At the beginning of each new year we often resolve to change aspects about ourselves that we’d like to improve on and all too often, as soon as we slip back into our routines, those annoying old habits resurface again. I recently read a gem of a book called “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” written by Dr Joe Dispenza which discusses the neurophysiology associated with those outdated habits/patterns that we want to change and gives a very specific guide to actually creating the changes that we dearly want. Part of this guide highlights an important aspect of the LAW OF ATTRACTION that is often overlooked.
Firstly, let me explain the basic premise of the law of attraction which essentially states that whatever we think, feel and do, subconsciously, creates what we experience in life.
According to findings in neuroscience that Dr Joe Dispenza details, our subconscious mind controls 95% of our thoughts, feelings and actions, and only 5% is controlled by our conscious mind. This means that most of us are thinking, feeling and acting out of subconscious patterns that we aren’t even aware of.
These subconscious patterns are formed from historical experiences that have become embedded within us through memories that we’ve played over and over in our minds and bodies so many times that our responses become automatic.
These automatic responses have several components
Thought processes: judgements, assumptions and decisions we made about ourselves and our environment
Feelings/Emotions: a felt emotion triggered by the thoughts e.g. fear, grief, anger, shame
Physical response: biochemical changes resulting in a variety of physical reactions e.g. contracted muscles causing tension/pain, sleeplessness, anxiety, nausea, digestive issues, lowered immune system leading to physical illnesses etc
Behavioural response: e.g. drinking too much, emotional eating, drug dependencies, violent outbursts, reclusiveness, overspending, irresponsibility, self pity, hopelessness, apathy, fixed psychological positions, obsessive compulsive disorders, snapping at your partner/kids, being overly critical, being overly competitive, being overly controlling…and the list goes on
These thoughts, feelings and physical responses have been so well memorized by us, that they then become subconscious. An example of this given by Dr Dispenza is getting into your car and driving from “A to B” and upon arriving at “B”, you have no recollection of the journey…you’ve done it so many times before you no longer have to methodically go through all of the steps involved in driving, it is now an automatic/subconscious memorized behaviour.
So, as Dr Dispenza instructs: we can either create our experiences by default, assuming a powerless state of ignorance about our own negative patterns and let our subconscious automatic thoughts, feelings and actions run the show, resulting in a haphazard, luck of the draw kind of life; or we can create our thoughts, feelings
and experiences consciously and deliberately by accessing our mysterious subconscious mind and changing our negative internalized programs and patterns to ones that serve us, thereby using the law of attraction to our benefit.
Coming back to THE FLAW WITH THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
(Well it’s actually a flaw with a misperception regarding the Law of Attraction).
Many readings and teachings on the Law of attraction emphasize focusing our thoughts, words, feelings and behaviors on the positive and not the negative experience, e.g. what we DO want,and NOT what we DON’T want to create.
THE FLAW with this perception, is that it disguises the problem with false positivity. Colouring everything positive is not only inauthentic, it also ignores and distracts us from the very thing that we want to change, thereby making it less conscious to us which is exactly what allows it to continue.
I was surprised to read that Dr Dispenza’s instruction for changing the habitual pattern of our choice begins by emphasizing the need to identify and memorize what the individual DOES NOT WANT! This vital step is often omitted from teachings on the LAW OF ATTRACTION.
It dawned on me that the reason for identifying and memorizing the negative state is for the purpose of alerting the CONSCIOUS MIND. The subconscious mind needs the CONSCIOUS MIND to wake it up from its trance-like slumber of automatic thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They’re automatic because we don’t realize what we’re doing until we’re already acting out the same old pattern, just like the example of the journey of driving from “A to B”, and this is why the negative pattern cannot be bypassed by
the conscious mind.
This bypassing of the conscious mind is potentially why, despite much focusing on positively framed thoughts, beliefs, intentions, emotions, feeling states and actions, it’s still easy to get tripped up by that old bad habit, that old way of being, and before you know it, self doubt creeps back in and it feels so impossible to change, it’s easier to just identify with that limited old version of ourselves as who we really are.
What we fail to recognize, is that limited version of ourselves is just an older generation model of us, based upon old neural networks that we keep acting out time and time again despite our best of intentions and desire to be different. If any of this is sounding familiar to you, then perhaps it’s time to give yourself an update
So, speaking from personal application of Dr Dispenza’s teachings, by first identifying and memorizing the negative thing that I want to change, I can bring it into my conscious mind. Then, it takes a good level of self-honestly to acknowledge all of the ways those negative patterns play out; an example could be:
Thought: No one understands me
Feeling: fear, anger or sadness
Physical response: breathlessness, abdominal tension, fatigue, feeling tired and lackluster
Behaviour: Sighing, speaking sharply or rudely, isolating self by either pushing people away with abrasiveness or retreating and sulking, being overly controlling, critical or judging of others, crying, numbing the feelings through drinking alcohol or overeating
By then memorizing those various negative patterns, whatever they may be
for me, I can catch myself the very moment I start thinking, feeling, physically responding to or behaving in any of those familiar old ways and thereby interrupt my own automatic behaviour. Once the pattern is interrupted, I can then employ the change techniques that I’ve learnt (Dr Dispenza gives a thorough instruction
of this in his book) in order to experience a new outcome. Repeating this process through moment to moment awareness, has allowed me to begin to disrupt those old automatic habits and then activate the memorized thoughts, feelings, physical responses and behaviours that I WANT to experience. I am now observing this process play out in real time, having deliberate experiences that are allowing me to emerge into a better version of myself
HOPE
When all else fails, including us, when we fail despite the best of our intentions, hope can be a sustaining force. Hope gives us the ability to try again and again…and again, to be the best version of ourselves we can be in any given moment, and why settle
for anything less?
Tomorrow is a new day and we’ve just started a new year so wishing you all
the very best for becoming all that you can be in 2019!
CHRISSY DIAMOND
