Becoming a New Self: Why We Repeat the Same Patterns and How to Finally Break Them
Why do we keep returning to the same patterns? An exploration of identity, routine, and inner change through the book we read in January at the Materia Book Club: Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza.
Every morning begins almost identically. Waking up at a similar time, moving through the space along a familiar path, hands automatically reaching for clothes, water being put on for the first tea or coffee. The body knows the order of things before the mind is fully awake. It is precisely in these everyday routines that we can most clearly see how unconscious patterns, habits, and ways of thinking shape identity and, over time, influence our sense of personal satisfaction and mental wellbeing.
Routine has long been considered a foundation of stability, a guarantee of physical and mental health, control, and continuity.
Yet within these repetitive, almost mechanical actions, a persistent sense of tension often appears. In routines where the same life patterns repeat again and again, emotions remain unnamed, while thoughts create noise from the very start of the day, feeding themselves and forming new emotional layers.
We tend to identify with all of this and accept it as “me”, as a stable image of ourselves that we rarely question.
In January, the question opened within the Materia Book Club of how to become a better version of ourselves. Not the version promised by typical New Year narratives, but the version we chose to examine more deeply and more uncomfortably, together. You can explore more about the context of these conversations in our Materia Book Club space.
Who am I really?
The question of identity is one of the key questions of personal growth, because it reveals to what extent our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are the result of conscious choice, and to what extent they are learned patterns absorbed from our environment.
When we think about who we are, we often define ourselves in relation to the external world. Many of us, often unconsciously, allow our surroundings to shape our inner landscape. People, places, relationships, and stimuli frequently dictate thought patterns, emotional reactions, and behaviour.
Social media, upbringing models, and lifestyles adopted without reflection gradually become “normal”, and are mistakenly experienced as authentic. As something we are, while in reality we move through life constantly seeking validation from others.
If personality is understood as a combination of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, then attention must be paid to what happens automatically: reflex reactions, habitual emotional responses, and internal monologues that are rarely questioned.
At that point, an uncomfortable but essential question arises. Is this really us, and if it is, do we want to remain this way?
Do we want to keep hiding our inner struggles from society, and from ourselves? And if we are aware of them, why do we avoid resolving them, choosing instead to bury them deeper within?
One of the hardest questions this book forced me to face was which parts of myself I would be willing to let go of.
Personality creates personal reality
In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza connects personal growth with neuroplasticity and the conscious reshaping of emotional and mental habits that shape everyday life. Through meditation and intentional work with thoughts and emotions, he describes the possibility of gradually changing internal patterns. You can read more about these foundations in our beginner-friendly meditation guide.
This process is never quick or easy. It is a gradual redefinition of the relationship we have with our own identity.
The core idea of the book, that changing our inner state leads to changes in life circumstances, carries with it a great deal of responsibility. It can feel heavy, even frightening. At the same time, it opens a liberating perspective. The understanding that the external world is not a prerequisite for self-understanding, and that control does not lie in circumstances but in how we respond to them.
What happens when we stop seeking validation outside ourselves
That anxiety we sometimes feel in the morning, or the sense that we must keep moving, working, pleasing others, pushing limits, often comes from a need to confirm our existence and identity in the material world. These actions, performed in the name of self-validation, are no less exhausting than the meditation and inner work Dispenza proposes.
The difference is that constant striving, proving, and overworking have been glorified and normalised, while calmness, meditation, and introspection are often perceived as uncomfortable or even passive.
When external validation disappears, or when we stop chasing it, it becomes clear how often our inner compass was shaped by other people’s expectations. We begin to see how many of our decisions, attitudes, and emotions were adjusted to an invisible audience.
Dispenza starts from the assumption that change does not begin with circumstances, but with inner state, and only then flows outward. When dominant thought patterns, emotional reactions, and responses to everyday situations change, so does the way we participate in our own lives.
Negativity and the repetition of familiar patterns are easier to explain through external factors than by accepting responsibility for our inner world. Paradoxically, it is easier to believe that negativity holds us captive than to accept that we have the capacity to consciously change direction.
To do so would mean acknowledging our own power, and with it, the responsibility that we can no longer hide behind circumstances, past experiences, or the expectations of others.
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself does not promise that life will change if our inner state changes. What it offers is clarity. That a large part of what we experience as fate, circumstance, or bad luck is reproduced daily from the same internal place.
And while it is easier to speak about external systems and causes, the book persistently brings the focus back to what is harder to accept. Our own role in maintaining an identity that no longer serves us.
Change, then, is not necessarily about acquiring more happiness or a new life, but about breaking old patterns through meditation and inner work, finally opening the door to the life our true self deserves.
