5 Lessons From A Week with Dr. Joe

2023 Progressive Retreat in Basel, Switzerland

Three months ago, my buddy Bobby and I were sitting on my couch in Hermosa Beach, CA watching Dr. Joe Dispenza’s episode of the Know Thyself podcast. I looked at him and said, “It’d be cool to experience him live, when’s his next retreat?”

A quick Google search returned that everything was sold out for ’23… so I joined the waitlist. 24 hours later I received an email that they were releasing 500 more tickets at 10a Switzerland time (2a PST). I set an alarm, woke up, refreshed the page and boom… sold out again.

Instead of shutting my laptop I purchased a French translation (€ 50 upsell) without having a ticket to the event and submitted a support ticket saying “I believe I purchased the wrong thing.” Three days pass and I receive an email saying they’ve refunded my translation ticket and have credited me with the last GA ticket. 

I was already going to be in the EU for my last retreat of 2023 on Sao Miguel Island in the Azores Nov 11-18th… and after securing a ticket I decided to stay for the entire month.

The best part… 3 of my 4 weeks here are peak weeks for my Dec 2nd race (Brazos 100) so I’m getting to see a LOT by foot. The day before writing this I ran from Switzerland to Germany to France and back along the Rhine… ’twas epic!

Here are my top five from the weekend with Dr. Joe:

1: Why look for your future if you feel you've already created it.

This came up in his opening keynote on Friday night and sent me down a rabbit hole of curiosity the remainder of the evening and into the following morning.

Part of what he teaches, and has found to be true, is that our environment signals our genes... and if our personal reality is shaped by our personality (which is shaped by our thoughts and beliefs) then it's possible to emotionally feel our future now.

If we do so, we're no longer searching for the reality we want, we've created it... and the most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.

2: What feels right is familiar. The unknown is always uncomfortable.

In contemplation on my own life, it's the moments where my discipline lapses that I revert back to the familiar... into my previous patterned way of thinking.

It makes me think of the Thomas Jefferson quote:

"To get something you've never had, you've got to so something you've never done."

If this is true, which I believe it is... then all progress results in you finding comfort within the uncomfortable and writing your own ticket.

If you can think it, you can achieve it.

3: Genes don't create disease... the mismanagement of our emotions do.

82.1% of Primary Care visits in the United States are a result of perceived stress.

If our thoughts can make us sick, then so too can out thought make us well.

If you've watched Dispenza speak on anyone's podcast, you'll have heard him speak about how events turn into temperaments, which turn into moods, which turn into states of being, which become your personality.

Unregulated, it's our thoughts that pull us out of a homeostatic internal state and create the conditions for sickness to exist. Therefore, it's not our biology, or germs, that leads to sickness - it's our EQ, and our ability to process our emotions.

4: Become so conscious of your unconscious that you don't fall back into it.

Stated above (#2), what feels 'right' is often habitual, and because it's habitual, it is, more often than not, unconscious. Existing unconsciously is the equal opposite to actively creating your future - it's allowing past patterns to dictate future outcomes.

If you truly want to sit in the drivers seat, you must become a student of the self and become so aware of what makes you, you, that you're able to recognize (in the moment) when you fall from consciousness and correct it.

In my experience, this is a practice, not an end state.

What has worked best for me to date has been to become curious of the things I receptively do and to reverse engineer back to the input, or the repetitive stimulus. It's here where I've been able to clearly identify a lot of 'why I do what I do'.

Lastly, always step on 'ANTS' (Automatic Negative Thoughts).

Anytime I catch myself having a thought that isn't directed towards who I want to choose to be, I speak to myself and say "We don't do that anymore." and continue on with my day.

5: If you can't think greater than how you feel, then you're thinking in the past.

It's one things to be caught off guard by a moment in the past, it's another to fall victim to an experience and identify with a way of being due to what's happened. When we choose to live in the latter state our thinking gets stuck in the past.

If you believe that you are the creator of your future, which you are, then what you think and feel determines that which you become - and that is incredibly exciting.

Our present reality is a reflection of our internal state...

... if you want to change your reality, start by changing *yourself.

*which is the only thing actually within your control.

Want to experience a Joe Dispenza retreat yourself?

Here's a list of his upcoming retreats.

Quote On My Mind:

"What punishments of God are not gifts."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Problems are the pressure we must push against in order to craft our character... for it's our response to them that shape our personality.

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Interview Worth Watching:

I’ve experienced a significant amount of loss in my life, all of which I now consider a blessing because I would never have become the person I am without those experiences.

In this interview Steven Colbert so eloquently speaks on the passing of his mother in response to a question posed by Anderson Cooper and provides us a beautiful example of how loss blesses us with more than we could imagine.

(Watch on YouTube)