Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza

Are you interested in helping your brain and, in the process, your life?

This book came to my attention through my partner, who values psychology and was reading it herself. I recognised an opportunity to expand my knowledge of psychology and spirituality. The title suggested exploring who you are, breaking bad habits and becoming a better version of yourself—all things that resonate with me.

I had intended to read the book, tick it off my list and return to my core subjects. However, I have to say that it has taken my understanding of mental consciousness in a new direction and opened up useful trains of thought that I want to share in a concise way through this blog. I’ll explore these ideas through individual topics that may well prompt you to learn more yourself.

I like how Joe speaks, as he uses wordplay and incorporates rhymes into phrases, making them really hit home and memorable. This also creates the illusion that there must be an internal logic to the ideas because the words sound good together. I first noticed the power of wordplay when Gabor Maté said that disease is dis-ease in the body, before going on to establish a scientific basis for this idea. I have noticed this technique even more with Joe Dispenza, and it is probably a technique borrowed from NLP.

This book should matter to anyone who values their brain and quality of life, is interested in getting what they want out of life, and wants to become a better person for themselves and those around them. It is also a good book to progress to if you understand psychology, have a grasp of neurobiology, are interested in self-help and have a growth-oriented, flexible mindset—one that is interested in doing the work required to improve and become better aligned.

In fact, in the foreword, Daniel Amen expresses his envy of “beautiful brains” and contrasts the benefits of a healthier brain, which can help us become happier, healthier, wealthier, wiser and better at making decisions in the areas we wish to pursue, with the alternative of becoming sadder, sicker, poorer, less wise and less successful.

As I meet more people, I am realising how often I categorise them as healthy, open, curious, growth-focused and energising. Others are harder to talk to, have few ideas, enjoy the mundane, lead basic lives, align themselves with authority and are rather fixed in their thinking.

Furthermore, there seems to be a clear dividing line between those who have empathy for humanity and individual flourishing and those who do not. I suspect, as the book explores, that this may well be the result of their past experiences, memories and survival-mode selves.

Comparative listing of negative and positive states providing clear examples of a what a beautiful brain can be.

Personality Becomes Personal Reality

What if the life you experience today is, in part, a reflection of the person you have repeatedly practised being? Explore how our thoughts, emotions and behaviours reinforce familiar patterns, shaping your personality and influencing how you experience the world.

Often, we think, feel and act in recognisable ways, producing experiences that reinforce our existing beliefs about ourselves. Over time, thoughts become experiences, experiences become memories, and memories shape the person we believe ourselves to be.

The problem arises when we want a different future but continue rehearsing the past. We seek new opportunities while carrying old fears, repeat familiar behaviours while expecting different results, and allow past experiences and memories to dictate the infinite possibilities of the future. You are a habit.

Morpheus freeing Neo’s mind, the path of the one is an excellent example of breaking the habit of being yourself. As is mentioned, everyone falls the first time, but unlike the others, Neo flies.

Our habits can become invisible limitations. There is a quote on the quotes page of this site that references “the laying of chains”, which is particularly relevant here.

Stress, fear and other survival-related emotions and memories may keep our attention fixed on perceived threats rather than on the creative opportunities that are immediately available. We become attached to the familiar, even when it no longer serves us. The new and the future must compete with the comfort of what we already know.

It must always be remembered that “attention is energy”.

In this distracting world, our environment can be our worst enemy. What we repeatedly focus on—or, even worse, allow to distract us—influences what we notice, how we feel, what we think about and where we direct our efforts.

Dispenza encourages us to cultivate more elevated emotional states to overcome lower emotional states. This is a choice all of us can make, starting today, by being mindful of how we protect and cultivate positive states, as if our lives depend on them—which they do.

The challenge is to unlearn and relearn: to question the beliefs that constrain us, reduce unnecessary stress and become less dependent on our environment to determine our internal state.

Instead of automatically reacting to circumstances, we can practise responding with greater intention.

This is where creativity becomes transformative. Creating something new requires us to imagine beyond what already exists. Personal growth demands the same willingness to challenge the familiar and explore the unknown.

You cannot create a different future by repeatedly rehearsing the past.

Begin by changing what you give your attention to, how you respond and what you practise daily. Your personality is not necessarily a fixed destination; it is something you can continue to develop or, if needed, completely overhaul.

Cause and Effect to Causing an Effect

How much of your life is determined by deliberate choice, and how much is simply a reaction to your environment, past experiences and habitual ways of thinking?

In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza challenges us to recognise how easily we become trapped in cycles of predictable thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We wake up, follow familiar routines, respond to familiar problems and experience familiar emotions. Before long, our lives become Groundhog Days, with the same patterns producing the same results.

To create a different future, we must first make a different choice in the present.

Neuroscience offers an interesting perspective: Hebb’s principle, often summarised as “neurons that fire together wire together”, describes how repeated neural activity can strengthen connections between neurons. In practical terms, repeatedly practising a thought, behaviour or response can help make it more familiar and accessible.

The challenge is that our brains can reinforce patterns that limit us just as readily as those that help us grow. Dispenza encourages us to interrupt these automatic processes through conscious awareness and deliberate practice.

Instead of allowing yesterday’s experiences to dictate today’s responses, we can begin to rehearse a different way of thinking, feeling and behaving.

This is where change becomes a choice. Rather than waiting for circumstances to improve before feeling confident, motivated or grateful, we can practise cultivating these states while taking meaningful action towards our goals.

Explicit words from Goggins as he shares how he had nobody while he still broke the habit of being his fat, lazy, overweight, spraying for cockroaches, illiterate self – an inspiration for all leaving no excuses.

Re-mind and reminding become a daily discipline: bringing our attention back to the person we intend to become whenever familiar thoughts and behaviours pull us towards the past.

Write your goals. Speak them aloud. Think about them. Connect them with the feelings that inspire you to move in the right direction.

Be before becoming, as what is within shall be without.

Then translate those intentions into thoughts, feelings and actions.

The objective is not to control every outcome but to become more deliberate about the choices that influence them.

Stop living as a reaction to your past. Start acting as a creator of your future.

When your daily decisions begin to reflect your intended direction, you are no longer simply experiencing life as it happens; you are actively participating in shaping what comes next.

The Creative Process: Making Your Future Real

Creativity is often associated with producing something that has never existed before: a work of art, a business, an invention or a new idea. But what if the creative process could also be applied to the person you are becoming?

In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza explores how imagination, intention, emotion and meditation can be used to break familiar patterns and rehearse a different future. His central proposition is that personal transformation begins when we stop allowing our past experiences to define the limits of our future.

A new mind creates the possibility of a new destiny.

The first step is getting real about what you want. Not what your environment expects of you, what your past suggests is possible or what fear tells you to settle for, but what genuinely matters to you.

This requires shifting the lens of your mind: looking beyond familiar limitations to imagine a different way of living.

Dispenza’s meditation practice encourages you to move beyond your usual identity and surroundings, described through the phrase “no body, no place, no thing and no time”. In this state, the intention is to quieten habitual thinking and mentally rehearse the future you wish to create.

Conor McGregor specifically referencing the use of positive visualisation in his success.

Rather than simply visualising an outcome, imagine yourself already embodying the qualities required to achieve it. How would you think, feel, communicate and behave?

Let the thought become an experience, and allow the emotions associated with that future to inform how you act today.

Dispenza connects these ideas with universal intelligence and quantum physics, presenting consciousness as central to the creative process. These are philosophical and spiritual interpretations rather than established evidence that thoughts alone can manifest external events.

It should be remembered here that the mind can influence the body by stimulating the release of neurotransmitters and hormones, to say the least.

The practical value, therefore, lies in using imagination and emotional commitment to influence your choices and actions.

Create a new future, then live in it.

Turn your vision into daily behaviours, develop the necessary skills and remain committed when progress becomes uncomfortable.

Greatness is holding fast to a dream while doing the work required to realise it.

You cannot guarantee your destiny, but you can become an active participant in shaping it.

The creative process begins in the mind. It becomes real through the life you choose to build.

Conclusions

The book invites readers to get clear about what they truly want and cultivate the thoughts, emotions and sense of identity associated with that desired future.

Through visualisation and meditation, they are encouraged to think and feel as the person they aspire to become, bringing the emotional experience of their future into the present.

By aligning their internal state with their intended destiny, they emotionally embody the person they want to be, sending out the electromagnetic signals they hope to receive in return.

Within Dispenza’s framework, this creates a connection with the desired future in the quantum field, allowing it to materialise in physical reality in unexpected ways—as the future they envision begins to find them.

Those who practise these techniques, as illustrated in the videos, seem to achieve greater success than the rest of the population.

Related Books

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

Waking Up by Sam Harris

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson