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Belief Systems
By Jean McAulay

Editor's Note: How does what we think about affect what we can accomplish? This question fascinated thinkers in the past and in the present. Exploring one of Life University's Eight Core Proficiencies, Belief Systems and Performance, writer Jean McAulay interviews Dr. Joseph Dispenza, author of the award-winning movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

Deep within each of us, lives a little voice, an inkling, or perhaps a tender thought nudging us to imagine that we might be more tomorrow than we are today. Even the most negative and downtrodden suspects, and hopes, he is capable of doing more, experiencing more—indeed being more—than he is right now.

"Everyone secretly believes in his or her own potential," explains neuroscience researcher Joe Dispenza, D.C., author and featured speaker in the award-winning movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" "Being told it's possible to learn new things and modify our behavior gives people permission to embark on their own personal evolution."

Thinking and performing
Helping people evolve and make positive changes in their lives is Dispenza's mission and the message he shares in speaking engagements around the world and through his new book, "Evolve Your Brain." He wants people to know science now proves what many have intuited for years; what we think affects how we feel and perform, and our brains can be rewired to direct our emotions and behaviors in new ways.

He means it literally. Although concepts such as the power of positive thinking have long posited that how you think affects how you feel, Dispenza uses the latest neuroscience research to demonstrate how replacing self destructive thinking with more intentional thought actually changes the brain on a neurological level. He explains that what you keep thinking about becomes chemically reinforced in the brain (neurons that fire together wire together) and that creating new neural connections literally changes the mind.

The Life University alum's work resonates with his alma mater's Eight Core Proficiencies that expose students to a range of contemporary intellectual approaches and technologies to help them reach higher levels of personal performance and professional success. Coursework on Belief Systems and Performance is infused into the educational experience of every Life student to further understanding and appreciation of the connection between what we think and how we feel and perform.

"We need to be grounded in something as human beings," says Brian Flannery, D.C., coordinator of community education and clinic marketing and co-developer of the Life Quest student philosophy retreat. "We all have a philosophy. The question is, do we live with one we may have developed by chance or create one based on critical thought and personal introspection. A constructive belief system that supports your development will lead to higher levels of performance and a life fulfilled," he says.

Flannery and faculty colleague Michael Headlee, D.C., take small groups of students into the mountains each quarter for a philosophy retreat. They delve into Life's Eight Core Proficiencies and discuss the 33 principles while hiking. "We ask them really tough questions and stimulate dialogue that helps students hone in on their beliefs. We talk about how to eliminate limiting beliefs so they can hit the ground running in clinic and in future practice," Headlee explains.

Thinking and feeling
Limited beliefs about ourselves and constricted views of the world often block us from reaching higher levels of performance and satisfaction, according to Dispenza. "Every time you have a thought, your brain makes a chemical. It's signaling the body to feel the way you think. Happy, unlimited thoughts will start to make you feel that way. If you change how you think, you will change how you feel."

The trick, he says, is to put yourself in the director's seat so you can instruct your brain to think in certain ways. Dispenza calls that lifting the mind out of the body (or emotions) and putting it back in the brain.

"When we live in habit, the body becomes the mind. We rely on skills, habits, conditioning and associative memories from experiences we've repeated so many times our body is conditioned to remember them as well as the brain does. All of these states of mind are loaded into a subconscious memory system in the brain called implicit memories," Dispenza explains. "It becomes difficult to change because we've repeated these actions so often they now drive our behaviors, precluding the conscious mind from making thoughtful choices. Essentially, we are on autopilot. We have to consciously and willfully rewire these automatic programs and eliminate the unconscious actions associated with them to put the mind in control of our environment and feelings rather than vice versa."

"There's nothing wrong with having emotional reactions, until they no longer serve us," Dispenza explains. "Learning to break our addiction to certain emotional reactions and predictable behaviors that don't serve us well is the gift that enables us to gain control of our destiny." New thinking leads to new emotional responses that can actually reorganize the body and brain to remember a new way of being.

Feeding the brain
The best way to open up to new possibilities and behaviors, according to Dispenza, is to feed the brain new information. "Every time we learn something, new synaptic connections form in the brain. By making those new connections, we are literally making a new mind. Knowledge is the raw material that allows us to function and think in new and unpredictable ways. New knowledge can then lead to the creation of whole new patterns of behavior."

To create new neural connections we have to consciously expose ourselves to new ways of thinking and new experiences. "We have this personal barometer that quickly screens out what we'll accept and won't accept," Dispenza says. "That's OK, unless you're interested in changing yourself. Then, you have to actually stop thinking and acting in your old, predictable ways and expose yourself to new paradigms of thought."

Putting the brain in charge
Fortunately, human beings possess a well developed frontal lobe that is the most highly evolved part of our nervous system. This area of the brain handles high level functioning such as making conscious, intentional choices, filtering out interference from other areas of the brain and focusing attention. Our frontal lobe comprises 30 to 40 percent of the brain, compared to 11 to 17 percent in primates and just a little more than 3 percent in cats.

Harnessing the power of our impressive frontal lobe can free us from simply repeating familiar behaviors on auto pilot. "If we want to overcome habitual states of mind and our predisposition to feel rather than think, we need to understand how the frontal lobe functions," Dispenza says. "The brain actually changes in response to every new experience, thought and thing we learn." A person who breaks a bad habit in her golf swing or learns not to react to family demands with impatience is demonstrating the brain's flexibility (neuroplasticity) and ability to rewire itself in new configurations. This bit of neural machinery is evolution's gift, allowing us to make conscious changes in just one lifetime.

One of the most effective ways to use the frontal lobe to rewire the brain is by applying it to the practice of mental rehearsal. Rehearsing behaviors, actions and attitudes in your mind with intense focus (performing the actions in detail) trains the brain to behave in new ways. It literally releases chemicals that will create new bonds between neurons and allow old, unwanted bonds to release. The power of focused concentration in mental rehearsal creates a scenario in which the brain cannot tell the difference between performing the task in your mind and performing it in real life.

A 1995 study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology demonstrated the effects of mental rehearsal on developing neural networks in the brain. Four groups of people participated in an experiment of learning to play the piano while changes were measured in their brains. The group that practiced a sequence of notes only in their minds showed almost the same changes (involving expansion and development of neural networks in the same area of the brain) as the participants who physically practiced the sequences on a piano. The control group who did nothing and another group who only pounded randomly on the keys in a different way each day did not develop new neural connections.

In another study, students who physically squeezed a spring with their fingers over a matter of time increased muscle strength by 30 percent. Those who only performed the task mentally still experienced a 22 percent increase in muscle strength.

Dispenza sees mental rehearsal as a particularly valuable tool for new chiropractors as they perfect new skills such as adjusting, patient education and staff communication. "If you rehearse in the morning how you will think and act, you'll be more likely to follow through because the brain is actually starting to create a new mind before the experience even happens. You warm up those circuits in the brain and then live from that new state of mind, ahead of the unconscious process."

"I don't think there's any end to learning and changing and rewiring the brain," Dispenza says. "If we stop learning and growing, we're only left with the genetic circuits we inherited. But if we learn new things and have new experiences, we'll perceive entire new realities and make choices based on those new opportunities."

The message is really about having your thoughts influence your internal and external environments, and not allowing your environment to override your thinking. Change your thinking and you will change your world.