Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Do This Every Morning to Reduce Stress and Anxiety | Dr Joe Dispenza #473

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Once we learn how to unlock the power of our mind, we can create huge change in our lives for our stress levels, our health and our happiness. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 266 of the podcast with Dr Joe Dispenza, a New York Times best-selling author, speaker and researcher. Dr Joe has spent decades studying neuroscience, meditation and the effect our thoughts have on our health and wellbeing. In this clip, he explains the 3 different kinds of stress, how chronic emotional stress can drive ill health and disease, and he shares some practical strategies to help us break free. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/266 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 266 of the podcast with Dr. Joe Dispenza, a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and researcher. Dr. Joe has spent decades studying neuroscience, meditation, and the effect our thoughts have on our health and well-being. And in this clip, he explains the three different kinds of stress, how chronic emotional stress can drive ill health and

disease, and he shares some practical strategies to help us break free. A lot of this is a complete paradigm shift for the current way most of society is and the way modern society is kind of taught. If I talk through the lens of a medical doctor, about 80% of what we see is in some way connected to our collective modern lifestyles. I'm not putting blame on people. I'm just saying it's the way we are living these days is leading to not just things like obesity, type 2 diabetes, but also anxiety, depression. But I've got to say, over the last few years, I've been wondering, well, yes, I still maintain that's the case. And I still want to help people

make those lifestyle changes. But actually, I've realized it's not the root cause. I can go further upstream. Yes, lifestyle is important. If I can help people change, yes, it changes their health. yes, lifestyle is important. If I can help people change, yes, it changes their health. But the way we think, our mental well-being, our happiness, I have actually come to the conclusion over the last year, so that's even more important than lifestyle. Because if we change the way we think and approach the world and respond to people and external events rather than unconsciously reacting, well, that creates a new environment in our body where we naturally make better lifestyle choices. In fact, those lifestyle choices no longer feel like an effort because a lot of the time, those lifestyle behaviors

are simply a way for us to manage the stress in our lives. I mean, how would you see that? Do you agree with that? Do you have a different perspective? I'm just very, very interested to hear your thoughts. No, no, I absolutely agree with it. I absolutely do. And I just think the one thing, if it took you five years of living in chronic stress and living, and what are the emotions of stress and survival aggression anger hatred um competition judgment insecurity envy jealousy pain suffering guilt shame fear anxiety depression hopelessness powerlessness those are all derived from the hormones of stress and psychology calls the normal human states of consciousness. Those are altered states of consciousness.

And so then if you're living in emergency and your response to your coworker, to your boss, to the traffic, to the news, to whatever it is, weakens the organism. And you're switching on that emergency system over time. No organism can live in emergency mode for an extended period of time. You're drawing from the body's vital resources and you're converting all of its energy into chemistry for some threat real or imagined. Okay, so then if you keep doing that in chronic conditions, there's no energy for growth

and repair. There's no energy for long-term building projects. The immune system dials down. The digestive system becomes out of phase. Hormones change. Our cardiovascular system changes. Our respiratory system changes. This is because the body is believing it's living in a dangerous environment. Okay. When you perceive a threat it's living in a dangerous environment, okay? When you perceive a threat or a danger in your life, you turn on that primitive nervous system and you're mobilizing all your body's resources for some threat, real or imagined. No problem if it's short-term. But the chronic, long-term effects of the hormones of stress downregulate genes and

create disease. Now, the problem is we can turn on that stress response just by thought alone. We can think about our problems. We can imagine the worst case scenario in our life. We can capture bitter memories and do that over and over and over again. So the problem then becomes that the arousal of these stress hormones that create fear, that create anger, aggression, or create pain, give the body a rush of energy. Now, people become almost like an addict. They need the problems in their life to reaffirm their addiction to that arousal, to that emotion.

And now, if you can turn that response on by thought alone, number one, you become addicted to your own thoughts. And number two, you become addicted to the very life, the life that you don't even like. So then you ask the person, why are you this way? And they'll say, I am this way because of this event that happened to me five years ago. Well, what that really means is they had some really profoundly emotional experience. And the stronger the emotion we feel, the more altered we feel inside of us, the more we pay attention to what causes it. And the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot. And that's called the long-term memory. And so then that person then is altered biologically from that trauma, from that event.

And what they don't know is every time they remember the event, they're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body as if the event was occurring. Okay, well, then you tell the person, why are you this way? Well, then they'll tell person, why are you this way? Well, then they'll tell the story about how it happened. And the research on memory says that 50% of that story, the way you recount it is actually not accurate. It's actually not the truth that people don't have the same brain. So they embellish the story to excuse themselves from changing. And if

they make it more difficult or they add more components to it, then now they'll reaffirm their identity in being a certain way. That story becomes very important to them. And they believe it, they behave it as it, and they ultimately become it. And so then can you use those same principles and begin to start to manage your inner world? And so if there's three types of stress, physical, chemical, and emotional. Physical stress being trauma, injuries, accidents, falls. Chemical stress, you know, viruses, bacteria, pesticides, pollutants, toxins, hangovers, whatever.

Emotional stress, that's the big one. That's family tragedies, second mortgages, single parenting, 401ks, whatever it is. It tends to be then that the difficult one to manage really is our emotional stress. So if you can help people to get more physically balanced, more chemically balanced, and to become more emotionally balanced, then the effects of their personal change will be expedited and there'll be a longer duration. So the person sees you for six months, they start a great program, they start making the right choices and they start feeling better. And then once they make the wrong choice, then it's a downward spiral back to the old unconscious habits and emotional condition.

They feel unworthy again and they return back to your clinic or they return back to your consultation and they come back with the same exact conditions. And the simple solution is, yeah, because you return back to the same personality and you're feeling the same emotions and your body's back to believing it's in the same environmental condition. So if your personality creates your personal reality, and I believe that, and your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel, then the present personality who's listening to this podcast has created the present personal reality called their life.

Not your ex, not your parents, not your boss. You create your life. So it makes sense then if you wanted to create a new personal reality, you'd have to change your personality. In other words, if you want to change your life, you have to change. And nothing changes in your life until you change. So then this first step in change then, 95% of who we are is a set of unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Then the first step is to become conscious of your unconscious thoughts,

become so aware of how you behave. Do you complain? Do you blame? Do you make excuses? Do you judge? Do you, are you aggressive? And then look at the emotions. What is this emotion I'm feeling? Wow, this is guilt. This is sadness. This is victimization. This is unhappiness. Name it so now you're so conscious of it that you don't go unconscious and return back to the same self. and say, okay, before I grab my cell phone, before I get up and run through my routine,

you know, my automatic routine where people are on automatic pilot and a habituation of what they did yesterday and their body's dragging them into the same predictable future based on what they did in the past and they've lost their free will to choose, to become conscious to a set of automatic programs.

Well, if the familiar past is the known and the predictable future is the known, there's only one place where the unknown exists. And that's the sweet spot of the present moment. So you said, OK, let me get present here. Let me remind myself of those thoughts I don't want to think. Let me remind myself of the behaviors I want to change. Let me review in my mind the emotions that caused me to move to a lower denominator. Let me become so conscious of that that I won't go unconscious again. Let me remind myself who I do want to be, how I do want to think, how I do want to act, how I do want to feel. And let me see if I can get so good at doing

this with my eyes closed when I start my day that I can do it with my eyes open. If you have people present, really, and you teach them how to stretch a little further, instead of reaching for their cell phone or posting something on social media, they're going to stick with it and be curious. What's on the other side of this limited thought? What's on the other side of this familiar emotion? What's on the other side of this complaining and judging and analyzing? What's on the other side of this familiar emotion? What's on the other side of this complaining and judging and analyzing? What's on the other side of it? Now, there's not a lot of agreement in society that says, Rangan, you have to sit with yourself and to know thyself, to become so conscious of those unconscious thoughts, behaviors,

and emotions that I won't go unconscious again. Yeah, I mean, this is so powerful. You mentioned curiosity. I think that's such a wonderful emotion, thought-feeding value for us all to have and approach our life with. What might it look like if I didn't wake up and feel like this every day? Even just to imagine that that's a possibility. Be curious about that. I think that's very empowering. You also said that many of us have become addicted to a life that we don't even like. That has stayed with me. That is so powerful. And I think people really need to sit with that. We're rehearsing, many of us, these negative emotions. We're rehearsing stress. We're getting better at being in stress because we're practicing every day. And you're offering a possibility to say, hey, listen, it may be

uncomfortable at first. We know, we talk about comfort zones, right? You know, go for a longer run than usual. Go out your comfort zone. Have a cold shower, right? Get out your comfort zone. shower, right? Get out of your comfort zone. But what your work, I think, speaks to is that we can get out of our comfort zone in our minds. So not with physical actions, but in our minds, let's get out of your comfort zone, think differently. People, Dr. Joe, may be struggling and going, okay, look, I get that. Yes, I don't like the way that I think, but I don't know how to change that. Right. So in terms of moving us into maybe some practical things people can do, firstly, you need awareness. Hopefully this conversation is giving people that awareness,

but if people are not aware, how can they become aware? And once they become aware, what sort of things should they start to do to start making those changes? What sort of things should they start to do to start making those changes? Yeah, thank you for teasing that out. That's such a great question. You know, my interest is to give people the tools so that they have within their reach all the things they need to begin to apply and become scientists in their life. People don't know, if you don't know that those stress hormones are addictive, then you think they have power over you. If you don't

think that you can change your thought, just because you have a thought, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. And the moment I realized that, I was free, right? And if you isolate yourself a lot and you don't, you're not out in the world because of whatever, you'll start to believe every thought that you think is the truth. And so that challenge then of saying, okay, I do truly wanna be happy. I do truly wanna be healthy.

I do truly wanna have a life that is really empowering, that I feel good about. Okay, if you're telling the story of your past every single day, and 50% of that isn't even the truth, then you're reliving a miserable life you never even had. All for the reason to excuse yourself from change. Stop telling the story of your past and start telling the story of your future. Stop romancing your past and start romancing your future. Why not fall in love with your future as much as you've fallen in love with your past? If I do this as an experiment, then

you're scientifically minded. Make your life the experiment. Make your life the experiment. Okay, there is a very strong change that goes on when people start making the effort. So simple thing to do, wake up in the morning before you reach for your cell phone, ask yourself, who do I no longer wanna be? Let me write down the thoughts today. Let me become so conscious of I can't, this is horrible, I hate my life.

Let's just stop that thought because that thought is gonna produce a chemical that's gonna signal your body to feel a certain way. Let's become aware of how I behave. Write down two behaviors. Do I complain? Do I blame? Do I rush?

Write them down and just commit them. Review them in your mind. What emotions do I wanna no longer feel today or at least stay conscious of? Do I feel sadness? Do I feel suffering? Do I feel fear? Do I feel anxiety? Let me just become conscious of those. And if I start feeling that, I just want to become aware and see if I can change it. Okay, what do I want to change to? When I feel that, let me think this way. Let me review that. Let me review how I'm going to

behave. Let me rehearse it in my mind. Let me teach my body emotionally. I want to be able to feel this feeling over and over again so well. I'll keep practice feeling it till I can feel it on command. Wow. Now that's, that's, that's greatness. You know, that's, that's getting out of the bleachers and getting on the playing field and, and it's not going to be a linear process. It's, but catching yourself and when it matters the most is when it's the hardest that's when it matters the most yeah i mean just uh wonderful right wonderful hearing you speak with such passion i love the idea that we should be our own experiment because what i'm hearing is listen there's no negative side of it say try it right try it there's no downside to trying to change the way that you think and

practicing it and developing it like a skill. And I think that's the thing for me. This is a skill that you can practice, you can get better at. Just as if you practice running, you may get faster and run for further distances. Well, let's also practice thinking in a different way. So I thought that was really important for people to have in the front of their minds. I practice on myself. I am in my early 40s and genuinely have never felt this good, Dr. Joe. Calm, content, happy. I know I'm responsible for my emotions and my thoughts. So I've now trained probably over five or six years to get to the point now where external events just don't, I don't allow them anymore to influence my state. And what you said about it not being linear. Yeah, I have a daily practice of morning routine, which has a bit of meditation, a bit of breath work, a bit of positive mindsets.

And you just keep showing up, you keep doing it. And then before you know it, you're in some sort of stressful, well, you're in a situation in life that previously you would have found incredibly stressful and gone on, you know, just like this negative mindset afterwards, which would have lead to all kinds of compensatory behaviors. And you're like, oh, wow, I didn't react to that. I could see that big space between stress and response. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family.

And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it

free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.