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

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1. Why is this book a must-read?

In my opinion, this book is a must-read because we all have been plagued by bad habits. This is a book about how to break them. Dr. Joe Dispenza is a researcher and lecturer, who has conducted research in neuroscience, epigenetics and quantum theory. As a result of his research, he writes about the relationship between our physiological self and our intentions. In this book, Dispenza explores the power of the mind and how we can use it to create lasting change in our lives. He provides us with practical tools and techniques that we can use to break old patterns and create new, positive ones.

2. What is the key message of the book?

The key message of the book is that our thoughts can create any reality that we want. Like the Buddha quote: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” For a long time, I played with the idea of starting to meditate. This book was the first that talked me through the science behind meditation, and how to apply it, with effect.

Dispenza will take you from our Newtonian view of cause-and-effect – e.g. I will be happy if I find a new job – to a quantum view – I will focus my thoughts and emotions on learning to feel gratitude for an event that I see clearly but which hasn’t happened yet. From this emotional stance, you send out a message to the quantum field and will cause this exact event to manifest into the physical realm.

The book is a reminder of a key life lesson: “If you keep doing the same things every day, how can you expect to see new and different results showing up in your life?” Apparently, by age 35, your character is pretty much set and you run 95% of the day from your subconscious. It’s your body brain that took over to make it easy for you, and also why behavioural change is so tough. We actually have to reprogram ourselves. By starting to consciously observe our habitual behaviours, thought patterns and reactions (e.g. by meditating) we can access our subconscious and change those behaviours.

The bottom line is that most of us define ourselves by our sensory reality, which in turn focuses on our body, time and environment. If we can find a way to transcend these “big 3” – e.g. through flow states, creation, meditation … – we can conquer these three and harness our energy to create.

3. Who should read this book?

Obviously, everybody can benefit from reading this book, but maybe especially those in the midst of their lives. By mid-life, many of us start to find the gap between “the self we show to the world” and “our hidden, darker self with its anxieties and resentments” less and less bearable, and we notice that the external distractions (like work, spending, drinking …) become less and less able to fill that void.

This book is a must-read for everyone who wants to alter negative emotion through consciousness and meditation, who wants to close the gap between your true self and what you show to the world. Dispenza’s meditations are focused on working at peeling away these layers over several weeks. In the end, you become able to operate from a state of being that will allow you to manifest what you want by channeling new, positive emotions.

Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One • Joe Dispenza • Hay House Inc • EAN 9781401938093