Now that you’ve contemplated your answers, it’s time to rehearse them.
Review how you will think, act, and feel as your new ideal. Let’s be clear
here. I don’t want you to become too mechanistic or rigid. This is a creative
process. Allow yourself to be imaginative, free, and spontaneous. Don’t
force your answers to be one way or another. Don’t try to go through your
list in the same exact way during each meditative session. There are many
different means to arrive at your end.
Just think about the greatest expression of yourself and then remind
yourself how you will act. What will you say, how will you walk, how will
you breathe, and how will you feel if you become that person? What will
you say to others and to yourself? Your goal is to move into a “state of
being” and become this ideal.
For instance, think back to those piano players who mentally rehearsed
piano exercises without touching any keys, and how they achieved almost
the same brain changes as people who physically played the same scales
and chords for the same length of time. The “mental” players’ daily
rehearsal changed their brains to look like they had already had the
experience of physically executing the activity. Their thoughts became their
experience.
If you recall the finger-exercise experiment involving mental rehearsal,
there were also significant physical changes demonstrated in the body,
without the subjects’ ever lifting a finger. In this step, your daily rehearsals
will change your brain and your body to be ahead of time.
That’s why it’s so important to rehearse—to bring up again—how you
will act as your new self. This is how you biologically change the brain and
body to no longer live in the past but rather to chart a map to the future. If
the body and brain are changed, then there is physical evidence that you are
changed.
Becoming Very Familiar with the New You
This part of Step 7 is about making the leap to get to the “unconsciously
skilled” level of expertise. When you are unconsciously skilled at
something, that means you just do it without having to place a great deal of
conscious thought or attention on the activity. It’s like going from a novice