Quantum Physics & Life Change

Sifting the brilliance from the bullshit in "manifesting"

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I just finished reading (and started re-reading) a book called Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How To Lose Your Mind and Create A New One. I decided I have to write about it with you, readers (love you), because it’s all I’ve been thinking about lately and it’s really improved how I’ve been feeling.

The premise of the book is (loosely, clumsily, I’ll attempt to summarize) that our subconscious mind affects our thoughts, and our thoughts affect our feelings, and our feelings affect our personality, and our personality affects our reality. AND - that all of this is actually much more in our capacity to change than we might realize, from our subconscious to our lived reality. 

The book has a good amount of content that contains (in my estimation) unrealistic and unnecessary leaps from real principles of quantum physics to our ability to “manifest” any reality of our liking by setting our intention, visualizing, and physically feeling the emotions of a new circumstance before it comes to us. (If you’re like, ummm ok? Me too. Keep reading.

I’m very wary of people running way too hard with the idea of manifesting, so that piece of the book was my main critique. Last night I spent two hours on the phone with my dad, reading him excerpts to get his thoughts and while he said most of the scientific points were accurate, his main critique was, “It sounds like Joe Dispenza is proposing there is no limit to the law of attraction. Like if I set my intention clearly enough, I’ll never have to take a shit again. But I’m a human body, and I will definitely need to take a shit again.” Copy that, dad.

Notwithstanding, I heartily recommend this book for the many useful chapters it contains, and encourage you to leave what doesn’t serve you. There is a lot of extremely helpful information on meaningful, positive change. I’ve read so many self-help books it borders on embarrassing, and the parts of this book that stuck, really stuck. Let me explain. 

The book demonstrates how our beliefs, or in other words, our subconscious programming (our basic perceptions of the world and ourselves that are socialized, conditioned, and shaped into us by society, our family, and our lived experiences) affect our thoughts. Our thoughts then affect our feelings. From there, a lot of people get stuck in a maladaptive feedback loop of negative thoughts and feelings that keep them trapped in the same state of mind that they find distressing.

For example, if subconsciously my beliefs are that life happens TO me, that I am powerless, that the world is generally a scary place, that I can expect to lose and fail, and that I am a victim who won’t ever truly succeed, then I’m very likely to walk around thinking self-defeating thoughts without even trying. It is my natural state of mind.

My subconscious informs my thoughts. Thoughts like, “I’ll never figure this out,” or “I can’t do this so I’ll to put it off,” or “This is just how I am,”  or “I’m trapped.” Sometimes I’m not even verbalizing or consciously thinking these thoughts, but they still inform my feelings (scared, anxious, hopeless, desperate, distracted, numb, etc.) which inform my actions (procrastinating, self-sabotaging, being irritable, reactive, not going for things, not following through) which affect my reality (being in the same place I was yesterday, last month, or last year).

When we are feeling bad, we generally think thoughts that affirm the bad feelings without trying very hard, because we think the feelings that come up have reinforced the thoughts we started with, and vice versa. (“See! Life IS scary and bad, look how badly I feel. My thoughts were right. What’s the point.”) Soon enough, over years we’ve built very strong neural connections that don’t serve us, based on often-wack subconscious beliefs we didn’t even consciously pick for ourselves. 

Over a period of years, that state of mind becomes our personality. We start to identify as a pessimist, or an angry person, or an anxious person, or someone who always seems to have bad stuff happen to them. In a sense, without realizing it, we become addicted to feeling the same feelings and thinking the same thoughts we are familiar with. They take no effort! Those feelings are easy now, and the neural pathways are strong because we’ve spent years reaffirming them. When we travel those same neural pathways, we know what to expect and it becomes automatic. So automatic in fact, we actually unconsciously SEEK OUT situations that reinforce those thoughts and feelings. 

If we are willing, it’s true that we can change. We reprogram our brain with intention, visualization, and repetition. We interrupt the habitual nature of our thoughts and feelings, and try out substituting new ones. Neuroscience supports that neuroplasticity is a real thing, meaning we can at any time choose to interrupt old pathways, use them less, and build up new neural pathways that support us and guide us into better realities. In the next substack, I’ll share more of what that looks like, and how it’s brought meaningful change in my own life. 

Love you mean it,

Jolie

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P.S. Don’t miss my online drop happening at Marigold - lots of new items will go love Thursday March 21 at 8:30PM EST.