Awareness

Awareness shapes your reality—and that’s the lens Jenna Williams uses to guide this episode. Jenna explores how the brain’s attentional filter influences what you notice, what you miss, and how your internal focus can quietly reshape your daily experience. Through familiar perception examples like the “invisible gorilla” experiment and simple storytelling metaphors, she explains how people can look directly at something and still not see it—because attention, not eyesight, determines awareness.

Jenna breaks down how this built-in mental filter is neutral, amplifying whatever it’s trained to look for. When your focus shifts, your experience shifts—not because the world magically changes, but because your filter does. She connects this insight to healing and emotional recovery, encouraging listeners to intentionally filter in joy, laughter, play, and meaningful moments instead of only problems and fear. A reflective story about perspective reinforces that the filter responds to direction, not judgment—it will highlight positive or negative depending on what it’s told to prioritize.

The episode also emphasizes that one of the most reliable ways to increase happiness is to take ownership of your time and deliberately make space for what you love. Jenna offers a simple five-minute daily awareness practice and invites listeners to become observers of their own lives—learning to notice what they’re noticing. With warmth and compassion, she reminds listeners that awareness is a gift and grace is part of the process.

If you’ve ever wondered why your mind seems to spotlight certain things while ignoring others, this episode shows how your attention filter works—and how gently redirecting it can support healing, presence, and greater joy.

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Transcript

Welcome back to Just Call Jenna. Today we’re talking about awareness.

Awareness is incredibly important to the brain. The brain has a built-in filter called the reticular activating system, or the RAS. It’s a mouthful, so I stick with the acronym. What it really means is simple: your brain filters for what you ask it to notice.

Your subconscious is receiving more information than your conscious mind could ever handle. If you tried to process everything around you, your brain would be completely overwhelmed. So the subconscious uses this attentional filter — the RAS — to decide what gets your attention and what gets ignored.

The easiest way to understand this is through stories.

There’s a famous example called the Invisible Gorilla experiment. In a short video, people are asked to count how many times players in white shirts pass a basketball. Most viewers get the number right. But halfway through the video, someone in a gorilla suit walks across the screen, pounds their chest, and leaves. A surprising number of people never see it at all. Their focus on counting passes filtered everything else out.

That’s how attention works.

Another example is what I call the “red car effect.” If you decide you want a red car, suddenly you see red cars everywhere. They were always there — your brain just filtered them out before. When your focus changed, your awareness changed.

Think about two travelers walking the same path in the woods. One describes it as dark and miserable. The other says it was beautiful and peaceful. Same path, different experience. The difference wasn’t reality. The difference was what each person noticed and how they interpreted it.

Your experience follows your filter.

You probably won’t look back and regret time spent doing what you enjoy. So why not tell your brain to filter in more of what you enjoy? If you believe your life is good, your brain searches for evidence that it is. If you believe your life is miserable, it will gather proof for that too.

One of the simplest ways to increase happiness is to take ownership of your time and spend more of it doing things you love. You’re training your brain toward what psychologists call cognitive ease — teaching it that feeling good is allowed.

Awareness itself is a gift. Even five minutes a day of noticing your thoughts can change your experience. I grew up hearing the G.I. Joe line, “Knowing is half the battle.” Here, noticing is half the battle.

During my stroke recovery, I didn’t focus on walking to the end of the block. I focused on getting a little better every day. I wasn’t pretending I was healed. I was focusing on progress. When I told myself I was improving, my brain began to notice improvement. When I told myself something was hard, my brain showed me all the reasons it was hard.

I thought about Bethany Hamilton surfing without an arm and told myself, “If she can do that, I can lift a spoon.” I trained my brain to filter for capability instead of limitation.

Most events in life are neutral until we define them. Two people can experience the same moment and give it completely different meanings. You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can control the meaning you assign and what you continue to focus on.

Growth and healing begin with understanding your filter.

There is far more information around you than you can ever process. The filter determines what expands in your life. I chose to focus on what I was capable of because it built confidence. I practiced gratitude for small wins — even hitting a golf ball 25 yards instead of 200. Gratitude, consistency, and small improvements compound over time.

Think of the brain’s filter like an air filter in a car. When it’s clogged, clean air doesn’t circulate. You can’t replace your mental filter, but you can train it. You can teach it to look for gratitude, opportunity, and progress instead of only problems.

After my stroke, I lost control of almost everything — my body, my independence, even basic daily tasks. The one thing I could still control was what I allowed into my thoughts. In that hospital room, I realized my story wasn’t over. Later I learned the science behind it, but at the time I just felt a decision inside me to keep going.

The RAS works like a GPS. When you choose a destination, your brain begins highlighting possible paths. I chose gratitude, abundance, and freedom. I also had to unlearn worrying about other people’s opinions and fear of making mistakes.

Your brain will collect proof for whatever you ask it to prove. If you look for opportunity, you’ll notice more opportunity. If you look for reasons to feel defeated, you’ll notice those too.

Start with a simple five-minute awareness practice. No phone. No distractions. Just observe your thoughts. You don’t need perfect meditation. Just notice.

When a thought appears, acknowledge it: That’s a thought. See how it feels, and let it pass. You’re not fixing your whole life in five minutes — you’re training awareness.

Even this podcast came from that process. I didn’t plan to host a podcast. I simply asked how I could share my story and help people. Over time, the path revealed itself.

There’s also a study about luck. People who described themselves as lucky and unlucky were asked to count pictures in a newspaper. The “lucky” group finished faster because they noticed a printed message inside that gave the answer. The “unlucky” group missed it. The difference wasn’t luck — it was attention.

So begin today. Five minutes of awareness. Notice what you notice.

You are the observer of your life.

And remember — karma is real, your energy is contagious, and your vibe matters.