BITESIZE | The Powerful Daily Habit to Break Unconscious Patterns & Create Lasting Change | Dr Joe Dispenza #599

Today’s guest believes that every single one of us has a lot more potential than we think, and once we start to tap into that potential, we can create huge changes in our lives, for both our health and our happiness. 86% of people in the Western world reach for their phone first thing in the morning. But what if that simple habit is programming you to think, feel and behave in the same way… every single day?⁠ Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 549 of the podcast with Dr Joe Dispenza, a New York Times best-selling author, speaker, and researcher. Dr Joe has spent decades studying neuroscience, meditation, and the effect our thoughts have on our health and well-being. In this clip, he shares how we can begin breaking free from the unconscious patterns that can keep us feeling stuck, and why your morning routine could be the most important place to start.⁠ Thanks to our sponsor ⁠⁠⁠https://drinkag1.com/livemore Show notes and the full podcast are available at https://drchatterjee.com/549 Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts ⁠⁠https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore⁠⁠ For other podcast platforms go to ⁠⁠https://fblm.supercast.com. DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 0:41Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 1:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  See all details at drinkag1.com/livemore. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 549 of the podcast with bestselling author, speaker and researcher Dr Joe Dispenser. Dr Joe has spent decades studying neuroscience, meditation and the powerful impact our thoughts have on our health and wellbeing. And in this clip, he shares how we can begin breaking free from the unconscious patterns

• 2:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  that can keep us feeling stuck and why your morning routine could be the most important place to start.

• 2:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  You mentioned earlier on, what we practice, we get good at. So for many people, the first thing they do in the morning is they practice stress. They get up, whether it's the news, or emails, or social media, they, in what I consider to be a very important time of the day, they allow the environment to start conditioning their mind, and then that conditions their body. So that's the way I see it. So how important to you is the first part of the day when someone has woken up? Is that a critical part of the day where people have to be very intentional?

• 2:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or can they do some of the work that you promote later on? Or do you think first thing in the morning is a very important part of the day?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I want to be really careful about this. I think there's two times the door to the subconscious mind opens up.

• 3:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  When we wake up in the morning, and we go to bed at night. And it's simple brain chemistry and simple physiology. We have a circadian rhythm. Soon as there's light, our body has been pretty much programmed that we begin to release serotonin, different chemicals that kind of wake us up. So our brainwaves go from delta to theta to alpha to beta. And you kind of slide up this way, and then you're back to conscious awareness, local in space and time. When you go to bed at night, you go from beta to alpha to theta to delta, and you slide down. Now, if you're stressed, you can't stop thinking, you stay in beta, and you're thinking actually is arousing the body because you're thinking about your problems.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  You can't slide down, right? So when we're in alpha, our analytical facilities are suppressed. We're in theta, we're in a hypnotic state. And the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is wide open. What separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind. So as you suppress analytical facilities, you can program anybody to do anything. So then, what really happens for most people before they even reach for their cellphone, and by the way, the statistics are 86% of the people in the Western world, first thing they do is they reach for the cellphone, and they connect to everything that's known.

• 4:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And why is that a problem?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Well, I would never tell people how to think, but I would give them information to cause them to think. So the device is reminding them of things that are known. And every person, every object, everything, every place is mapped neurologically in our brain because we've experienced it. And then we have an emotion associated with our coworker, with our boss, with our ex, with our whoever. And so the moment we start responding, now we start feeling the same way. So now the environment is actually controlling the person's feelings and thoughts. And anything that controls the way we feel and the way we think, we're victims to.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  So something's programming us to think and feel a certain way. There's nothing wrong with that. You should check your tax, but do whatever you need to do. But the first thing in the morning, if the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is open, why don't we program a new behavior? Why don't we rehearse a different way of being with our children, with our spouse, in our Zoom meetings, when we're alone, when we're in traffic? Is there a better way to evolve our experience? So if you're truly in the game of evolution, you're truly in the game. Like, one lifetime, one day. What am I working on today? Can I respond a different way to this person? Can I think this way instead of that way? Let me be conscious of my unconscious thoughts. Let me not be in a habit. Let me stay away from certain emotions.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Let me practice feeling these emotions, see if I can maintain it. Now you're in the game. You're out of the bleachers and you're on the playing field. So it actually happens even before the cell phone. Because what most people do is they wake up and the first thing they do is the brain has a record of the past. They think of their problems. And those problems are just memories that are etched in the brain, that are connected to certain people and objects at certain times and places. The moment they think of their problems, they're thinking in the past. Then when they think about their problems and they feel unhappy, now their body's in the past. And if you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, wow. And then the emotion that's associated is now the body's in the past because thoughts is the language of the brain, feelings are the language of the body. And how we think and how we feel creates our state of being. Now, here's the problem.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  If you can't think greater than how you feel, and you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, and you understand that feelings and emotions are a record of the past, then you're thinking in the past, and your life will stay the same.

• 7:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. So I've always been a fan of morning routines personally. For me, I've discovered when I have some intentional time to myself in the morning and when I don't, I'm a different person. I show up differently. My productivity, the way I am with my wife or my kids is completely different. So I know mornings are very important for me. And I feel first thing in the morning, I'm priming myself to be a certain way for that day. It's this idea that you spoke about last time, mental rehearsal. You know, we have no problem thinking about athletes rehearsing how they're going to perform. We have no problem thinking that, of course, an actor, if they want to play a part a certain

• 7:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  way, they're going to rehearse, they're going to keep rehearsing until they're able to do it. Yet, most of us don't really apply that in our own life. We don't think, yeah, I need to be rehearsing for the person I want to be in my own life.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  The game of life.

• 8:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  The game of life, the most important game.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  The most important game. Well, 95% of who we are is a set of memorized behaviors, automatic emotional responses, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs and perceptions that are running pretty much like a computer program. They're automatic, right? So you can think positively all you want. You can say, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm free, I'm free, I'm worthy, I'm worthy. And your body's saying, no, you're not, you're miserable, right? So it makes sense that there's got to be an unlearning process. And we've got to stay conscious of our unconscious thoughts that slip by our awareness unnoticed. We've got to watch how we speak, we've got to observe how we act, we've got to pay attention to the way we're feeling.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And we have to become so conscious of those unconscious states of mind and body that we don't go unconscious in our waking day. Because how you think, how you act and how you feel is your personality and your personality creates your personal reality. So if you're thinking the same way, you're acting the same way and you're feeling the same way, nothing's going to change in your life, right? So then the unlearning process. Is as valuable as the relearning process. The breaking the habit of the old self has to happen before you reinvent a new self. You gotta prune synaptic connections before you sprout new connections. You gotta unfire and unwire before you refire and rewire. You gotta deprogram and then reprogram.

• 9:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  How do you unlearn? I get you can meditate. You can feel that elevated emotion with a very, very high degree of emotional intensity. But how do you go about becoming conscious and unlearning those previous patterns?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  It's trial and error. You gotta go out into life and try it out. Okay, I've changed my internal state. You could have a great meditation. You can connect, your heart could open. This happened to me. You could open your heart. You'd be amazing. You feel like the day is invincible. And you get up and then the rest of your day, you're unconscious, the 15 hours of your day. So you're gonna weigh one hour of being in a different state of being against 15 hours of you being unhappy and rushing it in a program. So then, how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's called change. How many times do we have to go unconscious

• 10:27Speaker 01

  to the point where we no longer go unconscious and we stay conscious? That's the moment of change. Now, if you're truly out of the bleachers and you're on the playing field, and this happens to a lot of people in our work. They say, I had to start really watching myself in my life. How I was emotionally responding to my ex? How I was emotionally responding to my financial problems? I had to really, really pay attention to that. And that takes an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of awareness to stop the program, right? So you forget and you go, damn, I went unconscious there. Now, you didn't lose, you didn't fail. You just became conscious. Now, if you keep becoming so conscious of your unconscious states, you're outside the program.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  You're only in the program when you're unconscious. The moment you're conscious, you can objectify your subjective self. So you can see yourself through the eyes of someone else. So, okay, how am I? In my waking day, the moment you begin to ask that question, you turn on the frontal lobe, and the frontal lobe is the seat of your conscience. Now, the moment you start looking at, at the end of your day, how did I do? This is such an important question. How did I do today? Did I fall from grace? When did I lose it? And who did I lose it with? If I had another opportunity, how would I do it differently? The learning process comes from the mistake. The brain learns by mistakes and surprises. I've made enough of them in my life. It's just whether you're gonna do it again. Yeah. You wanna do it again, you're back in the habit, back in the routine.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Now, if you're just doing your meditation, just because you wanna please God or do the right thing, or feel good about yourself, that's gonna get stale after a while, because it's just gonna become another routine, between your coffee, and your shower, and your emails, and your drive to work, and people aren't present, right? So, so, the familiar past, conditioning is based on the past, that thought and the feeling, but habituation is the programming to predictable future, that's the known. So, if you teach a person how to find the present moment, that's where the unknown exists. And that takes, that takes a lot of energy, and a lot of awareness, and yet, if you practice it, the body literally will begin to respond to the mind. It's like training an animal, it finally relaxes, and when that occurs, your response

• 12:40Speaker 01

  to people and circumstances in your life will be different, because you overcame yourself at the beginning of the day. So, I'm an early morning guy, just like you. I get up really early. Why? Because nobody bothers me. What time? 4:30-ish, somewhere around there. And what, then what do you do? I get in my think box. What's a think box? Well, okay, what am I doing today? But I'm not gonna sit down and just jump into a meditation. What thoughts, before I go into this meditation, am I gonna stay away from? Well, what circumstances, what things I can think about later that aren't that important? I mean, what emotions, what memories am I gonna stay away from? If I go there, I know what that's gonna do. Why am I doing this meditation? What am I gonna be doing? What am I, how am I gonna do it? So, I, just like, just like... Anybody who does anything really well,

• 13:25Speaker 01

  you get in your think box and you organize what you're gonna do.

• 13:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  You doing this in bed or you having coffee first?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I just get up, move around a little bit, you know, do a few things, maybe write some notes down. Cause then I can assign meaning to the act. I can stay conscious when I'm in it.

• 13:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you do all this before your meditation?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Always. But then when I get in my play box, there's no thinking. I did all my thinking in my think box.

• 13:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  You did all your thinking in your think box. Is that also when sometimes we wake up and there's these kind of thoughts that are just popping up is you writing down a few things? Is you processing them a way of sort of quietening down the noise? So you can drop into meditation?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's say I have 10 Zoom meetings in one day. I look at my calendar and I go, okay, none of that. I'm gonna get to all of that. This is not my time to think about the known. I know all this stuff is gonna work out. I know how the Zoom meetings are gonna go. Okay, but let me just make sure when I'm in these certain Zoom meetings, that I'm leading with my heart and I'm being the person that I wanna be as an example for my team. I wanna make sure I'm communicating really clearly. I'll make time for this, that. Okay, I get all that out of the way. That's all the known stuff. But when I come to execute now, what am I gonna do to open my heart today? Like, what am I really gonna do? When I do the breath to bring energy into my brain, what am I bringing? Like, where am I gonna go to that? What do I want to experience? How do I do that? Let me just review that. Okay, then I'm gonna open my focus.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go deep into nothing. I'm gonna go as far as I can. And then when I get to that point, then I'm gonna create. And when I create, this is what I'm gonna create. So I'm not thinking in when I'm there, what should I create? I've already got that all worked out. I'm rehearsing, I'm getting clear in what I'm gonna do. I'm getting clear in what I'm not gonna do. I'm getting clear on how my last meditation was and how I wanna evolve my next meditation. So then when I get to my play box, I'm not analyzing and thinking, cause if I'm analyzing and thinking, I can't do it. Right? So I get that worked out. If it takes me half an hour, I allow for two hours for myself. If it takes me half an hour to get very clear, and then sometimes there's disturbing things that I have to get through because there's meetings and stuff like that. But I just go, that is all always gonna work out. This is you, this is your time.

• 15:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's interesting, Dr. Joe, that for many of us, for many people, meditation is almost like your pre-day ritual. Right? So you meditate to prime yourself for your day, how you're gonna be. But when you talk about your morning routine. You have a premeditation ritual.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which I, which I find really, really interesting.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Cause I wanna get, I wanna get into it. I wanna like, I wanna assign meaning.

• 15:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  To what I'm doing. When you assign meaning to the act, you turn on your prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex says, quiet. Everybody that's not involved in this intention, settle down. So the frontal lobe will actually lower the volumes of the circuits in the brain that, that are disturbance. So, so when you assign meaning to something, you get more value from it. So I just learned that if I just get in and just do my meditation, sometimes they're wonderful because I've done it enough times. But if I just drop in, it just, it doesn't have any meaning. If it doesn't have any meaning, then it just becomes another routine. You're, you're doing your meditation, but you're thinking about your coffee. You're doing, drinking your coffee. You're already thinking about your emails. Your, the brain's an anticipation machine and we lose our free will to that kind of programming.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  So, so after I, when I get my think box really clear, it's just like when I used to golf. I would just kind of look at where I was gonna hit the ball. I was thinking about the, the club I was gonna use, how I was gonna swing. And how I was gonna feel. I work it all out in my think box. When I get my play box, I've done all my thinking. Now I'm just gonna execute, right? So, so we've found that when people do that, we do this in our week-long events. I'll always say to the audience, alright, after we come back from the break. So turn to someone now and I want you to have a conversation about what you love about yourself. That you did really well in that last meditation. What did you stick? What, what felt right for you? What did you execute really well?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  I want you to articulate that and remind yourself, reproduce that same level of mind. Install the neurological hardware by firing and wiring, so you can step into that footprint and do that again in the next meditation. Then I say to them, now let's light a match in a dark place.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  If you had another opportunity to do another meditation, what would you bring? What would you work on improving? What would you become aware that you don't want to do that you did in that last meditation? Let's get really clear about what you're not going to do. And if you had another opportunity, what you would do? And somehow that kind of shapes the brain for the next experience for them to evolve their experience because they're in the experience now. They're like, oh yeah, I'm not going down the, I'm not getting off the exit of my job. I'm not getting off the exit of my ex. I'm going to go straight. I'm going to just keep. You can make those turns in the beginning. It's normal, but you start making those turns and then all of a sudden you're realizing, I'm not going to make those turns and you drive right past the exit. I drive right past, I'm too old.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I drive right past, I'm too out of shape. I drive right past, my disease isn't going to go away. There's something wrong with me. You just keep driving past those. The next thing you know, you run into something big. So it's trial and error, you know? I mean, this is like, if I rehearse how I'm going to be mentally, I'm going to install the hardware in my brain. If I keep doing this, it's going to become a software program and start acting that way. Okay, if I say, I can't, it's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't feel good. Those are the things that stop me. Okay, but what if I just start saying, anything is possible. I believe in synchronicities. What if I, with my intention and attention, just really get clear on that? Would that be the new voice in my head? So now, if you're truly in the game of change, then you would be rehearsing how you were going to be in the next Zoom meeting if you

• 19:07Speaker 01

  were really off in the last one. The next time I have that opportunity, if I'm truly in the game of evolution, let's see if I can stay in my heart and the whole time I'm not going to react. That would be a victory for me. That would be a victory. So then at the end of your day, you go, I can actually kind of love myself. I actually got my behaviors to match my intentions. I got my actions equal to my thoughts. I had a new experience in it. It actually felt good. Hey, I'm going to do that again. And you start doing it with your children. You start doing it, opening the door for the person who's walking out of the office building. You start letting people go ahead of you in traffic. You're just cool. You're no longer in that vigilant state. Now, Get enough people doing that.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, you start noticing your wife a little bit differently. Rangan's all of a sudden starting to smile a little bit more. He seems way more relaxed and chilled. People are going to start getting relaxed and chilled around you because mirror neurons in the tribe say, hey, there's somebody doing something that I'd like to do. I just need evidence to be able to do it. And all of a sudden, you start developing a community of people that start behaving differently. What's the significance of that? That's called emergence. An emergent consciousness is that everybody's behaving differently. And that is what's going to change the world, you know?

• 20:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, one of the core ideas I get from your work is that we all have a choice. We can practice the way that we want to feel so that we actually start feeling it every day. For someone who is watching this or listening and is intrigued and they go, okay, I understand. I've got a choice. I can practice feeling an elevated emotion. They also hear you saying that this can take time. If you've spent 10 years in stress, it ain't going to happen overnight.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  And sometimes it does.

• 20:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  But sometimes it can do. For that person who's watching now and listening and says, hey, hey, Doc, I understand what you're saying. I get it. But I don't have time. My life is busy. I don't have time to meditate. What would you say to them?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I would say you can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or you can learn and change in a state of joy and inspiration. I mean, if you don't have time now, make time when you can. But for the most part, I mean, I want to inspire people to not wait for that crisis or that trauma or that disease or that loss to really change. I want them to be inspired to try it out. It's an experiment. The hardest part about all of this, Rangan, is actually making the time to do it. That's the hardest part about all of this. When we make time for our precious selves. When we invest in ourselves, we invest in our future. And in order for us to believe in ourselves, we have to believe in possibility.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And when we believe in possibility, we believe in ourselves. So it doesn't even have to be a long amount of time. Do a little experiment. Say, "I'm not gonna think these thoughts. I'll write them down. I'm not gonna act this way or speak this way. And I'm not, today I'm gonna work on just staying conscious of these feelings. That's all I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna close my eyes for a few moments and remember that I'm not gonna do these things." If that's the start, you just demystified meditation, because meditation means to become familiar with. To become familiar with, that symbol is familiarization. To become so familiar with yourself that you can become familiar with a new self and not default back to the old person. We all default. We all react.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  That's not the question. The question is, how long are you gonna, how long are you gonna do that for? And so we have a choice. Try it out as an experiment. Little time, just a little time. If you don't have the time, a lot of people say, "Well, I don't, I don't have the time." And I say, "Well, well, get up earlier." And they say, "Well, I'm tired." And I say, "Well, go to bed earlier." What am I gonna say? You know, when do you wanna do it? If you don't wanna do it and you don't have the time, don't do it. If it inspires you to do it, I want you to do it. Only do it if you're inspired. Don't do it because you have to. And so the act of making time. You show up to do the work because you wanna believe in your future more than you believe in your past. And there's some people that do this work, that get up and believe less in their past

• 23:25Speaker 01

  because they didn't overcome themselves. And then there's people who do it every day, and they get up and they believe more in their future every day. And the side effect of that are all these wonderful changes that begin to happen in a person's life. And they say what everybody says, "I knew it was the truth. I just had to prove it to myself."

• 23:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five, and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel-good to get you ready for the weekend.

• 24:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatgy.com/fridayfive. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.