by Joe Dispenza
In a very real way, you have become an effect of circumstances outside of yourself. You have allowed yourself to give up control of your destiny. Unlike Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, you’re not even fighting against the ceaseless monotony of what you are like and what your life has become. Worse, you aren’t the victim of some mysterious and unseen force that has placed you in this repetitive loop—you are the creator of the loop.
The good news is that since you created this loop, you can choose to end it.
The quantum model of reality tells us that to change our lives, we must fundamentally change the ways we think, act, and feel. We must change our state of being. Because how we think, feel, and behave is, in essence, our personality, it is our personality that creates our personal reality. So to create a new personal reality, a new life, we must create a new personality; we must become someone else.
To change, then, is to think and act greater than our present circumstances, greater than our environment.
Greatness Is Holding Fast to a Dream,
Independent of the Environment
Before I begin to explore the ways in which you can think greater than your environment and thus break the habit of being yourself, I want to remind you of something.
It is possible to think greater than your present reality, and history books are filled with names of people who have done so, men and women such as Martin Luther King, Jr., William Wallace, Marie Curie, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison, and Joan of Arc. Every one of these individuals had a concept in his or her mind of a future reality that existed as a potential in the quantum field. This vision was alive in an inner world of possibilities beyond the senses, and in time, each of these people made those ideas a reality.
As a common thread, they all had a dream, vision, or objective that was much larger than they were. They all believed in a future destiny that was so real in their minds that they began to live as if that dream were already happening. They couldn’t see, hear, taste, smell, or feel it, but they were so possessed by their dream that they acted in a way that corresponded to this potential reality ahead of time. In other words, they behaved as if what they envisioned was already a reality.
For example, the imperialist dictum that had India under colonial rule in the early 1900s was demoralizing to Indians. Despite that, Gandhi believed in a reality that wasn’t yet present in his people’s lives. He wholeheartedly endorsed the concepts of equality, freedom, and nonviolence with undying conviction.
Even though Gandhi endorsed liberty for all, the reality of tyranny and British control at that time was quite different. The conventional beliefs of that era were in contrast to his hopes and aspirations. Although the experience of liberty was not a reality while he was initially engaged in changing India, he did not let outward evidence of adversity sway him to give up this ideal.
For a long time, much of the feedback from the external world didn’t show Gandhi that he was making a difference. But seldom did he allow the conditions in his environment to control his way of being. He believed in a future that he could not yet see or experience with his senses, but which was so alive in his mind that he could not live any other way. He embraced a new future life while physically living his present life. He understood that the way he was thinking, acting, and feeling would change the current conditions in his environment. And eventually, reality began to change as a result of his efforts.
When our behaviors match our intentions, when our actions are equal to our thoughts, when our minds and our bodies are working together, when our words and our deeds are aligned … there is an immense power behind any individual.
History’s Giants:
Why Their Dreams Were “Unrealistic Nonsense”
The greatest individuals in history were unwaveringly committed to a future destiny without any need for immediate feedback from the environment. It didn’t matter to them if they hadn’t yet received any sensory indication or physical evidence of the change they wanted; they must have reminded themselves daily of the reality they were focused upon. Their minds were ahead of their present environment, because their environment no longer controlled their thinking. Truly, they were ahead of their time.
Another fundamental element shared by each of these celebrated beings was that they were clear in their minds about exactly what they wanted to happen. (Remember, we leave the how to a greater mind, and they must have known this.)
Now, some in their day might have called them unrealistic. In fact, they were completely unrealistic, and so were their dreams. The event they were embracing in thought, action, and emotion was not realistic, because the reality had not yet occurred. The ignorant and the cynical might also have said their vision was nonsense, and such naysayers would have been right—a vision of future reality was “non-sense”; it existed in a reality beyond the senses.
As another example, Joan of Arc was considered foolhardy, even insane. Her ideas challenged the beliefs of her time and made her a threat to the present political system. But once her vision was made manifest, she was considered profoundly virtuous.
When one holds a dream independent of the environment, that’s greatness. Coming up, we’ll see that overcoming the environment is inextricably linked with overcoming the body and time. In Gandhi’s case, he was not swayed by what was happening in his outer world (environment), he didn’t worry about how he felt and what would happen to him (body), and he didn’t care how long it would take to realize the dream of freedom (time). He simply knew that all of these elements would sooner or later bend to his intentions.
For all of the giants in history, is it possible that their ideas were thriving in the laboratory of their minds to such an extent that to their brains, it was as though the experience had already happened? Can you, too, change who you are by thought alone?
Mental Rehearsal:
How Our Thoughts Can Become Our Experience
Neuroscience has proven that we can change our brains—and therefore our behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs—just by thinking differently (in other words, without changing anything in our environment). Through mental rehearsal (repeatedly imagining performing an action), the circuits in the brain can reorganize themselves to reflect our objectives. We can make our thoughts so real that the brain changes to look like the event has already become a physical reality. We can change it to be ahead of any actual experience in our external world.
Here’s an example. In Evolve Your Brain, I discussed how research subjects who mentally rehearsed one-handed piano exercises for two hours a day for five days (never actually touching any piano keys) demonstrated almost the same brain changes as people who physically performed the identical finger movements on a piano keyboard for the same length of time.2 Functional brain scans showed that all the participants activated and expanded clusters of neurons in the same specific area of the brain. In essence, the group who mentally rehearsed practicing scales and chords grew nearly the same number of brain circuits as the group who physically engaged in the activity.
This study demonstrates two important points. Not only can we change our brains just by thinking differently, but when we are truly focused and single-minded, the brain does not know the difference between the internal world of the mind and what we experience in the external environment. Our thoughts can become our experience.
This notion is critical to your success or failure in your endeavor to replace old habits (prune old neural connections) with new ones (sprout new neural networks). So let’s look more closely at how the same learning sequence took place in those people who mentally practiced but never physically played any notes.
Whether we physically or mentally acquire a skill, there are four elements that we all use to change our brains: learning knowledge, receiving hands-on instruction, paying attention, and repetition.
Learning is making synaptic connections; instruction gets the body involved in order to have a new experience, which further enriches the brain. When we also pay at
tention and repeat our new skill over and over again, our brains will change.
The group who physically played the scales and chords grew new brain circuits because they followed this formula.
The participants who mentally rehearsed also followed this formula, except that they never got their bodies physically involved. In their minds they were easily able to conceive of themselves playing the piano.
Remember, after these subjects repeatedly mentally practiced, their brains showed the same neurological changes as the participants who actually played the piano. New networks of neurons (neural networks) were forged, demonstrating that in effect, they had already engaged in practicing piano scales and chords without actually having that physical experience. We could say that their brains “existed in the future” ahead of the physical event of playing the piano.
Because of our enlarged human frontal lobe and our unique ability to make thought more real than anything else, the forebrain can naturally “lower the volume” from the external environment so that nothing else is being processed but a single-minded thought. This type of internal processing allows us to become so involved in our mental imaging that the brain will modify its wiring without having experienced the actual event. When we can change our minds independent of the environment and then steadfastly embrace an ideal with sustained concentration, the brain will be ahead of the environment.
That is mental rehearsal, an important tool in breaking the habit of being ourselves. If we repeatedly think about something to the exclusion of everything else, we encounter a moment when the thought becomes the experience. When this occurs, the neural hardware is rewired to reflect the thought as the experience. This is the moment that our thinking changes our brains and thus, our minds.
To understand that neurological change can take place in the absence of physical interactions in the environment is crucial to our success in breaking the habit of being ourselves. Consider the larger implications of the finger-exercise experiment. If we apply the same process—mental rehearsal—to anything that we want to do, we can change our brains ahead of any concrete experience.
If you can influence your brain to change before you experience a desired future event, you will create the appropriate neural circuits that will enable you to behave in alignment with your intention before it becomes a reality in your life. Through your own repeated mental rehearsal of a better way to think, act, or be, you will “install” the neural hardware needed to physiologically prepare you for the new event.
In fact, you’ll do more than that. The brain’s hardware, as I use the analogy in this book, refers to its physical structures, its anatomy, right down to its neurons. If you keep installing, reinforcing, and refining your neurological hardware, the end result of that repetition is a neural network—in effect, a new software program. Just like computer software, this program (for example, a behavior, an attitude, or an emotional state) now runs automatically.
Now you’ve cultivated the brain to be ready for your new experience, and frankly, you have the mind in place so that you can handle the challenge. When you change your mind, your brain changes; and when you change your brain, your mind changes.
So when the time comes to demonstrate a vision contrary to the environmental conditions at hand, it is quite possible for you to be already prepared to think and act, with a conviction that is steadfast and unwavering. In fact, the more you formulate an image of your behavior in a future event, the easier it will be for you to execute a new way of being.
So can you believe in a future you cannot yet see or experience with your senses but have thought about enough times in your mind that your brain is actually changed to look like the experience has already happened ahead of the physical event in your external environment? If so, then your brain is no longer a record of the past, but has become a map to the future.
Now that you know you can change your brain by thinking differently, is it possible to change your body to “look like” it too has had an experience ahead of the actual intended circumstances? Is your mind that powerful? Stay tuned.
CHAPTER THREE
OVERCOMING
YOUR BODY
You do not think in a vacuum. Every time you have a thought, there is a biochemical reaction in the brain—you make a chemical. And as you’ll learn, the brain then releases specific chemical signals to the body, where they act as messengers of the thought. When the body gets these chemical messages from the brain, it complies instantly by initiating a matching set of reactions directly in alignment with what the brain is thinking. Then the body immediately sends a confirming message back up to the brain that it’s now feeling exactly the way the brain is thinking.
To understand this process—how you typically think equal to your body, and how to form a new mind—you first need to appreciate the role that your brain and its chemistry plays in your life. In the last few decades, we’ve discovered that the brain and the rest of the body interact via powerful electrochemical signals. There is an extensive chemical factory between our ears that orchestrates a myriad of bodily functions. But relax, this is going to be “Brain Chemistry 101,” and a few terms are all that you need to know.
All cells have receptor sites on their exterior surface that receive information from outside their boundaries. When there is a match in chemistry, frequency, and electrical charge between a receptor site and an incoming signal from the outside, the cell gets “turned on” to perform certain tasks.
Figure 3A. A cell with receptor sites that receive vital incoming information from outside the cell. The signal can influence the cell to perform myriad biological function.
Neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones are the cause-and-effect chemicals for brain activity and bodily functioning. These three different types of chemicals, called ligands (the word ligare means “to bind” in Latin), connect to, interact with, or influence the cell in a matter of milliseconds.
— Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that primarily send signals between nerve cells, allowing the brain and nervous system to communicate. There are different types of neurotransmitters, and each is responsible for a particular activity. Some excite the brain, others slow it down, while still others make us sleepy or awake. They can tell a neuron to unhook from its current connection or make it stick better to its present connection. They can even change the message as it is being sent to a neuron, rewriting it so that a different message is delivered to all the connected nerve cells.
— Neuropeptides, the second type of ligand, make up the majority of these messengers. Most are manufactured in a structure of the brain called the hypothalamus (recent studies show that our immune system also makes them). These chemicals are passed through the pituitary gland, which then releases a chemical message to the body with specific instructions.
— As neuropeptides make their way through the bloodstream, they attach to the cells of various tissues (primarily glands) and then turn on the third type of ligand, hormones, which further influence us to feel certain ways. Neuropeptides and hormones are the chemicals responsible for our feelings.
For our purposes, think of neurotransmitters as chemical messengers primarily from the brain and mind, neuropeptides as chemical signalers that serve as a bridge between the brain and the body to make us feel the way we think, and hormones as the chemicals related to feelings primarily in the body.
Figure 3B. Neurotransmitters are diverse chemical massengers between neurons. Neuropeptides are chemical couriers that signal different glands of the body to make hormones.
For example, when you have a sexual fantasy, all three of these factors are called to action. First, as you start to think a few thoughts, your brain whips up some neurotransmitters that turn on a network of neurons, which creates pictures in your mind. These chemicals then stimulate the release of specific neuropeptides into your bloodstream. Once they reach your sexual glands, those peptides bind to the cells of those tissues; they turn on your hormonal system, and—presto—th
ings start happening. You’ve made your fantasy thoughts so real in your mind that your body starts to get prepared for an actual sexual experience (ahead of the event). That’s how powerfully mind and body are related.
By the same means, if you start to think about confronting your teenager over the new dent in the car, your neurotransmitters would start the thought process in your brain to produce a specific level of mind, your neuropeptides would chemically signal your body in a specific way, and you would begin to feel a bit riled up. As the peptides find their way to your adrenal glands, they would then be prompted to release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol—and now you are definitely feeling fired up. Chemically, your body is ready for battle.
The Thinking and Feeling Loop
As you think different thoughts, your brain circuits fire in corresponding sequences, patterns, and combinations, which then produce levels of mind equal to those thoughts. Once these specific networks of neurons are activated, the brain produces specific chemicals with the exact signature to match those thoughts so that you can feel the way you were just thinking.
Therefore, 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.
There’s a certain synchronicity that takes place moment by moment between the brain and the body. In fact, as we begin to feel the way we are thinking—because the brain is in constant communication with the body—we begin to think the way we are feeling. The brain constantly monitors the way the body is feeling. Based on the chemical feedback it receives, it will generate more thoughts that produce chemicals corresponding to the way the body is feeling, so that we first begin to feel the way we think and then to think the way we feel.