggling with doubt and fears and negation of abundance.
You’re looking at the dream house while thinking “I’ll never afford that.”
You’re visualizing the relationship while believing “I’m not worthy of that kind of love.”
You’re affirming abundance while your subconscious mind is telling stories of scarcity.
For short, internal division. And your brain always, always listens to what you actually believe to be true at your subconscious level.
That’s why and how your vision board becomes just another form of wishful thinking – wanting something you don’t actually believe is possible for you. And your RAS, faithfully serving your subconscious beliefs, filters reality to confirm what you actually believe: “This isn’t for me.”
The Two Kinds of Prayer
Is it possible that we have the same approach in prayer, even if we don’t realize it?
Prayer with doubt: “God, please make this happen. God, please get me through this (while the underlying thinking process speaks – I hope it works out. I’m worried it won’t. What if it doesn’t? But I’m asking anyway.) If it’s Your will… (please let it be Your will)… ( but I don’t really know… I’m scared it won’t happen… I’m trying to have faith…)
I know I prayed like this. Not once. The words say one thing; the heart believes another. It’s petition shadowed by fear. Hope undermined by doubt. A fractured prayer.
Prayer with trust: A knowing so deep it feels already done. A hard-to-explain certainty. Where there is no internal division, no begging for a future outcome. It’s a resting in the present reality and an anchored- in-trust prayer. No if , no but, no questions. Patience and peace.
A verse comes to mind : “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
Not “believe you will receive” – believe you have received. Present tense. Already done.
I’ve experienced this too. A peace and a knowing that makes you look like crazy. And it’s not about denying current reality. It’s internal coherence to such level that your subconscious, your conscious mind, and your faith are undivided.
The mechanism is simple and precise : when you’re internally undivided, your brain stops filtering for evidence of lack and starts filtering for evidence of provision. Your RAS highlights opportunities instead of obstacles. Your nervous system relaxes from defensive scanning into receptive awareness.
How This Becomes Dangerous
Everything I said above comes dangerously close to prosperity gospel: “Just believe hard enough and God becomes your cosmic vending machine.”
That’s not what I’m saying at all.
Prosperity gospel basically preaches that your faith manipulates all outcomes into what you want, God being a faithful provider. This part alone deserves its own conversation.
For now, what I am saying is this: your internal state, the set of beliefs stored in your subconscious mind (trust vs. doubt) determines what you’re capable of perceiving, receiving, and participating in.
God doesn’t need your perfect faith to work. But your fractured faith might prevent you from recognizing His work when it is happening ringht in front of you..
Your doubts won’t prevent God from acting. Your doubt prevents you from seeing, receiving, and cooperating with what God is already doing.
Your brain, filtering reality through the lens of “this won’t work,” literally blinds you to evidence that it is working or even better alternatives.
The Real Work Isn’t Praying Harder
I took the long, windy road to explain this simple truth:
When your vision board isn’t “working” , the problem isn’t that you need to check it more often.
When your affirmations don’t bring you anywhere, the problem isn’t that you need to repeat them more often, or place them in more and more places
When your prayers feel powerless, the problem isn’t that you need to pray harder or longer or with more eloquent words.
The problem is internal division.
You’re saying one thing while believing another. Your conscious desire conflicts with your subconscious belief. Your words don’t match your internal state.
And I know, the self-help world is abundant with solutions that bring insight. Insight is great. But not enough. Insight brings you to understanding that you have patterns of beliefs, puts a name to your pain and frustration. And you feel victorious. When you recognize your whole internal story in a book, you feel like a winner – “I finally know why I feel the way I feel. I finally have a clear container for my struggles”. But it’s short lived. The internal challenge remains untouched. Same pain- new label.
Becasue insight without practical, effective ways to fundamentally change those beliefs, is just expensive awareness.
The real work, the one that makes a long-lasting difference , is in resolving the internal conflict.
It’s asking: What do I actually believe underneath what I’m saying?
Where’s the doubt? Where’s the fear? Where’s the subconscious conviction that “this isn’t for me” or “I’m not worthy” or “good things don’t happen to people like me”?
The real work is to become internally congruent.
The Questions That Make A Difference
What are you internally undivided about?
When you pray, when you create your vision board, when you speak your affirmations, when you visualize your future and desired outcome – what does your subconscious actually believe?
Not what you wish you believed. Not what you’re trying to believe. What you actually, in your depths, believe is true about you, about God, about what’s possible?
Because that is what your brain will work to confirm.
Shared with Love,
Gabriela
The Re-Coding ProtocolTM is the only program that takes you through all the stages that reveal internal conflict and unaddressed resistance and doesn’t leave you drowning in insight – it gives you highly effective re-coding protocols that rewire old beliefs right at the point of formation. Because when that happens, you can grow, expand, and become in full agreement with your inner landscape.
