Can you imagine what you could do if you had a better memory. Do you realize that you already have an amazing memory? Observe your mind right now in how many things that you can rememer...
In The Wizard of Oz where he sent Dorothy home, gave the Scarecrow brains, the Tin Man a heart, and the Cowardly Lion courage. After they received these gifts, Glenda the Good Witch told them that they “had the power all along”. Dorothy was already at home having a nightmare, the Scarecrow already had brains, the Tin Man a heart, and the Lion already had courage. They were just not aware of the power that they had. Our memories make up who we are. If we had no memories, we would no longer be ourselves. Our memories are our lives. We use memories to cherish the moments that we had in the past, and we use them to function in our everyday life. Here we will help you realize the memory power that you already possess.
Our memory has everything to do with our powers of observation/mindfulness/meditation. It has everything to do with our ability to focus, and the importance that we place on people and objects. If you walked into a room full of 30 people that you had no interest in and they had no interest in you, how easy would it be for you to remember the names of seven of these people? You could be introduced to these people and told their name and an hour after you would find it very difficult to remember one of these. In contrast, if someone walked up to you on the street, and told you seven winning lottery numbers that were guaranteed to win you 300 million dollars, how easy would it be for you to remember them? It would be much easier for you to remember this information, rather than walking into a room of indifferent people that we had no interest in. The more information has meaning and importance to us, the easier it is for us to remember it.
If we do not believe that the information is correct or that it doesn’t impact our lives, it makes it more difficult to focus on the information. Our memory depends on how important the information is to us. It also depends on how much we care about the information. In order to remember something there are ways that we can make this information have a greater impact on us. What we also want to ask ourselves is are we trying to remember information that is important to us and has nothing to do with our passion? If you just want to impress your friends with your memory, or memorize pointless information for school or work there are ways that we can trick ourselves into thinking that this information is important.
Imagine that you are in a classroom trying to memorize information for a test. There is a commotion outside, so you look out the window to see what is going on. You see a squirrel. You very likely will not be able to remember what you are studying as the squirrel has distracted you from focusing on what you want to remember. If you allow your Lizard Brain to be distracted by all of the crap going on in your life, you will not be able to get through anything that you are studying or reading.
If you are at a party and you are introduced to a new person, they give you their name, but if you are focused on the hot chick in the corner, you will not remember their name. If you want to remember somebody’s name at a party you need to be totally focused on them, and find a reason for them to be important to you. Put their information in a filing cabinet inside your head (later you will learn how to create a filing cabinet inside your mind where unlimited information can be stored and retrieved). Only by focusing on them and ignoring the rest of the party can you remember their name and information.
This is why observation, meditation, and mindfulness are so very important in improving our memory. Mindfulness helps us to focus on one thing, and to not be distracted by outside noise. Our focus, our passion, and our tribe are all involved in improving our memory. All of these things help us to eliminate distractions that would stop us from remembering important information in our life.
We have a limited auditory memory and a boundless visual memory. For us to remember spoken or written words, we need to turn them into pictures. To illustrate this, think of a journey that that you would take to visit grandmother's house in the woods. As you make the journey, you will realize that every object along the path reminds you of the next turn that has to be taken to get to grandmother’s house. If you were to drive from New York to LA every week, you would eventually be able to take every lane change, every freeway exit. You would remember the location of every hotel, and remember the location of every restaurant along the way. And you do this with ease. This is because you have a visual roadmap in your mind. If you did not have this boundless visual memory, you would not be able to find the bathroom at the end of the hallway. Let's do a little test to see if you have a visual memory.
Let’s begin with a list of ten objects. If you need to go back to the breathing exercise in the previous article. Decide that this is important. Clear your mind, it is safe for you to be awesome!
- Car
- Train
- Apple
- Cart
- Bird
- bike
- shoe
- milk
- bug
- tree
Imagine
-A cute red car driving down the road.
-The cute red car jumps onto the train track and becomes a train.
-Then you look in the back of the train and all you see are apples.
-The apples are all being held in a giant apple cart.
-Wings sprout out of the cart, and it flies off as a bird.
-The bird lands on top of a bicycle.
-The bicycle runs over the shoe.
-The shoe squirts out milk.
-Bugs fly down to drink the milk,
-A tree sprouts out of a pile of bugs.
This is called the Link Method where we morph objects into each other. The list could be 100 items long, or longer. The more vivid and gross the events in your mind, the easier it is to remember. The only thing that you need is your imagination. It is also important to create the morphs or links in a pattern that is familiar to you. In the videos below we will have examples with 10 objects, 20 objects, 50 objects, and 100 objects in them. This is just the beginning of our memory exercises. The more that you practice this with your friends and family, the easier it will be for you.
Start practicing now. Start small and simple. It will be like working out with a muscle on a new exercise routine. At first it may seem difficult and your brain may hurt, but eventually you will get stronger. The more you practice over time, the easier it will become.