So when your body makes these autonomic physiological changes, it’s because you have associated the future thought of standing in front of an audience delivering a presentation with the past emotional memory of your flawed public-speaking experience. And when that future thought, idea, or possibility is consistently associated with the past

anger, but also on consciously cultivating heartfelt, positive emotions, such as gratitude, joy, excitement, enthusiasm, fascination, awe, inspiration, wonder, trust, appreciation, kindness, compassion, and empowerment, to give us every advantage in maximizing our health.

It occurred to me in an instant that my identity as “patient” and “sick person with a disease” had become stronger than any other role I’d played in life. I had pretended to be that person, but all along I knew I wasn’t. All of my attention and energy were consumed with being a patient instead of with being a woman, a girlfriend, a daughter, an

This means that by thought alone, you can personally activate new genes right away. It happens just by changing your mind; it’s mind over matter.

Assigning meaning, the third element, to a placebo helps it work, because when we give an action a new meaning, then we have added intention behind it.

We could say that as long as you perceive your life through the lens of the past and react to the conditions with the same neural architecture and from the same level of mind, you’re headed toward a very specific, predetermined genetic destiny.

As the stories in the last two chapters illustrate, when we truly change our state of being, our bodies can respond to a new mind. And changing our state of being begins with changing our thoughts.

To see how the process unfolds, it’s vital to examine and review three key elements: conditioning, expectation, and meaning. As you’ll see, these three concepts all seem to work together in orchestrating the placebo response.

You see, most people try to create a new personal reality as the same old personality, and it doesn’t work. In order to change your life, you have to literally become someone else.