creates a new emotion (which signals new genes in new ways). Thus,
emotions signal the body to record the event chemically, and you begin to
embody what you are learning.
In the process, the limbic brain assists in forming long-term memories:
you can remember any experience better because you can recall how you
felt emotionally while the event was occurring. (The neocortex and limbic
brain together enable us to form declarative memories, meaning that we can
declare what we’ve learned or experienced.^1 See Figure 6B[1] for more
information on declarative and nondeclarative memories.)
You can see, then, how we are marked emotionally by highly charged
experiences. All people who have been married can tell you where they
were and what they were doing when they or their beloved proposed.
Perhaps they were eating a great meal on the patio of their favorite
restaurant, feeling the balmy breezes of that summer night and enjoying the
sunset while the strains of Mozart played softly in the background, when
their dinner partner got down on one knee and held out a little black box.
The combination of everything they were experiencing in that moment
made them feel very different from their normal self. The typical internal
chemical balance that their identity self had memorized got knocked out of
order by what they saw, heard, and felt. In a sense, they woke up from the
familiar, routine environmental stimuli that typically bombard the brain and
cause us to think and feel in predictable ways. Novel events surprise us to
the point that we become more aware in the present moment.
If the limbic brain had a motto, it might be: Experience is for the body.
If knowledge is for the mind, and experience is for the body, then when
you apply knowledge and create a new experience, you teach the body what
the mind has intellectually learned. Knowledge without experience is
merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance. There’s a
progression that has to take place. You have to take knowledge and live it—
embrace it emotionally.
If you’re still with me as I’ve been discussing how to change your life,
you’ve learned about gaining knowledge, and then taking action to have a
new experience, which produces a new feeling. Next, you have to
memorize that feeling and move what you’ve learned from the conscious