Let’s talk about frequency illusion.
What is it? You know when you buy a yellow car (like I made the huge mistake of doing once), and you suddenly start seeing yellow cars everywhere? Yea, that’s it.
When you start thinking about having children, or you have a child and all of a sudden it seems like everyone and their mom is also having children? I personally experienced this one when I started therapy because I was told (at age 23) that I probably would not be able to have children. My therapist was pregnant. Really? It is funny now, especially since I have a child, but at the time it blew my mind.
This is the illusion when something is at the top of your mind ,whether consciously or unconsciously, your brain starts to notice it more often, leading you to have the illusion that it has a higher frequency of occurrence, when in actuality it is just on the top of your brain so your brain is on high alert for it. Pretty cool, right? Or not. It can be super annoying too.
All of this happens without you even thinking about it consciously (until you see it, that is). It’s not like you are repeating the same thing every second, it just happens.
You know you have experienced this and no, you were not just imagining things, it is real. Well, it is perceived to be real if that makes any sense at all.
So imagine if a yellow car is at the top of your subconscious, and you start seeing it much more often, then what else is happening in your brain on that subconscious level? Are you constantly thinking about how bad you have it? Or how everything goes wrong for you all the time? Are you still mad about the conversation you had with your friend and it is plaguing your mind?
I recently had a terrible argument with someone and it kept me from sleeping all night long, I just continued going through every single word in my brain, so I could not focus on anything else.
Now imagine if you trained your brain to flip those thoughts. If you start thinking about the great conversation you had with a friend, or how grateful you are for what you have and how far you have come in any situation. If you think about how your baby smiled at you for the first time, or that your partner told you they loved you. If you think about how lucky you are for your health.
I am a firm believer that gratitude reciprocates, and this frequency illusion proves that even more. If you all of a sudden start seeing something more because it is at the top of your mind, it doesn’t mean it is happening more, it means your brain is also pushing it to the front of your thoughts. Therefore, if that can happen with trivial things it can also happen with your mindset. Isn’t it cool just how powerful our brains really are?
The more you think about how much you can do, the more you will see how much you can do. The more you think about how grateful you are for what you have, the more grateful you will be for what you have.
Equally, the more you think about what you cant do, the more that will become true and you will stop believing that you can. The less you practice your gratitude, the more you will believe you don’t have enough.
The frequency illusion is not just for things or situations, it can also be for mindset. And I bet if you think about it, it has happened where you started seeing something more once you had it in your mind. So, you can also train your brain to use the frequency illusion to your benefit, now that you know what it is.
You literally have the power to make your life better just by believing it is better. Just by believing you have the power to make it better. You also have the power to make your life worse, just by thinking it is worse.
Choose wisely today and every day.
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