I am always learning something new. As far back as I can remember, I have loved math and science, computers, technology. I am insatiably curious of the world around me, always wanting to know and to understand what things are and how they work.

It came as a great surprise, then, when I realized one day just how much I hadn’t remembered about many of the things I thought I knew. I was trying to recall something from chemistry and couldn’t. With a little more concentration, I realized I could only remember a few quotes and concepts from an entire year of chemistry; most of it had been forgotten.

Well, this was frightening to me. Had I wasted my time?

Fast forward a few years. I still don’t remember my chemistry classes, but I had another surprise: I could ’see’ the workings of a particular molecule, even thought I couldn’t verbalize the rules that governed those workings. I understood, even though I couldn’t express. I was in a place of ‘knowing’.

What had happened?

I realized that the workings I was understanding were not new, that I had actually understood that much when I took the class. This was the knowledge that went with me after the homework and tests, after the lectures. This is what I had grafted into my mind at a deeper level.

We all remember snippets of life: certain people, certain events, certain conversations, certain views and scenic panoramas. After a while, many of them blend together into composite memories or are forgotten from the conscious mind altogether.

Some of those experiences, however, change us at a deeper level. Our first passionate kiss, for example, alters how we see the world from that moment forward. Good or bad, we’ve experienced something profound, and our life is forever changed.

When this deep understanding occurs, we have integrated the experience.

T. Harv Eker, a life coach and personal development trainer, says the following: “How do we know if we know something? If you live it, you know it. If you don’t live it, you’ve ‘heard about’ it, you’ve ‘read about’ it, but you don’t know it.”

It’s all well and good to learn new things. but you must integrate them to gain value in the knowledge. Spouting facts, figures, opinions, and data is not the same as knowing something. Until you incorporate the knowledge into your daily life, it’s just useless fluff.

So how do you integrate something? There are a few ways; the more of these you do, the more quickly and effectively you integrate the learnings:

• Experience the material in multiple ways, from several points of view, using all your senses. View it, touch it, smell it, taste it, feel it. If it’s a concept, imagine it and contemplate it for a while.
• Take a hands-on approach. You can read about baking a cake, but until you actually bake one you haven’t actually learned anything. Try it. Try it again. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Try it again. And again. Then one more time.
• Practice it every day. A black-belt in martial arts got that way by living and breathing the exercises, drills, movements, and thought patterns for years. Once they don’t have to think about what they are doing, they have integrated the material. You have integrated walking, you have integrated brushing your teeth; you don’t even have to think about these things, they just happen. That which you do repeatedly becomes a part of you.
• Just let it sink in for a while. Do something else. Sleep on it. Go for a walk. Meditate on an unrelated topic.

Read about it, hear about it, do it, ignore it; then reflect on how you’ve changed. Integration has occurred at some level, figure out how much you’ve grown from your experience.

It’s completely acceptable to try something new and decide it’s not what you were looking for. But don’t tell yourself you know something unless you live it. Everything else is just data. Have a higher standard for what you call knowledge or wisdom.

Other news

• And all this time we thought it was smoking: Gum Disease Boosts Tongue Cancer Risk in Men [healthday.com]
• And all this time we thought it was stress: Salty Diet May Raise Ulcer Risk [healthday.com]
• Huh? Preschoolers Don’t Need Math to Do Math [healthday.com]

From the editor

As you know, I’ve been totally disconnected for quite some time now. I am starting the massive project of catching up with a month’s worth of email and voicemail. If you sent feedback over the last month, expect a reply over the next few days. Thanks for being so patient while I was away.

I still expect to be slow in getting back to people because I am currently integrating the last four weeks of learnings.

Healthy thoughts,

Jeff