Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

by Joe Dispenza

  A Different Midlife: A Time for Facing

  Feelings and Letting Go of Illusions

  At this time of life, other people who don’t strive to keep their feelings buried ask some big questions: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Where am I going? Who am I doing all of this for? What is God? Where do I go when I die? Is there more to life than “success”? What is happiness? What does all this mean? What is love? Do I love myself? Do I love anyone else? And the soul begins to wake up….

  These types of questions begin to occupy the mind because we see through the illusion and suspect that nothing outside of us can ever make us happy. Some of us ultimately realize that nothing in our environment is going to “fix” the way we feel. We also recognize the enormous amount of energy it takes to keep up this projection of self as an image to the world, and how exhausting it is to keep the mind and body constantly preoccupied. Eventually we come to see that our futile attempt to maintain an ideal for others is really a strategy to make sure that those impending feelings we’ve been running from never capture us. How long can we juggle, keeping so many balls in the air, just so our lives don’t come crashing down?

  Instead of buying a bigger TV or the latest smart phone, these people stop running from the feeling that they’ve been trying to make go away for so long, face it head-on, and intently look at it. When this happens, the individual begins to wake up. After some self-reflection, she discovers who she really is, what she has been hiding, and what no longer is working for her. So she lets go of the façade, the games, and the illusions. She is honest about who she really is, at all costs, and she is not afraid to lose it all. This person stops expending the energy she had been putting into keeping an illusory image intact.

  She gets in touch with her feelings and then turns to people in her life and says: You know what? It doesn’t matter if I don’t make you happy any longer. I’m through obsessing about how I look or what other people think about me. I am finished living for everyone else. I want to be free from these chains.

  This is a profound moment in a person’s life. The soul is waking up and nudging her to tell the truth about who she really is! The lie is over.

  Change and Our Relationships:

  Breaking the Ties That Bind

  Most relationships are based on what you have in common with others. Think about this: You meet a person, and immediately the two of you compare your experiences, as if you both are checking to see whether your neural networks and emotional memories are aligned. You say something like this: “I know these ‘people.’ I am from this ‘place,’ and I lived in these places at these different ‘times’ in my life. I went to this school and studied this subject. I own and do these ‘things.’ And most important, I’ve had these ‘experiences.’”

  Then the other person responds: “I know those ‘people.’ I’ve lived in those ‘places’ during those ‘times.’ I do these ‘things,’ too. I had those same ‘experiences.’”

  Thus, you can relate to each other. A relationship is then formed based on neurochemical states of being, because if you share the same experiences, you share the same emotions.

  Think of emotions as “energy in motion.” If you share the same emotions, you share the same energy. And just like two atoms of oxygen that share an invisible field of energy beyond space and time in order to bond together in a relationship to form air, you are bonded in an invisible field of energy to every thing, person, and place in your external life. Bonds between people are the strongest, though, because emotions hold the strongest energy. As long as either party doesn’t change, things will be just fine.

  Figure 7C. If we share the same experiences, we share the same emotions and the same energy. Just like two atoms of oxygen bond to form the air we breathe, an invisible field of energy (beyond space and time) bonds us emotionally.

  So when our friend in the example in the last section begins to tell the truth about how she really feels, things begin to get very uncomfortable. If her friendships have been based upon complaining about life, then she is bonded energetically in her relationships by the emotions of victimization. If, in a moment of enlightenment, she now decides to break from that habit of being herself, she is no longer showing up as that familiar person to whom everyone could relate. People in her life are using her to remind themselves of who they are emotionally as well. Friends and family respond: “What is wrong with you today? You’ve hurt my feelings!” Which translates to: I thought we had a good thing going here! I used you to reaffirm my emotional addiction in order to remember who I think I am as a “somebody.” I liked you better the other way.

  When it comes to change, our energy is connected to everything that we’ve had an experience with in our outer world. When we break the addiction of emotion we’ve memorized, or when we tell the truth about who we really are, doing that takes some real energy. Just as it takes energy to separate two atoms of oxygen that are bonded together, it takes energy to break the bonds with the people in our lives.

  So the individuals in this person’s life who have shared the same emotional bonds with her rally together and say, “She hasn’t been herself lately. Maybe she’s lost her mind. Let’s get her to a doctor!”

  Now remember that they have been people she shared the same experiences with; hence, they shared the same emotions. But now she’s breaking the energetic bonds with everyone and everything—and even every place—familiar. This is a threatening moment for everyone who has been playing the same game with her for years. She’s getting off the train.

  So they bring her to the doctor, who gives her Prozac or some other drug, and in a short time, the person’s former personality returns. And there she is, projecting her old image to the world, right back to shaking hands on others’ emotional agreements. Once more she’s numb and smiling—anything to take the feeling away. The lesson goes unlearned.

  Yes, the person wasn’t being herself—not the “top-hand” self that everyone had grown accustomed to. Instead, briefly, she was the “bottom-hand” self—the one with the past and the pain. And who can blame those loved ones who insisted on the return to her former numbed self that “went along to get along”? That new self emerged as unpredictable, even radical. Who wants to be around that person? Who wants to be around the truth?

  What Really Matters in the End

  If you need the environment in order to remember who you are as a somebody, what happens when you die and the environment rolls up and disappears? Do you know what goes with it? The somebody, the identity, the image, the personality (top hand) that has identified with all of the known and predictable elements in life, who was addicted to the environment. You could have been the most successful, popular, or beautiful person, and you could have had all the wealth you ever needed … but when your life ends and your external reality is taken away, everything outside of you can no longer define you. It all goes.

  What you’re left with is who you really are (bottom hand), not how you appear. When your life is over and you cannot rely on your external world to define you, you will be left with that feeling you never addressed. You would not have evolved as a soul in that lifetime.

  For instance, if you had certain experiences 50 years prior that marked you as insecure or weak and you felt that way about yourself ever since, then you stopped growing emotionally 50 years ago. If the soul’s purpose is to learn from experience and gain wisdom, but you stayed stuck in that particular emotion, you never turned your experience into a lesson; you didn’t transcend that emotion and exchange it for any understanding. While that feeling still anchors your mind and body to those past events, you are never free to move into the future. And if a similar experience shows up in your present life, that event will trigger the same emotion and you will act as that person you were 50 years ago.

  So your soul says: Pay attention! I’m letting you know that nothing is bringing you joy. I’m sending you urges. If you keep playing this game, I’m going to stop trying to get your attention, and
you will go back to sleep. Then I’ll see you when your life is over. …

  It Always Takes More and More

  Most people who do not know how to change think, How can I make this feeling go away? And if the novelty of accumulating new things wears off and stops working, what do they do? They look to bigger things, a whole other layer above where they were, and their avoidance strategies become addictions: If I take a drug or drink enough alcohol, that’s going to make this feeling go away. This external thing will produce an internal chemical change and make me feel great. I’ll shop a lot, because shopping—even if I don’t have the money—makes that emptiness go away. I’ll watch pornography … I’ll play video games … I’ll gamble … I’ll overeat….

  Figure 7D. When the same people and things in our lives create the same emotions, and the feeling we are trying to make go away no longer changes, we look for new people and things, or try going to new places, in an attempt to change how we feel emotionally. If that doesn’t work, we go to the next level—addictions.

  Whatever the addiction, people are still thinking that some external thing is going to take that internal feeling away. And remember: we have this natural propensity to associate an external thing that’s making that feeling go away with our internal chemical change. And we like that external thing if it makes us feel good. So we run away from what feels bad or painful, and we move toward what feels good and comfortable or brings us pleasure.

  As the excitement people get from their addiction continually stimulates the pleasure centers in the brain, they get a flood of chemicals from the thrill of the experience. The problem is that each time they gamble, binge, or stay up late playing online games, they need a little bit more the next time.

  The reason why people need more drugs or more shopping or more affairs is that the chemical rush that’s created from those activities activates the receptor sites on the outside of their cells, which “turns on” the cells. But if receptor sites are continually stimulated, they get desensitized and shut off. So they need a stronger signal, a bit more stimulation, to turn them on the next time—it takes a bigger chemical high to produce the same effects.

  So now you’ve got to bet $25,000 instead of $10,000 because otherwise, there’s no thrill. Once a $5,000 shopping spree does nothing for you, you’ve got to max out two credit cards so you can feel that same rush again. All of this is to make the feeling of who you really are go away. Everything you do to get the same high, you have to keep doing more of, with increasing intensity. More drugs, more alcohol, more sex, more gambling, more shopping, more TV. You get the idea.

  Over time, we become addicted to something in order to ease the pain or anxiety or depression we live by on a daily basis. Is this wrong? Not really. Most people do these things because they just don’t know how to change from the inside. They are only following the innate drive to get relief from their feelings, and unconsciously they think their salvation comes from the outside world. It has never been explained to them that using the outer world to change the inner world makes things worse … it only widens the gap.

  And let’s say that our ambition in life is to become successful and to accumulate more things. When we do, we reinforce who we are, without ever addressing how we really feel. I call this being possessed by our possessions. We become possessed by material objects, and those things reinforce the ego, which needs the environment to remind itself of who it is.

  If we wait for anything outside us to make us happy, then we are not following the quantum law. We are relying on the outer to change the inner. If we are thinking that once we have the wealth to buy more things, then we will be overjoyed, we’ve got it backward. We have to become happy before our abundance shows up.

  And what happens if addicts can’t get more? They feel even angrier, more frustrated, more bitter, more empty. They may try other methods—add gambling to drinking, add shopping to TV and movie escapism. Eventually, though, nothing is ever enough. The pleasure centers have recalibrated to such a high level that when there is no chemical change from the outer world, it seems the addict now cannot find joy in the simplest things.

  The point is, true happiness has nothing to do with pleasure, because the reliance on feeling good from such intensely stimulating things only moves us further from real joy.

  The Bigger Gap—Emotional Addiction

  I don’t intend to diminish the severity of the damage caused by what I’ll loosely refer to here as material addictions—to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, consumerism, and so forth. Those problems cause great harm to the numerous people who suffer from them and to those who love and work with such “addicts.” While many people who experience these and other addictions can use the steps in these pages to overcome them—since they are a part of the Big Three—it’s beyond the scope of this book to deal with these kinds of addictions specifically. But it is imperative to realize that behind every addiction, there is some memorized emotion that is driving the behavior.

  What is not beyond the scope of this book and is, in fact, its central purpose is helping people break the habit of being themselves, whether they view that self as being an alcoholic; a sexaholic; a gambler; a shopaholic; or someone who is chronically lonely, depressed, angry, bitter, or physically unwell.

  In thinking about the gap, possibly you said to yourself: Well, of course we hide from other people our fears, insecurities, weaknesses, and dark side. If we gave those things free rein to be fully expressed, we’d likely be beyond anyone else’s caring about us, let alone our caring about ourselves. In a sense, that’s true. But if we are to break free, it means we have to confront that true self and bring out into the light that shadow side of our personality.

  The advantage of the system I employ is that you can confront those darker aspects of yourself without bringing them into the light of your everyday reality. You don’t have to walk into your place of work or a family gathering and announce: “Hey, listen up, everyone! I’m a bad person because for a long time I resented my parents for having to spend a lot of time with my younger sibling, while I felt my needs were being neglected. So now I’m a really selfish person who craves attention and needs instant gratification in order to stop feeling unloved and inadequate.”

  Instead, in the privacy of your own home and your own mind, you can work on extinguishing negative aspects of self and replacing those characteristics (or at least, metaphorically, cutting way back on the role they play and allowing them only an occasional, brief appearance) with more positive and productive ones.

  I want you to forget about past events validating the emotions you’ve memorized that have become part of your personality. Your problems will never be resolved by analyzing them while you are still caught up in the emotions of the past. Looking at the experience or reliving the event that created the problem in the first place will only bring up the old emotions and a reason to feel the same way. When you try to figure out your life within the same consciousness that created it, you will analyze your life away and excuse yourself from ever changing.

  Instead, let’s just unmemorize our self-limiting emotions. A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom. Then we can look back objectively upon the event and see it and who we were being, without the filter of that emotion. If we take care of unmemorizing the emotional state (or eliminating it to the best of our ability), then we gain the freedom to live and think and act independent of the restraints or constraints of that feeling.

  So if a person relinquished unhappiness and got on with his life—entered into a new relationship, got a new job, moved to a new place, and made new friends—and then he looked at that past event, he would see that it provided the adversity he needed in order to overcome who he was and become a new person. His perspective would change, just by seeing that he could actually overcome the problem.

  Closing and even eliminating the gap between who we are and who we present to the world is likely the greatest challenge we all face in life. Whether we term this livin
g authentically, conquering ourselves, or having people “get” us or accept us for who we are, this is something that most of us desire. Changing—-closing the gap—must begin from within.

  Yet far too often, most of us change only when we are faced with a crisis, trauma, or discouraging diagnosis of some sort. That crisis commonly comes in the form of a challenge, which may be physical (an accident, say, or an illness), emotional (the loss of someone we love, for example), spiritual (for instance, an accumulation of setbacks that has us questioning our worth and how the universe operates), or financial (a job loss, perhaps). Note that all of the above are about losing something.

  Why wait for trauma or loss to occur and have your ego get knocked off balance due to that negative emotional state? Clearly, when a calamity befalls you, you have to act—you can’t take care of business as usual when you’ve been knocked, as the expression goes, to your knees.

  At those critical moments when we’ve really, really grown tired of being beaten down by circumstances, we’ll say: This can’t go on. I don’t care what it takes or how I feel [body]. I don’t care how long it takes [time]. No matter what’s going on in my life [environment], I’m going to change. I have to.

  We can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or we can do so in a state of joy and inspiration. We don’t have to wait until we are so uncomfortable that we feel forced to move out of our resting state.

  Side Effects of Closing the Gap

  As you know, one of the key skills you need to develop is self-awareness/self-observation. That’s a shortcut definition of what I mean when I talk about meditation in the next chapter. In meditation, you’re going to look at the negative emotional state that has had such an impact on your life. You’re going to recognize the primary state of your personality that drives your thoughts and behaviors so that you become intimately familiar with every nuance of them. Over time, you’re going to use those powers of observation to help you unmemorize that negative emotional state. By doing so, you will surrender that emotion to a greater mind, closing the gap between who you are and who you have presented to the world in the past.