Learning to Re-Brainwash Myself

Yup, I used the B word!! See why below

A belief is just a thought you keep thinking. So I'm re-brainwashing my mind with a new belief system that works for me, not against me.

I listened to a recent podcast by Lewis Howes where he interviewed Dr. Joe Dispenza. What I heard was exactly what I needed that day.  Dr. Dispenza is a leading researcher on the power of the mind and way it can change your body and brain function within a matter of days by implementing specific mind techniques. Dr. Dispenza discovered that you can rewire your brain chemistry simply by visualizing the future you want rather than focusing on events in the past. This practice improves not only your mental state but your health as well.  

For example, if I focus on the traumas of my past, this keeps me continuously focused on worst-case scenarios. The more I entertain those thoughts, the more it becomes my reality, and the more my body reacts to those thoughts. This reaction comes in the form of continuously living in fight or flight mode, not knowing the difference between my thoughts and my environment. We all want to create a life we love and become an ideal version of ourselves. But focusing on the story and events of our past will hold us back from making any positive change. Dr. Dispenza points out that it's easy to focus on our past is because it reaffirms our limited sense of our ability to change. We can then use this reaffirming belief as an excuse for why we haven't changed.

"The more we hold on to the identity of the past, the harder it is to become our idea of the future." 

-- Dr. Joe Dispenza

This was a key realization for me, as it's so easy to blame our present circumstances on events of the past. But how does that help us moving forward? How does that give us the courage to change the things we want to change? It doesn’t. It holds us back, keeps us stuck and afraid of changing because of X scenario that happened X years ago. 

Getting stuck in this thought process affects our immune system and mental health function, as our body continues to use up valuable resources usually reserved for emergency situations only. In order to build our immune system, we need to rewire our brain so it rejects negative thought processes, takes us out of emergency mode and back into a state of relaxation. In this balanced state, our body will be able to naturally reject viruses and health issues.

Now, how do we do this? Well, Dr. Dispenza says we build this up by opening our heart system and connecting to our intuition. This helps us live from a space of love, wholeness, and joy, rather than separation and lack. When you feel whole, you feel like everything you want has already happened. And it’s in this state where your body starts to change. It doesn’t take that long, but it takes work. It takes awareness, repetition, information, sharing, and experience to get to the point where we let go of our persona of the past. But when we do, the body is liberated from and there is a huge release of energy.

This is what Dr. Dispenza does as his life's work.  His technique re-brainwashes our minds, but in a way that WE want, however that looks for you. Dr. Dispenza said that 95% of who we are is a set of unconscious programs. In order to become someone else, we have to become aware of who we are. We have to become self-aware of every thought, word, emotion, expression, and more, and how it influences our thoughts. When we do, we develop willpower greater than our self-programming simply by being aware of our thoughts.

All we want is wholeness, peace, and happiness. But to obtain that, we have to first conquer the mind and make it our best friend rather than our worst enemy. You become your thoughts because the body adapts to your thoughts. We can teach ourselves to become immune to negative thoughts and viruses, or keep being susceptible. 

You cannot just stop your negative thoughts. You need to replace the negative with positive. For me, this works in the form of mantras, which I repeat until they become automatic thoughts. The more I say it the more I think it and the more I believe it, which forms a new belief system. This is my first step to re-brainwashing myself. In the podcast, I heard this phrase by Dr. Dispenza, and I decided to use this as a mantra to start changing my brain chemistry and therefore my life:

“I’m more connected to the energy of my future than to the energy of my past. I’m more in love with my future than the story of my past.”

See if this works for you too, or find one that resonates. Write it down, repeat it, use it as the background on your phone. Start working on re-brainwashing your brain today to make it work for you! If you are interested in listening to the full podcast, click on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTuf7OfZ-yY

Your Story and Your Experiences Matter!

Realizations after a Social Media Break

Recently I took a 10 day social media break and used the time doing something I’ve been putting off: going through absolutely horrendous instances in my childhood that children should never have to experience. I allowed myself to feel mad, horrified, gross, sad, and ashamed. Feelings I try to avoid in my everyday life by telling myself it wasn’t that bad.

It’s insane to me how many of us who grew up in cults still downplay our experiences. It’s usually a “well so and so had it worse”, or “I don’t remember anything really bad” excuse. Refusing to honor our experiences completely holds you back from healing, moving forward and evolving.

Your story matters, your experiences matter and no, it was not normal. Nothing about growing up in a cult was ok. I was systematically abused on a daily basis then made to think it was my fault, and I carried that fucked up brainwashed belief into adulthood. I thought I was ok because if it was really bad I’d be way worse off, right? Wrong.

Do not gaslight yourself into believing you’re ok simply because you’re carrying your pain on the inside and not the outside. Just because your pain doesn’t look like someone else’s, doesn’t mean that your life was easy. I wish I could tell every cult survivor that yes, your pain matters and your experiences matter. But you cannot heal something you deny is there. 💚

The quickest way out is through it. Going back through those memories allows me to heal my relationship to those events, take my power back and give myself permission to be mad at my parents, caretakers, and everyone else who failed me.

It’s not the easy way but it’s the only way to get to where I want to go. I’m not ok being stuck repeating the same patterns over and over again. I’m not ok not changing. I’ve come this far and there’s no way I’m going back to the person I used to be.

I’m not downplaying my experiences any longer simply because it makes other people feel more comfortable. I’m using this time for some deep healing I’ve been trying to avoid for a while, and I’m going to make it out the other side. The time is now and I’m all in.

All is not what it seemed...

My experience leaving the desert of New Mexico, and the people I encountered

I want to talk about my experience on a plane when I left New Mexico. As I think it’s a great example of how skewed our view on the world could be. My initial impression of the world outside of my safe, secluded, lovely abode in New Mexico was complete chaos, fear, selfishness and political divides, based on what I've seen on the news and experienced on social media.

The plane was fairly full, we all boarded and sat down, masked up as usual. A woman across the aisle from me started having a severe panic attack as she wasn't seated next to her husband who was behind me. The woman who sat next to the husband offered to switch seats as the wife was clearly having a difficult time. The wife thanked her and sat next to her husband.

I was in front of this couple, next to a respiratory Doctor. As he explained his experience with COVID and patients, I could still hear the woman behind me having a very difficult time with having to wear a mask on the plane. She hyperventilated and panicked even more, so much that the stewardesses didn't know what to do. It got so bad that the husband offered to leave the plane and not fly at all.

I decided to offer the woman what little help I could and gave her my bag of lavender seeds to smell to help calm her breathing. The respiratory doctor next to me confirmed that lavender is actually in a lot of the medication he gives his patients, particularly for the calming effect. He then helped her with some breathing exercises to calm her body.

As the plane took off the woman was still in a slight panic though she had calmed down a bit by sniffing the lavender and doing the breathing exercises. After takeoff a young couple sitting across from the woman gave her oil to put on the back of her ears to help w her nerves. We joked at how all the "crazy" holistic health people are crawling out of the woodwork, exposing themselves to help her.

Surprisingly, the woman actually fell asleep on the plane and slept the entire time, even during landing.

As we disembarked the woman thanked us all profusely for helping and doing what little we could to help. The young couple gave the woman her oil, I gave the woman my lavender seeds, & the respiratory doctor gave the woman his card so she could call him if she had any other difficulties on flights.

This small interaction of kindness between a total group of strangers gave me so much faith for humanity. Of course, not single person filmed this incident to post on social media. Why? Because it was calm, peaceful, and loving. These type of things don’t go viral on social media and they don’t make the news. It’s not outrageous or something to debate and divide people. But it was real life and it was wonderful.

Sure, flying on planes with masks is horrible. Sure, the extra precautions are annoying. But the people? They're not annoying. They're scared, confused and frustrated like everyone else. These strangers just chose to use those emotions not to shame or shun, but to help and show empathy.

This experience and others on my trip showed me a different perspective of humanity. It made me remember that we're all just doing the best we can with the resources provided to us at the moment.

Good people and experiences are out there, y'all. You just gotta turn off the TV for a sec, step away from the conspiracy theories, and go out to find that it for yourself.

Have you experienced moments like this with strangers in this time during the pandemic? If so I want to hear about it! Leave a comment below and let me know. Let's share the good news as well as the bad! 

xx Serena xx