What creates real human change?

I heard an interesting expert on the human mind and brain function last week. 

Dr. Joe Dispenza came to town to speak about how losing your mind can lead to the creation of whole new dimensions of your Self and reality.

You might recognize Joe as one of the scientists in the popular film “What the bleep do we know?” which came out in 2004.  That movie blew my mind!  I still watch it regularly to remind myself how much I’m missing in my limited day-to-day way of seeing my life.

Joe spoke here about how unlikely it is that any one of us will ever change very much if we keep doing things the same way and thinking the same thoughts which lead to the same emotions, like an endless, boring cycle in our brains.

Joe believes we are all “reality-producing machines.”  So to make any real changes in our lives we have to be able to think beyond our present circumstances, dream BIG, and then live as if that dream was already unfolding.

The examples he gave were Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  Both of these men saw little around them that would convince them that racism would change any time soon.  So they instead chose to live as if their own vision of a world without racism were already a reality.  In other words, they had to change their mind ahead of their actual real-life experiences.

So why don’t more of us do this?  Because we don’t believe we can change anything.  We don’t believe any of this visioning stuff works, so we instead get busy with our day-to-day lives and never get beyond that reality.

In this model, the only circumstances where real change is possible is through crisis or trauma.  Something big and undeniable may confront us and force us to consider other possibilities for our future.  In my case divorce and then job loss threw me for a loop, forcing me to think outside the box, and reconsider all of my previous assumptions about myself and my life.

According to Dr. Joe, this caused changes in my actual brain circuitry.  I began seeing the world differently right about the time “What the Bleep do we know?” came out.  I decided to change my mind and now it works better for me.  First I removed MANY of the limitations I had built around my existence.  I realized that I really could do anything if it was that important to me.

For me, crisis is when things get interesting!  My own private take away from Joe’s talk was the  revelation of why I unconsciously chose to became the crisis queen. Crisis is where change becomes possible!

Crisis opens up opportunities unseen before.  It creates interesting u-turns in our lives and somehow gives us permission to change something major.  When we change it is often to something we had only dreamed of before, in my case I finally became a writer after thinking about it for decades!

Crisis is exciting to me now.  It is a fool proof way of keeping life interesting!

Tagged as: brain chemistry and life changes, crisis and personal change, Gandhi, how to change your life, Joe Dispenza, Martin Luther King, racism