Praise for Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself “Dr. Joe Dispenza wants to empower you to let go of negative beliefs and embrace the positive. This intelligent, informative, practical book will help you be your best, freest self so that, as Dr. Joe puts it, you can ‘step toward your own destiny.’” — Judith Orloff, M.D., author of Emotional Freedom “In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza explores the energetic aspects of reality with sound science and provides the reader with the necessary tools to make important positive changes in their life. Anyone who reads this book and applies the steps will beneft from their efforts. Its cutting-edge content is explained in a simple language that is accessible to anyone, and provides a user-friendly guide for sustained change from the inside out.” — Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Director of Research, HeartMath Research Center “Dr. Joe Dispenza’s entertaining and highly accessible manual for rewiring your mental and emotional circuitry carries a simple but potent message: what you think today determines how you live tomorrow.” — Lynne McTaggart, best-selling author of The Field, The Intention Experiment, and The Bond “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself is a powerful blend of leading-edge science and real-life applications woven into the perfect formula for everyday living. “The hierarchy of scientifc knowledge tells us that when new discoveries change what we know about the atom, what we know of ourselves and our brains must change as well. Through the 14 concise chapters of this book, Dr. Joe Dispenza draws upon a lifetime of experience to describe how subtle shifts in the way we use our brains are the quantum key to life-affrming changes in our bodies, our lives, and our relationships. In a responsible, well-researched, and practical manual that you’ll want at your fngertips for your personal practice, Dr. Joe’s easy-to-use, step-by-step techniques give everyone the opportunity to experiment with their own quantum feld to discover for themselves what works best. “From the powerful exercises highlighting the thinking that keeps us stuck in old beliefs, to the simple practices that catapult us beyond our limiting beliefs, this book is the owners’ manual to a successful life we wish we’d been given in frst grade. If you’ve always known that there’s more to you than you learned in Biology 101, but fnd yourself intimidated by the technical language of science, this is the beautiful book you’ve been waiting for!” — Gregg Braden, New York Times best-selling author of Deep Truth and The Divine Matrix “As a semiretired psychologist who has thought about many of these issues for years, I have to admit that [this book] will likely change some long-held beliefs in the feld of psychology. Dr. Joe’s conclusions, which are well grounded in neuroscience, challenge our ideas of who we think we are and what we think is even possible. A brilliant and uplifting book.” — Dr. Allan Botkin, clinical psychologist; author of Induced After-Death Communication “We’re in the midst of an unparalleled new era of personal growth, in which a productive feedback loop has been established between the latest discoveries of neuroscience and the ancient practices of meditation. Dr. Joe Dispenza’s new book masterfully yet clearly explains the ‘hard science’ of how our brains and bodies work. He then applies it practically in a four-week program of fundamental personal change, showing how we can use a structured meditation program to consciously rewire our neural network for creativity and joy.” — Dawson Church, Ph.D., best-selling author of The Genie in Your Genes (EFTuniverse.com) “Dr. Joe Dispenza brings us the manual for becoming a divine creator! He makes the brain science practical; he shows us how to break free of the grip of our emo- tions to create happy, healthy, and abundant lives, and how to fnally dream our world into being. I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time!” — Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., author of Power Up Your Brain and Shaman, Healer, Sage Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself ALSO BY DR. JOE DISPENZA EVOLVE YOUR BRAIN: The Science of Changing Your Mind MEDITATIONS FOR BREAKING THE HABIT OF BEING YOURSELF (2-CD set) YOU ARE THE PLACEBO: Making Your Mind Matter (available April 2014) Please visit: Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com® Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One Dr. Joe Dispenza HAY HOUSE, INC. Carlsbad, California • New York City London • Sydney • Johannesburg Vancouver • Hong Kong • New Delhi Copyright © 2012 by Joe Dispenza Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com® • Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse .com.au • Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www .hayhouse.co.uk • Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast Books: www.rain coast.com • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in Interior design: Nick C. Welch • Interior illustrations: Laura S. Craig • Indexer: Jay Kreider The following illustrations incorporate copyrighted images used with permission: Figures 1E, 3C, 7C: People figures, © Izabela Zvirinska - Fotolia.com • Figure 3B: Man silhouette, © styleuneed - Fotolia.com • Figures 3B, 5B, 5C, 6A: Human brain, © Alila - Fotolia.com • Figure 5B: Neurons and nucleus, © ktsdesign - Fotolia.com • Figure 6A: Human brain, © Pavel Eltsov - Fotolia.com • Figures 7A, 7B, 7D, 7E: Hands, © lom123 - Fotolia.com • Figure 8D: Retro laser gun, © LHF Graphics - Fotolia.com • Figure 8D: Sketchy bulb, © get4net - Fotolia.com • Figure 8K: Brain, © Oguz Aral All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, pho- tographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use— other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well- being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dispenza, Joe. Breaking the habit of being yourself : how to lose your mind and create a new one / Joe Dispenza. -- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4019-3808-6 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Change (Psychology) 2. Thought and thinking. 3. New Thought. I. Title. BF637.C4D56 2012 158.1--dc23 2011042878 Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-3809-3 Digital ISBN: 978-1-4019-3810-9 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 1st edition, February 2012 Printed in the United States of America For Robi CONTENTS Foreword by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. .............................................................xi Introduction: The Greatest Habit You Can Ever Break Is the Habit of Being Yourself ..................................................................xv PART I: The Science of You Chapter 1: The Quantum You ..............................................................3 Chapter 2: Overcoming Your Environment ....................................... 39 Chapter 3: Overcoming Your Body ....................................................53 Chapter 4: Overcoming Time ..............................................................85 Chapter 5: Survival vs. Creation ......................................................... 97 PART II: Your Brain and Meditation Chapter 6: Three Brains: Thinking to Doing to Being .....................123 Chapter 7: The Gap ............................................................................ 147 Chapter 8: Meditation, Demystifying the Mystical, and Waves of Your Future ............................................... 175 PART III: Stepping Toward Your New Destiny Chapter 9: The Meditative Process: Introduction and Preparation ............................................................... 219 Chapter 10: Open the Door to Your Creative State (Week One) .......... 231 Step 1: Induction Chapter 11: Prune Away the Habit of Being Yourself (Week Two) ........................................................................ 237 Step 2: Recognizing Step 3: Admitting and Declaring Step 4: Surrendering Chapter 12: Dismantle the Memory of the Old You (Week Three) ....................................................................259 Step 5: Observing and Reminding Step 6: Redirecting Chapter 13: Create a New Mind for Your New Future (Week Four) ...... 271 Step 7: Creating and Rehearsing Chapter 14: Demonstrating and Being Transparent: Living Your New Reality ..................................................289 Afterword: Inhabit Self .............................................................................299 Appendix A: Body-Part Induction (Week One)...........................................305 Appendix B: Water-Rising Induction (Week One) ......................................307 Appendix C: Guided Meditation: Putting It All Together (Weeks Two Through Four) ...............................................................309 Endnotes .................................................................................................. 315 Index ....................................................................................................... 319 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................326 About the Author .....................................................................................328 xi FOREWORD Your brain is involved in everything you do, including how you think, how you feel, how you act, and how well you get along with other people. It’s the organ of personality, character, intelligence, and every decision you make. From my brain-imaging work with tens of thousands of patients worldwide over the past 20 years, it is very clear to me that when your brain works right, you work right, and when your brain is troubled, you are much more likely to have trouble in your life. With a healthier brain, you are happier, physically healthier, wealthier, wiser, and just make better decisions, which helps you be more successful and live longer. When the brain is not healthy for whatever reason—such as a head injury or past emotional trauma— people are sadder, sicker, poorer, less wise, and less successful. It is easy to understand how trauma can hurt the brain, but researchers have also seen how negative thinking and bad pro- gramming from our past can also affect it. For example, I grew up with an older brother who was intent on shoving me around. The constant tension and fear I felt then led to a higher level of anxiety, anxious thinking patterns, and always being on guard, never knowing when something bad was about to happen. This fear caused long-term overactivity in my brain’s fear centers, until I was able to work through it later on in life. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, my colleague Dr. Joe Dispenza is your guide to optimize both the hardware and software of your brain to help you reach a new state of mind. His new book is based on solid science, and he continues to speak with kindness BREAKING THE HABIT OF BEING YOURSELF xii and wisdom, as he did in the award-winning film What the BLEEP Do We Know!? and in his first book, Evolve Your Brain. Even though I think of the brain like a computer, with both hardware and software, the hardware (the actual physical func- tioning of the brain) is not separate from the software or the con- stant programming and reshaping that occurs throughout our lives. They have a dramatic impact on each other. Most of us have had trauma of some kind in our lives and live with the day-to-day scars that have resulted. Cleaning out those experiences that have become part of the brain’s structure can be incredibly healing. Of course, engaging in brain-healthy habits, such as a proper diet and exercise and certain brain nutrients, is critical to the brain working right. But in addition, your moment- by-moment thoughts exert a powerful healing effect on the brain . . . or they can work to your detriment. The same is true for past experiences that can become wired in the brain. The study we do at the Amen Clinics is called “brain SPECT imaging.” SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) is a nuclear-medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity patterns. It is different from CT scans or MRI, which examine the brain’s anatomy, because SPECT looks at how the brain func- tions. Our SPECT work, now over 70,000 scans, has taught us so many important life lessons about the brain, such as: • Brain injuries can ruin people’s lives; • Alcohol is not a health food and often shows signifcant damage on SPECT scans; • A number of the medications people routinely take, such as some common anti-anxiety medications, are not good for the brain; and • Diseases like Alzheimer’s actually start in the brain decades before people have any symptoms. SPECT scans have also taught us that as a society, we need to have much more love and respect for the brain, and that allowing children to play contact sports, like football and hockey, is not a smart idea. Foreword xiii One of the most exciting lessons I have learned is that people can literally change their brains and change their lives by engag- ing in regular brain-healthy habits, such as correcting negative beliefs and using meditative processes such as those discussed by Dr. Dispenza. In one series of studies we published, the practice of medita- tion, such as what Dr. Dispenza recommends, boosted blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, the most thoughtful part of the human brain. After eight weeks of daily meditation, the prefrontal cortex at rest was stronger, and the memories of our subjects were better, too. There are so many ways to heal and optimize the brain. My hope is that, like me, you will develop “brain envy” and want a better-functioning brain. The brain-imaging work we do has changed everything in my own life. Shortly after I started order- ing SPECT scans in 1991, I decided to look at my own brain. I was 37 years old. When I saw the toxic, bumpy appearance, I knew it was not healthy. All of my life I have been someone who rarely drank alcohol, never smoked, and never used an illegal drug. Then why did my brain look so bad? Before I really understood about brain health, I’d had many bad brain habits. I ate lots of fast food, drank diet soda like she was my best friend, often slept only four to fve hours at night, and carried unexamined hurts from the past. I didn’t exercise, felt chronically stressed, and carried an extra 30 pounds. What I didn’t know was hurting me . . . and not just a little. My last scan looks healthier and much younger than it did 20 years earlier. My brain has literally aged backward—that’s how changeable your brain is, too, when you make up your mind to take care of it properly. After seeing my original scan, I wanted my brain to be better. This book will help yours be better, too. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. — Daniel G. Amen, M.D., author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life }}}} xv INTRODUCTION The Greatest Habit You Can Ever Break Is the Habit of Being Yourself When I think about all the books on creating the life we de- sire, I realize that many of us are still looking for approaches that are grounded in sound scientifc evidence—methods that truly work. But already new research into the brain and body, the mind, and consciousness—and a quantum leap in our understanding of physics—is suggesting expanded possibilities on how to move to- ward what we innately know is our real potential. As a practicing chiropractor who runs a busy integrated-health clinic and as an educator in the felds of neuroscience, brain func- tion, biology, and brain chemistry, I have been privileged to be at the forefront of some of this research—not just by studying the felds mentioned above, but also by observing the effects of this new science, once applied by common people like you and me. That’s the moment when the possibilities of this new science become reality. As a consequence, I have witnessed some remarkable changes in individuals’ health and quality of life when they truly change their minds. Over the last several years, I have had the opportu- nity to interview a host of people who overcame significant health conditions that were considered either terminal or permanent. Per the contemporary model of medicine, these recoveries were labeled “spontaneous remissions.”