Moment 144: How To ACTUALLY Break Bad Habits: Joe Dispenza
This episode explores how to break ingrained habits and change one's personal reality by altering thoughts, actions, and feelings. It emphasizes leveraging specific times of day and mental rehearsal to reprogram the subconscious mind and become the creator of one's life.
Deep Dive Analysis
11 Topic Outline
The Challenge of Breaking Habits and Being Ourselves
Neuroscience of Habit Formation: Nerve Cells That Fire Together
Accessing the Subconscious Mind for Deep Change
The Daily Practice of Conscious Reprogramming
Overcoming Discomfort and Stepping into the Unknown
Myth: Waiting for External Change to Transform
Shifting from Victim to Creator of Your Life
Personality Creates Personal Reality
The Power of Mental Rehearsal to Prime the Brain
Conditioning the Body for Future Emotions
Meditation as Familiarization with a New Self
5 Key Concepts
Habit
A habit forms when an action has been repeated so many times that the body knows how to perform it better than the conscious mind, becoming programmed subconsciously. The greatest habit to break is often the habit of being oneself.
Nerve Cells That Fire Together Wire Together
This neuroscience principle explains how repeated thoughts, choices, actions, experiences, and emotions cause the brain's biology to become hardwired or programmed. To change, one must change their thinking, acting, and feeling patterns.
Analytical Mind
The analytical mind separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind. To make deep, lasting changes, one must learn to get beyond the analytical mind by slowing down brain waves, which allows access to the subconscious operating system for reprogramming.
Personality Creates Personal Reality
This model suggests that an individual's personality, which is made up of how they think, act, and feel, directly creates their personal reality or life experience. To create a new life, one must change their personality.
Mental Rehearsal
A neuroscience technique where one mentally practices an action or behavior without physically performing it. This process can install new circuits in the brain, physiologically changing the brain and body to prepare for the desired behavior, as the brain doesn't differentiate between real and imagined experiences.
6 Questions Answered
A habit is when the body knows how to do something better than the conscious mind, becoming subconsciously programmed. It's hard to break because it means breaking the habit of being oneself, which requires making different choices that initially feel uncomfortable.
The door to the subconscious mind opens when brain waves slow down, such as when waking up in the morning or going to bed at night. Meditation also helps slow brain waves, allowing one to get beyond the analytical mind and enter the subconscious operating system for reprogramming.
The conscious mind represents only about 5% of our mental activity, while 95% is programmed subconsciously. Trying to change with only the conscious mind is like trying to change the operating system from outside of it, making it ineffective for deep, lasting transformation.
Yes, mental rehearsal can install circuits in the brain and cause physiological changes similar to actual physical practice. Studies show that people who mentally rehearse actions can grow the same amount of neural circuits as those who physically perform them, because the brain doesn't differentiate between real and imagined experiences.
A common myth is waiting for something external in life to change before one can change themselves or feel relief. This limited model of reality keeps people feeling like victims rather than creators of their lives.
One becomes the creator of their life by changing internally first, which then leads to seeing changes externally. This shift involves taking personal responsibility and investing in oneself, recognizing that one's personality (how they think, act, and feel) creates their personal reality.
11 Actionable Insights
1. Change Your Personality, Change Reality
To create a new personal reality or life, you must change your personality, which is made of how you think, act, and feel. Trying to create a new reality with the same personality will not work, requiring you to become someone new.
2. Reprogram Subconscious in Key Windows
Utilize the times when you wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, as these are when your brain waves slow down, opening the door to the subconscious mind. Learn to slow your brain waves to bypass the analytical mind and rewrite programs.
3. Practice Mental Rehearsal
Mentally rehearse desired behaviors or how you will act in specific situations to install new circuits in your brain. This primes your brain and body for the act, making it easier for your behaviors to automatically match your intentions.
4. Cultivate Desired Emotions
Consciously bring up and feel emotions like kindness, care, love, gratitude, and appreciation with your heart, practicing until you can do it with your eyes open. This conditions your body to feel a desired future emotion before it happens.
5. Break Habit of Being Yourself
Recognize that the greatest habit to break is the habit of being yourself, as your biology becomes hardwired by repeated thoughts, choices, actions, and emotions. To change, you must become conscious enough to not revert to unconscious patterns.
6. Avoid Morning Phone Habit
As an experiment, instead of immediately reaching for your cell phone in the morning, sit in silence and reflect on the greatest expression of yourself you can be today. This prevents falling into redundant autopilot habits.
7. Tame Bodily Urges
Practice sitting your body down and ’taming the animal,’ deciding when you will get up rather than letting your body dictate it based on fatigue or desire. This establishes discipline over physical cravings and programmed actions.
8. Identify & Shift Thoughts/Emotions
Consciously identify two thoughts and two emotions you live by daily that you want to change, reviewing them repeatedly to become aware of your unconscious patterns. Then, rehearse how you will think and feel instead.
9. Embrace Discomfort of Change
Understand that stepping from the known into the unknown by making different choices will feel uncomfortable. This discomfort is a natural part of the change process, and resisting it can lead to clinging to past patterns.
10. Shift from Victim to Creator
Stop waiting for external circumstances to change before you change; instead, initiate internal change to see external shifts. This transforms you from a victim of your environment to a conscious creator of your life.
11. Daily Reflection & Recommitment
At the end of each day, reflect on how you performed and where you went unconscious. Use this awareness to recommit to your desired changes the next morning, viewing each day as a new opportunity.
5 Key Quotes
the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before
Dr Joe Dispenza
nerve cells that fire together wire together
Dr Joe Dispenza
to change then is to become so conscious that you don't go unconscious again
Dr Joe Dispenza
the brain did not know the difference between the real life experience and what they were imagining
Dr Joe Dispenza
meditation means to become familiar with
Dr Joe Dispenza
1 Protocols
Morning/Evening Subconscious Reprogramming Practice
Dr Joe Dispenza- Instead of immediately reaching for your cell phone, sit in silence, aware of nothing but yourself.
- Ask yourself: 'What is the greatest expression of myself I can be today?'
- Identify two thoughts you want to keep in your awareness today and two emotions you want to change; become conscious of what they feel like in your body and review them repeatedly.
- Review and repeat how you want to think (e.g., how greatness would think), how you want to behave, and how you want to act in specific circumstances.
- Mentally rehearse a change you want to make in a certain situation, playing through the scenario until it feels right and you can do it from start to finish without losing attention.
- Think about how you do want to feel today; open your heart to life, feel kindness, care, love, gratitude, and appreciation.
- Bring up that desired feeling repeatedly, practicing with your eyes closed until you can easily evoke it with your eyes open.
- Make a decision not to get up until you feel that desired emotion.
- At the end of the day, reflect on how you did and where you went unconscious, then commit to a new day and new lifetime tomorrow.