Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself

They say old habits die hard. In fact, it´s worse than that. If you don´t purposefully set out to break them, they never die. They just stay with you – dictating your life – until you die. So, rather than allow our habits to define our existence: Is there an alternative? Dr Joe Dispenza emphatically believes there is, and his book Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself explains in great detail how to go about it. I recently read the book twice over and can recommend it. Joe Dispenza is a 64-year-old American who gained his doctorate in chiropractic. However, over the past 30 years he has evolved into an internationally-acclaimed advocate of neuroscience as a means to help people shape their lives. He conducts workshops around the world and is the author of several books which fall into the “self help” genre.

In this post, I shan´t attempt to give a precise or full summary of Dispenza´s book: because, although it´s written in a very easy-to-read style, there´s a fair bit of complexity to the content. His core point is that by about age 25 the personality of each individual has been fully developed and does not change. (Unless made to do so). Thus, our habits, our actions and reactions, our value system, our sense of who we are, our outlook on life….the entire playbook has been written long before we even reach 30. For the rest of our lives, we read from that same playbook. In the process we become very set in our ways – for better and for worse.

Dispenza devotes the first half of Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself to a science-based explanation of how the brain makes decisions and sends instructions. He takes the reader gently through the quantum physics and the neuroscientific principles involved. He discusses how neurological pathways are formed to transmit information: and how the repeated use of those pathways makes so many of our actions and reactions seem instinctive. As if they were hard-wired into our brain. In fact, Dispenza argues, the brain has handed over responsibility for all the “habit-related” decision making to the subconscious. So, when we say “I reacted without thinking”, we´re quite right. There was no thought process. The subconscious merely identified the external stimulus and rolled out its already-prepared response to that particular situation.

Are all habits bad? Of course not. The habit of kindness, of generosity, of faith in human nature. Nothing wrong there. The habit of always putting on your left shoe before the right shoe: harmless. Getting up at 7.00am each day, eating breakfast and going to work. No problems there either. Having a negative thought about your husband every time he blows his nose with his serviette whilst at the dinner table? (Well, you´re right, he shouldn´t do that. It´s a bad habit). And therefore your reaction is justified. Every day, as human beings, we are confronted by hundreds of moments when a reaction occurs: when the subconscious dictates our life. The challenge is: what to do about it?

Dispenza says the first thing we can do is simply say “No” out loud. Whenever we have what we might describe as an unwanted instinctive response to an external stimulus, we should instantly engage the conscious mind and verbally object to the arrival of that response. By doing so, we begin the process of breaking that neurological pathway. However, this idea is but a tiny part of Dispenza´s advice. The vast bulk of the book focusses on creating new neurological pathways to give ourselves new life outcomes. In this sense, the title Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself is something of a misnomer. The book´s sub-title sums things up rather better. It reads: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One.

The final third of the book is the engine room, where we receive a practical guide on how to achieve these new outcomes. There are two parts to this process. First, you have to imagine what habit, or characteristic, or personality outcome you wish to achieve. You have to fully develop it in your mind´s eye. You have to visualise it: which means seeing what you look like as you are doing this thing. Even more, Dispenza says you have to begin “living” this characteristic. Feel the satisfaction of having it, truly believe that you now have it. Do the things a person with this characteristic would do. In a basic example, an athlete would repeatedly visualise him/herself participating successfully in an event. Starting the race well, being well positioned at the mid-point and then surging to the line as the winner. As a young man, I used to do this before my rugby union matches. I visualised myself catching the ball well, then running with it, evading tacklers and finally scoring a try.

The second process in the practical guide is that of meditation. By this stage in the book, Dispenza has convinced us we must access the subconscious if we wish to break or create habits. So he sets out a series of meditative practices to be learned over a four-week period where the “new” characteristic is drummed into the subconscious so that it becomes our instinctive reaction. In the case where we want to break an existing bad habit and replace it with a more desirable reaction to the same stimulus, Dispenza says that, during the meditation process, the bad habit will dissipate as the new good habit develops.

But what if I don´t have any bad habits to break? Ah, but you do. We all do. When the wife says of her husband “I´m sure he doesn´t even know he´s doing it” she´s right. The subconscious is so called because it is below our conscious awareness. On the surface (of our life) we may feel fine; however, further down there are often problems. That´s why Dispenza explains in detail how to gain access to your subconscious mind – and then influence it and reshape it. In this mediation section of the book, Dispenza even provides the reader with lists of habits which may apply to him/her. Sure enough, after firstly thinking I had no bad habits to cure, in those lists I found some candidates. Prime among them was being judgmental (which I thought might be a helpful trait for a journalist). As it turns out, I´m too judgemental for my own good. So, I have work to do. Also, a lot of men become cranky in their retirement years – and they don´t know why. Angst is a habit. And it´s well documented that pent-up anger in the body leads to illness. So, to those men: read the book.

Since Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power Of Positive Thinking back in 1952, the beneficial effects of visualisations and affirmations have been well known. But whereas a deep religious conviction was at the centre of Peale´s approach, in contrast Dispenza´s model is based almost entirely upon modern science. It has generated for him a worldwide following: some of whom are attracted to his teachings in the belief that they can gain better health – even cure an illness – by visualising and becoming a person who no longer has that thing (for example, cancer) in their body. Critics of Dispenza say there´s no evidence of any curative powers for cancer; however, improved general wellbeing is entirely achievable. Weight loss is an example.

At this point in my life, I am faced with a clear choice: keep going in the same old way as I have been for, say, the last 20 years; or open my mind to new ideas which might greatly enrich the time I have remaining.