The Power of Your Mind - Dr. Joe Dispenza

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to the power of your mind with Dr. Joe D'Spenza. Get access to the Resilient Mind journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. But for me, my thoughts do matter. I think every thought that you have makes a chemical. And you can have thoughts that make you feel good and thoughts that make you feel bad. And I think that if 90% of the thoughts that we think are the same thoughts as the day before, the same thoughts lead to the same choices. The same choices lead to the same behaviors. The same behaviors will create the same experiences. And the same experiences produce the very same emotions. And those same emotions influence a person's very same thoughts. And their biology, their neurosurcatory, their neurochemistry, their hormones. And even their gene expressions, they's the same because they're staying the same. There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think that if you think differently and you learn new information, and you have new thoughts, if you can make new choices and demonstrate new behaviors and create new experiences and arrive at new goals and feel new emotions, I would say that's evolution. And I think that people really, really secretly believe in themselves on some level. And I think being defined by a vision of the future or really always, always dreaming of another great experience, I think is a great reason to wake up in the morning. Unfortunately, it normally takes crisis, trauma, disease, diagnosis, betrayal, loss. A person has to reach that lowest denominator where nothing's making that feeling go away. Has to. Well, not they don't have to, but this is human, this is the human condition. This is the moment where they don't feel like returning the texts. They don't feel like going to dinner and seeing the same people. They don't feel like watching the same television show any longer. The sports car, the wardrobe, the none of that is making this feeling go away. This is a moment of reckoning for the soul. And this is really when you could actually see yourself through the eyes of someone else because you don't feel like yourself anymore. And that's the moment where people begin to change. They can see how they've been thinking. They can notice how they've been acting. They could pay attention or become aware of how they've been feeling for the last 20 years. And that idea in neuroscience is called metacognition. That's the moment you're no longer the program. Now what we believe and what we've seen and what I think is much better approach is being defined by a vision of the future. And if you understood that you could actually elevate your state without anyone or anything every single day and hold whatever that intention of your future is and it takes a coherent brain to do that. And feel the emotion of your future before it happens. That is you know you can't wait for your wealth to feel success. You can't or abundance. You can't wait for your new relationship to feel love. You can't wait for the mystical experience to feel awe or your healing to feel whole or grateful. That's kind of the old model of reality of cause and effect waiting for something out there to change and take away this emptiness, this lack that I feel in here. To teach people then they could elevate their state and we teach that model through meditation. And they can combine that clear intention with an elevated emotion and teach them how to make that heart of theirs more coherent. They do that properly then. They'll live their life feeling like their future has already happened. Now from that elevated state instead of that self limited state they can become as conscious of that unconscious self as they could if they were at that limited state and being defined by that vision of the future, getting up every day inspired by it and not letting any person, any circumstance, anything in our life remove us from that vision. That would be a day well lived. So then most people then they have that vision of the future but they give up on that vision because in order for them to arrive at that vision they have to do something. They have to think differently, they have to act differently, they have to feel differently. And it's so much easier to make the same choice every single day and the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice you're going to feel uncomfortable because you're stepping from the known into the unknown. So some people would rather cling to their self pity than take a chance and possibility. They'd rather tell the story of their past instead of telling the story of their future. They'd rather believe in their past instead of believe in their future. It's so much more important though to romance your future instead of romance your past. And I think if people understood that they could actually arrive at it, I think many people have done this already in their life. I think everybody at least once in their life has done something great. And when they did something great they just made up their mind. And they made a decision in that moment to do something or to change with such firm intention. But the amplitude of energy in making that choice caused their body to respond to their mind. But the choice that they were making to change became a moment in time that they would never forget. And the stronger the emotion they felt in order to change the more they remembered the choice. And we could say then that they're giving their body a taste of the future emotionally. And they're literally aligning to that destiny. We discovered that if you keep doing that every day, somehow you'll arrive at that destiny and your biology will literally begin to change to look like you're living in a different life. I think in so many ways that a belief is an unconscious process. A belief is a thought you keep thinking over and over again until it's hardwired in your brain. And most beliefs are based on past experiences. And so many people have a belief about something that has to change in order for them to arrive at a new place in their life. And what we discovered a lot of times with people in this work is that they, they, when they, for example, they were healing themselves of a health condition. Sometimes they would do their meditations three times in one day and I asked them why three times and they said because I stopped believing. And when I caught myself no longer believing in it, I had to sit down and change my belief again. In other words, they had to get up believing more in their future instead of believing less in it. And they have to change their state of being to do that. So I think that that's a limitation. I also think that unconsciously we're always waiting for something out there in our life to change so that we can change or feel the relief of the lack of what we don't have. And I do think that's kind of a limited model of reality. I think when you start changing inside of you and you start seeing the changes happening outside of you, you go from being a victim in your life to being a creator of your life. And I think that when that occurs, then all of a sudden it's no longer a half to you. It's something that you want to do. You actually don't want the magic to end in your life. So now you become a work in progress by investing in yourself. And when you invest in yourself, you invest in your future. So there is probably a chronic disbelief that many of us have that we're not creators of our life. And the only one we get the parking space or something good happens to us, do we believe that we're the creator of our life? But imagine a world where everybody actually took responsibility in being the creator of their life and no longer the victim of their life. I think we would see a dramatic shift in consciousness. That makes people feel uncomfortable. This idea of personal responsibility. It's quite a, it's almost become quite a controversial, controversial idea. The idea that we are the creator of our lives. And I have to accept responsibility for all the bad things that happened. Dave dumped me. I got fired from work. Someone bumped into my car and I hurt my neck. Well, maybe that happened by default. Maybe that happened by not creating. Maybe you were just left to the randomness of reality that maybe you're not creating. And the fact that you're not creating your left to the effects of your environment actually controlling you, controlling your feelings and thoughts. If you woke up every morning and you truly made time to think like this, okay. If my personality creates my personal reality and my personality is made of how I think, how I act and how I feel. If I want to create a new personal reality, a new life, I'm going to have to change my personality. And most people try to create a new reality, a new personality as the same personality that doesn't work. We literally have to become someone else. So if you said, okay, let me not default and go unconscious to that 95% of who I am that's programmed. Let me become so conscious of the way I think. Let me become so aware of how I'm going to act today. me decide what emotions keep me connected to my past. and bring me to a lower level, a lower level of energy, let me not go unconscious. And then if you said, okay, the belief is just the thought I keep thinking over and over again. What thoughts do I want to fire and wire in my brain? And with attention and with intention to begin to familiarize yourself with the new way of thinking. Meditation means to become familiar with. If you keep firing and wiring those circuits, you're going to begin to install the hardware. If you did enough times and it becomes a software program, that could be the new voice in your head. That says, I can, it is possible. If you said, okay, when did I fall from grace yesterday? When did I lose it? Oh my gosh, it was with at work, with my coworkers, with my ex, with my enemy, with the news, with traffic. Acting this way is not going to make me happy. If I had another opportunity, another opportunity, how would I do it? If you could close your eyes and rehearse in your mind mentally, how you're going to behave in certain situations. I'll give you a specific one. Anyone. So I'll give you the specific one where, late at night, on occasion, I've eaten things that I really regret eating. Also, another one that I'm trying to work hard on is I can be very messy with when I travel. So my hotel room can look like a mess. And I don't like that about myself. And I don't know why I do it, but it's almost like you talk about being unconscious. I'm clearly not thinking about it, but that's part of the problem. And it's the same with the bloody sugar, midnight, eating, ordering things that are, and then feeling instant guilt, 10 seconds after I've put it in my mouth. Well, it may be that on some level, well, you could actually be addicted to the guilt not to the sugar. And so you return to the same emotional state that allows that action to re-accur. So if you said, let me decide how I am going to act, what I'm not going to do. And you rehearsed it. The research on mental rehearsal says, your brain will look like you already did it. That you'll be so present, the brain won't know the difference between what you're imagining and what is real. Your brain will begin to change to look like the experiences already happen now. You're priming your brain for that behavior. Keep rehearsing it. Mental rehearsal is one of these great ideas in neuroscience where you can actually install circuits in your brain, right? So everybody has done this. Musicians do it. They're playing a song in their mind all the time. Athletes do it. They're always going over. Their moves, dancers do it, actors do it. So many people rehearse mentally what they're about to do. And when they do that, they actually prime their brain. They actually can change their brain and change their body just by thought alone. Physiologically change. You can take a group of people that never played the piano before and divide them into two different groups and do functional brain scans on both groups. One group will come for two hours a day for five days and they'll practice these one-handed scales and chords. Now, you learn something new. You make new connections in your brain. You get some instruction. You get your body involved. When you get your body involved, you're going to have an experience. You pay attention to what you're doing and you repeat it over and over again. Nerve cells that fire together, wire together. You're going to begin to install new circuits in the opposite side of your brain. That's common. You do the scan at the end. You see those actual physical changes. You take those people, the other group, and you ask them to close their eyes without lifting a finger. Have the mentally rehearsed those scales and chords. At the end of five days, they grow the same amount of circuits in their brain as the people who actually physically demonstrated the act. In other words, they were so present with what they were doing, the brain did not know the difference between the real life experience and what they were imagining. The brain was physically changing to look like they already experienced it. They already did it. Now, you take those people and they've played the piano before. They've just been mentally rehearsing for two hours a day for five days. You set them in front of the piano and they could actually play those scales in chords. Why? Because they primed their brain for that behavior. If you're going to prime your brain for a new behavior, whether you're the CEO of a company, whether you're a parent, whether you're learning something, the more you rehearse it mentally, the more you prime your brain body for the act. You could actually practice rehearsing how you're going to change in your life. If you keep doing it enough times, your behaviors will match your intentions automatically because you have the mind installed to do it. If you don't have the mind installed to do it, you'll go back to the same past behavior. And rehearse it in your mind until it feels right. So you feel like I could actually do that and go from start to finish without losing your attention. So that it gets easier each time you do it. It makes sense then you'll actually do it. And then if you said, "Okay, enough of this guilt. I've felt enough of it. I don't like feeling that way." I could actually break the conditioning of that emotion in my body. Can I condition my body? Can I teach my body to feel something differently? What would be the feeling that I want to feel if I was able to do it? Would it be worth? Would it be self-love? Would it be freedom? Would it be joy? Let me teach my body emotionally. What a future could actually feel like before it happens. If you keep doing it over and over again, you're going to start making more of those chemicals and this will become easier for you to do it. It's going to become familiar to you. And that's exactly what meditation is to become familiar with an old self, to know myself. It becomes so conscious of that unconscious self that you don't go unconscious to that self. And how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's the moment of change. What thoughts do I want of fire and wire in my brain? Let me become familiar with those. What behaviors do I want to demonstrate? What would greatness do? What would love do? And actually rehearse a greater way. Rehearse it enough times so that you could actually step into that footprint. Teach your body emotionally that there's another way to feel and do it over and over again. It'll become familiar to you. And so the model of change is unlearning and relearning. It's breaking the habit of the old self and reinventing a new self. It's pruning synaptic connections and sprouting new connections. It's unfiring and unwiring, refiring and rewiring, deprogramming and reprogramming. Using your mind and creating a new one, unmemorizing emotions that have been stored in the body and then reconditioning the body to a new mind, to a new emotion. Turns out if you teach people how to do that, in seven days you can see very profound biological changes if they immerse themselves into the experience. So we run week-long events around the world. And I think it's so important to do events in person with community. Because it's a flock. It's a herd. It's a school. It's a collective. And so that exact process in seven days, we take people through a very immersive experience. And we do functional brain scans or FMRIs or quantitative EEGs before they start the event. And then we, at the end of seven days, we look at their brains at the end of seven days. And they are dramatic changes in the way their brain works. Very significant changes. Some of them are really outstanding changes. We teach people how to create more heart coherence when you feel anger, when you feel frustration, when you feel impatience, when you feel resentment, your heart beats out of order, when you feel gratitude, when you have kindness and care, when you feel love for life, your heart beats in a more orderly fashion. You can actually train somebody to get good at feeling that way. And we use that and we see people at the end of seven days be able to regulate their heart much better. And it's a function of really how soon or how slow we age. We take a blood and we measure 2,882 different metabolites in a person's blood. And at the end of seven days, we measure again. And I can tell you that if you're a novice meditator, really never meditated before, kind of your first event, and you go through that seven day process, at the end of seven days, there are so many biological changes that are taking place in the collective in the community, not just one, not just two, the majority of people. And I mean, the significant majority of people, suggesting that their body literally is living in a new environment in a new life. And there are chemicals in their bloodstream in terms of information that wasn't there prior to the event. In other words, some way without taking any drug, without taking any exogenous substance, without changing their diet, without changing their lifestyle in any other way, going through this process, eating the same foods that they typically eat. That at the end of seven days, there's chemistry, there's biology that suggests that somehow their biology is changing significantly. We measure gene expression. I can tell you that you can change your gene expression in seven days. We measure the microbiome. And once again, seven days, there are dramatic changes in the microbiome and the mind somehow is making significant and effective changes in our body. So our research is pretty outstanding because in a seven day intervention, that's producing these effects. There's not a whole lot of drugs that are as effective. And we've discovered that. But the nervous system makes a pharmacy of chemicals right now that works better than any drug. That's what we've discovered. And it's all within you.