I’d already begun a daily meditation practice when someone mentioned New You, New Life by Joe Dispenza. I love when a book comes along at just the right time. I decided to listen to it with my notebook on hand, and found myself making plenty of notes.
I love when a book comes along at just the right time.
I’d already begun a daily meditation practice when someone mentioned New You, New Life by Joe Dispenza. I decided to listen to it, notebook at hand, and found myself making plenty of notes.
The book explores how our thoughts, emotions and behaviours are connected, and how we can begin to change habitual patterns by becoming more conscious of the way we think and act.
Many of the ideas resonated with me and connect with the work I do in my coaching practice, particularly around mindset, neuroscience and the role our thinking plays in the way we approach our lives and creative work.
New You, New Life: changing habitual thinking
Dispenza’s central premise is that we can change the way we think, feel and behave by consciously practising being the person we want to become.
He explores the relationship between our thoughts, emotions and behaviours, suggesting that many of our responses are habitual. We revisit the same thoughts, experience the same emotions and repeat the same behaviours, often without realising we’re doing it.
Think about how easy it is for us to fall into familiar patterns.
Perhaps you tell yourself you’re not good enough to write that book and you put off starting because you don’t know where to begin. You compare your progress with someone else’s and end up feeling even less confident. Over time, these old thoughts and behaviours can become so familiar that we stop questioning them. They become part of the story we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’re capable of. In this book, Dispenza encourages readers to become more intentional about that story. Rather than simply reacting to life as it happens, we can begin to imagine how we’d like to think, feel and behave, and practise moving towards that version of ourselves.
There’s something here that has similarities with manifesting, but the emphasis is on meditation, mental rehearsal and consciously practising new ways of being.
The role of meditation
One of the things I found particularly interesting in New You, New Life was Dispenza’s discussion of meditation and brain states.
He talks about the theta state, which is associated with relaxed and drowsy states of consciousness. (There’s a useful introduction to alpha, beta and theta brain waves in this article from The Conversation.)
Dispenza suggests that meditation can help us move away from our usual analytical thinking and become more receptive to new ways of thinking and being.
I’m interested in this relationship between a quieter, less analytical mind and creativity.
How often do we give ourselves the opportunity to pause, step away from the constant stream of thoughts and make room for something new?
As writers and creatives, we’re often focused on producing something. We sit down to write, make, solve a problem or get a project finished. But what if making a little space for stillness could also become part of our creative practice?
That’s something I want to explore further.
What I’m taking into my own creative practice
There were two things I particularly wanted to experiment with after listening to this book.
1. Becoming more aware of habitual behaviour
I want to notice the moments when I slip into unconscious patterns of thinking and behaving.
It might be scrolling on my phone without really thinking about it, or eating without noticing what I’ve eaten. These are relatively ordinary examples, but they remind me how easily we can move through parts of our day without being fully present.
I’d like to reflect on these moments at the end of each day in my journal, without judgement.
The point isn’t to criticise myself or try to eliminate every habit. It’s to become more aware of what’s happening and give myself the opportunity to make a different choice.
2. Experimenting with meditation before writing
I’m continuing my daily meditation practice and want to experiment with meditating before each writing session.
What happens if I give myself a few minutes to settle my mind before I begin? Does it change how I approach the work? Am I more open to ideas, less distracted or simply more present?
I’m also interested in experimenting with some of Dispenza’s suggestions for setting up a meditation practice:
- Sitting comfortably rather than lying down and risking falling asleep.
- Putting my phone on Do Not Disturb.
- Trying noise-cancelling headphones.
- Experimenting with an eye mask or blindfold and a darkened room.
I’m curious to see what difference, if any, these changes make.
What resonated (and what didn’t)
I don’t think changing our mindset means we can simply think our way out of every difficulty.
Sometimes we need practical support, better working conditions, rest or a different approach to the work itself. And we don’t need to replace every uncomfortable thought with a positive one.
It reminds me of people telling someone experiencing depression to ‘just be happy’, as though it’s that easy. Our circumstances matter. Our experiences matter. And sometimes what we need isn’t a change in thinking but a change in what’s happening around us.
However, I do think there’s considerable value in recognising that our habitual responses aren’t necessarily the only responses available to us. We can question old assumptions, experiment with different ways of approaching a challenge and give ourselves opportunities to practise new habits.
For me, that’s where Joe Dispenza’s latest book New You, New Life has the most value. It reinforces the importance of paying attention to the patterns we’ve developed, while reminding me that change is something we practise, not simply something we decide to do.
A thought to take away
If you’ve been feeling stuck, perhaps there’s a familiar story you’ve been telling yourself about what you can or can’t do.
What if you paused long enough to question it?
You don’t have to transform your life overnight or suddenly become a completely different person. You might simply start by noticing one habitual response and experimenting with another.
What would you like your future self to be like, and what’s one small action you could take today to move towards that?
If you’d like to explore how our habitual thinking can get in the way of creative work, you might enjoy my Mindset Insight, Why are we so tough on ourselves?, where I explore our inner critic and how we can learn to work with it.