The moment our thinking starts to narrow.
I see this moment all the time.
It usually begins the same way.
A conversation begins and the thinking in the room starts to tighten.
Options feel limited.
The path forward suddenly looks smaller than it actually is.
And in that moment, the mind can sound very convincing.
There’s a question I return to often — both in my own life and in conversations with clients.
Am I operating from expansion… or contraction?
You can usually feel the answer almost immediately.
There is a physical response.
In contraction, everything narrows.
Your body tightens.
Your thinking tightens.
Options begin disappearing.
The path ahead starts to feel smaller than it actually is.
And the strange thing is that when we’re in contraction, it often feels completely convincing. The mind begins telling a very persuasive story about why the situation is fixed, limited, or already decided.
But what’s happening in the brain is actually much simpler.
At any moment, the brain is receiving millions of pieces of information. Consciously, we process only a tiny fraction.
The system responsible for deciding what reaches our awareness is called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) – the brain’s filtering mechanism.
In simple terms, it acts as a filter.
And that filter responds directly to what we ask it to look for.
The brain doesn’t show us everything that’s happening.
It shows us what we’ve trained it to notice.
Which means the questions we ask shape the world we see.
If the mind believes there is no way forward, the brain begins scanning the environment for evidence that confirms it.
But the moment we ask a different question, something else becomes visible.
Possibilities we couldn’t see moments earlier.
I see this with leaders constantly.
A conversation will begin with someone feeling completely boxed in.
Like, “There’s no other way.”
And then a small shift happens.
Someone asks:
“What might be another path?”
And the energy in the room changes.
Thinking opens.
New ideas appear.
The conversation begins moving again.
Nothing about the external situation has changed.
But the lens has.
And that same shift is available to us as well.
Sometimes the move back to expansion is cognitive.
Sometimes it’s physical.
A walk outside.
Sunlight.
Movement.
Stepping away from the desk long enough to reset perspective.
I notice this in my own life as well.
When I begin contracting, it’s often a signal that I’m out of alignment in some way. Usually something simple has slipped.
I haven’t moved my body.
I’ve stopped listening carefully.
I’ve started comparing instead of trusting my own path.
Or I’m trying to control something that can’t actually be controlled.
And when that happens, my thinking narrows.
The moment I return to alignment, perspective opens again.
Which is why I often come back to a single question:
Where might there be more possibilities than I’m currently seeing?
Because the moment we ask that question, the brain begins scanning again.
And more often than not, something new appears.
Not because the situation changed –
but because our lens did.
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