Our brains have collections of neurons and they fire together and are wired together in a certain pattern. Many people live unconscious lives. They repeat the same thoughts and behaviors: living their lives in loops. They don’t even notice that they are on autopilot; they do not have a clear window into their thoughts. They just live, existing in a loop that can sometimes be damaging to them. Eventually, life calls them to change. Some event happens. They get a diagnosis. A family member stops tolerating who they are. A life-shattering crisis occurs. They are forced to change: to rewire their brain, to learn new skills, to reshape the core of who they are.

The river of change is not an easy place to be in. It can be painful. It is one step forward, two steps back. It is three steps forward, one step back. It is four steps forward, three steps back. Those who are rewarded are those who are persistent. Those who are rewarded are those who can set a target for who they want to be next and consistently force their brains to fire in new ways until those new ways solidify. Remember, actions in the brain are networks of neurons collaborating together in sequences. The old self’s collections of neurons fire in the same sequence of patterns. The new self’s collection of neurons fire in a new sequence of patterns. The more we fire the new patterns, the easier it becomes to embody the new self. By definition, the more we fire the new patterns, the more we become the new self.

Once we realize that the self is really a pattern of neurons that are wired together and consistently fire together, we can start to play with this. We can start to design a new self. A new self that feels new emotions, has new personality traits, behaves in new ways, practices new superpowers, and lives a different life. The more we embody this new self the more our lives change. Change. Begins. Within.

I discovered this truth in two ways. 1) I captured it in Dr. Joe’s lectures. 2) I lived it myself. I used to be anxious, insecure, telling myself that the entire world was judging my Instagram posts, keeping the greatness within me down, full of pain in my stomach, ignoring the call of my spirit, uptight at work, and antisocial.

I’ve become more loving and kind, I have developed the personality trait of being a visionary and relentlessly persistent. I feel more love and calm and grace and presence in my life. I feel more grateful for existing. I have developed the power of sending information of love and kindness through the field to bless others’ lives.

It is important to note what it is that Epigenetics is. Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environmental factors cause changes that affect how our genes work without changing the underlying DNA sequence. It is the way in which we can affect how our genes are activated in our lives. Genes create proteins and proteins take action in the body. The most effective and healthy genes are activated when our bodies are in a state of homeostasis. When we are in a state of calm, peace, and balance.

Often, people live lives full of stress, fear, anger, and sadness, without even noticing these emotions. These emotions have a direct negative impact on people’s bodies. If you look at someone’s body when they are stressed, you see that they often are wound up, tight, and contorting their faces. You will notice tight forearms, tight expressions, and a difficult attitude. In lives of constant screentime, nonstop hustling, and clickbait news that plays on our emotions, it can be hard for some people to notice how consistently stressed they are. The key is to notice when we are stressed and let go of that stress and move into more organized emotional states.

When people are living lives of calm, peace, presence, kindness, openness, and generosity, you will notice that they are relaxed and awake: gently living. This calm that you see on the outside is also present internally, and it allows their bodies to function in an orderly way, with biological grace. When we are calm, we produce the right pharmacy of chemicals we need to stay healthy: like melatonin and healthy proteins that help us sleep and build muscle.

Note: in my view, things like cold showers and exercise and certain amounts of stress can also activate strong genes. So it is of course, a balance. Challenges often help us become stronger, but if we are constantly stressed throughout those challenges: angry at life and resentful towards the people around us… we do ourselves a great disservice. The key is to be relaxed and awake. To be as calm, present, loving, and graceful through the journey as we can. Of course, we fall into stress, and anger and fear sometimes… it’s normal. But the question always is… how much time will we spend feeling those emotions? The sooner we notice ourselves in those states the less time we spend within them. The less time we spend within those states, the more time we spend in states of loving calmness, or expansive kindness. The more time we spend in loving calmness, the longer we live because our bodies are balanced and our genes are operating beautifully.

Often, our bodies follow our minds. If our minds are stressed, angry, and depressed, then the body has its own representation of that and it can behave in a way we don’t want it to. It can overtax the liver, it can send charges of unbalanced negativity through the heart, it can engage in addictions… it can do so many things that are negative and in effect: life-shortening.

If our minds are constantly in thoughts of abundance, of ecstasy, of loving the people around us, of kindness towards the universe, our bodies follow suit and activate genes of order and create more life for us. The people of the Blue Zones don’t have perfect diets; they have friends and family that they love around them. They live in community and walk together. They live in a state of happiness. They love their lives, and loving their lives is what extends their lives.

The mind holds certain beliefs about the way life is. Certain ‘facts’ it holds true about how the world works. It can think things like, ‘Business is supposed to be hard’ and ‘having many followers and telling my story is supposed to be hard’ and ‘I am not enough for a beautiful woman with a kind heart’. We often unconsciously act to confirm these truths in our lives: in other words, the beliefs we hold in our minds shape our reality. For example, if I believe that I am not enough for a beautiful woman with a kind heart, every time I meet one, I won’t be the version of myself that would attract her into my life. I would be someone she wouldn’t be attracted to because I am by my own definition, ‘unworthy’. I would subconsciously sabotage my chances of anything good happening. We often don’t notice it, but our minds do shape our realities.

When we become conscious of the limiting beliefs we hold in our lives, we can start to change them. When we change our beliefs about how life is supposed to work, we can actually influence the ways our lives are unfolding. We can use our minds to shape our realities consciously.

I’ll give you an example of beliefs I am changing:

• Business is hard
• Getting people to use my app is hard
• Hero’s Path isn’t working
• I don’t know how to organize information for talks and my mind is moving in too many directions
• Encephalon will never hire me

To:

• Business is easy
• Everyone loves using Hero’s Path, they just haven’t discovered how to yet
• Hero’s Path is an easy business that gives me freedom
• I’m very good at architecting information and giving talks
• Encephalon is looking for me

The body follows the mind. The body activates the genes and produces the proteins that the mind tells it to produce. If in our minds we hold the belief that we are strong, we produce proteins that make us stronger. If in our minds we hold the belief that we are weak, the body produces proteins that build a body structure that confirms that it is weak. Beliefs are sooooo powerful: they are like programs you write on the interface of the technology of the body.

This nuance is so important. Some people won’t believe it, but it’s true. For the past few years, I thought that since I drank too much in my early youth, my body was damaged and broken and that I could never build real strength again. My body created evidence for this belief and I was not as strong as I could be at the gym. I barely jogged. Now I shifted this belief, healed my body, created a new pattern of neurons firing, and sprint like a jaguar, enjoying life, and lifting more than I ever have before. I am in the best shape of my life because I shifted the belief that controlled how my body operated.

Ok, now that we have figured out that homeostasis infuses our lives with order and a healthy biology… let’s tackle meditation. Meditation is a way for us to step into a new mode of being. If we can only perceive .00001% of reality through our senses, then what we see in our daily lives is not the complete picture of the truth. Our senses do not deliver the truth of reality. Our minds merely create a believable picture of it. Meditation allows us to take off the virtual reality headset through which we view our lives and go deep within. To go deep within to a space that we sometimes do not know intimately. Dr. Joe calls this the unknown. He calls it source. He calls it the void.

Meditation allows us to activate homeostasis because it teaches the body to relax, to feel, and to take its attention off of the environment. When we combine the restful nature of meditation with an elevated emotion like love, we gain the ability to produce powerful genes and molecules like melatonin and other highly regenerative molecules. Why? These elevated emotional states create order within the body.

Dr. Joe has a method for meditation. This method is to combine a clear intention and an elevated emotion when we meditate. The best way for the body to be programmed to think and feel in a new way is to understand 1) what intention we want for the body and 2) to have an elevated emotion that allows our body to program that intention into the body.

A clear intention can be 1) to visualize and feel the way it would feel like to work for Encephalon. An elevated emotion can be 2) the loving gratitude I would feel from helping others feel more love in their lives. Dr. Joe says that we should spend time thinking about our intention and elevated emotion before we go into the meditation, and when in the meditation, surrender to fully feeling that intention and that elevated emotion.

During meditation, we can go into such deep states of relaxation and of taking off our attention of our present lives that we gain the ability to change ourselves and to change our habits. Our identities and habits are deeply hardwired into our autonomic system, which is essentially the operating system of our bodies.

Through deep states of meditation and getting beyond ourselves, and becoming pure love, or source, or moving deep into ‘nothing’ we gain access to the autonomic nervous system and by interfacing with this autonomic nervous system, we can reprogram it, rewire it, influence it to think new thoughts and create new patterns within our lives. Meditation is a tool that can help us rewire ourselves.

Dr. Joe takes us deep into ‘nothing’ in many of the meditations. ‘Nothing’ is source, pure love, universal consciousness. It is what the universe was before it all began—oneness, nothing. He does this to help us forget 3D reality and the nature of our lives. He does this to create a blank slate in each meditation. This blank slate creates a nearly hypnotic state that makes our autonomic nervous system more reprogrammable. When we get into this reprogrammable state of pure consciousness he gives us the opportunity to motivate ourselves with new visions for our lives.

The key to meditation is to pair a clear intention with an elevated emotion, become pure consciousness, and maintain this state of pure consciousness for as long as possible. The longer we spend in states of pure consciousness, the more beautiful our lives become.