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the only challenge i think with addictions is that if you can’t think greater than how you feel your life will stay the same yeah the solution then is [Music] i thought today i wanted to talk a little bit about addiction so as we speak i’ve been a medical doctor for 21 years so if i look at my patient population but even if i look across society as a whole these days it’s very hard not to draw the conclusion that almost everyone is addicted to something whether that be their phones instagram alcohol online pornography drugs whatever it might be and so i’m interested dr joe what’s your view on addiction what’s driving so much addiction and what can people do to try and break free sure i think it’s a a question worthy of a conversation i think that um we’ve been programmed and it’s not a good thing or a bad thing it’s just how we’ve been programmed so um i think behind every substance addiction or some addiction on some gaming or media or whatever there’s an emotion that the person is doing their best to regulate so let’s just say a person has been exposed to a trauma right and and when we have an event in our life that changes our emotional state the stronger the emotion we feel from the shock the betrayal the trauma the news whatever it is the more altered we are inside of us the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot and that’s called the long-term memory and long-term memories so we remember them because we remember the feeling associated with them so what most people don’t know is that trauma or those series of events alters our internal state and every time we think about or remember the trauma we produce the same chemistry in the brain and body as if the event was occurring now the body is so objective that it doesn’t note the difference between the real life experience that’s creating that motion or the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone and it only takes a thought and a feeling and image and emotion and stimulus and response and you’re actually conditioning the body subconsciously into that emotional state and that sets the baseline of that person’s emotional state so then the person goes god i feel empty i feel anxious i feel unworthy i feel resentment i feel frustrated and i don’t know how to change it so then they look for things in their outer world to make that feeling go away so whether it’s a drug whether it’s gaming whether it’s pornography whether it’s complaining doesn’t matter what it is but let’s just use a pill as an example or a drug a recreational drug the person takes a recreational drug the moment they take the recreational drug they notice a change in their emotional state and the moment they notice that change in their emotional state they associate that change with what caused it and they they remember what what caused it so that starts to create a dependency now i think there are degrees of addiction some are very physiological you know receptors are modified but when you get right down to it an addiction is when the body has been conditioned to be the mind so then the person every time they start feeling the emptiness they feel the unworthiness they feel the frustration they feel the anxiety their brain creates the image of what they need to do to make that feeling go away in the last time or the last series of times it was that ex exogenous substance or that that activity that made it go away now here’s the problem let’s use gaming as an example okay so when you blow someone up or you break through a certain level or you shoot someone or you get points for whatever you’re doing in a game there’s a release of dopamine in the brain and dopamine is the reward chemical it’s a pleasure chemical the problem is is that the amount of dopamine that’s released in in a very short interval of time is outside of normal so now rush dopamine into the brain and the receptor sites on the outside of the cell say this is way too much dopamine that i’m used to processing so the receptor sites actually close down they they shut down so now in order for the person to get that same feeling they got to play more yeah they got to do more they gotta that’s the stimulus has got to be greater so so over time we start recalibrating those pleasure centers those receptors to a higher level now what’s the significance of that in the absence of that stimulation our pleasure centers have been hijacked to such a high level that we can’t find pleasure in anything you can’t find pleasure from a sunset you can’t find pleasure from sitting down the table and having a meal with your family playing with a dog going see your grandparents a lot especially for a lot of children you can look at them and you can see that something happened to them where they’re just glazed over yeah that’s because they’re kidnapped by the technology and so in order for them to get that same rush they have to play more they have to do more now here’s really the big problem learning should be a reward in and of itself right i mean learning should be a reward but now for most people they need a stimulus they need something to drive their attention to whatever they’re learning and and now attention is dependent on something outside of us and when you capture people’s attention you capture uh their energy so and you can program them as a result of it so the solution then is to teach people how to self-regulate so we see people that come to our work that have had problems with addictions all kinds of addictions but really it’s some emotional addiction that really they’re trying to change right and so they just don’t programmed the thing that it has to happen outside of it outside of us so what we discovered in our research is that you could actually turn that hypnosis that conditioning around and not wait for the experience to produce the emotion but teach people how to self-regulate their emotional states and be able to trade resentment frustration anxiety for an elevated emotion and if you keep practicing it you get really good at what you practice yeah so good at it that you actually become it so so then when people start to self-regulate we actually measure what happens to their physiology when they do it properly and it becomes a habit and so then when the person notices then that their body’s out of balance they have one of two choices they can rely on some exogenous substance or something outside of them or they can take a moment and recalibrate their emotional state and the only the only challenge i think with addictions is that the moment you say i’m not gonna drink coffee i’m not gonna smoke cigarettes i’m not gonna drink alcohol i’m not gonna have sugar the moment you make that conscious declaration with your conscious mind the body has been conditioned and dependent on that substance so two hours goes by and the body has modified its receptor sites and it starts talking to the brain and starts saying rangan why don’t you start tomorrow tomorrow’s a better day any other day but this day this is not a good day for you it’s my parents fault it’s my boss it’s the news and that thought is being driven by the body mind now if we act on that thought we make it the same choice we do the same thing we create the same experience we feel the same emotion and then all of a sudden that emptiness or that emotional state goes away and the person returns back to the known so there is a biological there is a neurological there’s a chemical there’s a hormonal genetic death of the old self because you’re breaking that stimulus and response that inhibition then causes the body to feel chaos it’s it’s looking for the known the familiar so instead of white knuckling it to the other side we teach people how to regulate their internal emotional states and over time you start seeing the moment you’re feeling an elevated emotion like gratitude or appreciation or kindness or care and love with life you don’t need anything outside of you to make you feel better you’re actually doing it by yourself and and people can sustain these states like any habit for an extended period of time yeah there’s a there’s a phrase i’ve heard you say before dr joe that people often mistake love for pleasure and when people start to feel whole again they have less of a need for pleasure yeah and i think that really speaks to what you’ve just said you know when you feel these as you call them elevated emotions you have less of a need for these quick dopamine fixes right yes exactly i mean think about it i mean how could you want if you’re whole you if you’re whole there’s no need to there’s no lack there’s no separation what does that mean whole well we see we here’s how we describe it um we do a lot of studies on brain coherence and hard coherence and let’s talk about what it’s what it’s not okay i mean so so when there’s an emergency or when we’re aroused by some threat or some condition in our life or we can’t predict an outcome we can’t control an outcome we have the perception that something in our world could possibly get worse we switch on that primitive nervous system right that yeah fight-or-flight nervous system and now the game is fight run or hide the problem is is with human beings when we’re at it we feel like a loss of control our brain all of a sudden tries to control everything in our life so every person every object everything every place every experience that you’ve ever had is mapped in your neocortex so the arousal of the stress hormones drives the brain into a very high brainwave state called high beta but then as you shift your attention from one meeting to another meeting to another text to another person to another thing to another place you have to go every one of those different elements has a neurological network in the brain so like a lightning storm in the clouds the brain starts firing out of order it starts firing incoherently and when the brain is incoherent we’re incoherent and so think about when you’re stressed the most common thing that people do is they over focus they narrow their focus on whatever it is that’s driving them to pay attention to it yeah and so then the act of paying attention to the problem is actually driving the brain further out of balance and we’ve studied this when you analyze that problem that circumstance that condition within the emotion that you are feeling and derived by the hormones of stress you’ll make your brain worse a hundred percent of the time because the analysis the over analysis is driving it further into a higher thinking higher beta brainwave state so this kind of narrow focus is what causes the brain to be a house divided against itself so we thought well why don’t we do the opposite why instead of narrowing our focus on the cause something physical something material because the hormones of stress actually heighten the senses and cause us to become materialists so matter is the issue when there’s survival it’s whatever’s around the corner it’s whatever is going to happen so we said okay let’s teach people something else let’s teach them how to broaden their focus and as they broaden their focus and take their attention off of everything material and everything known and focus on space focus on nothing the act of doing that actually starts slowing down the analytical mind you can’t analyze when you’re sensing and it starts to change the person’s brain waves into a slower brainwave pattern and so now as you start slowing your brain waves from that high beta you start slowing down you’re shifting gears you go into a mid-range beta then you go into a low level beta and then all of a sudden you get into alpha now alpha when you’re in alpha the voice in your head the critic in your mind goes away that voice that’s talking to you stops and the brain tends to see in images in pictures that’s the imaginary state that’s a creative state in an alpha when you’re out of survival you’re looking for answers you’re creative you’re looking for new ways of doing things so when they broaden their focus not only they move into alpha but all of a sudden we start seeing those different compartments of the brain that were once subdivided yeah all of a sudden starting to unify different communities of neurons that were fragmented start to synchronize that’s what you call coherence right so what sinks in the brain links in the brain so when you see the front of the brain talking to the back of the brain the right side of the brain talking the left side of brain you start knowing something good is starting to happen and the person is starting to create more order so when you see those psychic union of two hemispheres coming together you know the polarity that person starts to feel incredibly whole and coherence when you have waves that are coherent when they build or interfere with each other their waves get bigger and the higher the amplitude of the wave the higher the energy in the brain all of a sudden the person starts to become very relaxed and no longer stressed in a program and kind of alert and awake at the same time when you’re resentful or frustrated or impatient and you’re sitting in traffic the same hormones are released and your heart is actually beating like there’s a tiger behind you but you can’t run you can’t fight you can’t hide and the traffic is frustrating you even more you’re releasing more of those chemicals so the heart starts beating against the closed system and when that happens the heart starts beating out of order now the heart’s incoherent so when incoherent waves interfere with each other they’re out of order they diminish energy and the brain energy leaves the heart and this is when we stop trusting this is not a time to communicate this is not a time to learn this is not a time to be creative and energy leaves the heart so we discovered then when a person truly starts practicing those elevated emotions the heart gets very orderly very coherent as well and now when you start feeling the emotions of the things that you want in your life or that you would like to create in your life ahead of the actual experience it’s impossible for you to want it why could you possibly want it if you feel like it’s already happened now here’s the cool part maintain that modified state of being get so good at doing it with your eyes closed start practicing with your eyes open and if you can maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day coherent heart as soon as energy reaches the heart we’ve done thousands of studies on this it’s going straight to the brain the heart starts to inform the brain that it’s safe to create at the exact same time the heart begins to produce an external magnetic field you’ve got a wi-fi signal now you start feeling connected you start feeling more whole and the brain is go here and it’s it’s directing a very clear vision of what it wants combine that clear intention with an elevated emotion you have a different wi-fi signal you have a different energy and and now the cool part about that is you start to see those synchronicities those coincidences those opportunities start showing up in your life and you’re not going anywhere to get them they’re actually coming to you now let’s just look at the biology of this yeah epigenetics says that’s the environment that signals the gene genes don’t create disease our response to the environment actually creates disease well the end product of an experience in the environment is called an emotion so the person who lives by the same emotion every single day the body’s so objective it’s believing it’s living in the same environment doesn’t know the difference and they keep the same genes signaled in the same way genes make proteins proteins are responsible for the structure and function of your body the expression of proteins is the expression of life and the person now is in the same emotional state they’re expressing the same genes and nothing changes in our life until we change okay so now the person who trades resentment and frustration and anger and everything else for an elevated emotion and they can sustain that state the body’s so objective that it’s believing it’s living in a different environment yeah so they’re knocking on the genetic door so the elevated emotion the person memorizes the body doesn’t is so objective it doesn’t know the difference between the real life experience that’s creating that emotion and the emotion that that person’s regulating by thought alone keep knocking on the genetic door you down regulate the gene for disease and you up regulate the gene for health because their bodies in a different emotional state and the body’s believing is living in a different environment and we’ve done studies with novice meditators and we were curious to see what kind of biological changes would take place in one week if you went all in like all in like immersed yourself in the entire week-long event right people do on their one week yeah one week retreats yeah so yeah so we we we draw blood and we look at about 2882 metabolites all exosomes gene expression and at the end of seven days the novice meditators almost 100 of them show substantial biological changes in their blood that suggests that they’re living in a different environment now here’s the weird part about it they’re in a ballroom there’s nothing going on in a ballroom i’ve been to thousands of ballrooms there’s nothing very exciting going on in the ballroom they’re actually making those changes inwardly and i say to our research team where are those chemicals coming from where are they coming from the person’s not taking any substance is coming from within us and so the nervous system starts manufacturing a whole pharmacy of chemicals equal to the person’s intention and emotional state and it’s how we think and how we feel that begins to alter things in our lives yeah i mean it’s absolutely incredible to hear this what kind of metabolites or or i guess chemicals are you measuring are they to do with markers of inflammation yes cytokines uh markers of inflammation markers of the immune system markers of the immune system exosomes that have very positive effects that show the cell is in the state of growth and repair instead of in a state of tissue break breakdown or cataract i mean this is profound because because a lot of people may not realize that just the way you sleep if you have a beautiful seven and a half eight hours of deep sleep compared to let’s say five hours of sleep the next day you can measure maybe 700 genes are expressed differently in the body you could be more pro-inflammatory the night after poor sleep and what you’re saying your research is showing that actually when you take novice meditation people who don’t know how to do this who you know don’t have years of experience they’re not monks they have not you know been trained in fact not to interrupt you in fact if they have no experience they’re going to do really well because they’re going to do exactly what you tell them to do especially guys that come and their wives drag them along or people come and their partner wants them to do it and they’re like i don’t know anything about this and i said you’re the perfect person just follow the instructions you have no preconceived notions they just do exactly what you’re asking there’s the guy his heart’s blown wide open he’s crying he’s hugging his wife and she’s looking at me like what happened to him he just fell into something really big so yes of course is that common in terms of the people who come to your work i’m interested is the difference between males and females and something you said there really resonated with me so in my clinic what i’ve seen time and time again is that men and they’re well known for this and of course this is a gross generalization but i’ve certainly seen it to be true in my experience is they wait they’ve got things going on they don’t want to see the doctor they don’t want to go and get help and often when they turn up the first thing they will say is hey doc look i’m sorry spotty my wife made the appointment for me my girlfriend told me i have to come in and see you it’s almost as if they want to excuse themselves for hey i wouldn’t be here wasting your time but actually you know my other half made me do this is that something you see as well in in your work um something similar but in terms of this kind of genre we have a very high percentage of men that come to our work and i think the number one reason why i’m going is because we use science uh as the model we rationalize we give we combine quantum physics with neuroscience with neuroendocrinology with psychoneuroimmunology the mind-body connection epigenetics electromagnetism we build a model so guys like they like that they like to understand all of that stuff so they can reason with it so they can leap women somehow tend to be a lot more intuitive yeah it resonates with them they trust that and they just seem to flow a little differently but then again you know we have men that that come and of course a lot of times their partner wants them to come but they really come because they notice the change and their partner they’re like wow they’re way different i can see that their response to things completely different in other words my memory of them this person is not fitting into how i remember them they’re out of phase you know so so then when men finally do commit and they understand the science and and gosh i mean it’s a really big thing for a man to get in touch with those feelings right because in the in the game of competition you know the the rut you know the roost you’re you’re always trying to compete you’re always trying to get ahead you’re always sure you can’t be vulnerable well um that works for a really uh a a good amount of time when you are mad at trying to change matter when you got to do things and you got to work hard and you got to be driven and all that stuff sacrifices but we teach that there’s another actually another way to create actually and that is really that opportunity for them to open their hearts now i have stood next to men that have done it and completely reversed the health condition within a very short amount of time because you know here comes the house of cards you know they they just realize that they’ve been holding this facade this image of themselves just so they can keep up and play the game and instead of waiting for crisis or disease or diagnosis and once they get in touch with their feelings again there’s nothing like a man who’s leading with his heart oh my god they consider the whole and and so so and then you take a look at women you know and this is just again a general observation women hold the family together they make a whole lot of sacrifices they continue to forgive they do a lot of things they put themselves after they’ve taken care of their family and all of a sudden they already know how to love you just teach them how to get very clear on their intention and watch out i mean they’re they’re women do amazing amazing work a couple of times of this conversation the word practice has come up and you mentioned earlier on what we practice we get good at so for many people the first thing they do in the morning is that they practice stress they get up whether it’s the news or emails or social media they in what i consider to be a very important time of the day they allow the environment to start conditioning their mind and then that conditions their body so that’s the way i see it and in a view of what we’ve been talking about so far of course we’ve mentioned addictions which are rife these days how important to you is the first part of the day when someone has woken up is that a critical part of the day where people have to be very intentional or can they do some of the work that you promote later on or do you think first thing in the morning is a very important part of the day um i want to be really careful about this i think there’s two times the door to the subconscious mind opens up when we wake up in the morning and we go to bed at night and it’s simple brain chemistry and simple physiology we have a circadian rhythm as soon as there’s light our body has been pretty much programmed yeah that we begin to release serotonin different chemicals that kind of wake us up so our brain waves go from delta to theta to alpha to beta and you kind of slide up this way and then you’re back to conscious awareness and local in space and time when you go to bed at night you go from beta to alpha to theta to delta and you slide down now if you’re stressed uh you can’t stop thinking you stay in beta and you your thinking actually is arousing the body because you’re thinking about your problems you can’t slide down right so those two points uh in the day when we wake up in the morning we go to bed at night when we’re and when alpha or our analytical facilities are suppressed we’re in theta we’re in a hypnotic state and the door between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is wide open what separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind so as you suppress analytical facilities you can program anybody to do anything so then what really happens for most people before they even reach for their cell phone and by the way the statistics are 86 of the people in the western world first thing first thing they do is they reach for the cell phone and they connect to everything that’s known and why is that a problem well i would never tell people how to think but i would give them information to cause them to think so the device is reminding them of things that are known and every person every object everything every place is mapped neurologically in our brain because we’ve experienced it and then we have an emotion associated with our co-worker with our boss with our ex with our whoever and so the moment we start responding now we start feeling the same way so now the environment is actually controlling the person’s feelings and thoughts yeah and anything that controls the way we feel in the way we think we’re victims to so something’s programming us to think and feel a certain way there’s nothing wrong with that you can you should check your text but and do whatever you need to do but the first thing in the morning if the door between the conscious mind the subconscious mind is open why don’t we program a new behavior why don’t we rehearse a different way of being with our children with our spouse in our zoom meetings when we’re alone when we’re in traffic is there a better way to evolve our experience so if you’re truly in the game of evolution you’re truly in the game like one lifetime one day what am i working on today can i respond a different way to this person can i think this way instead of that way let me be conscious of my unconscious thoughts let me not be in a habit let me stay away from certain emotions let me practice feeling these emotions see if i can maintain it now you’re in the game you’re out of the bleachers and you’re on the playing field so it actually happens even before the cell phone because what most people do is they wake up and the first thing they do is the brain is a record of the past they think other problems and those problems are just memories that are etched in the brain that are connected to certain people and objects at certain times and places the moment they think of their problems they’re thinking in the past then when they think about their problems they feel unhappy now their body’s in the past and if you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny yeah wow and then the emotion that’s associated is now the body’s in the past because thoughts of the language of the brain feelings are the language of the body and how we think and how we feel creates our state of being now here’s the problem if you can’t think greater than how you feel and you believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny and you understand that feelings and emotions are wrecker of the past then you’re thinking in the past and your life will stay the same yeah so i’ve always been a fan of morning routines personally for me i’ve i’ve discovered when i have some intentional times myself in the morning and when i don’t i’m a different person i show up differently my productivity the way i am with my wife or my kids is completely different so i’ve learned and i’m now 44 at this age i know mornings are very important for me and sure could i do the same thing at lunchtime or later on technically i could but i never find time number one number two i don’t think it’s as powerful later because i feel first in the morning i’m priming myself to be a certain way for that day and actually since our first conversation dr joe i went on your website and i downloaded uh some of your meditations and i’ve been doing one most mornings it’s a 23-minute meditation and i’ve got to say my favorite bit in the meditation is about 17 or 18 minutes in where you say something to the effect of and i don’t want to misspeak for your words but it’s something about now’s the time to remind yourself of the feelings you don’t want to feel remind yourself of how you do want to show up i i love that bit because each time for me it’s like yeah okay i don’t want to be like this today and if and when this happens this is how i want to show up this is how i want to be so first i want to say thank you because it’s been it’s this idea that you spoke about last time mental rehearsal you know we we have no problem thinking about athletes rehearsing how they’re going to perform we have no problem thinking that of course an actor if they want to play a part a certain way they’re going to rehearse they’re going to keep rehearsing until they’re able to do it yet most of us don’t really apply that in our own life we don’t think yeah i need to be rehearsing for the person i want to be in my own life the game of life the game of life the most important game the most important game well um 95 of who we are is a set of memorized behaviors uh automatic emotional responses unconscious habits hardwired attitudes beliefs and perceptions that are running pretty much like a computer program they’re automatic right so so so you can think positively all you want you can say i’m healthy i’m healthy i’m wealthy i’m wealthy i’m free i’m free i’m worthy and worthy and your body’s saying no you’re not you’re miserable right so it makes sense that there’s got to be an unlearning process and we’ve got to stay conscious yeah of our unconscious thoughts that slip by our awareness unnoticed we gotta watch how we speak we gotta observe how we act we gotta we gotta pay attention to the way we’re feeling and we have to become so conscious of those unconscious states of mind and body that we don’t go unconscious in our waking day because how you think how you act and how you feel is your personality and your personality creates your personal reality so if you’re thinking the same way you’re acting the same way and you’re feeling the same way nothing’s going to change in your life right so then the unlearning process is as valuable as the relearning process the breaking the habit of the old self has to happen before you reinvent a new self if you enjoyed this video i think you are really going to enjoy my new book happy minds happy life the new science of mental well-being i’ve been a practicing doctor for over 20 years now and i can tell you there’s a very strong link between happiness and health happier people are healthier and they live longer now happiness is actually a trainable skill that all of us can get better at once we know what to work on and that’s what my book is about all the simple free tools that you can use in your life to help you feel calmer more content more in control yes happier but also healthier you can order the book right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below you gotta prune synaptic connections before you sprout new connections you gotta unfire and unwire before you re-fire and rewire you gotta de-program and then reprogram how do you unlearn because i guess we think about addiction for many of us this is just living in the past we’re just repeating behaviors that we’ve done in the past that made us change our state that gave us that dopamine boost i get you can meditate you can feel that elevated emotion with a very very high degree of emotional intensity but how do you go about becoming conscious and unlearning those previous paths it’s trial and error yeah you got to go out you got to go out into life and try it out okay i’ve changed my internal state you could have a great meditation you can connect your heart could open this happened to me you could open your heart you’d be amazing you feel like the day is invincible and you get up and then the rest of your day you’re unconscious the 15 hours of your day so you’re going to weigh one hour of being in a different state of being against 15 hours of you being unhappy and rushing and in a program so then how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering that’s called change how many times do we have to go unconscious to the point where we no longer go unconscious and we stay conscious that’s the moment of change now if you’re truly out of the bleachers and you’re on the playing field and this happens to a lot of people in our work they say you know i really believe that this is the truth i really believe that you could heal yourself i really believe you could change your life i’ve seen the testimonials i just never believed that it could happen to me now this is a big moment now you’re really stepping on the playing field so a person who starts doing their work they’re not they’re not interested in healing the true the person who’s truly interested in this work they understand that the only way they can heal is that they have to change they’re not saying i’m going to wait for my wealth or my healing to happen in order for me to feel grateful and be joyful in life they’re saying if i feel grateful my healing is going to begin right if i if i feel more whole then there should be some change in my gene expression so they’ve studied the content they’ve studied the information and now it becomes extremely practical so they may have a great meditation and we’ve seen this happen to many people they sleep better they have less pain they have more energy but their blood values never change now they don’t say oh i feel better but i’m failing this doesn’t work they say what is it about me that’s stopping this from completely healing okay how am i in my waking day the moment you begin to ask that question you turn on the frontal lobe and the frontal lobe is the seat of your conscience now the moment you start looking at at the end of your day how did i do this is such an important question how’d i do today did i fall from grace when did i lose it and who did i lose it with another opportunity how would i do it differently they’ll tell you i’ve seen them stand on the stage and tell their story and say i had to start really watching myself in my life yeah how i was emotionally responding to my ex how i was emotionally responding to my financial problems i had to really really pay attention that and that takes an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of awareness to stop the program right so you forget and you go damn i went unconscious that now you didn’t lose you didn’t fail you just became conscious now if you keep becoming so conscious of your unconscious states you’re you’re outside the program you’re only in the program when you’re unconscious the moment you’re conscious you can objectify your subjective self so you can see yourself through the eyes of someone else so the learning process comes from the mistake the brain learns by mistakes and surprises i’ve made enough of them in my life it’s just whether you’re going to do it again yeah you want to do it again you’re back in the habit back in the routine if you say this is it the next time that happens i am not going to do that not for anybody else but because those emotions actually my response to that person or that circumstance is actually weakening the organism is that person that circumstance worth it so then it’s evolution it’s evolution the challenge then has to be met with a greater level of mind now if you’re just doing your meditation just because you want to please god or do the right thing or feel good about yourself that’s going to get stale after a while because it’s just going to become another routine between your coffee and your shower and your emails and your drive to work and people aren’t present right so so the familiar past conditioning is based on the past that thought and the feeling but habituation is the programming of the predictable future that’s the known so if you teach a person how to find the present moment that’s where the unknown exists and that takes that takes a lot of energy and a lot of awareness and yet if you practice it the body literally will begin to respond to the mind it’s like training an animal it finally relaxes and when that occurs your response to people and circumstances in your life will be different because you overcame yourself at the beginning of the day so i’m an early morning guy just like you i get up really early why because nobody bothers me what time 4 30 ish somewhere around there and then what’d you do um i get in my think box what’s the think boss okay what am i doing today but i’m not going to sit down and just jump into a meditation what thoughts before i go into this meditation am i going to stay away from well what circumstances with things i can think about later that aren’t that important what emotions what memories i might stay away from if i go there i know what that’s going to do why am i doing this meditation what am i going to be doing what do i how am i going to do it so i just like just like any anybody who does anything really well you get in your think box and you organize what you’re going to do are you doing this in bed or you’re having coffee first i just get up move around a little bit you know do a few things maybe write some notes down because then i can assign meaning to the act i can stay conscious when i’m in it so you do all this before your meditation always but then when i get in my play box there’s no thinking i did all my thinking in my think box you did all your thinking in your thing marks is that also when sometimes we wake up and there’s these kind of thoughts that are just popping up is is you writing down a few things as you processing them a way of sort of quietening down the noise can drop into meditation let’s say i have 10 zoom meetings in one day i look at my calendar and i go okay none of that really i’m going to get to all of that this is not my time to think about the known i know all this stuff is going to work out i know how the zoom meetings are going to go okay but let me just make sure when i’m in these certain zoom meetings that i’m leading with my heart and i’m being the person that i want to be as an example for my team i want to make sure i’m communicating really clearly i’ll make time for this that okay get all that out of the way that’s all the known stuff but when i come to execute now what am i going to do to open my heart today like what am i really going to do how when i do the breath to bring energy into my brain what am i bringing like where am i going to go to that what do i want what to experience how do i do that let me just review that okay then i’m going to open my focus i’m going to go deep into nothing go as far as i can and then when i get to that point then i’m going to create and when i create this is what i’m going to create so i’m not thinking in what i’m there what should i create i’ve already got that all worked out i’m rehearsing i’m getting clear on what i’m going to do i’m getting clear on what i’m not going to do i’m going to clear on how my last meditation was and how i want to evolve my next meditation so then when i get to my play box i’m not analyzing and thinking because i’m analyzing thinking i can’t do it right so i get that worked out if it takes me half an hour i allow for two hours for myself it takes me half an hour to get very clear and then sometimes there’s disturbing things that i have to get through because there’s meetings and stuff like that but i just go that is all always going to work out this is you this is your time it’s interesting dr joe that for many of us for many people meditation is almost like your pre-day ritual right so you you meditate to prime yourself for your day how you’re gonna be but when you talk about your morning routine you have a pre-meditation ritual yeah which i th which i find really really interesting because i want to get i want to get into it i want to like i want to assign meaning yeah to what i’m doing when you assign meaning to the act you turn on your prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex says quiet everybody that’s not involved in this intention settle down so the frontal lobe will actually lower the volumes of the circuits in the brain that are disturbing so so when you assign meaning to something you get more value from it so i just learned that if i just get in and just do my meditation sometimes they’re wonderful because i’ve done it enough times but if i just drop in it just it doesn’t have any meaning if it doesn’t have any meaning then it just becomes another routine you’re doing your meditation but you’re thinking about your coffee you’re doing drinking your coffee you’re already thinking about your emails your brain’s an anticipation machine we lose our free will to that kind of programming so so after i want to get my think box really clear it’s just like when i used to golf i would just kind of look at where i was going to hit the ball i was thinking about the the club i was going to use how i was going to swing and how it was going to feel i work it all out in my think box when i get my play box i’ve done all my thinking now i’m just going to execute right so so we found that when people do that we do this in our week-long events i’ll always say to the audience all right after we come back from the break so turn to someone now and i want you to have a conversation about what you love about yourself that you did really well in that last meditation what did you stick what felt right for you what did you execute really well i want you to articulate that and remind yourself reproduce that same level of mind install the neurological hardware by firing and wiring so you can step into that footprint and do that again in the next meditation then i say to them now let’s light a match in a dark place if you had another opportunity to do another meditation what would you bring what would you work on improving what would you become aware that you don’t want to do that you did in that last meditation let’s get really clear about what you’re not going to do if you had another opportunity what you would do and somehow that kind of shapes the brain for the next experience for them to evolve their experience because they’re in the experience now they’re they’re like oh yeah i’m not going down the i’m not getting off the exit of my job i’m not getting off the exit of my ex i’m going to go straight i’m going to just keep saying you can make those turns in the beginning it’s normal but you start making those turns and then all of a sudden you’re realizing i’m not going to make those turns and you drive right past the exit i drive right past i’m too old yeah i drive right past them too out of shape i drive right past the z isn’t going to go away um there’s something wrong with me you just keep driving past those the next thing you know you run into something big so it’s trial and error you know i mean this is like so important for people to realize if it took them if it took them two years to of of chronic stress develop their health condition it’s not going to go away into meditations you know when i tell them i say you’re not that good you’re just not that good like just get real here like one foot in the quantum world one foot in the real world this i’m a pragmatist i don’t want to talk about quantum superimposition if it has no value in my life i want to talk about what it is that evolves my experiences so if you’re truly in the game of change then you would be rehearsing how you were going to be in the next zoom meeting if you were really off in the last one if you wouldn’t you wouldn’t say oh i’m this way because of that person or that circumstance that’s that program of being a victim saying that person in that circumstance is actually controlling the way i feel and think my response to that person is making me sick it’s actually weakening the organism okay the next time i have that opportunity if i’m truly in the game of evolution let’s see if i can stay in my heart and the whole time i’m not going to react that would be a victory for me that would be a victory so then at the end of your day you go i actually kind of love myself i actually got my behaviors to match my intentions i got my actions equal to my thoughts i had a new experience in it yeah it actually felt good hey i’m going to do that again and you start doing it with your children you start doing it opening the door for the person who’s walking out of the the office building you start letting people go ahead of you in traffic you’re just cool you’re no longer in that vigilant state now get enough people doing that you know all of a sudden you start noticing your wife a little bit differently rankin’s all of a sudden starting to smile a little bit more he seems way more relaxed and chilled people are going to start getting relaxed and chilled around you because mirror neurons in the tribe say hey there’s somebody doing something that i’d like to do i just need evidence to be able to do it and all of a sudden you start developing a community of people yeah that start behaving differently what’s the significance of that that’s called emergence and emergent consciousness is that everybody’s behaving differently and that is what’s going to change the world you know sorry interrupts if you are enjoying this content there’s loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification bell and now back to the conversation you know one of the core ideas i get from your work is that we all have a choice we can choose and practice the way that we want to feel so that we actually start feeling it every day you mentioned victim mindset a little bit already and i want to talk a little bit about that shortly because i think many people will say i’m the way i am because of this and we’ll get to that in just a second but before we move to that for someone who is watching this or listening and is intrigued and they go okay i i understand i’ve got a choice i can practice feeling an elevated emotion they also hear you saying that this can take time if you spent 10 years in stress it ain’t going to happen overnight and sometimes it does sometimes it can do how quickly might someone if they wake up and they don’t reach for the phone and don’t put the news on and they decide to engage in a meditation maybe with a pre-meditation ritual like you do how quickly might someone start to feel the difference one day’s two days or is it realistic that within seven days someone’s gonna start to feel quite differently okay let’s talk about this because i i don’t wanna mislead anybody knowledge is the forerunner to experience the more people understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it the how gets easier and this is a time in history where it’s not enough to know this is a time in history to know how the practical application in understanding that philosophy that theory that intellectual knowledge that information once you start to apply it and personalize it and demonstrate it the more you can understand that why you’re doing it and what you’re doing it you get greater value out of it so we have people that are diagnosed with serious health conditions that are nurses that are cancer researchers that are physicians that are engineers or or just a person who just really wants to understand the content now this is it’s so much easier to forget this information than to remember it’s just i i always laugh at myself because i have to go back and relearn it again and i think i know it pretty well and yet i forget i don’t know why but it’s just the way it is so so when our meditations get stale it’s because we forget what we’re doing right so the person who really really takes the time to study instead of watching netflix instead of scrolling through tik tok instead of getting on their phone and doing mindless text or whatever and i want to set aside an hour a day and i’m going to learn this information when they sit down to do the work they’re present yeah they’re they understand if they feel this emotion that they’re going to signal a new gene in a new way if they feel the other emotion they’re going to down regulate that gene and up regulate the gene for their disease so now it’s a it’s it’s an understanding yeah if i rehearse how i’m going to be mentally i’m going to install the hardware in my brain if i keep doing it it’s going to become a software program and start acting that way okay if i say i can’t it’s too hard i’m too tired i don’t feel good those are the things that stop me okay but what if i just start saying anything is possible i believe in synchronicities what if i with my intention and attention just really get clear on that would that be the new voice in my head so now the person who’s truly present and not thinking about their shower or the emails they have to do or their cell phone or their text or when they have to take their kids to ballet or whatever you’re going to get to all of that the person who’s truly present if they follow the instructions we’ve seen them have very significant changes first in their subjective experience of themselves like huh wow my back pain isn’t fair that’s kind of weird or god i slept better last night these small indicators are feedback to tell you that whatever you’re doing inside of you is producing a result outside of you keep that up over a period of time and you see instrumental changes taking place in the person now another person who has had a series of traumas been abused in some way from from childhood is facing a lot of health conditions a lot of emotional and psychological conditions we don’t want them to heal in one week we want them to work on overcoming those emotional states and those are the victories so sitting down in the meditation and when their body starts getting agitated or starts getting anxious instead of quitting and saying i can’t meditate because that would be the extent of that person let’s be curious what’s on the other side of this can i can i lower the volume to this emotion my body’s craving this emotion let me settle it down into the present moment that would be a victory so that person with a lot of trauma there’s a moment in the meditation where they feel uncomfortable the easy thing would be hey i’m going to stop i’m going to put on instagram i’m going to get a coffee i’m going to do anything else to distract me you’re saying that’s the key moment you want to sit with that and hopefully break through that what i’m saying is there’s no such thing as a bad meditation there’s only you overcoming you people think i’m doing my meditation wrong no you’re doing it right even if it’s difficult that is the moment that is going to define the person so so then the person goes oh god i feel really uncomfortable i i’m not a good meditator or something wrong with me it’s my traumas my past it’s my parents it’s what the person who says no no i’m going to sit in the presence of this anxiety and i’m going to keep working with my body and i’m going to keep lowering the volume to that emotion now listen you keep lowering the volume of emotion you’re going to take your attention off that past problem because you only put your attention on that past problem because of the emotion i’ll never tell anybody to go back and review their past i’ll say overcome the emotion overcome the amount this is a key point i think which i really want to talk to you about today dr joe trauma right there’s a lot of awareness growing now about trauma the impact of our childhoods how we’re spoken to the beliefs we take on as kids how that impacts us as adults now one approach to deal with trauma is to go there to go and unpick it and uncover and see a therapist and detail what happened why it happened you know get an understanding of why you’re behaving a certain way as an adult now i think for many people i include myself in this that can be incredibly powerful and incredibly important but i also see when i think of your work i wouldn’t say it’s mutually exclusive necessarily from the outside at least but is there a danger that we can spend too long in our trauma processing on trauma trying to think about it because effectively a key message from your work is don’t get stuck in those emotions of the past don’t let your past define you think about that vision of the future start to feel what you want to feel in the future so you can experience it right now but can someone go back revisit their trauma try and process it and is that approach consistent with yours or would you say it’s a better approach or a different approach is to not spend time there just create the new reality yeah i think i’m i i’m down the middle on this okay i i think there are many modalities that work for trauma what i’ve discovered is that insight never really changes behavior you can see that your father was overbearing or was an alcoholic or you could see all these different things you know like you could come up with the insight all these different things the problem that i see with people is then they tend to excuse their change by saying oh i had a rough childhood that’s why i am the way i am they are excusing their present position so and again trauma is a difficult thing but for me the person who’s living by the identity in their life that they were traumatized as a child or whatever it is or they’ve had a trauma in their life i’m not saying forget the trauma and create another emotion i’m saying that the person who’s willing to go through the emotion and keep working on lowering the volume to it we have had so many people in this work with brutal pasts really really difficult pasts do the work and finally they reach that point where they just break free from the emotion they look back and i have interviewed enough of them it’s the same thing they look back at their entire past and they don’t want to change one thing in their past because it brought them to this elegant moment where they’re liberated they see their betrayers they see their abusers they have nothing but love for them now the side effect of that and many times they’ll say it was like my heart blew wide open they had to pass through the valley of the shadow of darkness to get there and they just thought i don’t know if i can go any further and they went one more time and the body literally was liberated from the past right because the trauma’s not just in the brain the trauma stored emotionally in the body so you want to take the body out of the past out of the known what do you think the body’s going to say if it’s been conditioned to be the mind the unknown is a scary place you step out into the unknown you’re going to be unprepared for that trauma you don’t know how it’s going to happen and so the person keeps clinging to the known and but when the person finally overcomes the emotion the body literally is freed from the chains of the past the side effect of that is seeing the past from a greater level of consciousness lo and behold there goes the suicidal tendencies there goes the dysfunction there goes the irritable bowel syndrome that was because the body was still living in that past event by living by the same emotion so the research on memory is kind of fascinating and i just i’ve studied it enough and and the way we recount the past is not the way it happened even if you absolutely think you remember it being that way so we don’t have the same brain as we did when we were 8 years old or 12 years old or 20 years old we have a different brain we have a completely different brain so the fabrication of the story for many people they embellish the story and make it seem even worse than what it was but you’re really what you’re saying is i changed in those moments and from a biological standpoint i haven’t been able to change since so let me tell you why it’s been so hard for me to change and the story becomes dramatized or embellished oh and the person works them up fire themselves into this emotional froth and then fires and wires the same circuits in the brain and they’re actually reaffirming their limitation now there’s nothing wrong with that i think we’re just taking too long right so 50 of that story isn’t even the truth it means in a sense we’re reliving a miserable life that we never even had and we don’t want but but the but the the unknown people would rather cling to their suffering none this is not a judgment we all do this we’d rather stay in the known than take a chance in the unknown because those emotions of survival are saying what run from the unknown the unknown is a scary place so now the unknown you got to come up against that moment where you’re going to actually leave that behind and step into the unknown this is not a intellectual process this is this is david and goliath there’s a battle going on when the body keeps wanting to go back to its familiar state because it’s subconsciously been conditioned to be the mind stay in the known so then if the person keeps revisiting the trauma from the past i’m not certain enough that when they revisit the trauma from the past unless they learn how to desensitize their emotional response to it that is going to work for them what i learned is that if the person overcomes the emotion the memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom and now you no longer belong to the past so the body gets frustrated in the meditation instead of taking your uh blindfolds off or turning the lights on and say i listen to the voice i can’t meditate this is too much the sincere person says what’s on the other side if i can’t what’s on the other side of this emotion let me see if i can settle my body back down out of that emotion and recondition it to a new mind and the act of doing that in the beginning is very tedious and all of a sudden the person starts getting better at it and they’re telling their body it’s no longer the mind that they’re the mind they’re executing a will that’s greater than that program and just like training an animal you stay you’re not going to die i’m going to feed you you can check your emails you can check your text but this is my time right now and you keep doing that when the body keeps settling it down to the present moment it acquiesces it surrenders to a new mind and when that happens we’ve seen this we’ve measured it there’s a liberation of energy we go from particle away we go from matter to energy that emotion is liberated from the body and now now there’s energy to heal there’s energy to create a new life it’s it’s available energy it’s free energy so the person goes wow i i see it from a different level of consciousness i have nothing but love or my goodness i i’m no longer that person and and they’re now free from the past now the side effect of that is that there’s a biological upgrade there’s a neurological upgrade there’s a chemical upgrade there’s a genetic modification that’s taking place why you think the same way you make the same choices you do the same things you create the same experiences you feel the same emotions your biology will stay the same because you’re the same now the person’s thinking differently they’re making different choices they’re doing different things they’re behaving in different ways they’re having new experiences and they’re certainly feeling different emotions the body reorganizes to a new chemistry and and they’ll tell you i’m not that person any longer i’m literally not that person and and they’re betrayers even if they’re family members they have forgiveness for them and what is forgiveness you take your attention off the emotion you overcome the emotion you don’t pay attention to the person or the problem now you’re free you free yourself and you free them and what if someone says to your doctor joe look uh i i get what you’re saying but my ex-husband cheated on me right they shouldn’t have done it i cannot forgive them for what they did and the reason i’m asking is because this is exactly what happened with one of my patients because this often happens so i talk a lot about forgiveness and a lot of people push back they go yeah i want to but you don’t know what happened to me this was really really bad like this cannot be forgiven what would you say to that person i’d say to them i want you to think about something in your life that you’ve done that you would like forgiveness for that you don’t feel good about and forgive that person the way that you would want to be forgiven and you would be forgiving yourself i mean we all have done we’ve all had indiscretions nobody’s companies nobody’s perfect so so that person that is in that state is still in the emotional state the problem with that is that no new information can enter the nervous system that is not equal to the emotion the person experiencing because it’s not relevant so the question really is is how long do you want to do that how long do you want to do that and and again knowledge and information about what that is doing to that person’s health and their biology if you reason with uh we’ve had this happen enough times in our work that’s not an uncommon situation when the person finally finally takes their attention off that and puts it on something else they notice that they feel differently yeah if they can you can’t just tell a person to forgive because it’s it’s it’s kind of an etherical thing it’s it’s a subjective process right so if you’re we’ve seen this our oxytocin levels and a lot of our participants go up 200 times right that’s a that’s a lot of that’s a lot of love oxytocin signals nitric oxide nitric oxide signals another chemical that literally causes the arteries in your heart and lungs to actually expand there’s more energy there’s more blood going into your heart okay so when that person takes their attention off their ex takes their attention off their past and starts looking at themselves denaturing that identity that’s built on the past see that person had a reaction to that circumstance and that reaction produces a refractory period of chemicals and emotions right and if you don’t know how to control that refractory period and it lasts for hours or days it’s called the mood you keep that same refractory period going on for weeks or months now it’s a temperament one long emotional reaction you keep that refractory period going on for years and that’s a personality trait and most people’s personalities are defined by i am this way because my husband cheated on me what you’re really saying is you haven’t changed in 10 years and you’re giving your vital life force to that person who is worth 10 years of your life yeah who’s worth it so then the stronger the emotion we feel the more we pay attention to the cause where you place your attention is where you place your energy a person’s giving their vital life force to heal their life force to change to that person or that circumstance lower the volume to that emotion yeah you take your attention off that person or promise not the person or the problem they’re using unconsciously that person or that circumstance to reaffirm their addiction to that emotion that’s why they keep thinking about it if they weren’t addicted to that emotion they would stop they would stop thinking about it so then is it the person no it’s the you’re left we’ll we’ll take your ex-husband and put him in a a rocket and a straitjacket let’s shoot him to the moon now what now what now what now what do you do you still have that’s embossed in your brain and conditioned in your body at what point so then the research on oxytocin you can’t you can’t you can only talk around this you can’t say to someone forgive if they still feel the emotion that’s they’re separate from the act of forgiving imagine feeling so much love by by no one’s doing it to you it’s actually coming from within you have that um you have that moment that catharsis where you feel that emotion oxytocin levels go up just slightly in the research just a little bit more elevated an elevation an oxytocin makes it impossible to hold the grudge they’ve done the the research on the date you cannot hold a grudge it’s possible you just you just go i like this feeling better than that feeling and because i like this feeling better than that and you’re okay forget about it yeah i’m good i’m good that person who falls in love again that whose husband cheated on them who falls and loves again and finds a person who is intelligent and caring and kind and loving and provides all of a sudden they can forgive that person like oh my god i got that what had had to happen because now i have a better person well well you’re if you don’t let go of that you’re never going to have this in fact if you bring that into the next relationship you’re not going to have a healthy relationship because there’s going to be a trust issue on every level so then you want an equal write down exactly what you want and become that person and see what and the experiment see what comes to you try it out try it out as an expert if i for if i really work on my god this emotion is actually now that i understand the science behind this this emotion is actually weakening me every day it’s it’s it’s knocking my brain and body out of homeostasis stress is when our brain and body are knocked out of homeostasis and balance turning on the stress response just by thought alone hormones of stress down regulate genes and create disease my thoughts are making me sick is that person or that circumstance worth it if my thoughts could make me sick is it possible that my thoughts can make me well well now you got to come up against the belief now i don’t really want to believe this then that really means that you want to stay in that emotional state but go to the go see some testimonials of people who who’ve had that and see their the life that they’re living now they they the the miracles the synchronicities the opportunities the coincidences the healings they bless their past they say my my disease that that condition that was my greatest teacher yeah that was my greatest teacher and and now that the soul is free like let’s get on with in eternity it’s a big place you’re gonna hold on to that emotion for how long you’re not doing anything wrong you’re just taking too long that’s all yeah that and and it works it works with anything with in with any some people want wealth some they were bankrupt some people their business partner uh you know it took the you know took all their money uh some people it’s a relationship some people it’s uh trauma from childhood it’s all the same but what we’re looking for is wholeness so then it’s not just the emotion the emotion is driving a certain behavior the immersive emotion is driving a certain habit of action the emotion is driving a certain series of thoughts that are associated with that with that person or that circumstance if you truly believe that you have the power within you to change the first step would be would be saying i have to take responsibility for myself right now because i got to start thinking differently i got to start acting differently and start feeling different it’s going to be hard yeah if it was easy everybody would be doing this but how was self-love born i’ve studied this when the person sits through the fire and sits through all of that anxiety all that hatred all that anger and keeps lowering the volume sooner or later the body’s going to release it and when they when it’s released forgiveness is a side effect you take your attention off that person uh because you no longer have the emotion to keep your attention on and in fact you feel so good this feels better that you naturally forgive it’s not like now you’re forgiven it’s not like hey look at me i’m forgiving you it’s just kind of like wow isn’t life great whoa you’re good i mean you’re good i’m getting on with my life right now right so so emotions keep us stuck in the past and we tell that story we reaffirm it we get in trouble it’s you know it subjectively feels better to forgive and practice gratitude and joy but biochemical you change as well this particular patient when she did ultimately learn how to forgive because her lifestyle her diet was fantastic to get to that point but she had chronic high blood pressure as soon as she started to learn how to forgive blood pressure starts coming down and you you know this full well like it’s yes subjectively feels great but it is literally changing your physiology at the same time and let me just say one thing about that because you could have the most organic vegan gluten free ketogenic triple filtered water take all your vitamins take all your nutrients work out do pilates do yoga do your breathing you do all of that get your body chemically balanced get your body physically balanced but if you’re not going to get your body emotionally balanced forget it yeah because the moment you get emotional your body literally goes to the past that’s that’s the one that matters the most and then people once they realize it’s the emotion that’s signaling the gene oh my god i better start really taking care of my emotional balance as much as i do with my physical exercise and my diet and all that other stuff yeah i completely agree this is you know for many years i was focused on food and movement and sleep and i still am i am too those things are important but i realized actually if you want to get to the root of the roots yeah this up here yeah it’s how you think it’s how you deal with conflict it’s how you approach the world it’s it’s also dr joe what you said about awareness like the really powerful idea one of the many powerful ideas i get from your work is it’s about evolution right so if you never meditate before sure start meditating learn how to meditate have a great meditation great that that’s going to be better than if you weren’t doing it but then learn oh you know i had a great meditation but i still was judging my co-worker i still reacted to my boss okay cool tomorrow i’m gonna see if i can show up and not react in that way so it’s not and again we’re talking about trauma you’re not saying don’t go back and revisit it you’re just saying hey maybe don’t stay there too long maybe if you’ve been trying to process it for 10 years and you’re still there yeah maybe it’s time to shift a little bit is that fair to say yeah and look i mean look i mean we’re human beings we’re so programmed for survival and when you’re in survival and you’re threatened and there’s a danger you prepare for the worst yeah so the person who’s traumatized is actually anticipating the event to happen again and they’re preparing themselves for the worst case scenario because there’s better chances of survival if you prepare for the worst so the brain naturally fabricates an outcome but actually in it actually says well what if this happens what if that happens and now we’re actually we’re this is a really vivid imagination but it’s working against us in a lot of ways so there’s nothing wrong with this i mean we’ve all done it you’ve had a trauma you’ve you’ve had an insult you’ve had you know a betrayal you have whatever and then you’re still you get wise from the experience but then you’re always if it’s really strong trauma then you’re expecting it to happen again right so the brain is selecting out of the infinite potentials in the quantum field the worst case scenario and then emotionally embracing the outcome before it happens a thought and feeling an image and an emotion a stimulus and response and they’re conditioning their body into the mind of that emotion their past is they’re reliving their past in their future every single day in the present moment and now it becomes a very visceral and subconscious process so it takes an enormous amount of will it takes an enormous amount of awareness and energy to break that apart and we have so many brain scans of people that have severe anxiety and and you cannot be anxious if you’re in the present moment and they just kept catching themselves going to that thought and feeling that feeling and bringing it back and then getting frustrated and going ah and then all of a sudden they’re there again well why are they there because they’ve been practicing that do you keep practicing feeling anxious you get really good at it you start practicing feeling gratitude you get really good at that we’re doing a study with children in australia and i say to them you practice being angry you’ll get good at being angry you practice being kind you get really good at being kind and it feels better at its core it’s that simple it’s that simple it really is you know what you practice you get good at exactly one thing i’ve heard you say recently which has been really helpful for me is that you don’t get up from your meditation until you’ve overcome that emotion until you’ve reached that place of calm and gratitude and joy and if i think back to when i started meditating on and off maybe 10 years ago you know some days i’d drop in it would be great other days it would be really hard i think oh it’s not today so i’d walk out of it oh you know not today with a with a complete misunderstanding that oh it always has to be perfect and joyful whereas now i know it’s a practice i sit there for the entire time some days it’s wonderful other days it’s hard and i think that’s very powerful what you what you shadow how long do you really take for yourself for two hours two hours the first 20 minutes or so or 30 minutes depends on me i’m in my think box and then then the next hour and a half if it takes me an hour again to get to the present moment i will not get up for my meditation until i get there so i’m just uncompromising to that because i know that if i overcome myself it’s the overcoming process that’s the becoming process so if i get if i stretch myself as it doesn’t feel good and and i and i break through then i’m a different person the rest of the day if i get up and quit then i’m the same guy yeah i can’t expect anything really magical to happen in my life so i’m just willing to just go that distance because because i think that if you get up as the same person that sat down nothing really happens nothing nothing really happens and and we’ve talked to so many people that have had so many transcendental profound experiences and they look back at all the meditations that they’ve done and it’s not the good ones they remembered it’s the ones where they sat through the fire and they love themselves for doing it they love themselves because they sat through it that’s that’s really the value uh behind all of this so for so so for the person who’s on the journey like for me i’m just the type of guy that like if i do a meditation and i and i get when i make it through it and it wasn’t a pretty meditation i’m that that discomfort bothers me the whole day it bothers me because i don’t want to do that again and i want to make sure that i’m not thinking about the news or i’m not thinking about what people think about me i’m not thinking about all that any other stuff i’m really thinking about what happened there joe like where did you go like why are you feeling this way because i’m disturbed by something because i think i could do better it’s like he’s like a martial artist you know you’re sparring somebody you kicked in the face three or four times sooner or later you say what am i doing like yeah what and and you sit there and you think about it over and over again over and it bothers you until you figure it out right so so you feel good because you overcame it you’re like hey man i can overcome it and so then what people say to me wow two hours in the morning you know i say listen it’s really simple if i can overcome myself the beginning of the day the rest of my day i can overcome anything like i’m just okay with it when you’re okay with yourself you’re okay with anybody when you’re angry with yourself you’re angry with others if you’re unhappy with yourself you punish other people to feel unhappy because you want them to feel the way you do it’s just the way it is you’re grateful for you get up grateful yeah you get up grateful just for the fact that life is the gift i’m alive i got a body i have a family i have people that love me i can eat i have a home uh kind of running water in my shower i feel pretty good yeah i made a bunch of mistakes but i’m alive yeah hey a new day new life you know you get up grateful that way and you start seeing these coincidences happening in your life i guarantee you the meditation will no longer be about to have to that’s what i love about our community we don’t do the work because we have to do the work or to please god or be holy or any of that stuff people do the work because they don’t want the magic to end the moment you see the coincidence happen in your life you’re going to stop believing that you’re the victim of your life and you’re starting to believe you start believing you’re the creator of your life and when you do what do you think that synchronicity creates you think it creates sadness or pain the synchronicity wakes you up you get feel a little energy you feel a little joy and that inspires you like huh the experiment’s kind of working yeah and i’ll show up tomorrow for the experiment again hey that’s kind of weird hey i’m going to do it again wow and then you don’t want to stop doing it because you start realizing that you actually can produce effects in your life yeah i don’t care what kind of past you’ve had i don’t care you can’t even tell me you’re too sick to do this work you can’t tell me you’re too old to do this work you can’t tell me i never meditated before you can’t even tell me that you had a brutal past you can’t do this work i’ve seen it happen all all races all colors all sizes all shapes all diets all past all social status nobody’s so special to be excluded from this principle and so the act of making time yeah to be a creative creator in your life if you make time to be a creator in your life that means you must believe that you’re a creator in your life if you don’t make time or you don’t do it you don’t believe that you’re the creator in your life you’re believing in your past more than you’re believing in your future you show up to do the work because you want to believe in your future more than you believe in your past and there’s some people that do this work that get up and believe less in their past because they didn’t overcome themselves and then there’s people who do it every day and they get up and they believe more in their future every day and the side effect of that are all these wonderful changes that begin to happen in a person’s life and they say what everybody says i knew it was the truth i just had to prove it to myself that’s joe as always so inspirational being around you just to finish off for that person who’s watching now and listening and says hey hey dark i understand what you’re saying i get it but i don’t have time my life is busy i don’t have time to meditate what would you say to them i would say you can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering and you can learn and change in a state of joy and inspiration i mean uh if you don’t have time now make time when you when you can but for the most part i mean i’m i want to inspire people to not wait for that crisis or that trauma or that disease or that loss to really change because we i want them to be inspired to try it out it’s an experiment the hardest part about all of this rankin is is actually making the time to do that’s the hardest part about all of this when we make time for our precious selves when we invest in ourselves we invest in our future and in order for us to believe in ourselves we have to believe in possibility and when we believe in possibility we believe in ourselves so it doesn’t even have to be a long amount of time do a little experiment say i’m not going to think these thoughts i’ll write them down i’m not going to act this way or speak this way and i’m not today i’m going to work on just staying conscious of these feelings that’s all i’m going to do i’m just going to close my eyes for a few moments and remember that i’m not going to do these things if that’s the start you just demystified meditation because meditation means to become familiar with to become familiar with that symbol is familiarization to become so familiar with yourself that you can become familiar with a new self and not default back to the old person we all default we all react that’s not the question the question is how long are you going how long are you going to do that for and so we have a choice try it out as an experiment a little time just a little time if you don’t have the time and what people say well i don’t i don’t know the time and i say well well get up earlier and they say well i’m tired i said well go to bed earlier i don’t what am i going to say what is it what is it when is it going to you know when do you want to do it if you don’t want to do it and don’t have the time don’t do it if it inspires you to do it i want you to do it only do it if you’re inspired don’t do it because you have to do it because you want to try the experiment out talk to joe you’re an incredible human being that’s coming on the show i appreciate it thank you so much rangan if you enjoyed that conversation about the power of our minds i think you are really going to enjoy this powerful one all about how you can become happier today if you actually went to the happiness gym several times a week you will actually have a happier life right and the happiness gym is very straightforward it’s a set of skills that you need to practice …