Joy Spotlights: Rewire Your Brain's Focus

We explore how to retrain your brain's spotlight to naturally find moments of joy instead of stress. By understanding your reticular activating system (RAS), you can break anxiety loops and build joy loops that fuel your healthiest habits.

Chapters

• 0:00 Brain's Spotlight and Joy
• 1:30 Understanding the Reticular Activating System
• 3:23 How RAS and Vagus Nerve Interact
• 4:50 Four Practical Strategies
• 6:25 Benefits and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Emily Feist: 0:00

If your brain was holding a flashlight, where would you shine it? On the mess in the corner? Or in the cozy chair in the sun? Today, we're talking about how to retrain your brain's spotlight so it naturally finds little moments of joy, and why those moments are the secret fuel to your healthiest habits.

Emily Feist: 0:17

Welcome back to "Starts Starts at Vegas, the podcast where we stop chasing calm and start creating it, one small shift at a time. I'm your host, emily, and I'm your guide to rewiring stress, restoring peace and giving your nervous system the attention it deserves.

Emily Feist: 0:32

Today, we're talking about something deceptively small but deeply powerful how to train your brain to notice the little sparks of joy and satisfaction in your day, and how those sparks can quietly fuel your healthiest habits. By the end, you'll have simple, practical ways to shift from scanning for stress to scanning for what supports you. This isn't about faking positivity or ignoring what's hard. It's about giving your brain a fair chance to see the good too.

Emily Feist: 1:00

Let's start with a tough truth. Your brain is not wired for happiness by default. It's wired for survival, and that means your mental grocery store, your cart, aka your daily experience, ends up filled with the same tension over and over. Now let's introduce a network of nerves that are not as popular as the vagus nerve, and that is your reticular activating system. Your reticular activating system is a network of nerves located in the brainstem that has many functions, but for now let's look at how this helps the brain confirm safety and quiet the body's stress response when there's no real threat. The reticular activating system receives input from all of your senses except for smell, and that information is relayed to other areas of our brain. The reticular activating system receives input from all of our senses except for the sense of smell, and it relays that information to other areas of our brain. It's a vital neural structure that acts as a gatekeeper for our consciousness, influencing how we see the world.

Emily Feist: 2:20

Your reticular activating system is your mind's bouncer. It decides what's worth noticing based on what you've been paying attention to. The more you focus on anxious cues, the more your RAS lets them in and the more those neural pathways get reinforced. So if you've been focused on stress or anxiety, the reticular activating system thinks aha, this is important, let's find more, because your brain acts as if you're telling it the truth and it will find information to support your thoughts even when they're not true. So if you focus on an anxious thought, your brain will do its best to support it. That's one reason why positive affirmations help, because when you say them, your brain will want to support those words, to make it true to yourself. Here's how this creates a loop Attention fuels behavior and behavior reinforces attention.

Emily Feist: 3:15

You notice a small stressor, then you focus on it. Your body reacts, so your heart rate spikes or you get a bad feeling in your stomach. You interrupt that as proof that something's wrong and then your brain files that experience away as important. Notice this again next time. It's like accidentally training a puppy to bark every time the mail comes. You didn't mean to, but the repetition makes it automatic.

Emily Feist: 3:43

Here's where it gets interesting.

Emily Feist: 3:45

Your reticular activating system and the vagus nerve actually live in the same neighborhood in the brainstem. They don't directly plug into each other, but they talk through the body's stress network. When the RAS is on high alert, scanning for danger, your body shifts toward a stress state and your rest and digest functions of the vagus nerve go quiet. And when your vagus nerve is active, through the deep breathing, safe connection or movement, it tells your brain we're safe and that message goes to the RAS, which can relax its tight focus on threats and starts noticing neutral or even positive things again.

Emily Feist: 4:27

Think of your reticular activating system as your security cameras, and the vagus nerve as your thermostat. If the cameras keep spotting threats, the thermostat cranks up the heat, aka your stress. But if the thermostat keeps things cool and steady, the cameras stop zooming in so tight on danger and can widen their lens. And the good news is this loop works both ways. If we can unintentionally strengthen anxiety loops, we can then intentionally strengthen joy loops. Think of it like planting wildflowers in your mental garden you can't stop every weed from growing, but you can make sure that there's so much color in life that the weeds don't dominate.

Emily Feist: 5:10

Let's make this practical with four strategies that you can start today. First, daily micro scan Every morning and evening. Ask yourself what was one thing that felt good today, what's one small thing I did for my health. Write them down, especially if you feel like they're tiny. So over time your brain learns oh, we notice these things now and it's good to support those positive neural pathways. Second, start doing sensory anchoring. Pick one daily activity showering, making tea, walking the dog and challenge yourself to find one pleasant sensation in it the warmth of water, the smell of soap, the sound of your dog's paws on the sidewalk. It's a great time to pause and enjoy life.

Emily Feist: 5:56

Number three habit pairing. Attach a cue to a healthy habit. When you fill your water bottle, think of one thing that you're grateful for. When you soak up the morning sun, notice the fact that you're taking care of yourself. Connect the two habits together. Number four social reinforcement. You need to share your small wins. Share it with a friend, a group text or in a journal that you reread. Let yourself be seen in those moments, because acknowledgement strengthens the behavior.

Emily Feist: 6:25

Practicing these micro habits shifts your brain's patterns. You're teaching your mental spotlight to swing towards the good, which, over time, changes the baseline of your internal dialogue. You're reinforcing and noticing healthy actions, making them more likely to repeat. And because you're pairing them with feel-good moments, you're layering reinforcement on top of reinforcements. Think of it like stocking your kitchen you can't make a nourishing meal if the pantry is empty. So each time you notice a moment of joy or a small healthy choice, you're stocking your mental pantry with ingredients of a calmer, more resilient life. So today we covered how your brain's spotlight and reticular activating system naturally filter for what you've been focusing on how anxiety loops get stronger with attention, but joy loops can be built in the same way.

Emily Feist: 7:19

And four simple tools the daily micro scan, sensory anchoring, habit pairing and social reinforcements. You don't have to overhaul your life to feel better. You just have to change what your brain catches and over time, those little shifts add up to big changes in how you feel and how you care for yourself. All right, friends, thanks for hanging out with me today. Remember to soothe your nervous system and reclaim who you are. If this episode helped you today, share it with a friend or leave a quick review. I'll be back next Tuesday for another episode of it Starts at Vagus. Until next time, remember, wellness starts at Vagus.