Welcome to the Daily Quote, the podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way. I'm your host Andrew McGivern and this episode is brought to you by the Great News podcast. Link is in the show notes.
Today's quote comes from Dan Sullivan, co-founder of Strategic Coach, the world's leading entrepreneurial coaching program, author of more than 50 books, and a man who has spent five decades helping people understand how their thinking shapes the reality they experience.
He said:
”Your eyes can only see and your ears can only hear what your brain is looking for.”Here's a question. Have you ever decided to buy a particular car, say, a red Honda and suddenly that specific car seems to be everywhere? Every parking lot. Every intersection. Every street you drive down. They were always there. You just couldn't see them. Your brain had no reason to flag them as relevant, until it was relevant to you.
That's not coincidence. That's your Reticular Activating System, the neurological filter your brain uses to decide what information from the overwhelming flood of sensory input around you actually reaches your conscious awareness. And here's the critical insight: it filters based on what you've decided matters and told it to look for.
Dan Sullivan's quote is pointing at something with enormous implications for how you live your life. Your brain is not a passive receiver. It's an active filter. And what it filters for is determined by what you've programmed it to look for, through your beliefs, your expectations, your fears, and your focus.
If you wake up every morning expecting the day to be difficult, your brain will find the evidence. Every small frustration will be flagged. Every setback will feel confirming.
Not because the day is objectively harder but because your filter is tuned to difficult.
If you begin a new project with a clear and specific goal, your brain immediately begins scanning your environment for the people, ideas, and opportunities that are relevant to that goal and they start appearing almost like magic. But they were always there.
Sullivan describes a client who wrote down exactly what he needed for a new venture, and within the same week, the precise person he needed walked into a conversation completely unprompted. He had experienced not once but twice, the phenomenon Sullivan describes: once you define what you're looking for, you begin finding it everywhere.
The profound implication is this: what you consistently focus on, expect, and believe becomes the instruction set for your brain's filter. Change the instruction set and you don't just change your outlook. You change what you literally perceive to be available to you in the world.
When I started this podcast I thought it would be difficult to keep finding quotes. But then all of sudden I noticed quotes EVERYWHERE. In books I was reading, on billboards, in podcasts and YouTube videos. And on social media and then because of the algorithms I started getting fed even more quotes in my feed. There isn't a day that I don't see several potential quotes I can use in the Daily Quote.
So here's the question: What has your brain been programmed to look for right now?
Because it is finding it. Right now, today, in every interaction and every moment your filter is running. The question isn't whether your brain is looking for something. The question is whether you chose what it's looking for or whether it was chosen for you by habit, fear, or default.
You can reprogram the filter. Deliberately. Intentionally. Starting today.
What you look for is what you'll find. Choose your own adventure!
That's going to do it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern signing off for now, but I'll be back tomorrow. Same pod time, same pod station with another Daily Quote.
