Integrate. That’s the powerful process required whenever you’re serious about learning a new skill or knowledge that you want to apply. In other words, integration is necessary when you want to learn in order to make a difference in your life, not just to remember material long enough to pass a test or exam.

After hearing this message in stereo from two respected professionals over the past six months – the neuropsychologist Dr. Julia DiGangi in her NeuroEnergy 365 year-long online course and Coach Supervisor and fellow Master Neuroplastician Sonja Vlaar in the npn.Hub – I’m now inspired to be more diligent about integrating my learning.

The process is working well. And it’s important to note that learning actually occurs after, not during, the consumption of new information and other content. That’s because of the way the human brain works.

The brain operates through a system of interconnected neural networks. Dr. DiGangi, also the author of the book Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power, uses the metaphor of a highway system to describe these brain networks. She explains that when you take in new information, it’s as if your brain enters a construction zone. “Lanes are rerouted, connections are reinforced, and traffic patterns are adjusted. These neural networks require time to stabilize, reorganize, and integrate what has been learned before efficient flow is restored.”

So how do you integrate to learn? Make sure you actively engage with the content you’re consuming – not just the first time you’re exposed to it in a class, on your own, with a learning partner, or whatever the mode, but also later. Ideally within 24 to 48 hours of your initial exposure, take some or all of these four steps:  

1. Reflect on what you’ve learned. (More about this next)

2. Deliberately put into practice what you’ve learned, especially if the content is related to self-improvement and you’re committed to start living what you’re learning.

As an example, let’s say you want to adopt a more positive outlook. To integrate this learning, you’d immediately start practicing reframing, assuming you’ve learned one of the most popular techniques for shifting your mindset to assign a new, more constructive meaning to a situation or event when the facts stay the same. In this case, you’d immediately challenge yourself to look at a situation, problem, or relationship from a different perspective so it would appear to be more positive–or at least less negative.  And keep doing this!

3. Review the teachings, including re-reading the notes you took, re-watching any videos and re-relistening to any recordings.

4. Take time to rest as well as sleep to help your brain consolidate memories. That’s because your brain’s default mode network, which operates 24/7, is responsible for memory consolidation, insights, and other actions that support integration.

As for reflection, it’s a powerful tool for learning and generating insights as well as enhancing your problem solving; boosting innovation; increasing your self-awareness; and improving your understanding of others, which also increase your empathy.

In our npn.Hub, Sonja suggests several reflection techniques to help you make implicit knowledge explicit, that is surface what you’ve submerged. In particular, she encourages:

• Free writing: Write whatever comes to your mind, without concern about your grammar or your logic.

• Answering questions: Some questions to ask yourself (which I’ve slightly adapted for everyone reading this) include: What was significant in what I experienced and how I’m processing this? What insights have I gained? What had I taken for granted? What connections exist between what I knew before and what I just learned? What does this mean for me? What else strikes me? What is the effect on me and what I want to do next? Ideally, you should write your answers to help you remember them.

• Using metaphors: Compare your learning to images from nature, art, or symbols, especially if the experience is too complex for words. Also, for many of us, visuals, especially if they’re vivid, are easier to recall than words or phrases. 

• Tapping into your body and your feelings: Reflection can be more than cognitive activity. Reflection can involve your feelings; other physical sensations, such as how your stomach and muscles react; your posture; and your inner monologue. So when you reflect using any of these techniques, also make an effort to notice how your body is reacting.

Integration is a personal process. So please experiment with these various techniques to determine what works best for you and the content you’re learning. Just remember that you do not learn by passively listening to, watching or reading material; you need to take time and actively integrate the concepts.

To say this another way, you do not learn immediately; you learn later by integrating what you’ve learned. And when you do so, your learning becomes functional. This means you’ll become what you’ve learned and start to live it.