mind to the subconscious mind. You’ve already got the hardware to do that
in the third brain area we’ll discuss.
From Thinking and Doing to Being: The Cerebellum
Stores Habitual Thoughts, Attitudes, and Behaviors
Do you remember my talking about the common experience when we
can’t consciously remember a phone number, ATM PIN, or lock
combination, but we’ve practiced it so often that the body knows better than
the brain, and our fingers automatically get the job done? That may seem
like a small thing. But when the body knows equal to or better than the
conscious mind, when you can repeat an experience at will without much
conscious effort, then you have memorized the action, behavior, attitude, or
emotional reaction until it has become a skill or a habit.
When you reach this level of ability, you have moved into a state of
being. In the process, you’ve activated the third brain area that plays a
major role in changing your life—the cerebellum, seat of the subconscious.
The most active part of the brain, the cerebellum is located at the back of
the skull. Think of it as the brain’s microprocessor and memory center.
Every neuron in the cerebellum has the potential to connect with at least
200,000—and up to a million—other cells, to process balance,
coordination, awareness of the spatial relation of body parts, and execution
of controlled movements. The cerebellum stores certain types of simple
actions and skills, along with hardwired attitudes, emotional reactions,
repeated actions, habits, conditioned behaviors, and unconscious reflexes
and skills that we have mastered and memorized. Possessing amazing
memory storage, it easily downloads various forms of learned information
into programmed states of mind and body.
When you are in a state of being, you begin to memorize a new
neurochemical self. That’s when the cerebellum takes over, making that
new state an implicit part of your subconscious programming. The
cerebellum is the site of nondeclarative memories, meaning that you’ve
done or practiced something so many times that it becomes second nature
and you don’t have to think about it; it’s become so automatic that it’s hard
to declare or describe how you do it. When that happens, you will arrive at