You experience your environment through your senses, which are continually interacting. Exteroceptors detect stimulation from outside of your body. Common examples are smell and taste. Interoceptors receive stimulation from the inside your body. If you have ever had a headache or a thirst for water or been sexually aroused, it is the workings of your interoceptive sensory system.
Each of your senses has an inherent capability to receive and process stimuli. No one of your senses works in isolation or apart from the other senses. Your senses are continually interacting. What your senses experience makes you feel as though you are awake. Yet, research shows that your conscious brain is physically aware of a very small fraction of the information you could potentially capture if you took the time to train yourselves to be more aware.
Every second tens of millions of bits of data is passing through your sensory organs – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. It is nearly impossible to imagine that you could ever be consciously aware of such a massive amount of information. Actually, most of that data is filtered out and transferred to the unconscious parts of your brain to keep you from being overwhelmed. The sensory organs and filter are working 24/7.
To get a gist of the significance, let us look at what you see through your eyes. Research shows that your eyes are exposed to more than 10 million bits of visual data every second. Out of these millions of bits your brain takes in about 40 bits and you consciously notice 16 bits.
The difference between what is filtered to the conscious and unconscious parts of your brain is determined by what you consciously decide to let your eyes see. The moment you consciously choose to become visually aware of something specific within your environment is the very moment the filtering begins to sort through anything and everything associated or connected with where or on what your eyes are focused. This is happening every second, which accumulates into significant amount of valuable visual information when you choose where to aim your attention, focus, and energy.
All your senses perceive and process millions of bits of data. If you allow yourself to be distracted and do not choose to pay attention to what your senses detect, what might you be missing?
Consciously choosing means you choose differently to expose yourself to the right kinds of information to draw that 16 or more bits of data from the 10 millions bits of possibilities. You consciously zero in on what is important and give that your undivided attention. For example you focus your full attention to what someone is doing and saying. Task-wise, you give 100% focus to whatever you should be doing in that present moment.
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