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

Have you heard about neuroplasticity? Probably you have, since it is becoming a common term thanks to the brain discoveries available with our latest technologies. If you haven't heard about it, I suggest you to google it while your copy of this book arrives because it will be a topic that will come up in a dinner conversation very soon :).

Dr. Joe on Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, combines the science with the HOW TO apply the new discoveries that surround neuroplasticity on our daily lives. Is your life already good? Make it even better! Do you think it could be better? whether your answer is yes or not, this is a must read. I highly recommend this book.

Why is it important to me that functional brain scans are showing that people are activating and expanding clusters of neurons in a specific area of the brain just by rehearsing a thought? Times are changing and to use neuroplasticity with all the amazing discoveries as a topic for your next dinner conversation is fun, but this book will teach you that true empowerment comes when we start to look deeply at our beliefs. It will teach you how to "install" the neural hardware needed to physiologically prepare you for new amazing events by creating the "real estate" of neurons ready to take advantage of opportunities that may have been invisible in the past. Dr Joe takes you on a journey on how to go from thinking to doing to being using our 3 brains, stepping toward your New Destiny in a state of creation and not in a state of survival or by default.
Like any other skill, "..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 a computer software this program (for example, a behavior, an attitude, or an emotional state) now runs automatically.." Dr. Joe says.

And my favorite question you can answer after reading the book:
"..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.."

Dr. Joe Dispenza's first book, Evolve Your Brain, was in my opinion, a fantastic book, yes it was a bit heavy in some parts, but I loved the science in it. Obviously, off course, some people simply skipped to page 381, to skip the "science stuff" and read the chapter starting on that page "The Art and Science of Mental Rehearsal". "Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself" raises the bar completely, with now the "How To" companion in easy to follow steps to be comprehended and practiced. The book was also a very easy to read, straight to the point, with fantastic images to compliment nicely the information conveyed, in almost every chapter to understand more of Dr. Joe's message.

This is a book I could not put down. I am now up to doing the Induction Step of the Meditation, and I quickly rushed to Dr. Joe's website to purchase the audio materials for the meditation. The book has been divided into 3 parts, I have written my notes on each chapter as follows:

PART I - THE SCIENCE OF YOU

Chapter 1: The Quantum You:

-You and the world are made up of energy and matter.
-If you look at the body, including the brain, at the cellular level you have: Tissues > Cells > Molecules > Atoms > Subatomic Particles > Energy.
-Your thoughts have an effect on the Quantum Field.
-We are in control of our past, present, and future.
-When we focus on a thought. Single--mindedly, we make it more real than anything else. We are experiencing the thought beyond the physical realm.
-We can create our future.

Chapter 2: Overcoming Your Environment:

-The environment causes us to think. Familiar places, things, people and circumstances fire a set of circuits which cause the brain to think in certain ways (an external stimulus is causing us to think).
-If the environment causes us to think, firing the same circuits over and over, the circuits become hardwired and part of our being.
-"Nerve cells that fire together wire together" - Hebbs Law
-To change then is to think greater than the environment and any external stimulus.
-Mental Rehearsal plays a major role in building new neuron networks in the brain.

Chapter 3: Overcoming Your Body

-Every time you have a thought you make a chemical.
-If you think the way you feel, and feel the way you think, over and over, you create a state of being.
-Positive thoughts alone will not work to change this.
-The environment pushes genes in our bodies, which cause stress, disease, or happiness and joy.
-If you ever forget to remember a phone number, you pick up the phone and you just put your fingers on the buttons, and suddenly your body knows better then your brain.
-To change is to pull the mind out of the body and put it back in the brain.
-To change is to think greater than how you feel.
-Mental Rehearsal also contributes to changing the body physically and mentally.

Chapter 4: Overcoming Time

-We happen to live in the emotions we have memorized from the past.
-We need to live in the present moment and focus on new emotions.
-When we watch a movie, read a book, go on a long drive, etc - we lose track of time.
-To change is to change the emotions we memorize, we need to move from a state of anger or jealousy to a state of thankfulness and gratitude.

Chapter 5: Survival Vs Creation

-Living in a state of survival creates stress, disease, and it activates the fight or flight nervous system.
-To change is to be selfless, not selfish. Forget about: Time, Your Body, Your Environment.
-True Creation is forgetting the "Big 3".
1. Metacognition: Become self-aware, an observer.
2. Create a new mind to think about new ways of being... asking questions like: 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, what traits do they have I can resemble?
3. Make thought more real than anything else is creation.

PART II - YOUR BRAIN AND MEDITATION

Chapter 6: Three Brains: Thinking To Doing To Being

-We go from: Thinking (Neocortex) > Doing (Limbic Brain) > Being (Cerebellum)
Emotions (in the limbic or mid brain) are the end products of experience.
-If you wake up from meditation differently before you sat down before, you have changed. You feel different.
-However, you must think and feel in harmony, you can not think one way and feel another way.
-When you think and feel different, and once you do something and taking action consistently, you will eventually be that new person. You will be in a new state of being, which is wisdom.
-A new state of being creates a new personality... A new personality produces a new personal reality.

Chapter 7: The Gap

-We only get our identity from other things, people and circumstances.
Our cars, phones, jobs, etc make us feel good.
-When we die, none of this exists... so where does true happiness come from?
-Happiness must come from within, not from the outside world.
-What we appear on the outside is different from what we really are.
-We need to close the gap and start being happy inside - meditation will help with this.

Chapter 8: Meditation, Demystifying The Mystical And Waves Of Your Future

-Remind yourself who you no longer want to "be" until this becomes so familiar that you know your old self - thoughts, behaviours and emotions connected to the old you that you want to change - to the extent that you unfire and unwire the old mind away and no longer signal the same genes in the same ways.
-Then repeatedly contemplate who you want to "be".
-This will fire and wire new levels of mind. Eventually this will become second nature, and that is change.

PART III - STEPPING TOWARD YOUR NEW DESTINY

This particular part goes into Chapter 9: The Meditative Process: Introduction and Preparation - which explains all the tools you need to prepare you for the meditation. The chapters that follow after, are all the steps clearly explained for your meditation journey.

Part III is the "how to do it" part of the book - with fantastic ways and variations to do the meditation. If I was asked today what would be the only book I could recommend for creating change in our lives and breaking old habits and routines, I would answer "Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself - By Dr. Joe Dispenza".

Anyone who remembers the hit indie cult film, What the Bleep Do We Know!? that took the theaters by storm in a grassroots phenomenon unlike any seen before will remember Dr. Joe Dispenza who is an audience favorite as one of the experts interviewed along with a host of other scientists and theologians, who made the relatively inaccessible strange quantum world accessible to the masses. The film had a lasting impact and has been distributed to millions around the world, becoming part of the cultural zeitgeist and finally making it cool to be holistically-oriented.

Dr. Joe is one of the best communicators in the world of this area of science as well as neuroscience, neurology, brain function, chemistry, cellular biology, memory formation, and aging and longevity. This book follows his first, Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind which laid down the science for this one.

The first book was a bit heady and as a layperson with an avid interest in personal development and a growing interest in science, I must admit it was a bit difficult for me to read. I think it may have been intended for those who are practitioners with a science background as well as those in holistic and heart-centered therapies who by now it seems, should really know this stuff if they are working with people. I found myself recommending the first one to a whole host of professionals in the helping and healing professions - nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, body workers, yoga teachers, EFT practitioners, and those who lead courses in personal development and spirituality.

This new book is a real breakthrough in terms of practical application. Dr. Joe's genius is in many areas, but certainly he must now be seen as one of the world's top voices in how to apply the new science to your life. It is a delightful tour of what makes us work and more importantly, how you can make lasting change in your life. I have done several personal development workshops and many claim to bring about lasting change, but few really deliver on that promise. But this book and I am sure Dr. Joe's trainings bring this important work to the common individual and it is designed to facilitate change.

Mainstream science is being forced to catch up to the cutting edge scientists who have labored long and hard without the benefit of grant money because the subatomic world is affecting everything from computers to smart phones to warfare. I look forward to the day my college physics teacher has to recant due to the fact he once said to me after discussing the classic work, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism that "You really don't think this affect us in our day to day lives do you?" That day, thanks to works like this one, is coming sooner than most people would think!

I will still recommend this for the professionals to read and I think they will read it with glee and gain many insights. But this one I like to think is for people like myself - those who want to grow and change and develop to be their best from the inside out!

I noticed that Dr. Joe is also in a number of other films that are out, but one that sounds very exciting is the forthcoming film "People vs. the State of Illusion," which I am sure many of his fans will want to catch.