The Resilient Mind - Your Brain Is Living in the Past (That’s Why Change Feels So Hard) - Dr Joe Dispenza

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

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_Journal🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Your Brain is Living in the Past, and it's why change feels so hard with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Your brain is a memory bank. It's a record of everything you've learned and experienced at this moment. We could say that your brain is a record or an artifact of the past.

So most people, when they wake up in the morning and the, they start their day. A brand new day where there's so many different possibilities, the first thing they do is they get their brain working and they start activating circuits in their brain that are connected to memories of the past. So they think about the problems in their life and those problems are connected to certain people and certain things and certain times and places. And every one of those problems then has an emotion associated with them. So if thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of your body,

and how you think and how you feel creates a state of being, if you're living by familiar and same thoughts and you're feeling the same emotions and emotions are a record of the past, we could say that most people wake up in the morning and their entire state of being is in the past, in the familiar past. Now, every thought has a frequency.

Every thought produces an energy. So we could say then from a quantum perspective, you're thinking the same known thoughts, the majority of the time that are producing the same frequencies. So then the same frequency is the same energy. And your life shouldn't change. And the only way your life can change is to change your energy. And nobody changes until they change their energy. Most people then, they have that vision of the future, but they give up on that vision

because in order for them to arrive at that vision, they have to do something. They have to think differently. They have to act differently. They have to feel differently. It's so much easier to make the same choice every single day. And the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, you're going to feel uncomfortable because you're stepping from the known into the unknown. So some people would rather cling to their self-pity than take a chance and possibility. They'd rather tell the story of their past instead of telling the story of their future. They'd rather believe in their past instead of believe in their future. It's so much more important, though, to romance your future instead of romance your past.

And I think if people understood that they could actually arrive at it, I think many people have done this already in their life. I think everybody at least once in their life has done something great. And when they did something great, they just made up their mind. and they made a decision in that moment to do something or to change with such firm intention. But the amplitude of energy in making that choice caused their body to respond to their mind, that the choice that they were making to change became a moment in time that they would never forget. And the stronger the emotion they felt in order to change, the more they remembered the choice.

And we could say then that they're giving their body a taste of their own. future emotionally and they're literally aligning to that destiny. We discovered that if you keep doing that every day, somehow you arrive at that destiny and your biology will literally begin to change to look like you're living in a different life. To change then is to be greater than your environment, to be greater than the conditions in your world. Then the environment is that seductive. So then why is meditation the tool? Well, let's sit down, let's close our eyes. Let's disconnect from your outer environment. So if you're seeing less things,

there's less stimulation going to your brain. If you're playing soft music or you have ear plugs in, less sensory information coming to your brain, so you're disconnecting from your environment. If you can sit your body down and tell it to stay like an animal, stay right here.

I'm going to feed you when we're done. You can get up and check your emails. You can do all your texts. But right now, you're going to sit there and obey me. So then when you do that properly, and you're not eating anything or smelling anything or tasting anything, you're not up experiencing and feeling anything, you would have to agree with me that you're being defined by a thought, right? So when the body wants to go back to its emotional past, you become aware that your attention is on that emotion, and where you place your attention is where you place your energy. You're siphoning your energy out of the present moment into the past, and you become aware of that. And you settle your body back down in the present moment because it's saying, well, it's 8 o'clock.

You normally get upset because you're in traffic around this time. And here you are sitting and we're used to feeling anger and you're off schedule. Oh, it's 11 o'clock and usually check your emails and judge everybody. Well, the body's looking for that predictable chemical state. Every time you become aware that you're doing that and your body is craving those emotions and you settle it back down into the present moment, you're telling the body it's no longer the mind, that you're the mind. And now your will is getting greater than the program. And if you keep doing this over and over again, over and over again, over and over again,

just like training a stallion or a dog, it's just going to say, I'm going to sit. And the moment that happens, and the body's no longer the mind, when it finally surrenders, there's a liberation of energy. We go from particle to wave, from matter to energy, and we free ourselves from the chains of those emotions that keep us in the familiar past. And we've seen this thousands of times. In fact, we can actually predict it now on a brain scan. But if you start understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it,

and the stronger the emotion you feel, the more you're going to pay attention to the picture in your mind, you begin to remember your future. You are branding that circuitry in your brain, and now you're emotionally conditioning your body into the future. Now, here's the side effect of that. If you can do that properly and become familiar with those states of mind and body,

and you get up feeling like your future has already happened, I guarantee you you're going to stop looking for it. The work is to be able to maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day. You've got to be able to sustain that state independent of your coworkers, independent of your boss, independent of your ex, independent of your finances, independent of your the traffic. traffic. And if you're able to do that, you will begin to see the feedback in your life. If you woke up every morning and you truly made time to think like this, if my personality

creates my personal reality and my personality is made of how I think, how I act, and how I feel, if I want to create a new personal reality, a new life, I'm going to have to change my personality. And most people try to create a new reality, a new reality, a new personal reality as the same personality and it doesn't work. We literally have to become someone else. So if you said, okay, let me not default and go unconscious to that 95% of who I am that's programmed, let me become so conscious of the way I think and become so aware of how I'm going to act today. Let me decide what emotions keep me connected to my past and bring me to a lower level, a lower level of energy. Let me not go unconscious. If a belief,

is just the thought I keep thinking over and over again. What thoughts do I want to fire and wire in my brain? And with attention and with intention, to begin to familiarize yourself with a new way of thinking. Meditation means to become familiar with. If you keep firing and wiring those circuits, you're going to begin to install the hardware. Repeated enough times and it becomes a software program.

That could be the new voice in your head. That says, I can. It is possible. People, when they have an event, what they do, is they keep recalling the event because the emotions of stress hormones, the survival emotions are saying pay attention to what happened because you want to be prepared if it happens again. Turns out most people spend 70% of their life living in survival and living in stress. So they're always anticipating the worst case scenario based on a past experience.

And they're literally, out of the instant potentials in the quantum field, they're selecting the worst possible outcome and they're beginning to emotionally embrace it with fear. And they're conditioning their body into a state of fear. Do that enough times? The body has a panic attack without you. You can't even predict it because it's programmed subconsciously. So then you say to the person, why are you this way? And they'll say, I am this way because of this event that happened to me 15 or 20 years ago.

And what that means from biological standpoint is that they haven't been able to change since that event. So then the emotions from the experience tend to give the body and the brain a rush of energy. So people become addicted to the rush of those emotions, and they use the problems and conditions in their life to reaffirm their limitation so at least they can feel something. So now when it comes time to change, you say the person, why are you this way? Well, every time they recall the event, they're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body as if the event is occurring.

is occurring, firing and wiring the same circuits and sending the same emotional signature to the body. Well, what's the relevance behind that? Well, your body is the unconscious mind. It doesn't know the difference between the experience that's creating the emotion and the emotion that you're creating by thought alone. So the body's believing is living in the same past experience

24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And so then when those emotions influence certain thoughts, and they do, and then, And then those thoughts create the same emotions and those same emotions influence the same thoughts. Now the entire person's state of being is in the past. So then the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before, period. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, get ready because it's going to feel uncomfortable.

People wake up in the morning, they begin to think about their problems. problems are circuits of memories in the brain. Each one of those memories are connected to people and things at certain times and places. And if the brain is a record of the past, the moment they start their day, they're already thinking in the past. Each one of those memories has an emotion. Emotions are the end product of past experiences. So the moment they recall those memories of their problems, they all of a sudden feel unhappy, they feel sad, they feel pain. Now, how you think and how you feel creates your state of being. So the person's entire state of being when they start their days in the past.

So what does that mean? The familiar past will sooner or later be predictable future. So if you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, and you can't think greater than how you feel, or feelings have become the means of thinking, by very definition of emotions, you're thinking in the past. And for the most part, you're going to keep creating the same level. life. So then people grab their cell phone. They check their WhatsApp. They check their text. They check their

emails. They check Facebook. They take a picture of their feet. They post it on Facebook. They tweet something. They do Instagram. They check the news. And now they feel really connected to everything that's known in their life. And then they go through a series of routine behaviors. They get out of bed on the same side. They go to the toilet. They get a cup of coffee. They take a shower. They get dressed. They drive to work the same way. They do the same things. They see the same people. They push the same emotional buttons, and that becomes the routine, and it becomes like a program. So now they've lost their free will to a program, and there's no unseen hand doing it to them. So when it comes time to change, the redundancy of that cycle becomes a subconscious program. So now, 95% of who we

are by the time we're 35 years old is a memorized set of behaviors, emotional reactions, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that function like a computer program. So then person can say with their 5% of their conscious mind, I want to be healthy, I want to be happy, I want to be free. But the body is on a whole different program. So then how do you begin to make those changes? Well, you have to get beyond the analytical mind because what separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind. And that's where meditation comes in because you can teach people through practice how to change their brain waves, slow them down. And when they do that properly, they do enter the operating system where they can

begin to make some really important changes. So most people then wait for crisis or trauma or disease or diagnosis, you know, they wait for loss, some tragedy to make up their mind to change. And my message is why wait. And you can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering or you can learn and change in a state of joy and inspiration. I think right now the cool thing is that people are waking up. Your body is your unconscious mind. In a sense, if you're sitting down and you start thinking about some future worst case scenario that you're conjuring up in your mind and you begin to feel the emotion of that event, your body doesn't know the difference between the event that's taking place in your world, outer world, and what you're creating

by emotion or thought alone. So most people then, they're... they're constantly reaffirming their emotional states. So when it comes time to give up that emotion, they can say, I really want to do it, but really the body is stronger than the mind because it's been conditioned that way. So the servant now has become the master. And the person all of a sudden, once they step into that unknown, they'd rather feel guilt in suffering because at least they can predict it. Being in the unknown is a scary place for most people because the unknown is uncertain. People say to me, well, I can't predict my future. I'm in the unknown, and I always say the best way to predict your future is to create it.

Not from the known, but from the unknown. What thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain? What behaviors do you want to demonstrate in one day? The act of rehearsing them mentally, closing your eyes and rehearsing the action. By closing your eyes and mentally rehearsing some action, if you're truly present, the brain does not know the difference between what you're imaging and what you're experiencing in 3D world. So then you begin to install the neurological hardware in your brain

to look like the event has already occurred. Now, your brain is no longer a record of the past. Now it's a map to the future. And if you keep doing it, priming it that way, the hardware becomes a software program. And who knows? You just may start acting like a happy person. And then I think the hardest part

is to teach our body emotionally what the future will feel like ahead of the actual experience. So what does that mean? You can't wait for your success to feel empowered. You can't wait for your wealth to feel abundant. You can't wait for your new relationship to feel love or your healing to feel whole. I mean, that's the old model of reality of cause and effect, you know, waiting for something outside of us to change how we feel inside of us. And when we feel better inside of us, we pay attention to whoever or whatever caused it. But what that means then is that from the Newtonian world is that most people spend their whole life with. living lack, waiting for something to change out there. What do you mean the Newtonian world? Newtonian world is all about the predictable. It's all about predicting a future. But the quantum model of reality is about causing an effect.

The moment you start feeling abundant and worthy, you are generating wealth. The moment you're empowered and feel it, you're beginning to step towards your success. The moment you start feeling whole, your healing begins. And when you love yourself and you love all of life, all of life, you'll create an equal.

Now you're causing an effect. And I think that's the difference between living as a victim in your world saying, I am this way because of this person or that thing or this experience. They made me think and feel this way. When you switch that around, you become a creator of your world

and you start saying, my thinking and my feeling is changing an outcome in my life. And now that's a whole different game. And we start believing more that we're creators of reality. And most people, when they have a thought, they just think that that's the truth. And I think one of my greatest

realizations in my own journey was just because you have a thought doesn't necessarily mean it's true. So if you think 60 to 70,000 thoughts in one day and we do, and 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before and you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, your life's not going to change very much because the same thought leads to the same choice, the same choice leads to the same behavior. The same behavior creates the same experience and the same experience produces the same emotion. And so then the act of becoming conscious of this process to begin to become more aware of how you think, how you act,

and how you feel. It's called metacognition. And so then why is that important? Because the more conscious you become of those unconscious states of mind and body, the less likely you're going to go unconscious during the day. And that thought is not going to slip by your own. awareness unchecked because it means to know thyself. The word meditation means to become familiar with. So as you become familiar with the thoughts, the behaviors, and the emotions of the old self,

you're retiring that old self. As you fire and wire new thoughts and condition the body into a new emotional state, if you do that enough times, it'll begin to become familiar to you. So it's so important, just like a garden. If you're planting a garden, you've got to get rid of the weeds. You got to take the plants from the past year and you've got to pull them out. The rocks that sift to the top that are like our emotional blocks, they have to be removed. That soil has to be tenderized and broken down. We have to make room to plant a new garden. So primarily we learn the most about ourselves and others when we're uncomfortable. Because the moment you move into that uncomfortable state, normally a program jumps in.

when that program jumps in is because a person doesn't want to be in the present moment and engage it consciously. If you're not being defied by a vision of the future, then you're left with the old memories of the past and you will be predictable in your life. And if you wake up in the morning and you're not being defined by a vision in the future,

as you see the same people and you go to the same places and you do the exact same thing at the exact same time, it's no longer that your personality is creating your personal reality. your personal reality is affecting or creating your personality. Your environment is really controlling how you think and feel unconsciously because every person, everything, every place, every experience has a neurological network in your brain. Every experience that you have with every person produces an emotion. So some people will use their boss to reaffirm their addiction to judgment.

They'll use their enemy to reaffirm their addiction to hatred. They'll use their friends to reaffirm their addiction to suffering. So now they need the outer world to feel something. So to change then is to be greater than your environment, to be greater than the conditions in your world, then the environment is that seductive. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.