WTB: How can you differentiate what your mind is saying you need and what your cells are saying they want?

DISPENZA: It depends on which mind is asking the question. When you’re in the midst of change there is always a tug of war between what we consciously have declared for ourselves as a mind and what has become familiar to us because of our chemical continuity as a body. Normally most people have an intention, which is mind, but their body has been entrained to do something else physically, so the body wants something else. That’s why when people say “I want to change this about myself,” their body says, “Well, you haven’t trained me to be that way. You’ve trained me to be like this.” And so there’s this struggle. So we have to be able to train the mind and then actually demonstrate what we’re thinking and apply what we’ve learned. We have to personalize our intentions so that if we can modify our behavior we produce a new experience. Producing a new experience is the doing. Once we can accomplish what we set our mind out to do, that new experience produces a whole new set of chemicals in the body. Then the body goes “Whoa, this is a different experience!” At the end of an experience, all of our senses: seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, hearing, are accumulating data from the environment in a different way and sending a rush of chemicals back to the brain. So now the body has a new chemical experience. Now the body is finally getting a new signal to reinforce the mind’s intent.

The key is, we can’t be satisfied with producing the experience once. We have to be able to reproduce the experience consistently. And once we’re able to reproduce the experience at will, on command and demonstrate it over and over again, now we’re starting to hardwire it in the brain; we are creating a new habit. So the process is going from thinking, to doing, to being. Thinking is learning, contemplating and deciding to do something. Doing is then applying what we learn and personalizing it, or demonstrating it so we can modify our behavior to have a new experience. After repeated doing and practicing, you just are it naturally. It is what the mystics have called “being it.” The question has to arise: What are we thinking, doing and being everyday to create new experiences with new emotional events that reinforce what we’ve intentionally thought? If we are thinking the same way, doing the same things and being the same person with the same feelings, chances are we haven’t changed our brain at all. As a matter of fact, if we process the same feelings everyday, it means that we really haven’t had any new experiences.

WTB: You have to really want to change something.

DISPENZA: You have to do your homework. You have to ask, “What are my weaknesses? What are the things I want to change about myself? Who do I have to become? Where do I lose it and at what part of the day? What pushes my buttons?” You have to be aware of these questions and then, instead of watching the television, sit and think all those things through. That process actually causes the brain to fire in different ways and out of routine patterns so that circuits hook up in different combinations and make new levels of mind. So, the beginning stage is becoming self-aware, then it is followed with accumulation of self-knowledge. Then a plan has to be implemented. If I want to be joyful, clear, unattached, present, etc., I’m going to have to keep reminding myself that’s who I want to be. That’s my sphere of influence right there. Now I’ve got enough thinking to go on to start altering the hardware in my brain.

WTB: So it could be as simple as you just imagining yourself getting all the way to dinnertime…

DISPENZA: …without having a fit of anger, etc.

WTB: And just keep going over that in your head and that’s going to help you that much more?

DISPENZA: The more we use the brain in the mental rehearsal process the better. Then mental rehearsal is followed by physical rehearsal. The union of mental and physical rehearsal is an alignment of thoughts and actions which then provides a new experience-- a new way of being. We ultimately wind up with a state of being that becomes a new hardwired state and neuroscience shows that as we do this process and we pay attention and we use the most newly formed part of the brain called the frontal lobe, the frontal lobe can allow us to make whatever we’re thinking about more real than anything else. It allows us to select what things are important either in our mind or our environment

WTB: How can you practice using your frontal lobe more instead of just staying on a reactionary fight or flight automatic pilot?

DISPENZA: It takes no longer allowing something external to you, in your environment, to cause you to think than it does to think for yourself. But this is where people get lost in their life. We’re so used to being in reaction. We’re so used to our environment turning on the circuits in our brain to cause us to think. When this occurs, our life can never be greater than our circumstances. The actual antithesis to this is actually asking the questions and then forcing our brain to come up with the answers without having something external from us turn it on. That is moving from effect to cause. And that’s not something in this society that’s revered too much, because entertainment, and sports, and convenience, and internet, and information is so accessible to us that to actually sit down and turn off those stimuli and ask questions and wait for answers from within ourselves is a dying art. It’s so much easier to just turn on the television and say, “Oh I feel so much better now.”

WTB: Oh, that’s so true!

DISPENZA: So that’s what my book is about. It’s about first learning what those people who had personal healings did. How our brain is wired. What parts are hard-wired and what parts are changeable. How we learn and what we experience and what it does for our brain. How we develop new circuits. What neuroscience says about people who repeat things with intention. What stress does to our bodies, what emotions do to our bodies. How did we turn on the genetics that create disease? How do we use the frontal lobe properly? How do we mentally rehearse? And finally, how do we go from thinking, to doing, to being?