JA: Hi everybody, this is John Assaraf

“Evolve Your Brain: the and thanks for joining us for another
Science of Changing weekly, expert interview where we
bring you great ideas for making
Your Mind” more money so you can live that
extraordinary life.

I have a friend of mine on the call

today and you are going to
absolutely love this. He has one of
the hottest new books that I am
telling everybody about and we’ll
talk about it in just a second.

Joe Dispenza is just an absolute gem

Virtual Coaching with
Joe Dispenza
Interviewed By John Assaraf
Recorded March 12, 2007
of a human being. He’s a top expert
on the human brain. He’s someone
who I’ve studied through my own
research. I was introduced to his
work through the phenomenal, multi-
award winning movie, “What the
Bleep Do We Know”. For years I’ve
been taking our clients and students
to see the movie and talk to them
about it. Everything he talks about is
right on the money. This is going to
be an outstanding call.
His new book is called “Evolve Your
Brain: The Science of Changing
Your Mind”. It’s something you all
know I’ve studied for years. It’s
something we talk about and Joe
understands inside and out. In the
book he teaches why people tend to
repeat the same negative behaviors,
how to break the cycle and how to
open yourself up to the new
possibilities that exist within and all
around you.

And, as always, for contributing to

the purpose of living an
extraordinary life and for making a

1
 difference on this planet, Joe,
welcome to OneCoach.
JD: It’s a pleasure to be with you, John.
JA: Joe, let’s get right into the book.
You’ve done some great work in
“What the Bleep”. I know that must
have launched your career. And you
have a phenomenal understanding of
biology, neurophysiology, brain
research, etc.
What inspired you to write this
particular book?
JD: I think it was a combination of
several different things, John. Just
like you, I’ve been involved in
understanding human potential from
the time I started asking the question,
“Is there more to life?” I began
investigating every alternative idea
that was important to me. I looked
into hypnosis. I studied martial arts
and yoga. My life was about
alternative means of thinking and
alternative means of health and
looking at reality.
In 1986 I had a serious accident. I
was hit by a truck in a triathlon. It
caused me to stop going at a very
fast pace, to begin to ask some
deeper questions and to see if some
of those principles actually worked.
Long story short, I was confined to
bed for (supposedly) three to six
months. They wanted to do radical
surgery.
Inside of eight weeks I was back in
my office seeing patients. Two
weeks later, no body cast, no
surgery, no paralysis. If I was able
2
to overcome this condition (I had
broken six bones in my spine), then I
would spend the rest of my life
investigating the concept of mind
over matter.
That’s exactly what I did.
JA: It seems we have a similar story. I
was in a car accident and I ended up,
not because of the car accident, but I
ended up with ulcerative colitis and
through some research was able to
heal myself of that.
I decided what a powerful tool we
have in our brain, and realized we
know nothing about it.
JD: I think science is now beginning to
scratch the surface. I’m sure that any
neuroscientist or anybody
investigating the brain will say, “The
sum of the parts is greater than the
whole.” We don’t have any definite
answers, but what we do have now is
functional brain scans. And
functional brain scans give us the
opportunity to study the concept
called “mind”. Mind is the brain in
action, the brain at work. That little
clue has given us volumes of
information about a healthy brain
and an unhealthy brain.
JA: I know you talk about emotions and
we are addicted to our emotions. We
consistently want to do the same
things over and over again.
How much potential do we have, as
humans, to be able to stop the
negative emotions or stop the
emotions that are not serving us, and
 really help ourselves by doing things
differently with the brain?
I want to be careful obviously
because I’m interviewing you. Some
of the answers I know. But I want to
hear it from your vantage point.
JD: First, let’s define emotion. Emotion
comes from the Greek word
emoverae, which means “to set into
motion.”
Emotions can be considered literally
as something that sets the mind into
motion. But I like to think of it as
something different. I think
emotions are always the end
products of experience.
When we experience anything in our
reality – whether we’re seeing,
smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing –
all of our five senses are immersed in
the experience. Volumes of
information are being sent back to
the brain through five different
pathways causing neurons to string
together and release chemicals.
Those chemicals that are released
during that experience mark the
experience as memorable. So the
end product, the finality of an
experience is called an emotion.
We can remember experiences better
because we remember how they feel.
If we understand that, then the
question is, “How many new
experiences have we had, number
one. And if we’re experiencing the
same exact emotion everyday, what
does it tell us?”
3
And, of course, if we’re experiencing
the same emotion everyday, it means
that nothing new is happening. If
we’re experiencing a repeated
chemical state, it means that we’re
remembering past experiences to
help us remember who we are.
If we believe that the quantum field
has anything to do with our future, if
we believe that thoughts have
anything to do with creating reality,
if we’re living the same feelings and
emotions, it means we’re just
creating more of the same. So most
people think that’s normal and, in
fact, given a scoop of humanity it
really looks normal.
But, in the quantum field, there are
so many experiences yet to have.
And those new experiences, in my
reasoning, would create new
emotions and those new emotions
would have nothing to do with those
survival states that we live by every
single day.
It’s not a bad thing to have it. The
problem is after there’s a stimulus,
after there’s something that elicits an
emotion. The problem is if we’re
repeating the same emotions there’s
this period after the emotion called
the refractory period. Some people
have a reaction and that refractory
period lasts hours, days, weeks,
months, years. And the same
chemicals that are being released in
the brain over and over again, pushes
the buttons, pulls the trigger that
activates the genetics that begin to
cause the person to live out their
genetic destiny.
 We’re just beginning to understand,
in neuroscience, that we can shorten
that refractory period. When we
shorten that refractory period to any
emotion, whether it’s anger,
frustration, or suffering, then every
other refractory period for every
other emotion is shortened. So,
during that refractory period, no new
information can enter into the
system. You can’t learn anything
new. You can’t do anything
differently.
As a matter of fact, you’ll do the
same exact thing and expect a
different result.
JA: That’s insanity, right?
JD: That’s insanity.
When we develop the ability to gain
control over those emotional states
by recognizing what they are and
rehearsing new ways of being, we
not only shorten those periods, but
there are even individuals that have
been tested with functional brain
scans that can actually stop the
reaction.
This says that we have innumerable
potential to no longer be enslaved to
the habitual state that most people
live in. Westerners think emotions
are normal because they feel so real.
They are really transient chemical
reactions that we continuously live
by. The problem is if we
continuously create the same
emotions, the rush of chemistry gives
the body a boost to make us feel a
little bit more alive, a little bit more
super aware.
4
The problem is it wears off and then
you have to do it again. But you do
it a little bit greater with a little bit
more emotion. Next thing you know
you’re in a repetitive cycle.
JA: It sounds like an addiction.
JD: You know my definition of addiction
has always been, and I’ve thought a
lot about it, “something you can’t
stop”.
If you’re in the midst of an angry
experience, suffering, confusion, or
any of those survivalist emotions and
someone said to you, “Why don’t
you just stop,” most Westerners
would give you every reason why
they’re feeling the way they feel.
Something from their external world
made them feel that way.
JA: I’ve got a client right now who is so
stuck on his story that he just can’t
see it. He doesn’t want to break free
from the story that’s repeating itself
over and over and over again.
JD: Yes. And every time we tell the
story, we’re creating almost the same
exact amplitude of chemistry as if it
was actually happening. That’s the
key. That’s what emotions do.
We can remember those experiences
better because we remember the
emotions that are tied to them.
JA: Interesting. Can the brain, based on
the latest research, stop that? Can
we do something that will give us the
ability to change our reality?
JD: The idea is that if we just look at this
particular topic, the question has to
arise, “Do our thoughts control our
emotions? Or do our emotions
control our thoughts?”
There’s an inverse law in the brain.
I’ve studied this at length. There’s a
part of the brain called the limbic
brain or the anellian brain; that’s the
emotional brain. That’s the chemical
brain.
On functional brain scans, the more
emotional the person is, the more
they are swamped in their own
emotional chemistry. The more
activity there is in that part of the
brain, the less activity there is in the
frontal lobe.
Frontal lobe is our seat of self. It’s
where we have attention, intention,
firm purpose, and a sense of identity,
a sense of awareness. The more
action and execution over their
impulses, the more they have control
over themselves and their life.
If there’s less activity in the frontal
lobe, then you tend to see more
impulsive, emotional behavior. If
there’s more activity in the frontal
lobe, you have a person who is less
emotional, less impulsive and more
able to reason answers and solutions
beyond what they already know.
Science used to say, 25 years ago,
that the brain was hard-wired,
meaning you were born with a
certain amount of circuits and you’re
going to turn out like your parents
and that’s the end of the story. But
what science is beginning to
5
understand is that there are definitely
plastic, moldable portions of the
brain that we can upscale the
hardware to. The way we change the
brain, the way we upscale the
hardware is by learning new things
and having new experiences. That’s
what causes the brain to reorganize
itself into new patterns and new
combinations, new sequences that
then create new levels of mind.
The problem is when we get to our
mid-thirties, the personality (the
identity) is sealed off. We spend
more time feeling than we do
learning. As a matter of fact, feeling
becomes the means of thinking; if we
spend more time feeling and we
can’t think outside our feelings (we
talk about that refractory period),
then it’s impossible for new
information to enter into the system.
As a result, it’s impossible to learn
new things. We’re just left with the
circuits that we’ve been given
genetically.
Then the second half of our life we
start heading for the destiny that our
parents had. That’s the story of most
people. When we learn it and we
apply what we learn, when we
personalize what we learn, we
demonstrate what we’ve learned.
For example, someone takes your
course or you’re a consultant for
somebody; you can give them all the
philosophy, all the understanding,
because you’ve already experienced
what you’re teaching them. They
take that knowledge and they never
apply it. It’s just good dinner
conversation. It’s philosophy.
But when they take your concepts
and principles and begin to apply
them, they’re setting themselves up
for a new experience. They’re
breaking their habitual ways of doing
things. They’re reviewing it in their
mind and creating a plan of how
they’re going to execute exactly
what you taught them.
That plan, that rehearsal, that process
of thinking of how they’re going to
do it already begins to reorganize
circuits in their brain. It may take a
little practice. It’s like tennis, golf or
anything else.
But there’ll come moments of
increased awareness and increased
attention where you’ll begin to
produce different and modified
experience. And that experience will
no longer keep the person in the
same story, no longer keep them in
their same emotional state. They’ll
embrace a new set of emotions and
those new emotions have nothing to
do with survival; they tend to be joy,
excitement, enthusiasm, all those that
I call the natural state of being. That
then allows them to create new
memories.
But it’s not enough to do it once.
Mastery is to be able to repeat that
experience over and over again.
That’s what I investigated and
created in my book called “Thinking,
Doing and Being”. We changed the
memory systems in the brain when
we get to that point of being it. Now
it’s hard-wired. Now it’s second
nature. Now it’s easy. Now it takes
no effort at all. Now it’s familiar.
6
And that state of being means that
we had the experience enough times
that we’ve trained the body to know
as well as the brain and the body will
actually do it while the brain can
think of other things. That’s why
when you can’t remember a phone
number, you can pick up the
receiver, look down at the keypad,
and let your hands do the dialing
because your conscious mind can’t
remember.
Your subconscious mind was pretty
much trained; your body was trained
by the mind. It’s not enough to just
learn information. Sure we’ll
upscale the brain’s hardware, but
until we integrate it into the body,
until we have mind and body
working together, then we’ll always
have opposition. We’ll never reach
our goals because when the frontal
lobe is really working, that’s the seed
of our divinity. That’s the place
where we work from.
When the front lobe is working
properly, that’s when thought and
action are aligned. That’s when
intent and behavior are working
together. When that’s lined up and
you’ve got body and mind working
together, pretty much the human
being is invincible.
JA: When I was in my early twenties and
I started getting some training in
business and sales I remember
Tommy Hopkins said, “You got to
fake it ‘til you make it. Just fake it
in your mind. There’ll come a time
where it will just become a reality.”
I don’t think anybody at that time, 27
years ago, understood what we were
 actually doing. But now with brain
scan imaging we can now see what’s
happening, how we are changing the
wiring of the brain.
Is that what you’re saying?
JD: I think “fake it ‘til you make it” is a
good beginning explanation.
I like to use the words mental
rehearsal. Those are the words I use
in my book and in my lectures. It
means a little bit more of a formal
plan. It’s remembering a new way of
being. If we can rehearse it in our
minds and think about how we’re
going to do it and execute it and
review the knowledge and put
ourselves in the experience, there’ll
come a moment of where we’re truly
intentional and truly focused where
the brain doesn’t know the difference
between what’s happening in its
external world and what’s happening
in the mind.
That’s the moment that new circuits
are up-scaled and formulated.
That’s a stage to which to execute
that knowledge and the person who
rehearses will do it easier, will make
it look more natural, will make it
look like it’s less effort because
he/she already has the circuitry in
place.
“Fake it ‘til you make it” was a good
slogan in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And it
has some value. But I think that
people get hung up on that because it
has an overused connotation. If we
see that we can mentally rehearse
something, plan our actions and
7
remember those, then you’re more
than likely going to walk into that
experience because the brain is
already prepared for the experience
ahead of time. That’s the name of
the game.
JA: When you talk about mental
rehearsal are you talking about
visualization?
JD: I don’t like to use “visualization”
because again that word has been
over utilized. A lot of people start to
visualize and the next thing they
know they get off on tangents,
they’re swimming with dolphins and
they’re doing different things than
their original intention.
Mental rehearsal involves intent. It
involves placing yourself in the
experiences; concepting yourself in
the experience; remembering what
you would do in the midst of that
experience.
There’s been enough tests to know
that when people do that, when they
remember, plan, apply what they’ve
learned, repeat it and they mentally
rehearse physically doing it that they
grow the same amount of brain
circuits as the people physically
doing the action. This means they
change their brain by thinking.
Rehearsal usually involves a little
more vigilance. It involves a little
more intention. I like that word
better than visualization because
some people don’t visually process
information the same way in the
brain as other people. That hangs
people up because they say they
 can’t see it. If you say “rehearse”, it
loosens it up a little bit and they can
throw themselves into it a little
easier. That gives them the
paradigm that’s a little more
acceptable. They can recruit all their
senses to be able to formulate a
scenario.
JA: There’s plenty of this in your book.
By the way, Joe’s book “Evolve
Your Brain” is not a book you’re
going to read in one day. This is a
book I want each one of you to get. I
want you to make it a part of your
library. I want you to study it and go
back and review it. It’s 60 days
since the book has been out. It’s the
best book on the market, bar none.
Joe knows his stuff. It’s been well
researched. It’s one of the books I
use for my own research. If I’m
using it, chances are it’s one of the
best ones out there.
JD: Thanks, John.
JA: No, Joe, I told you when you wrote
the book, you sent me a couple
chapters ahead of time, you’re right
on the money. We might as well go
to the best there is.
Let’s talk about why change is so
hard. I know you talk about the
implicit memory system and the
explicit memory system. Can we
talk about that for a moment? I want
people to get a handle on how
change is possible and some things
they need to do. But why is it so
hard?
JD: Let’s make it simple. I won’t use the
concept of implicit and explicit.
8
Let’s talk about a couple of
chemicals in the brain. The chemical
in the brain that makes us feel good
is called dopamine. The biggest
reason people don’t want to change
is because change is uncomfortable.
It means you have to break the
neurochemical habit of being
yourself.
You can declare, “I want to do this.
I want to be this. I want to have this.
I want to make $1M.” You can
consciously declare that and yet your
attitude keeps remembering a
different story in your example.
That story produces a certain amount
of chemicals which entrains the body
to believe something else.
So now all of a sudden you say, “I
want to be wealthy. I want to be
successful. I want to be powerful. I
want to make a $1M or $10M.”
However, the memories and the
thoughts that you’ve been processing
on an unconscious level have trained
the body, the subconscious element
of the body, to actually believe
something different.
So you start off intentional. You
start off clear. You start off
declaring it. Then in a matter of
days you’re on the couch eating bon-
bons with your remote control and
you don’t even know how you got
there. That’s because the body is
running a different program than the
mind.
Now, brain circuits work in
combinations, sequences and
patterns. If we keep processing the
same exact thoughts everyday,
thinking about the same things, the
same people, the same events,
remembering past information, those
brain circuits will strengthen. At the
same time they become hard-wired
and also release the same chemistry
because it’s the same stream of
consciousness.
If we do that enough times we
formulate a box of our own thinking.
Now it’s not a literal box in the
brain; it’s the most commonly fired,
most accurately wired sequenced
combinations of circuits that we
process that we use to identify. It’s
our autobiographical self.
Now to think outside the box is to
force the brain to work in different
sequences, different patterns and
different combinations. That takes
will and effort. It takes interrupting
the programs that we’ve lived by that
have become so convenient. We’ve
hard-wired enough automatic
programs that allow us, by the time
we’re 35 or whatever to begin to
formulate this.
Children’s brains are so neuroplastic
that they can be sad one minute, the
next moment be a bunny rabbit, and
the next moment be an astronaut and
forget that they were ever sad or
crying two minutes before. That’s
because their brain is that plastic.
Adults have an incident and then
they relate with that feeling because
they think that feelings are real. So
when a person makes a concrete
decision that they’re going to change
and the moment they begin to
change, they have to think
9
differently, act differently, behave
differently, and they have to create a
new state of being. That interrupts
the normal neurochemical cycle.
The brain stops making the same
chemicals. The cells of the body,
which have been pretty much
conditioned to those thinking
processes, start sending information
back up to the brain through the
spinal chord right back up to the
neural net start saying, “You’re no
longer producing the same chemistry
we’ve been conditioned to
experience.”
All of a sudden you start hearing
these voices in your head:
• you’re not good enough,
• you can start tomorrow,
• this doesn’t feel right,
• it’s too uncomfortable,
• let’s go get a beer,
• let’s forget about it
The body has become the mind; to
change is to put the mind back on the
throne, which is in the brain. To do
that, it means that we have to train
the body to be its servant.
Most of the time people will start off
for a period of time and within days
they’ll go back to their bodily needs
and sensations. Then the dream or
idea disappears because they go back
to the same habits of thinking.
JA: So it goes back to their addictive
emotions.
JD: Really what they’ve done, we can
use the word “addicted,” but they’ve
conditioned themselves into a state
of being. They’ve conditioned
themselves into feeling unworthy,
feeling sad, feeling less than, feeling
like a failure. Then, all of a sudden,
they make an attempt to be
something different.
However, as they start having this
model in their mind, they never give
it enough attention. They don’t
cultivate it. They don’t develop it.
They don’t become familiar with it.
It takes that process of rehearsal to
begin to interrupt the programs of
habitual thinking. That habitual
thinking when we begin to force the
brain to fire in new patterns and
combinations and break that habitual
thinking, that’s difficult. In the
beginning your brain wants to rush to
what it has been used to doing. It
wants to rush to the hard-wired
programs.
However, if we persist we know
from neuroscience that nerve cells
that no longer fire together no longer
wire together. Those circuits begin
to break down and they start to
reorganize themselves and that’s
called change. It takes more effort
because most of the time Westerners
believe that it should be our external
world that causes us to think. And if
we allow the external world to cause
us to think, then we’ll never think
greater than our reality.
To be great, to be an individual, to be
a maverick is to think greater than
your environment. That’s my
definition of evolution. My
definition of evolution is to think and
be greater than the conditions in your
10
environment; greater than your
circumstances. When you do that,
now the brain is already mapped for
the experience ahead of time. That
means we’re going to walk right into
it.
JA: I study this stuff just about everyday,
Joe. Every time I speak with you it
just blows my mind just how much
deeper and deeper you go into it and
you come up with new analogies and
new ways. So I know you’re
evolving your own brain on a daily
basis, as well.
JD: That’s all I want to do.
JA: You and I share the same passion
that there’s so much we’re capable of
as human beings. We’re scratching
the surface of our understanding of
how powerful we really are and how
spectacular this beautiful, little, blue
planet, this universe of ours is.
Whenever I speak with you I have a
big smile on my face, my friend.
Mental rehearsal, obviously it’s one
of the core elements of change and to
get that frontal lobe working, the
CEO of our life, to get that working
properly is where we want to be
from what I’m hearing and from
what I’ve read.
Mental rehearsal, how can people
start to apply some of that?
JD: You have to stop and ask yourself
some important questions. This is
inconvenient, by the way. I want
you to know that it takes time and
energy.
It means not turning on the television
or going to the computer.
It means sitting down and start to
say, “What’s my problem?”
You have to define who you are.
You have to define the state you’re
in.
You have to ask, “Who am I? What
are my repetitive thoughts? If
thoughts have anything to do with
my future, and I keep getting the
same future, I have to start
examining my thoughts. I have to
start examining my thinking, my
attitude.”
You have to start asking those
important questions, to construct the
questions that will lead you out of
this quagmire. The questions have to
be, “What would it be like? How do
they think? What would I have to
change about myself to be a success?
What areas do I still have problems?
I need to be honest. Where am I
limited? How do I change it?”
When you start to ask these
questions, the frontal lobe is like a
symphony leader. It begins to quiet
certain centers in the brain and it
begins to gather all the knowledge
and experiences that you’ve had
stored in your brain. It begins to
reorganize those circuits to create a
new picture. You’re forcing your
brain and your mind to begin to
organize, construct, develop a new
model of being.
The moment you ask yourself the
question, “What would it be like to
11
be happy? What would it be like to
be successful?” You’re foregoing
your normal way of thinking and
you’re speculating possibilities.
That’s what the frontal lobe loves to
do. It loves to speculate
opportunities. It will begin to cool
off the circuits you normally use and
begin to reorganize your past
knowledge and experience to
formulate a new way of being.
Now if you ask those questions every
single day and you begin to rehearse
yourself as this new person, thinking
about what it would be like, thinking
about what you have to change,
thinking about where you fall from
grace, thinking about what limits
your genius, thinking about where
you’re not telling the truth in your
life. What things are stopping you.
You begin to organize that type of
thinking. That’s rehearsal.
If you did it every single day, it
would begin to organize those
patterns and sequences together,
mend or formulate new neural
networks in your brain that would
then make it easier for you to be that
person during your normal day,
instead of the unconscious person
living by those habituations.
It takes asking those important
questions. No one likes to ask those
questions because a lot of times,
quite frankly, we don’t like the
answers. If we run from our own
disgrace and we run from our own
suffering, we’ll surely run into it a
lot faster. We run from that because
with entertainment, work and social
events, we don’t have to confront
issues. Anybody who has made any
personal change that was worth it has
separated themselves from those
elements, took a deep look and
began to make up their mind. When
you say, ”I am going to do this
independent of the circumstances,
independent of time and not in my
environment”, when we make up our
mind with that type of intention,
that’s the moment the frontal lobe
turns on. That’s the moment we start
putting the mind back in the brain
and on the threshold. And that
sometimes, quite sadly usually, takes
some type of near fatality for a
person to do that.
And yet all the greats in history:
Martin Luther King, Abraham
Lincoln, William Wallace, Mahatma
Ghandi, etc. made these
commitments: I have a principle and
I’m not compromising to it. I don’t
care how long it takes. I don’t care
what anybody else is doing. I’m not
going to out-compromise my
thoughts and my actions. I’m going
to keep them aligned.
There’s this period of chaos because
it creates inconvenience. Yet if we
can hang on, the cream rises to the
top and you have what’s called an
individual. And that individual is
uncompromising. They will not
compromise their truth because
they’ve already earned the right to
have thoughts and ideas and
behavior lined up. They’re
uncompromising and beyond
reproach. No one is going to bribe
them. No one is going to change
their mind. No one is going to find a
way to undermine them at that
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particular level of humanity. That’s
how greatness is formed.
JA: I totally agree. I have a question to
ask you. It revolves around our old
conditioning, going to school, getting
a degree.
They used to tell us that getting a
degree would pretty much ensure our
successful. My belief is that
regardless of your education, you
make your choices and then you go
out and either live and die by those
choices or succumb to all the
circumstances you want to tell
yourself about.
What is your experience with
somebody who is highly educated
and successful versus somebody who
does the right things, has the right
thoughts and is successful?
JD: That’s kind of a funny balance. I’ve
discussed this a few times in the past.
There’s this dance that has to take
place between having too much
knowledge and not enough
experience. If you have too much
knowledge and not enough
experience, you’re a philosopher. If
you have very little knowledge and a
lot of experience, more than likely, if
it’s tipping the scales, you’re
ignorant because it doesn’t
necessarily mean that you have the
experiences that are going to shape
or evolve you.
When one gains knowledge (even if
it’s a small amount, even if someone
hears something and it sticks and
they’re willing to run with it, apply
 it, use it), they’ll move faster than
the person who has all this
knowledge but never really makes
any moves. Even if those people
who have energy, enthusiasm,
interest – they’re excited about
learning and very willing to use it
and apply it – those are the people
that will move the fastest. The ones
that analyze, rationalize, think about
it, forecast which way it will go and
what will happen, they don’t want to
get out of the armchair. They want
to sit there in their intellectual quiet
because they may fail.
A person who doesn’t have a
problem with failure is usually a
person who will take small bits of
knowledge and integrate it very
quickly, and is the one who will
move the fastest.
JA: I’ve seen that time and time again.
The right information in the right
order backed by action is where I’ve
seen the most success happen. I’ve
always said to people that my
blessing was my not feeling good
about something I did or said for a
momentary period of time.
JD: If you think about it, if you know
you’re going to make it sooner or
later, you wouldn’t mind failing. If
you don’t know you’re going to
make it, failing is going to become a
very big issue. That’s the key right
there.
JA: I think also the meaning you give
failure determines whether or not
you’re okay with it. I was taught in
my late teens that failure was just
one way that it didn’t work. It was
13
just a lesson and meant that I should
just do it again, but a little bit
differently.
JD: We’re certainly conditioned in
different environmental settings and
family settings to have it mean
different things.
JA: I know in my own children’s lives
any time they failed or fell I looked
at them and said, “Get up. That’s
just part of the whole game.”
JD: The biggest question we have to ask
ourselves, and this is what I ask my
kids, “Let’s sit down and think about
this. How would you do it
differently if the event came again?
Think about it. Let’s decide a new
way of handling this when it
happens.”
That’s plasticity. It’s modifying our
act – end of story. If you teach a
child that type of plasticity, that type
of adaptability, that’s evolution.
When we no longer adapt to
circumstances because we freeze,
that’s what survival is. Survival is
freezing. You freeze when you’re in
survival because you don’t want a
predator to spot you. We freeze in
our life in the same way. We’re
afraid to move outside the forest
because we’re afraid we may
actually become prey.
All these mechanisms kick in and
that defines the extent of our growth
and evolution. There are really two
states of being: creation and
survival. We spend most of our time
in survival. In creation it’s really a
 simple process, integrate new
information into the system.
Let’s think about a new way of doing
it. Let’s get excited about it and let’s
want the experience to come so we
can do better the next time. The
circuit is in place. The information
is organized in our brain, yet we
resist that experience. Still, that
experience has to come in order to
create our own.
JA: Whenever someone is thinking about
(or doing) something new, there is
going to be some stress. Chemicals
are going to be released. How does
somebody feel those chemicals and
do it anyway? Any
recommendations?
JD: That’s my definition of genius, being
uncomfortable and being okay with
it. That’s my definition of genius.
If you know that when you begin to
make a change and you start to think
and act differently, that your body is
going to feel uncomfortable. I
always say that it is like crossing the
big river. You’re going to step into
the water and it’s going to be cold.
You’re going to look back like you
want to go back on familiar ground.
Then you’re going to start walking
and it’s going to get a little deeper
and a little colder and the current is
going to get a little stronger and
there are going to be brambles flying
by. There could be fish in there or
whatever else, slippery. You’re
going to get half way across and
you’re going to say, “I want to go
back because this is too much.”
Those who persist through it and
14
cross to the other side onto new
territory are so glad they went for the
adventure.
Adventure is the thrill in itself.
Breaking down thoughts, attitudes,
beliefs and perceptions, breaking
those down by the very simple
monitoring of our own thinking and
reacting will create chaos for the
body initially. In a sense the body is
just an animal and so it’s like you’ve
trained an animal to act in certain
ways and all of a sudden you’re
going to allow it to do something
differently.
The animal will still do the same
thing even though you’ve given it
freedom. There’s that first period
where the trained dog even though it
has freedom will keep doing what it
does. Then there will come a period
where there will be a sense of
freedom and then there’s a
reconditioning period, which means I
want to make you do this now. I
want you to be aligned with my mind
now. I want my mind and body to be
one. But in the beginning stages,
that chaos that’s created, the thing
that has to be understood is that that
is absolutely normal.
Evolution is not a comfortable
process until there is reconditioning.
We always say the same thing and
that is, “I’m so glad I left the shire
and went on a big adventure.”
That’s what that whole movie was
about, leaving familiar territory and
being confronted with adventure and
once that adventure takes place, you
can’t not want to go again. Even
though you’re happy to be home,
 you say, “You know, I’m going to go
on another one.” That’s life. That’s
the beauty of life.
JA: Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry in 1977 for his chaos
theory (contributions to non-
equilibrium thermodynamics,
particularly the theory of dissipative
structures). Basically decreeing that
every living organism will go
through absolute chaos where it
looks like, feels like, smells like, and
tastes like you’re in hell until you
evolve into a higher, living
organism.
JA:
That’s what I’m hearing. Is that
accurate?
JD: That’s exactly what it is.
JA: For all of you who are feeling right
now that you’re in chaos, chaos is
good. Change your meaning of it.
You’re obviously evolving and
growing. It’s so much more
palatable. I’ve gone through so
many changes in my life and, Joe, I
know you have. I have such a
different meaning to it right now.
The other thing I know as a human
being is that we are forever
changing. Changing is our only
constant. You have to get
comfortable with change because
that means you’re growing.
JD:
JD: One of the more prevalent times that
change becomes a big issue is when
we think we’re going to lose
something. The truth is that I’ve had
to condition myself to understand
15
that change is always gain. In
always some way or another I’m out
of routine, I’m out of habit. I have to
start acclimating with new habits. I
have to upscale my mind to match a
new future.
Most of us really want to move away
from that. Yet when we rise to the
occasion and put a little bit more
effort into it, we’re always amazed at
what a great job we do. That’s the
bottom line. You can’t bring it out
of somebody unless there is chaos.
Chaos is the defining element of self.
I agree. I think one of the reasons
we started OneCoach was to help
people through that chaos, to help
people understand that it’s normal, to
give them the accountability part of
doing what they do on a consistent
basis so that change is a little bit
easier. Not uncomfortable, but a
little bit easier when you understand
it.
Joe, based on your research, how
long does it take for somebody to
start seeing or feeling the beginnings
of “I’m a different person who is
capable of achieving X”? Have you
done some research on that? I’m
interested for the people listening
because they’re business owners
from around the world and they all
want to take their success to another
level.
I will tell you that they used to say
that it takes twenty-one days to break
a habit and create a new one. To
some extent that’s true, but it’s not
totally true. The truth is that if you
understood how rehearsal works and
how to reach deeper levels of mind,
then it could happen overnight.
Change doesn’t necessarily have a
timeframe attached to it. It’s equal
to our focus, our intent, and our
willingness to let go and surrender. I
know that sounds like the biggest
oxymoron that was ever said. But
that’s the dance.
The dance is setting the intention,
having the idea, falling in love with
your future. Then, if you take time
out of your day to do that, there
should be some sign in your world
that you’ve taken time to interact
with the greater mind and that you
should see something happen in your
world that is a signal that you’ve
made contact with it.
If you’re sincere and you’re making
those efforts, you should have
initially no signals because you’re in
chaos and then all of a sudden you’ll
start experiencing little signals to let
you know you’re moving in the right
direction; signposts, if you will, or,
mile markers.
The brain learns by feedback. The
greatest feedback we get is always
from our environment. If we’re
making changes internally, there
should be some reflection in our
external world. To make the finality
of change we think that we see
changes to reach our goals, goals are
finite and purpose is infinite. Of
course, we all have a purpose. The
goals we set up along the line are just
different markers to let us know that
we kept our intention and we haven’t
left or broken from having thoughts
16
and actions aligned. I always say
that if you make the effort every
single day, you’re sincere, and you
apply what you learn, there should
be measurable feedback every single
day. I expect that in my life.
I expect the feedback to let me know
that I have thought, action, deed, and
purpose, all in alignment. Some
people will do it in a very short
amount of time. Those are the
people that apply it, personalize it,
and run with it. They’re enthusiastic
to adapt; if it doesn’t work they’ll
put a little extra energy into it. The
other person will over-analyze, over-
scrutinize, try to figure out what’s
wrong. They’ll spend too much
time.
That dance between time to wire it in
your brain and then surrendering it to
a greater mind is the art. That’s the
art right there.
JA: That’s the art of believing.
Everybody on this call should, if you
have been in OneCoach for a while,
understand what Joe’s talking about
as he discusses a greater mind as
well as getting into some quantum
physics here.
I’m going to give you the
opportunity to let people know
where they can get a copy of your
outstanding book, “Evolve Your
Brain: The Science of Changing
Your Mind”. I’m going to share
with people that I am studying this
book right now. I’m recommending
it to everybody I know. It’s not just
because Joe and I are friends. He’s
 just done the most research and has
put it together in a way that it’s JA: To all our friends all around the
worthy to be in your library. world, you guys are the best. Keep
making sure that you learn and apply
Learn yourself. Learn with your that information and share it with
spouse. Teach it to your kids. Make somebody else so you make a
sure their teachers have a copy of it difference in other people’s lives.
so that they start to help our younger
ones understand. With adults we All the best to everybody this week.
have to change our mind. With kids Thanks.
we just have to help them make
theirs up. This is John Assaraf on behalf of
everybody on the OneCoach team
Where do people get the book, Joe, saying goodbye. Thanks, Joe, have a
and how would you like to leave the great one. Bye now.
listeners of OneCoach?
JD: Thanks, John.
JD: My book is listed on Amazon.com.
You can visit my Website,
www.drjoedispenza.com. It’s on
sale this month actually. The book
was probably twice the size that it is
now; we whittled it down; I wanted
to provide a manual for people to
begin to make measurable changes in
their life.

JA: If the book is half the size, you had

an encyclopedia before. There is so
much great material. I don’t read
Joe’s book, I study it.

Joe’s done so much phenomenal

work to bring us to the forefront of
what’s possible and he teaches us
how to do it, which is what I’m all
about, taking action.

This has been an absolute joy.

Thanks for teaching me and for
sharing your wonderful work,
wisdom, heart, and your love with
us.

JD: Thank you, John; it was a privilege.

17