1% Notes: Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza
Most people will die as the same person they were at 25.
Joe Dispenza broke his back in six places after a truck hit him during a triathlon. Doctors wanted to fuse his spine. He said no and healed himself in ten weeks with just his mind.
Then he spent thirty years studying other people who rewired their lives from the inside. He wrote down everything he learned in this book.
You’ll never change your life if you keep being the same person. 90% of your thoughts today are the same as yesterday: that’s the loop. The body is the unconscious mind. It does whatever you’ve trained it to do. Memorize the feeling of your future before it arrives.
This book made me rethink what’s actually possible. The book is huge, but the value is even bigger.
One sentence can change everything
The best part of a book is often just one sentence.
This is exactly how I think about reading. You can finish a whole book and walk away with just one idea, and that one idea can change your life. That’s the 1% I’m always after.
This short article from Derek Sivers is exactly what I mean. Four sentences, from four different books, changed the whole direction of his life. Not chapters, not big ideas: single sentences he almost missed.
Four sentences from four books:
- Island by Aldous Huxley. One line about switching jobs every two years made him quit at 22. He never worked for anyone again.
- Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina. One idea about needing to be surprised to keep growing made him leave America for good and live around the world.
- How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. A rich man’s regret about chasing more stopped Derek from chasing more himself. He hasn’t worked for money since.
- Doing Music and Nothing Else by Peter Knickles. A tip in a workbook about colleges paying musicians $1,000 to $5,000 a gig sent him playing 300 of them. He bought a house with the money.
It made me think of all the lines I’ve highlighted over the years. Sometimes one sentence is the whole reason you read the book.
As Kurt Vonnegut put it: “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”
70 years glued to the TV
I couldn’t stop watching this. A century of daily life in just four minutes.
Someone took a hundred years of data and turned it into a four-minute video: how the average person spends their day, from 1920 to today.
It’s funny to see how much of our time we actually spend distracting ourselves. That’s exactly why it’s so simple for billion-dollar companies to keep us glued to a screen. We’re practically built for it. Somehow we’ve spent 70 years watching TV more than almost anything else.
A fun, interesting watch, but a confronting one too.
A story that stayed with me
I read a short story in Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield. It really stayed with me.
It’s a true story about two young children. An 8-year-old girl had a rare blood disease, and her only chance of survival was a blood transfusion. Her little brother, just six years old, was the only match.
The doctor and their mother asked him: “Would you be willing to give your blood to your sister so she can live?”
The boy looked down. “I need to think about it.”
Two days later he came back. Quietly, he said yes.
At the hospital, they placed the two children side by side. The transfusion began. Slowly, color returned to the girl’s face. Her breathing became easier.
Then the boy turned to the doctor, leaned in, and whispered: “Doctor, when will I start to die?”
He had misunderstood. He thought giving blood meant giving his life. And still, he had said yes.
That’s what’s so beautiful about kids. They love without holding back, before the world teaches them to be careful with it.
Tiny upgrade: Todoist
This is one app I can’t live without. Todoist.
Everything I think of or have to do goes in there. Out of my head, into the app. I’ve used it for years: 13,376 tasks done so far.
It’s my system, agenda, and task manager all in one. The rule is simple. If I have to do it, it goes in the inbox. Sort it later, do it later. But first, get it out of my head.
Recurring tasks, appointments, routines: everything lands in this app. Each morning I open the app and see exactly what’s planned. At the end of the day, I update it. Once a week I organize the whole thing.
If your life feels chaotic and overwhelming, this app will change it.
What I’m reading
I finished Moonwalk by Michael Jackson. A beautiful book I didn’t even know existed: an incredibly inspiring story and a real look inside the mind of a legend.
I started reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. A book about a seagull leaving the flock to master flight on his own terms. The message: stop following, start thinking for yourself.
I’m still reading The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino. This book isn’t really about selling. It’s about ten habits that, if you actually do them, slowly turn you into a different person.