Your Reality Isn’t Random: 3 Biological Filters That Dictate Your “Luck”

We often speak about “attracting” success, “stumbling” into the right meeting, or experiencing a “lucky break.” To an outsider, these moments look like a roll of the cosmic dice. To the person experiencing them, it feels like the universe is finally providing. But if we peel back the layers of cognitive psychology and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), we find something far more mechanical….and far more empowering….at play.

The core question many high-performers ask is: Do I actually influence what shows up in my life from external sources, or is it just random?

The answer is a paradox: The external world provides the data, but your internal biology decides which data becomes your reality. You don’t necessarily “conjure” physical objects into existence, but you act as a high-powered editor. What shows up in your life is the specific subset of reality you have given yourself biological permission to notice.

Here are the 3 biological and psychological mechanisms that shape what you notice, pursue, and ultimately experience as “luck”:

1. Priming: Programming the Search Pattern

Your internal dialogue acts like a search engine for the brain. The words, beliefs, and emotional narratives you repeat begin programming your nervous system to search for matching evidence in the external world. In psychology, this is called linguistic priming.

If you repeatedly tell yourself:

• “There are no opportunities.”
• “People in this industry are difficult.”

…your mind begins preparing itself to notice and emotionally react to information that confirms those beliefs. This is why two people can walk into the exact same environment and experience completely different realities.

Imagine two salespeople entering the same meeting:

• One believes people are skeptical and resistant.
• The other believes people are looking for solutions and relief.

They are standing in the same room, hearing the same words, and seeing the same people. Yet one notices crossed arms and disinterest. The other notices curiosity and emotional engagement.

One experiences rejection. The other experiences opportunity. This is not magic. It is the brain searching for patterns that match the emotional and linguistic instructions it has been repeatedly given.

We don’t see the world as it is; we see it as we are. If you believe people are untrustworthy, you will focus on a single late email from a partner while ignoring ten on-time deliveries. Externally, “untrustworthy behavior” is what “shows up” because it’s the only data you are validating.

Your internal language influences:

• what you notice
• what emotionally stands out
• what risks you take
• how you interpret outcomes
• and ultimately, the reality you reinforce

What many people call “manifestation” may sometimes be the process of priming the brain to search for certain categories of experience.

2. Filtering: The Reticular Activating System (RAS)

Ok, so let me be scientific for just 30 seconds of your reading experience here. Your brain is processing millions of bits of information every second, but your conscious mind can only handle a tiny fraction of it. To prevent overload, your brain relies on a filtering mechanism called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).

The RAS acts as a gatekeeper. Its job is to decide:

• what reaches conscious awareness
• and what gets filtered out as irrelevant noise

The important thing is this:

The RAS filters based largely on what has already been emotionally and mentally primed as important. This is why the “new car effect” happens.

The moment you decide you want a specific silver SUV, you suddenly see that vehicle everywhere. The cars were always there. Your brain simply stopped filtering them out because they became psychologically relevant.

The same thing happens with opportunities, relationships, risks, and possibilities. If your mind has been primed to expect:

• rejection
• scarcity
• failure
• closed doors

…your RAS will prioritize evidence that supports those expectations while unconsciously filtering out contradictory signals.

At the same time:

• opportunities
• supportive people
• useful ideas
• strategic connections

may go completely unnoticed because your brain has categorized them as unimportant or inconsistent with your current mental programming.

What many people call “luck” is often selective attention directed by internal conditioning.

3. Identity: Blind Spots & Self-Concept

The final layer is identity.

Even when opportunities successfully pass through your mental filters, your identity still determines whether you emotionally allow yourself to engage with them. Psychology demonstrates this through Inattentional Blindness. If you are hyper-focused on one thing (like a problem), you can be completely “blind” to an obvious external resource (the solution) right in front of your face.

• – Work vs. Alignment: You can “work” incredibly hard and get nowhere because your beliefs have created a scatoma (blind spot) for the very shortcuts or resources that would make the work easier.
• – The “Attraction” Shift: When you change your belief, the blind spot vanishes. Suddenly, a resource “appears” out of nowhere. You didn’t work for it in that moment, but you prepared your perception to receive it.

In a famous experiment, participants were asked to count basketball passes between players wearing white shirts. Most became so focused on the task that they completely failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking directly through the middle of the scene. Attention shaped perception.

NLP (Neuro Lingusitic Programming) takes this a step further through the concept of identity-based blind spots, sometimes called scatomas. These are not simply things you overlook because you are distracted. They are things you unconsciously reject because they contradict who you believe you are.

If someone internally believes:

“I am not leadership material.”
“I’m not creative.”
“I’m not worthy of success.”
“People like me don’t reach that level.”
…the brain begins editing reality to protect that identity.

– A talented manager may hear an invitation to lead as a warning that they are unqualified.

– A gifted writer may unconsciously ignore publishing opportunities because success feels psychologically unfamiliar.

– A business owner may avoid high-value clients because safety feels more emotionally comfortable than visibility.

This is why people sometimes “attract” repeated patterns without understanding why. We do not simply react to reality. We edit reality to remain psychologically consistent with our self-image. And often, the greatest limitation is not the absence of opportunity… but the inability to perceive ourselves as someone capable of receiving it.

Summary: Is it Random?

Some events of the world may be random, but the results in your life are not.

Think of the world as a broadcast of a thousand different radio stations playing at once. You don’t control the broadcast, but your belief system acts as the tuner that determines which station you actually hear.

• The Stress/Pessimism Filter: Tunes your biology into “Survival Mode.” It prioritizes threats and obstacles. In this state, your brain physically narrows your peripheral vision and shuts down creative problem-solving. You don’t “attract” bad luck; you simply filter out everything but the problems.

• The Optimism/Belief Filter: Activates “Growth Mode.” It primes your brain to recognize allies, shortcuts, and “lucky” breaks that are invisible to others. You don’t “conjure” the opportunity out of thin air….it was likely there all along. Your belief simply unlocked your ability to recognize it.

Things “show up” because you have lowered the threshold for what your brain considers “relevant.” If you haven’t “worked” for a specific result yet, but you have programmed the expectation of it, your brain starts a “background search.” It’s like a computer program running in the tray…it’s not on your main screen (conscious work), but it’s using your processing power to find a match in the external world.

Tony Ragoonanan is the Founder of  V-Formation Training & Development. As a Certified Emotional Intelligence/Performance Strategist, he helps individuals, teams and organizations to align skills, behaviours and outcomes. Outside of this, it’s all about family,  football, and fitness!!

868-681-3492 | tonyr0909@gmail.com