Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

Author: Joe Dispenza

Rating: ★★★★☆

Author: By: Joe Dispenza

Rating: ★★★★☆

Book Notes:

Warning: when feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel. To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.

...when you have great thoughts or loving thoughts or joyous thoughts, you produce chemicals that make you feel great or loving or joyful. The same holds true if you have negative, fearful, or impatient thoughts. In a matter of seconds, you begin to feel negative or anxious, or impatient.
...if we focus on an intended future event and then plan how we will prepare or behave, there will be a moment when we are so clear and focused on that possible future that the thoughts we are thinking will begin to become the experience itself. Once the thought becomes the experience, its end product is an emotion. When we begin to experience the emotion of that event ahead of its possible occurrence, the body (as the unconscious mind) begins to respond as though the event is actually unfolding.
...it is always good to move into a state of wonder, contemplation, possibility, reflection, or speculation by asking yourself some important questions. Open-ended inquiries are the most provocative approach to producing a fluent stream of consciousness: What would it be like to … ? What is a better way to be … ? What if I was this person, living in this reality? Who in history do I admire, and what were his/her admirable traits?
...when you are in a new state of being—a new personality—you also create a new personal reality. Let me repeat that. A new state of being creates a new personality … a new personality produces a new personal reality.
...we can view a sitcom or a YouTube video and laugh hysterically, then watch a football game and feel competitive, then watch the news and be angered or fearful. All of these outer stimuli can easily distract us from those unwanted feelings inside.
...if you’re constantly analyzing (I call this “being in an analytical mind”), you are in Beta and you’re not able to enter into the subconscious mind. The expression “paralysis by analysis” is an apt one here. Well, that’s what is happening to us when we live most of our lives in that Beta range.
...daily changes in brain chemistry result in easier access to the subconscious mind just after you wake up in the morning and before you go to bed at night. These are the best times to meditate because you can more readily slip into the Alpha or Theta state.

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SURVEY:

Please take time to write down your answers to the following questions. Then review them, reflect on them, analyze them, and think about all the possibilities your answers raise. Questions to turn on your frontal lobe: What is the greatest ideal of myself? What would it be like to be ________? Who in history do I admire, and how did they act? Who in my life do I know who is/feels ________? What would it take to think like ________? Whom do I want to model? How would I be if I were ________? What would I say to myself if I were this person? How would I talk to others if I were changed? How or who do I want to remind myself to be?

How Do I Want to Think? How would this new person (my ideal) think? What thoughts do I want to put my energy behind? What is my new attitude? What do I want to believe about me? How do I want to be perceived? What would I say to myself if I was this person?

How Do I Want to Act? How would this person act? What would he or she do? How do I see myself behaving? How would I speak as this new expression of self?

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Trying to change your emotional pattern is like going through drug withdrawal.
By Itself, Conscious Positive Thinking Cannot Overcome Subconscious Negative Feelings.
Some maintain that “positive thinking” is the answer. I want to be clear that by itself, positive thinking never works. Many so-called positive thinkers have felt negative most of their lives, and now they’re trying to think positively. They are in a polarized state in which they are trying to think one way in order to override how they feel inside of them. They consciously think one way, but they are being the opposite. When the mind and body are in opposition, change will never happen.
Our emotions can turn on some gene sequences and turn off others, this study clearly showed. Just by signaling the body with a new emotion, the laughing subjects altered their internal chemistry to change the expression of their genes.
Have you ever heard of people, after being subjected to extremely stressful conditions, whose hair turned gray overnight? That’s an example of genes at work. They experienced such a strong emotional reaction that their altered body chemistry both turned on the gene for the expression of gray hair and shut off the genetic expression for their normal hair color, within a matter of hours.
Just as researchers have worked with test subjects who mentally rehearsed finger exercises and others who imagined playing piano scales, experiments have compared practical experience versus mental rehearsal for individuals doing bicep curls.
When you have thoughtfully rehearsed a future reality until your brain has physically changed to look like it has had the experience, and you have emotionally embraced a new intention so many times that your body is altered to reflect that it has had the experience, hang on … because this is the moment the event finds you! And it will arrive in a way that you least expect, which leaves no doubt that it came from your relationship to a greater consciousness—so that it inspires you to do it again and again.
A temperament is an emotional reaction with a refractory period that lasts from weeks to months.
Eventually, if you keep the refractory period of an emotion going for months and years, that tendency turns into a personality trait. At that point others will describe you as “bitter” or “resentful” or “angry” or “judgmental.” Our personality traits, then, are frequently based in our past emotions. Most of the time, personality (how we think, act, and feel) is anchored in the past. So to change our personalities, we have to change the emotions that we memorize. We have to move out of the past.
From a psychological perspective, overproduction of stress hormones creates the human emotions of anger, fear, envy, and hatred; incites feelings of aggression, frustration, anxiety, and insecurity; and causes us to experience pain, suffering, sadness, hopelessness, and depression. Most people spend the majority of their time preoccupied with negative thoughts and feelings.
When you are in creation mode, the frontal lobe is in control. It becomes so engaged that your thoughts become your reality and your experience. Whatever you’re thinking about in those moments is all there is for the frontal lobe to process. As it “lowers the volume” from other areas of the brain, it shuts out distractions. The inner world of thought becomes as real as the outer world of reality. Your thoughts are captured neurologically and branded into your brain’s architecture as an experience.
Knowledge without experience is merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance.
Wisdom is accumulated knowledge that has been gained through repeated experience. And when “being” compassionate is as natural as suffering; judging; blaming; or being frustrated, negative, or insecure, now we are wise. We are liberated to seize new opportunities because somehow life seems to organize itself equal to how or who we are being.
Instead, I’m asking you to take control and to invert the process. Rather than waiting for an occasion to cause you to feel a certain way, create the feeling ahead of any experience in the physical realm; convince your body emotionally that a “gratitude-generating” experience has already taken place.
Meditation during the middle of the day might be difficult, especially if you work in a busy office, manage a houseful of kids who demand your undivided attention, or are involved in activities that require heightened concentration. At such times you might be in middle to high Beta, and it may take more effort to slip through the door.
The reason why your prayers were hardly ever answered in the past is that you were trying to hold a mindful intention while being lost in lower emotions such as guilt, shame, sadness, unworthiness, anger, or fear connected to the old self. It was those feelings that were governing your thoughts and attitude.
With clarity, you will hold the image of each manifestation in your mind for a few seconds, and then let it go into the quantum to be executed by a greater mind.

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