Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

by Joe Dispenza

when we talk about someone cultivating an interest in a particular subject, we mean that he has thoughtfully researched that area of interest. Also, a cultivated person is someone who has carefully chosen what to expose herself to and who has amassed a breadth of knowledge and experience. Again, none of this is done on a whim, and little is left to chance. When you cultivate anything, you are seeking to be in control. And that’s what is required when you change any part of your self. Instead of allowing things to develop “naturally,” you intervene and consciously take steps to reduce the likelihood of failure. The purpose behind all of this effort is to reap a harvest. When you cultivate a new personality in meditation, the abundant yield you seek to create is a new reality. Creating a new mind is like cultivating a garden. The manifestations you produce from the garden of your mind will be just like crops from the earth’s soil. Tend well.

When those thoughts and feelings that used to signal the body are stopped by your conscious efforts, the liberated energy from those limited emotions is released into the field. You now have energy with which to design and create a new destiny. When we use meditation as a means to change, when we become conscious and aware, familiar with and willing to do what is necessary to eradicate an undesirable trait and cultivate a desired one, we’re doing what mystics have been doing for centuries.

For too long, we’ve been running unconscious programs that have been controlling us. Meditation allows us to reassert control. Awareness comes first—recognizing when and how those programmed responses take over is essential. When you move from the unconscious to the conscious, you begin to close the gap between how you appear and who you are.

When we are plugged into all three dimensions—the environment, the body, and time—the brain tries to integrate their varied frequencies and wave patterns. That takes up an enormous amount of processor time and space. If we can eliminate our focus on any one of those, the patterns that emerge will be more coherent, and we’ll be better able to process them.

As a result of normal daily changes in brain chemistry (alternately, the brain produces serotonin, primarily a daytime neurotransmitter that makes you alert; and melatonin, the nighttime neurotransmitter that begins to relax you for sleep), there are two times when the door to the subconscious mind opens—when you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning. So it is a good idea to meditate in the morning or evening, because it will be easier to slip into a state of Alpha or Theta. I like to wake up early to begin the process, because while I’m still a bit dreamy, I’m still in Alpha. I personally like to create from a clean slate. Others prefer the late evening. They know that the body (which was in control during the day) is now too tired to “be” the mind. They can create without any effort by drawing out the Alpha phase, and even entering into Theta, while they are still awake.

With great resolve, she decided to change her personality. No longer would she let life trample her and allow things to just happen to her. Next, Monique created a template of who she wanted to be, how she wanted to think, and what she wanted to feel. She imagined herself as a woman who made all of her choices with an abundance of energy, time, and money. Most important, her goal to become this person was as firm as her vision was precise. She knew who she no longer wanted to be; and she had definitive plans for how her new self would think, feel, and behave. When we make a decision that strongly and have a clear intention for what our new reality will be like, the clarity and coherence of those thoughts produces corresponding emotions. As a result, our internal chemistry changes, our neurological makeup is altered (we prune old synaptic connections and sprout new ones), and we even express our genetic code differently.

Monique began to live her life from the perspective of someone who had plenty of money, who had abundant energy, and whose every need was met. She felt wonderful. Certainly, not all the problems from her catalog of worries went away, but she was becoming better at living from a different mind-set.

“You won’t believe it! Your lottery ticket was a winner!” Now, you’ll recall that when the quantum field responds, it does so in a way that one couldn’t predict. Perhaps you are thinking, Of course she won millions and lived happily ever after. Not exactly. Monique won $53,000. Was she happy? Astounded is more like it. The couple owed exactly $53,000 in credit-card and auto-loan debt.

Monique relayed her excitement in telling us that story, but she slyly admitted that next time, instead of holding the intention that all her needs were met, she’d choose to imagine they were met—and then some.

What Monique’s story illustrates is the power of creating a new state of being. She couldn’t do that just by imagining that she was a new person; she had to put that new self into action. The old Monique wouldn’t have bought a lottery ticket; her new personality aligned her behavior to match her objective, and the field responded in an entirely unexpected yet perfectly appropriate way. Because Monique developed a new personality who seized opportunities and acted differently, she experienced new and better results in her life. New personality, new personal reality. You don’t have to win the lottery to change your life, of course. But you do have to make the decision to stop being your old self, enter into the operating system where those unconscious programs exist, and then formulate a clear design for a new one.

Once you’ve gotten to a neutral/empty state, it is far easier to engage a heightened one like compassion; it is easier to bring in pure joy or love or gratitude or any of the elevated emotional states. That’s true because those emotions are already profoundly coherent. And when you’ve moved through the meditative process and produce a brain-wave state that reflects this purity, then you will begin to overcome the body, the environment, and time, which once produced your self-limiting emotional states. They will no longer control you; instead, you will control them.

Mastering the ego. To be honest, I do have those days where I battle my ego tooth and nail, since it wants to be in control. Some mornings as I begin the process, my analytical mind starts thinking about flights to catch, meetings with staff, injured patients, reports and articles I need to write, my kids and their complexities, phone calls I have to make, and random thoughts from nowhere that pop into my head. I’m obsessing about everything predictable in my external life. Typically, my mind, like most people’s, is either anticipating the future or remembering the past. When that occurs, I have to settle down and realize that those are all known associations that have nothing to do with creating something new in the present moment. If this happens to you, it is your job to go beyond the tedium of normal thinking and enter into the creative moment.

Mastering the body. If your body bucks like an unbridled stallion because it wants to be the mind—to get up and do something, think about someplace it has to go in the future, or remember a past emotional experience with some person in your life—you must settle it down into the present moment and relax it. Every time you do, you are reconditioning your body to a new mind, and in time, it will acquiesce. It was conditioned by an unconscious mind, and it has to be retrained by you—so love it, work with it, and be kind to it. It will ultimately surrender to you as its master. Remember to be determined, persistent, excited, joyful, flexible, and inspired. When you do so, you are reaching for the hand of the divine. Now let’s begin….

On the other hand, the same is true for elevated states of mind and emotion. When you’re joyous, you love; when you love, you feel free; when you’re free, you’re inspired; when you’re inspired, you’re creative; when you’re creative, you’re adventurous … and so on. All of these feelings are driven by different chemicals that then influence how you think and act. Let’s use anger as an example of a recurring emotion you might choose to work with. As you unmemorize anger, all of the other self-limiting emotions will incrementally decrease within you as well. If you become less angry, you’ll be less frustrated, hateful, judgmental, envious, and so on.

This emotion has motivated you to appropriate everything you know in your environment to fashion an identity. Because of this feeling, you created an ideal for the world instead of an ideal for yourself. This feeling is who you really are. Acknowledge it. It is one of the many masks of your personality that you have memorized.

Suffering might lead to feeling victimized, depressed, lazy, resentful, or needy.

This enigma can be called innate intelligence, chi, divine mind, spirit, the quantum, the life force, infinite mind, the observer, universal intelligence, the quantum field, invisible power, mother-father life, cosmic energy, or higher power.

Let’s suppose you want joy in your life. So you ask the universe for it every day. However, you’ve memorized suffering into such a state of being that you whine all day long, you hold everyone responsible for the way you feel, you make excuses for yourself, and you mope around constantly feeling sorry for yourself. Can you see that you can declare joy all you want, but you are demonstrating being a victim? Your mind and body are in opposition. You are thinking a certain way one moment; then you are being something else the remainder of the day. Hence, can you humbly and sincerely admit who you have been, what you have been hiding, and what you want to change about yourself, so that you eliminate unnecessary pain and suffering before you create the related experiences in your reality? To vacate and lay down your familiar personality for a brief period of time and knock on the door of the infinite in a state of joy and reverence is so much more conducive to change than allowing your personality to be fractured by your insistent course of destiny, created by who you were repeatedly “being.” Let’s change in joy instead of changing in pain.

In the workshops that I conduct around the world, this is the most difficult part of the steps. No one really wants anyone to know who they really are. They want to maintain how they appear. However, as you have learned, it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep up this ongoing image. This is the point where you want to release that energy. And remember: since emotions are energy in motion, everything that you’ve experienced and interacted with in your external life has an energetic emotion attached to it. Essentially, you are bonded to some person, thing, or place by an energy that exists beyond time and space. This is how you continually remember yourself as an ego with a personality, identifying emotionally with and being tied to everything in your life.

Just surrender in … Sincerity Humility Honesty Certainty Clarity Passion Trust

The side effects of surrendering include: Inspiration Joy Love Freedom Awe Gratitude Exuberance

When you feel joy or live in a state of joy, you have already accepted the future outcome that you want as a reality. When you live as if your prayers have already been answered, this greater mind can do what it does best by organizing your life in new and unusual ways.

the quantum mind is like a big mirror—it reflects back to you what you accept and believe as true. So your outer world is a reflection of your inner reality. The most important synaptic connection you can make when it comes to this mind is to know that it is real.

Believe that the quantum mind will answer your call and help you. If you begin to doubt, become anxious, worry, get discouraged, or overanalyze how this assistance might happen, you have undone everything that you originally accomplished. You got in your own way. You blocked something greater from helping you. Your emotions demonstrated that you disbelieved in quantum possibilities, and therefore you lost your connection to the future that the divine mind was orchestrating for you. This is when you have to go back and reinstate a more powerful frame of mind. Talk to the quantum mind as if it knows you very well and loves and cares for you … because it does.

Universal mind within me, I forgive my worries, my anxieties, and my small-minded concerns, and I give them to you. I trust that you have the mind to resolve them much better than I could. Arrange the players in my world so that doors open for me. Innate intelligence, I release my suffering and my self-pity to you. I have mismanaged my inner thoughts and actions for long enough. I allow you to intervene and provide a greater life in a way that is just right for me.

Give thanks. Once you have completed your prayer, remember to give thanks ahead of the manifestation. When you do, you are sending a signal into the quantum field that your intention has already come to fruition. Thankfulness is the supreme state of receivership.

Step 1: First, go through your induction technique and continue to become more and more used to this process to enter the subconscious mind. Step 2: Next, by becoming aware of what you want to change about yourself in mind and body, “recognize” your own limitations. That is, define a specific emotion that you want to unmemorize and look at the associated attitude that is driven by that feeling. Step 3: Continuing on, inwardly “admit” to a higher power within you who you have been, what you want to change about yourself, and what you have been hiding. Then, outwardly “declare” what emotion you are releasing so as to free the body from the mind and break the bonds to the elements in your environment. Step 4: Finally, “surrender” this self-limiting state to a greater mind and ask that it be resolved in a way that is right for you.

It is important that you rationalize beyond the barometer of your feelings to understand that these survival emotions are affecting your cells in adverse ways by pushing the same genetic buttons and breaking down your body. It raises the question: “Is this feeling, behavior, or attitude loving to myself?” After I say “Change,” I like to say, “This is not loving to me! The rewards of being healthy, happy, and free are so much more important than being stuck in the same self-destructive pattern. I don’t want to emotionally signal the same genes in the same way and affect my body so adversely. Nothing is worth it.”