Dr. Wayne Dyer

Dr. Wayne Dyer holds a Doctorate in Educational Counseling from Wayne State University and was an associate professor at St. John's University in New York.

Wayne Dyer explores the spiritual journey in the second half of life when we long to find the purpose that is our unique contribution to the world. The powerful shift from the ego constructs we are taught early in life by parents and society—which promote an emphasis on achievement and accumulation—are shown in contrast to a life of meaning, focused on serving and giving back. 

Despite his childhood spent in orphanages and foster homes, Dr. Dyer has overcome many obstacles to make his dreams come true. 

In this book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, Dr. Wayne Dyer has reviewed hundreds of translations of the Tao Te Ching and has written 81 distinct essays on how to apply the ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu to today’s modern world. Each chapter is designed for actually living the Tao or the Great Way today. Some of the chapter titles are “Living with Flexibility,” “Living Without Enemies,” and “Living by Letting Go.” 

Each of the 81 brief chapters focuses on living the Tao and concludes with a section called “Doing the Tao Now.”

Intention is generally viewed as a pit-bull kind of determination propelling one to succeed at all costs by never giving up on an inner picture. 

In this view, an attitude that combines hard work with an indefatigable drive toward excellence is the way to succeed. However, intention is viewed very differently in this book.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer has researched intention as a force in the universe that allows the act of creation to take place. This book explores intentions not as something you do but as an energy you are a part of.

We are all intended here through the invisible power of intention. 

This is the first book to look at intention as a field of energy that you can access to begin co-creating your life with the power of intention.

Dyer teaches that excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don’t like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don’t know how to change. We spend a big hunk of our lifetimes contemplating what we can’t have, what we don’t want and what’s missing in our lives. 

What we have to learn is to put our attention and focus on contemplating what it is we would like to attract, and not on what is missing.

Dr. Dyer describes it as a mind virus. A virus has three purposes: to duplicate, to infiltrate and to spread from one host to the next. 

Ultimately, even a single virus can shut down an entire system.

A mind virus is different in that there is no form to it; these are ideas placed in our heads when we are little. We get programmed by well-meaning people like our parents and their parents, our culture, religions and schools. We get conditioned to believe in our limitations and what’s not possible.

After a while, we start really believing these things are true. People who have had self-defeating behaviors for a long time, such as people who have been overweight since they were children or people with longtime addictions, actually believe there is no other alternative.

So you really need to observe yourself, and then you will begin to see yourself living a life filled with excuses.

The reason we hang on to self-defeating behaviors is because it’s easier not to take responsibility. If you’re blaming something or someone else for the way you are, then that person, those people, those circumstances or those energies, are going to have to change in order for you to get better; that’s most likely never going to happen. It’s also a way to manipulate other people.

Usually, making excuses is just something we can get away with, rather than challenging or changing ourselves. If you want to change and you want your life to work at a level you’ve never had before, then take responsibility for it.

As a child who was abused and abandoned –I had to learn that I didn’t make that happen. Even though the reality is, that it did happen –it wasn’t my fault.

You see when I was a child, I did not know anything other than being terrified and scared. The reality I had to face as an adult was that I was no longer a child.

I had to make a choice and recognize that even the abuse that came into my life actually offered me an opportunity to transcend it, to become a better person and even more significantly, to help someone else not go through what I did.

I understand that my reaction to it will always belong to me, and Dr. Dyer helped me identify my thought system –my paradigm. I believe if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. The key is to trust in your own divinity, that you are God. Always know that as a spiritual being, you have Divinity within.

“It’s just all details, I just want to think like God thinks and thinks in terms of creating, kindness, beauty and goodness.” –Albert Einstein

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