PNTV: You Are the Placebo by Dr. Joe Dispenza (#190)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book. You are the placebo doctor Joe Dispenza, who you might remember from what the bleep do we know? Great guy, super passionate, and he lays out an extraordinary case for how we can subtitle of the book make your mind matter. So we've got the Philosopher's Note. Bunch of big ideas. Five of my favorite ones here. Start with a little chat about the placebo effect. So the placebo effect is amazing. Basically, when people think that a pill or an injection or even a surgery is going to benefit them, they experience the benefits that they thought they were going to have even though they had an inert substance or surgery or procedure. That's amazing. Now, most people write that off and say, oh, the placebo. And it kind of gets in the way. Studies on things like antidepressants. And the reality is, is that the placebo is almost always as effective as antidepressants. In these studies, only those with the most severe forms of depression will see a more significant boost in the taking of the actual medication. That's staggering. And Joe Dispenza said, well, look, if we can experience those benefits when we think something outside of ourselves accounting for that benefit, right, we're taking a pill or we're getting a surgery, then is it possible for us to actually induce the same change without going through a procedure or without taking a pill? Can we make ourselves the placebo? That's the basic thesis of the book. And he says unequivocally, yes. In his research and his workshops, he's seen ridiculous results from people who have embraced and engaged in the practices he recommends here that we'll talk about a little bit. Now, one other wacky thing, and he tells a ton of stories about all the research and incidents that prove the power of placebo. You can bring people into, or people have been brought into a study and then they think they're getting knee surgery. Three different groups, what's to say, two different groups are put under, they get surgery. One group gets the actual surgery they thought they were going to get, right? The other group, the surgeon just opens them up, pretends like he's doing it and sews him back up. Now, you'd think that only the group that had the surgery would experience benefits, right? But this group that had a sham surgery experienced the same benefits as the group that had the surgery, even months and months and months and even years later. That's crazy. The power of our belief. When we talked about the book How God changes our brain. The most powerful thing was belief. A strong belief is extraordinarily powerful. So we want to engage in that and become the placebo. That's a long prelude to the first big idea. Now, if we want to do that and we want to experience the benefits of inducing the placebo in our own lives and creating the conditions in which we can heal ourselves and become our optimal selves, then we need to become a new version of ourselves. And Joe has a great way of describing. He says, your personality creates your personal reality. Your personality personality creates your personal reality. It's a powerful idea. And he says, look, if you want to have a different personal reality in the future, you need to create a different personality. Now, our personality is formed by the thoughts we have, the choices we make, the behaviors we engage in, and the feelings we feel, right? Choices, thoughts, behaviors, feelings constitute our personality in our current reality. You essentially an expression of our past personality and all the thoughts and behaviors and feelings that we've had. So if you want to experience new things in your life, you have to become a new person. You have to become a new you. And he talks about how that's not easy. And when you start doing new things, like thinking different ways and doing different behaviors that are not like your old self, it's uncomfortable because you're literally being someone different now. It's a better version of yourself. But he says it's hard to cross the river of change. There's this river, right? And you're here, and you want to be here, and that's tough. You've literally got to biologically die to the old version of yourself to be born into the new. We talk about in the note, But Nietzsche says, the snake that cannot shed its skin must perish. Campbell says you need to have a crucifixion to have a resurrection. You need to become a new version of you and die to the old version of yourself and realize that that's not a comfortable experience. You're going to need to move through that discomfort to create the new you. Huge idea. That's the first one. The second one is awesome. Epigenetic engineer. That's what we want you to become. So epigenetics means literally a above the genes. So you have your DNA code. Now, up until very recently, we thought that our genes basically determined outcomes. And we now know that although we can't change the actual DNA code, we can change the expression of that genetic code. You can literally turn on and off different genes in different combinations to create an optimal life that's extraordinary. And the way to prove this very simply and think about it and frame it, is think of identical twins. Identical twins are genetically identical. By definition. Their genes are literally exactly the same. Now, if genes predetermined all outcomes and there was nothing else that could come in, you'd expect those identical twins to look and feel and have the same illnesses, or lack of illnesses, as at 90 years old, just like they look the same at nine days old. But that's not how it works. Huh. Interesting. So it must not be exclusively the genetic code. What else is impacting it? Well, epigenetics tells us that it's our thoughts, our behaviors, our feelings, our environment, internally and externally, that's turning on and off genes. And over a lifetime, when you do that, over decades and decades and decades and decades, you see two very different people at 90 years old. It's a really big idea. So we can become the epigenetic engineers in our own lives and literally shape our destiny. That's what this book is all about. Neuroplasticity and epigenetics. As a little side note on that, he talks about the fact that when you're in your old self, your old personality, and you keep on doing the same exact things, you have what he calls neuro rigidity. You're fixed, of course. Nothing's going to change. You keep on doing the same thing. Neuroplasticity is what happens when you do new things. You become the new you through your thoughts, behaviors, feelings. That's the second idea. We can obviously talk about that for quite a while longer. Third idea. Well, how do you turn on these genes? What do you got to do? One key practice is mental rehearsal. And it's really cool to see Joe. Dr. Joe, explain the science behind why mental rehearsal works. So all the mental training books, and I think I've read basically all of the top mental training books over the last two, three months, and they all say very similar things, and they all say mental rehearsal. And Dispenza talks about how athletes and performers mentally rehearse. They're creating their reality. And he says we need to do that because when you vividly imagine you. Your ideal behaviors and your ideal outcomes with emotion, you're literally changing your brain, and you're flipping on and off jeans. Your essence doesn't know the difference between a vividly imagined thing in your mind in reality. So by mentally rehearsing very vividly with emotion and intensity and frequently, you. You literally can rewire your brain in significant ways and to bring that future reality into your present. Unbelievably cool. He talks about emotion and how important it is to bring emotion to your images. All the peak performance mental training sports gurus say the same thing. Pele, when he imagined playing extraordinarily well, felt the enthusiasm of playing well when he practiced imagineering, which is what one author described it as. Right now, he says the strongest emotion, the best possible emotion that we can feel as we imagine our ideal selves in the future is gratitude, gratitude and joy. But gratitude, as we know, is huge scientifically. We talk about this again and again, but usually we're talking about gratitude in the context of things that we currently have in our lives. I'm grateful for this, this, this and this. Simply keeping track of that will boost your happiness by as much as 25%. But Joe tells us, be grateful for things you're going to have in your future now, that's one extraordinarily powerful way to mentally rehearse. Have gratitude for your perceived future now. And literally, your mind doesn't know if that's a real event, a past event, or a future event, or it's happening right now. So practice gratitude on things that you want to see in your life. Unbelievably cool. So imagine your ideal life. What do you do during your day? See yourself doing those new things, having new thoughts, feeling a different way. See that in your mind as you lay down and relax and enjoy that experience and actually bring that to life. With gratitude, you're actually experiencing it right now and you're grateful for it. It's a really cool idea. The fifth big idea, how do you basically tap into your subconscious? Well, you do it on brainwaves. If you want to access your subconscious, you need to do so riding a brainwave. He playfully says, if you're in your analytical mind, your beta mode, you're not going to be able to access your subconscious mind. We talked about this in the inner game of tennis. Self 1 Self 2 conscious mind, unconscious mind. If you're constantly chatting to yourself about what's right, what's wrong, criticizing, complaining, whatever, you're not going to get into your unconscious mind. You need to let go. You need to slow down your mind enough to access your subconscious mind. And we do that by moving out of beta into alpha and into theta, which is where we're most suggestible, is what he describes it as similar to hypnotism. The people who can be hypnotized are those who are most suggestible. The ones who are most suggestible are the ones who aren't overthinking everything. So slowing down our mind is so important. We want to practice that not just in our meditation, in our mental rehearsals, but throughout the day. So in the note I talk about Stephen King's jumper cables. Remember we talked about that in On Writing. He said it was really hard for him to write early in his career when he was a teacher. It felt like he had jumper cables on his brain. He was in beta mode all the time. If you're constantly in beta mode, checking your email every 23 seconds and your social feed every 48 seconds and texting and never allowing your mind to slow down, you're constantly in beta. You're going to have a really hard time having a real deep creative thought in alpha, and you have an even harder time dropping into theta where you can truly program your subconscious mind. So we want to slow down our thinking, our minds, take more time for silence during our days and have fun practicing mental rehearsal with gratitude. As we become epigenetic engineers and become the new version of ourselves, realizing that we are the placebo, we can create the extraordinary change we want. It's a great book, highly recommend it, and I look forward to covering more of his stuff in the future. For now, I hope you enjoyed and have another awesome day. See ya.