The Resilient Mind - Feeling Stuck? Here’s How to Change Your Reality - Dr. Joe Dispenza

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Dr. Joe Dispenza is a renowned author, speaker, and educator in the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics. He has spent over three decades studying the mind-body connection and the ways in which we can harness our thoughts and emotions to create positive change in our lives.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSpecial thanks to Lewis Howes, subscribe to his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/lewishowesWatch the full interview on Lewis's page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ezAOgZGXKw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Feeling Stuck. Here's how to change your reality with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. If 95% of who we are by the time we're in the middle of our life, a set of hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions, automatic habits and unconscious behaviors,

and immediate emotional responses, 95% is programmed into our biology. It's not enough to think positively, because you can think positively with the 5% of your conscious mind, but we're programmed subconsciously to feel negative, right? So mind and body are in opposition. And so the work is, you know, if your personality creates your personal reality, and then your personality is made of how you think, how you act, and how you feel, then the first step to change, to truly change, is kind of uncluttering ourselves from those programs.

And we've discovered, based on our research, is the best way to do that is to become conscious of those unconscious thoughts. So conscious of those unconscious thoughts that we don't go unconscious to them in our waking day. You know, I can, it's too hard. I'll never make it. I'm a failure. You know, it's someone else's fault. And then, you know, a habit is when you've done something so many times that the body now knows how to do it better than the conscious spine, the body's programmed, basically behave as if it's in the past, right? So think about any habit that you've ever broken.

The first thing that happens is you feel uncomfortable. The body's craving, you know. It's familiar known patterns. And so you have to become conscious. and then many times when we're breaking a habit, you forget and you go unconscious. So the fundamental question is, how many times do you have to forget until you stop forgetting and start remembering? How many times is that?

I don't know. It just depends on the person. That's the moment of change. And then emotions, of course, are chemical residue. There are records from the past and the stronger the emotions we feel from some past event, the more we pay attention to it and the arousal from some, you know, a stressful event causes the brain to freeze a frame and take a snapshot. And that's a long-term memory, right?

So when the person thinks about the event, they're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body as if the event was occurring. And it just takes a thought and a feeling, an image and an emotion, a stimulus and response, and you can condition your body to subconsciously become the mind of that emotion. Now the body's literally in the past. So it takes an enormous amount of energy, an enormous amount of awareness to catch yourself from going unconscious. And the only way you become conscious, the only way you get good at changing your conscience or your consciousness is to catch yourself going unconscious. And sooner or later, if you get really good at it, you begin to disentangle from the program and you begin to objectify your subject.

of self. And there's dissonance that goes on in the brain and body that's very uncomfortable. It seems really hard. It seems like we can't see there's an end. There's circuitry that's no longer firing and wiring. There's no longer the same chemicals that are produced. You're no longer signaling the same genes or the same hormones. The body's in flux. You know, it's in dissonance. It's out of order. And most people return back to the familiar, right? And they say, oh, this feels right to me. Well, that feels familiar, right? So if a person is stuck in their life, the first step to change is examining your thoughts, paying attention to how you speak and how you act, and look at these emotions that keep you connected to the past and finally decide,

does this emotion belong in my future? And I think many people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality. And it doesn't work. We literally have to become someone else. And that's, it's fundamental. We already know this. We already know this. And so many people don't want to go through the work of taking a look at themselves because it's tedious. It's easier to turn on the television or scroll through your social media or make a phone call or get distracted, right? But we discovered that in our seven-day week-long retreats, if you give people something to do, if they understand that the philosophy, the theory, they understand the knowledge base of what they're doing, and you give them something

to do, and so they can begin to change. Right around the second day, people start, you know, breaking through, they start seeing a different landscape. They're no longer tormenting their body with the same thoughts that produce the same emotions. They're no longer complaining and blaming and making excuses. And they're thinking differently because they're challenged to learn a lot of information. They're challenged to learn information and knowledge, and that causes people to think differently. And then if you start to think differently because you learn new information, you begin to make different choices. And if you make different choices, you can begin to do different things and behave in different ways, and you can create new experiences, you can feel

new emotions. And that's exactly what we discovered that changes a person's biology. The second point from that question is many people are waiting for something out there in their life to change to take away the lack or the separation of not having the life that they want. I mean, think about it. Our senses plug us into three-dimensional reality and the way that we create is we create based on lack. You see the sports car, you see the wardrobe, you see the scarf, you see the boat, whatever it is that a person wants. the lack of not having that particular thing causes the brain to naturally dream about having it. The challenge is, is that the only way for most people to get that dream to actually become actualized in three-dimensional reality, you've got to do something.

You've got to do something because there's the distance between the thought of what you want and the experience of having it is called time, and time is separation, right? So we've been hypnotized and conditioned to believe that when the experience happens in our life, well, think about it. You work hard, you save money, you make sacrifices, you know, you put in your extra time, you know, you work and you start accumulating success or abundance or wealth, and you start thinking, okay, I want the boat, right? and then you spend a year saving up all your money, you get the boat.

When you get the boat, the experience produces an emotion that takes away the lack of not having it. But if you're creating reality and it's not working, then many people will spend their entire life living in lack or separation. And we cannot attract anything in our life that we feel separate from. It's impossible. If you work hard and you put in your time and, you know, matter to matter, you're, you know, getting your behaviors to match your intentions and your actions equal to your thoughts. You're getting your mind and body working together. You're going to run into your goal.

You're going to run into your experience. The experience of your abundance, your experience of your thing that you want takes away the lack of not having it, right? But some people are creating, but they're spending their whole life and lack, waiting for their world to change to feel abundant, right? And we discovered that that's kind of the opposite of the way people actually get what they want. When they start holding a very clear vision of their future, and we call that intention, and you need a coherent brain to do that, and we work diligently to get people's brains tuned up to order.

The more coherent the brain, the more high functioning it is, the greater the signal. And it turns out that you have to feel the emotion of the future before it happens, because the emotion is the energy that's going to drive your body to that end to have the experience. And at the same time, if you're truly practicing feeling the emotion of your future, you won't be a lack. In fact, if you feel like your future has already happened, you'll never look for it. You only look for it when you feel separate from it. So it's kind of an analogy of like, you know, cause and effect, you know, waiting for your healing to feel gratitude, waiting for your abundance to feel worthy or successful, you know,

waiting for your relationship to feel love, you know, the old model of reality of cause and effect. The new model of reality is causing an effect. Causing an effect. Yeah, the moment you feel gratitude, your healing begins. Wow. The moment you're empowered and you're worthy, you're stepping or generating abundance, you're stepping towards your success. Now, the moment you're in love with yourself and love with life and you see beauty in all things, it's natural that you'll you'll attract an equal. So that's causing an effect, right? And so all you need is a clear intention and an elevated emotion.

And when you combine that clear intention and elevated emotion, just like when a person is remembering the past and feeling the emotion, if you start holding the intention and you feel the emotion, the stronger the emotion you feel, the more you remember the vision and you can begin to remember your future. Why is that important? because biologically, if you do it well, your brain will look like it's already happened. And if you do it really well, genetically, your body will begin to change to look like it's already

happened. In other words, our data shows that in seven days at a week-long event, when people really get in the creative process, they upregulate thousands of genes and metabolites to suggest that they're living in a whole new environment. The body's so objective. It doesn't know the difference between a real-life experience that creates the emotion and the emotion that we can create by thought alone to the body. It's exactly the same. So the body begins to believe it's living in that future. And of course, there's the thought and the feeling. There's the image and the emotion. There's a stimulus and response. We can condition the body emotionally to begin to believe it's living in the future. And if the environment signals the gene and it does, the end product of an

experience in the environment is emotion, you could actually regulate. genes, upregulate genes ahead of the environment. That's exactly what we discovered. People's bodies and brains change enough that it looks like the event has already happened. Now, this is where the fun part starts. Because if there's physical evidence in your brain and body that it has already happened, time to relax. This is one of the synchronicities. This is when the opportunities, this is one of the coincidences. All of a sudden, you no longer have to go anywhere and do anything to get it. Somehow there's an attraction, you know, they're coming to you. They're coming even without having to do anything. And so it's just a reframing of our understanding of how to

create. You can get really good at creating a lot of things matter to matter. You can, you know, study. You can, you know, you can learn from your mistakes. You can, you know, get, you can get consulting. You can do all these things and you can get really good at doing it. But there's another way. There is another way. And so to answer the question about being stuck, many people are living their whole entire life, not consciously. They're just subconsciously waiting for their wealth to happen so they could feel abundant, waiting for their new relationship to feel love, you know, that old model of reality. In order for you to create a new personal reality, you have to change your personality.

In other words, nothing changes in our life until we change. Now look, it's really simple. Just look, just make it. it really simple. Let's just say somebody wants to have a goal to make a certain amount of money. Yes. Or they want to get in shape, right? And here's the personality who's on the couch, who's, you know, eating free-dos, yeah, drinking a beer, twinkies, you know, laying around, you know, not motivated at all. And the person wants to get healthy or the person wants to become abundant.

There's got to be a lot of things that have to change. in order for you to be the personality of abundance because it isn't it is an abundance it's who you become. It's who you become in the process. It's almost like this person is out of alignment from the goal, the vision, the dream that they want to have. They have to be in more alignment of the person that can create that and harmonize with it is what I'm going to hear you say. And it's it's let's demystify it. If you want to become abundance, study abundant people. Get as much knowledge and resources, enough connections in your brain so you have a you have a storehouse of information for you can dream what it is to be abundant because if you study

abundant people, they made a lot of mistakes. They got people betrayed them. People got stole from them. They lost everything. They, you know, they had a journey. And the differences, they just went one more time. They just didn't see failure. They just kept going. So what are the qualities and characteristics that you would have to embody to become that abundant person and get busy doing that. Get busy doing that in terms of change and use it as an experiment. Like, if I change, will my life change, right? If I give up lack, if I give up fear, yeah, it sounds easy theoretically. You're going to have to put your time in.

You're going to have to work inwardly. you're going to have to do some surveillance on your own thoughts and, you know, how you act and how you feel. And you got to get really good, so good at doing it with your eyes closed. You've got to do it with your eyes open. It means you can't default in your life, right? Yeah, when life happens and there's distractions and people in your face and people cutting off emotional. One of the most response and you seamlessly return back to the old person. It's the worst.

But that's why we have another day. Yes. It's a new day. Like, you're okay. How did I do? One day, one lifetime. Like, how did I do? I sucked.

Okay? God's not up there with a laptop keeping track. You know, like you got another shot at it the next day. So can you learn from the last day and say, when did I fall from grace? Oh, I reacted to that person or circumstance with the same emotion. That emotion caused me to behave as if I was in my past and believe in my past. And that's when you no longer see the future because the emotion that you're feeling is keeping you connected to the past. You only believe in your future when you feel the emotion of your future.

So enthusiasm and theos filled with God, inspiration, inspire the movement of energy, right? The energy that it takes, the looking forward to, the optimism, that is what drives us to our dreams. And you've just got to be able to sustain that state of being independent of anyone or anything in your life. And if you can, get ready because that's when your life changes. You're literally thinking differently. You're acting differently and you're feeling differently. That's a new personality and that means a new personal reality. That's the experiment.

It's the experiment to try it out. So it's just uncovering that 95%. You can say, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, with the 5% of your conscious mind. And your body's saying, no, you're not, dude. You're miserable. You're unhappy. You're suffering.

The thought never makes it past the brainstem to the body. Get the body in the right emotional state. And then we could only accept, believe, and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to the emotional state of the body. I'm curious personally, is there something in the last decade where you shifted your personality so much that everything started to accelerate upward for you with your health, your business, your relationships? Was there something that you changed personally, Dr. Joe, that you created the new personal reality, even though you'd been studying this for a long time, but you've something? somehow reflected on what you were doing, whether something was working or not, that you shifted, and boom, it unlocked something new for you. Well, of course.

I mean, what I do takes an enormous amount of sacrifice. You know, I'm on the road over seven months out of the year. We're running week-long events just about once a month. We're doing advanced follow-ups, and we have research, and we have, you know, we have nonprofits, and we have Navy SEALs and Special Ops and indigenous tribes. and we're really excited about making cultural change. I think one of the key moments for me, Lewis, was when I was writing my last book, you know, when you write a book, you know this.

If you're writing a scientific book, you're always thinking about the one person that's going to judge you or to take a shot at you. And I just remember thinking when I wrote the book and then I was thinking about writing the forward and I was like, my God, you know, I really don't care what people think anymore. You know, the reason I can say that is because I know with certainty that I'm contributing to people's lives. I know that. I've seen the stage testimonials that are unbelievable. I seen the data in science, the scientific discoveries that we're making what we're publishing. I mean, we are greater than we think. And I know that because the data is greater than we think.

And we're studying people. We're studying our community. We're not studying. Buddhist monks or we're not studying nuns with 40 years of devotion, you know, in a monastery. We're studying human beings just like you and me. And so when I realized, my God, like, I really don't care what people think because I know on a deep level that I'm making a difference in people's lives. And when the science started coming out, I was just like, oh my God, there's, this is no longer pseudoscience. We have the largest database in the world on meditation.

We have so much information. We measure everything. Brains, EEGs, FMRIs. We measure heart coherence. We measure HRV. We measure blood. We measure urine. We measure tears.

We measure microbiome. We measure saliva. We measure breath. We measure breast milk. Anything you can imagine, we measure. We measure the energy of the room. And we have never been disappointed with the outcomes. It's always greater than we think.

So when I kind of thought about it and I thought, well, I really don't, I really don't care anymore. I know that I'm making a difference. Those people are probably not going to like me anyway. So let them judge me, right? But I know that if this resonates with people, they give them a formula for change and understand that when I change, my life changes. And I've interviewed enough people that have had remarkable remissions from all kinds of of chronic health conditions that have blown my mind. And they were not doing their meditations to heal. They were doing their meditations to change. And they understood that when I change,

I heal. When I open my heart, my body's so objective. It doesn't know the difference between a real life experience that's creating this love and the love that I'm creating on my own. My body's believing it's living in a nurturing environment. Okay. If I have the intention, when I feel this emotion to signal genes, our data shows 100% of the people. 100% of the people that were in that state were able to literally by intention upregulate genes. So I have a lot of hope in human potential. And a turning point for me was when I realized that on some level, I really don't care. I'm interested in the people that are open and really want to experiment

because I think this is a time in history where it's not enough to know. It's a time in history to know how. I think one of the key things is to never take criticism personally. Sometimes feedback that you get that's critical is good for you because, you know, you know this. You take a look at yourself on camera and you're like, oh, I'm going to cinch that in a little bit. You know, criticism causes us to become self-aware, right? It gets abusive when you attack the character of the person. And you should never take that personally.

Like people, I don't really, I don't care. Like, I really don't know what people say. I really don't care. The other thing is you've got to be really badass good at something. You can't, you can't be mediocre. You've got to put your time in again. You've got to be an expert. You've got to know your message.

You've got to know what you're doing. You've got to know that you know. Like, you've got to be at that level of expertise. You've got to be that competent that you're immersed in whatever field that you're in and you're current with it all. Then the criticism becomes actually an exchange of information. And you can disagree and have a great conversation. Yeah.

And I think that when you assault somebody's character, it's a distraction, right? So I would never take it personally at this point. I really don't care, especially if you're mission-driven and you've got a vision and that's where you're going. Use the criticism as a healthy way to check in and say, is that true for me? Yeah. Okay, he's got a point or she's got a point. Okay, I get that.

I'm going to change this. but this part, I know to be true. And I do that all the time. Like, people say, you should do this. No, no. I know where we're going. Like, I have to make those decisions. So I think it's healthy.

I think we're living in a little bit of a crazy time where it's very easy to take shots of people. But I think if you're really an expert on what you do, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to take you down. Yeah. You feel like you have to be fully healed in order to receive love in a new relationship? or if you're brokenhearted and broken, you can still receive love? I think love heals in a lot of ways, but it's got to be really unconditional love.

It really has to be love that transcends conditions. I love you because, but it's just kind of a state. Practicing feeling love is one of the things. things that we work on as a community. Feeling frustration, feeling, you know, impatience, feeling resentment, it really changes the way the heart functions. When you're living by those emotions, the heart basically is starting to become aroused. It's getting a rush of chemistry, but you're not running, you're not fighting, and you're not hiding, but it's pumping. So it's pumping against the closed system and it causes the heart to kind of get strained and beat out of order.

When the heart is incoherent like that, the waves that are created that are incoherent cancel each other out. The energy of the heart goes down and you trust less, you're less inspired, you're less affectionate, you're less kind, you're less caring. Because the heart has a different consciousness, right? And then the other hormonal centers of the body. So when we do our work, we start many of the meditations with opening our hearts because the heart is the creative center.

And when energy makes it to the heart, we've seen this over and over again. Once there's enough energy in the heart, we've seen it like you put your attention on it and you start to relax into it. There's a very low frequency that builds up in the heart. That's the energy that the heart uses to beat. So you're giving it life. And we know that if you can get really good at that. If you slow your breathing down, you slow your brain waves down and you get out of survival

and you start to see in more pictures and images, you're, You're kind of in a relaxed state. But when you're starting to relax into the heart, the heart, we've measured this enough times. It does two things. It sends a wave of energy, like grabbing a big sheet and going like this. It just sends a wave of energy to the brain. It tells the brain to get creative, dream. The heart is telling you, fall in love with your future.

Pick a new possibility that you would love to experience. And the brain goes into that super creative state. So the forebrain is the creative center. The heart is the creative center. It's the union of opposites, of polarity, of dualities, where wholenesses begins. So the heart informs the brain to become creative, but the other side of that, to answer your question,

we see this over and over again, especially when we work with veterans with PTSD. The heart resets the baseline for a past trauma in the brain. The heart tells the brain it's over. like the past is over. And the person has a new view of their past, and they have a new view of their future. Thank you for tuning in.

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