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A Conversation with Dr. Wayne Dyer
Interview by Matt Laughlin -- Summer 2009, Vol 5, Issue 16
Best selling author and speaker, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer talks about the most recent developments in his work and living what he teaches...
UH (Unified Health): Thanks
in advance for your time, Dr.
Dyer. It's a pleasure to be talking
with you.
WD (Dr. Wayne Dyer):
You're welcome.
UH: I thought we might focus
our interview on your latest book,
Excuses Begone! How to Change
Lifelong Self-Defeating Thinking
Habits...how does that sound?
WD: You can focus on anything
in this world you want to talk
about, Matt! I am going to give
you whatever answer comes out
of my crazy head. Have you
seen the new movie?
UH: Not yet... a lot of friends
have seen it and spoke really well
about it.
WD: Well, I'll have one sent
to you...
UH: That would be great,
thanks! I noticed in your new book
you refer to the film as The Shift – did you change the name?
WD: We did. Originally it was called Ambition to
Meaning, but it's now called The Shift. It's a great film. I am
very proud of it. It's a life-changing movie and it's got some
very, very good people and ideas in it.
UH: I enjoyed reading in your book Excuses Begone!
how you went about discerning whether or not to take on the
film project to begin with.
WD: Yeah... you feel something in your body and it's
like you start to trust your feelings rather than trusting your
head. Most of us use our heads way too much and don't listen
to our hearts. And your heart will almost always tell you
the right thing to do. You'll know when you're off course; you
might feel tight, or get worked up, or your blood pressure
goes up, you might feel sick to your stomach, get cramps,
break out or any number of things... Your publication is
focused on health, so you know it’s about listening to your
feelings.
UH: Absolutely. A couple
things really struck me about this
latest book; it seems like one of
the most personal books you've
written, and also, at least at a
distance, it really seems to
reflect a major change or shift in
your own consciousness.
WD: Yes. You know, I'm
now 69, but a few years ago
when I turned 65, I gave up
everything I had, everything
physical; all my possessions, all
my clothes, all my books, all my
everything. I just left it all and
donated it all. Even my home; I
just gave it all away.
UH: Really!
WD: Yeah, I decided to
spend a year living and practicing
the Tao Te Ching. I don't
know if you have read the Tao or
not, but it was written 2500
years ago by Lao Tzu and some
call it the wisest book ever written.
In the process of doing that, and living
that, I began to find that when
you really start to live your life on purpose and less focused
on yourself, your own ego, on outcome, and if or how things
are going to show up and all of that, you begin to live your life
from a very knowing place within you; that’s the only way I
can describe it. You get all the help you need, all the assistance,
all the guidance, the right people, finances; everything
just starts to show up. I started to really trust in that. And
something I wrote about in Excuses Begone! is that all excuses
are just misalignments.
It is quite an accomplishment to really devour the Tao like
that for an entire year, and to write about the experience and
to give people advice on how to live it and so on, especially
from such a great historical text like that. But it didn’t really
tell you how to go about changing lifetime thinking habits.
So, I began to listen directly to Lao Tzu. You can call it channeling,
you can call it whatever you want, but I think everything
is channeled in a sense. I mean here we are talking and
I have no idea where these words are coming from! There is
no screen in front of me, no teleprompter; it's just coming.
UH: Sure... Just like that!
WD: As you begin to trust in that, you begin to access
higher and higher support - and higher and higher just
means closer and closer aligned with God. Or, closer and
closer aligned with Source, the place from which everything
originates. That's how I wrote this entire book, Excuses
Begone! It was one of the sweetest, easiest, most peaceful
experiences I have ever had in my life of writing. I didn’t have
an outline at all. I had no idea what I was going to say, how I
was going to say it, or what examples I was going to use. I
just totally surrendered and really let it flow through me.
UH: While reading the book I picked up a different kind of
carrier wave you could say, as though the personal experiential
you're talking about really brought a kind of energy or
inspiration to it. There really is something unique about it.
WD: Yeah, I know there is. I am very aware of it, and I
know what it can do, because I continue to put it into practice
for myself. How old are you?
UH: I am 34.
WD: You probably notice that in men around the age of
40 or 50 the body starts to make some shifts and you just
look thicker. People just look thicker. I just saw a picture of
Tom Hanks, a very popular actor, of course, and I noticed this
guy is a lot bigger than he was not long ago, just thicker. You
know what I mean?
UH: Sure.
WD: And I just decided that I didn't want to be thick! I
am heading towards 70. I can’t even hardly say those words
it just doesn’t make sense to me. I have been an exerciser
and an athlete my whole life. I have run marathons, I exercise
every day. I swim. I do yoga. But what happens is you start
putting weight on around the middle of your body. So I put
this Excuses Begone! paradigm to work for myself and decided
that I was going change that. As with all my writing, I have
got to be able to know that this thing really works and will help
people to change before I share it. Sure enough, within a
week I had an interview with a guy named Jorge Cruise, who
has written a book about belly fat. I had an interview with
him, and he talked to me about sugar. He said in the 19th
century that the average amount of sugar consumed by
Americans was around 13 grams a day and today its 285
grams. That's like a 500% increase in the amount of sugar
consumed! He told me if you just get your sugar consumption
down to under 15 grams a day...
Well, a banana has 11 grams of sugar! An eight ounce
glass of orange juice has 35 grams of sugar in it. So it's a
pretty radical shift. Sugar is in everything! If you start looking
at what's on the packaging you'll see huge amounts of it;
in some cases its 100 grams in one serving of something you
would consume. So, Jorge said if you get it down below 15
grams a day, or even just below 40 grams a day, you'll take
off between 15-17 pounds, which is about what I wanted to
take off. I am not overweight. But I am thicker and I just
decided to look at the excuses I have used to stay this way
and put this paradigm to work. Sure enough, in less than 30
days I have taken off 17 pounds all the way around the middle.
So, you can really make these kinds of shifts. I always
challenge myself. If I am going to write about it, I have to be
able to walk the talk.
UH: That really comes through in this book. To give the
reader a sense of this Excuses Begone! paradigm you’re
referring to, would you comment on the essence of each of
the three parts of this book?
WD: Sure. The first part of the book is like the wow factor
in realizing that there are things built into us from the time
that we were little boys and little girls, belief systems that we
carry around that are called memes, or mind viruses. We
carry these mind viruses around with us and we begin to
believe them. Not only do we believe them but we act upon
them as truths. I referred to Richard Brodie's work, who discusses
this in his book, Virus of the Mind: The New Science
of the Meme. Memes are just these ideas that have been
planted into us about what is possible or not for us, about
what we can do and what we can't do, what human beings
are capable of and all that kind of thing. We carry these
memes around with us; they become viruses which just duplicate,
infiltrate and spread wherever they go until we act upon
them as if they were truth.
For instance, we really don't believe that we can change
things like our genetic structure. I mean, these are your
genes - how do you change your genetics? These were
handed to you by your parents. But then you begin to discover
as you examine this more closely that genetic expression
is shaped by the environment and by our thoughts. There is
research, for example, in which they take MRIs of people with
depression and assess their brain chemistry. They take pictures
of the brain while they're thinking depressed thoughts
and then they teach them how to change that thought from
one of I am depressed to That isn't me, that's just my brain
misfiring, it isn't really me. When they take a picture of the
same brain they see the chemistry of the brain has just
changed. So, when you look at the genetics you find that you
literally have within you - based on the environment and how
you process events - the capacity to change the genetic inclinations
you might have towards anything. So that's the wow
factor. Do you recall reading the experiment about the patients
who underwent fake knee surgeries but still recovered?
UH: Yes, that really struck me!
WD: That just blows you away, doesn't it? They interviewed
a man whose knee was healed because of a placebo.
UH: He believed he had a 'real' surgery and even played
on it and did all kinds of sports for two years before he found
out it he didn’t even undergo surgery!
WD: Yes, for two years. And he and many others were
part of a documented study and so on. So, we know the
power of the mind but to have it really demonstrated like that
is powerful. And Bruce Lipton does such a great job of that.
UH: That's right. We had a chance to interview him
about his work some time ago.
WD: Wonderful. He's a great guy and his book, The
Biology of Belief is going to be part of my PBS special. That
and Virus of the Mind. So in the first part of the book, we look
at how every excuse that you use in life is nothing more than
a virus - a meme - a set of beliefs that have been handed to
you. I cover in great detail eighteen of the most common
excuses or memes that hold us back. If you stay with the
book and you stay with the paradigm, at the end you will see
how to put these and any other excuses to the test of whether
they are true or not. Very much like, how many times have I
heard that as you get older you get thicker?
UH: Sure, that's a meme I've
probably said hundreds of times.
You know, man weight!
WD: Sure, that's right. And
I've even said it myself, well you
just get thicker. And we see people
in the culture and on television
like Tom Hanks, who is certainly
still a handsome guy, but thicker.
And that’s just one example.
UH: What can you say about
some of the principles you cover
in the second part of the book?
WD: The principles covered
in the second part of the book are
the tools you can use to think differently.
You have to learn to think
with the principle of awareness,
for example. In teaching this
process I want to teach people to
think like God. Your goal is to
think like God thinks. God doesn't
think with excuses. How could the
Creator, how could that which is
the Source of all things, that which
is creating every breath that we
take, and the air that we have, and the universe and all of
that, ever use an excuse and still continue to function? It’s
just not possible.
You come to see that excuses are all just misalignments.
In other words, whenever you have something that happens
to you, you can either think oh my God this is going to get
worse, or with God all things are possible. I choose to think
with God all things are possible. Shift your thinking away from
excuse mentality of what I can’t have and what I can't do and
what is not possible, into what I intend to manifest and what
I intend to create. That’s what each of the seven principles
of the book cover.
UH: Among those principles, I was especially stuck with
your contextualization of the principle of now, which is something
fairly well-known by a lot of people and something I
usually glance over. But reading about your personal experience
of that principle brought it to light in a new way.
WD: That's what I do when I write. I don't just write. I
live it. I always figure if it is true for me, if I can prove it for
myself, it will be helpful to others. The same thing is true
about the principle of contemplation. If our life isn't working it
is because we have been contemplating ideas that don't
work rather than contemplating ideas that do work. So when
you start thinking like God, you start gaining the power of
God. And as for the principle of now, just the idea that if you
just suspend yourself for a few minutes and be there…things
change. I did it this morning
when I woke up after an allnight
flight last night.
UH: I recall in the chapter
on contemplation that you
referred to Maslow's commentary
that self-actualized people
only think about or contemplate
what they want to create, and
that is all they will hold in mind.
WD: Right. And that's
what all great spiritual masters
do. They don't think about
what they can't do or what can't
be done. I used to give examples
of Jesus walking in
amongst the thieves and the
prostitutes. He's not thinking I
can't go among the thieves,
they’re going to steal my
clothes, they're going to take
my robe, they're going to take
my sandals. He didn't do that.
He would walk in amongst
them and because of his presence
they would not want to
steal anymore. Be like that.
UH: Let's jump to the third
part of the book.
WD: Well, that's really the core or essence of the book.
What did you think about it? You're among the first people to
have read the book.
UH: Well, I really appreciated the context you established
in the first two sections of the book. The eighteen most common
excuses and the principles you covered were very
inspiring to read. All of which really made the seven questions
at the end of the book much more powerful. The first
question really seemed central - to ask, is it true?
WD: It is. That question and the fourth question, which
is what would my life look like if I couldn’t think this thought?
UH: Maybe you could elaborate on those.
WD: Well, I learned a lot about this from my friend
Byron Katie who does something called The Work; she is a
brilliant woman. I love her dearly. I give her credit because
she helped me a lot with this and got me thinking about it and
then I applied it to this excuse pattern. The display quote for
this book is "Don't believe everything you think." The fact is,
there is hardly any thought that we can ever have, if any at
all, that we can be 100% certain will be true 100% of the time.
So now we have a choice. On the one
hand, you know that a thought you
have may or may not be true, and you
know that if you think this particular
thought it’s going to take you away
from where you would like to be, such
as with an excuse - I can't do this, it’s
going take too long, it’s going to be too
difficult. I'm too old, I'm too scared, I'm
too fat - I am too whatever it might be.
And then you have the other choice, to
think the opposite thought, which may
be, it's going to be easy, it's not going
to be risky, I can afford it. And again,
while this thought may or may not be
true, you know it will at least give you
the opportunity to align with something
that may help you to achieve what you
want. Why would you pick the first one
rather than the second one? It’s just a
simple, logical thing when put into this
context.
I have been a therapist for years and
have written 34 books; I have never
seen the clarity that I had when I wrote
the chapter on the question is it true?
Then I put it to work with a woman
over on Maui who was a binger and
purger for 22 years; every single day
for 22 years. She was close to death,
maybe going to live another six months, she was so fragile.
In less than 45 minutes I got her to examine the thoughts
about changing that and thinking the thoughts that were
going to lead her to toward what she wants. It's entirely up to
you which thought you align with. Accepting the first thought
is going to keep you from overcoming it and aligning with the
second thought, which may or may not be true, at least has
the possibility of leading you to where you want to be. She’s
now 17 months free of it. She hasn’t gone back once.
UH: That's a powerful example.
WD: It is. Let's say I am working with you and I can get
you to examine the idea or question – what would your life
look like if you couldn’t think that thought? Everyone has the
same conclusion. When I have really pushed them to the
limit with that question, the answer is I would be free. I would
be free. Perhaps for the first time. I would be free. And
being free… what could be any better than that?
While there are other questions we could cover, that's basically
the essence. That's what the paradigm is. I have seen
people make some pretty radical changes and I did it again
myself by limiting my sugar intake to 15 grams per day for a
month. That means you look for cereal that has only 1 gram
of sugar per cup, versus almost all of them that have
between 15 and 20. It means looking at something like skim
milk and realizing there’s 13 grams of sugar in that cup; so,
you don’t take that. You take almond milk, which has no
sugar in it and you pour that on your cereal with 1 g of sugar
and you're just as full.
You’ve gone from 30-50
grams of sugar before
you’re hardly out of bed to
just two. And then just
watch what happens. Now
none of my clothes fit!
UH: That's your new
problem!
WD: Yes!... and I just
put myself to the test; that's
basically the essence of
it...
UH: Reading about all
of your personal applications
of this work brings to
mind the phrase leaving no
rock unturned...
WD: Yes. It's like,
how willing am I? What
level of willingness do I
have?
UH: Thanks so much
for your time, Dr. Dyer. I
have always been a fan of
your work and the way in
which you serve others... so I especially appreciate this
chance to speak with you.
WD: You are very welcome, and God Bless you my
friend.
About Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Wayne W. Dyer, PhD, is an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development. He's the author of more than
30 books, 18 of which have been national best-sellers, has created
numerous audio programs and videos, and has appeared on thousands
of television and radio shows. Wayne holds a doctorate in
educational counseling from Wayne State University and was an
associate professor at St. John's University in New York. Website:
www.DrWayneDyer.com
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