Category Archives: memory improvement

How To Remember Names Easily And Automatically

Mrs. Big Hair

Once I was at this party, and I was with a friend of mine, actually a date. I saw some guy that I’d met before; at least I think I’d met him before. We did that bit of recognition when you make eye contact with somebody that you know. An almost instantaneous acknowledgment of who they are. As soon as we did that, he came over. Then, to my horror, I realized that I not only didn’t remember where I knew this guy from, but that I also couldn’t recall his name. Not even a first letter.

For a few seconds, I hoped he was the kind of guy that just walks up and introduces himself, regardless of the situation, like some politician running for office, or the host of the party, or something. No dice. He walked, greeted me, (using my name of course) and then stood there waiting for me to introduce him to my date. Of course, my date, not knowing anyone at the party, was patiently waiting for me to introduce her to him.

One of the most common complaints that people have about their memories is an inability to remember names. The trick (that I didn’t learn until after that embarrassing moment at party) is two fold. One is an understanding of how memory works, and the other is a simple trick that you easily learn and put into place so you’ll never have trouble remembering names again.

The way memory works is that it’s not passive, unless it is for life or death information. Let’s say you’re walking through the jungle (back during our evolutionary past), and happen to look up at a banana tree. All of a sudden a group of ferocious monkeys swing down, beat you up, and chase you away. You’ll likely have no trouble remembering that spot, aided by the presence of the banana tree, as a no no in the future. You wouldn’t have to go back to your cave, and review you notes of the day and drill yourself so you’d remember where the safe places were, and where the dangerous place were. It would be automatic.

Likewise, if you were huffing it across the desert, and saw strange looking tree, and upon arrival at the tree found a source of an underground stream, you wouldn’t have any problems remembering where the stream was. Remembering where a hidden source of water in the desert is much easier than remembering where you parked at the airport.

So our memory is only passive when it comes to life and death. We somehow know that when we take classes in school. We listen attentively to the boring lecture, and know we have to study and drill the information into our brain before a test. We can’t just sit there passively listening to the lecture and soak it all up without a problem (at least most of us can’t). So why do we think we can remember names without putting in any effort? Who knows. The key is to realize that we need to remember names just like we’d study and remember information for a test. We have to consciously input the information into our brains in a specific way so it will make it easier to find them later.

When we listen to a lecture, we usually take notes, and then study for our notes later. You’d look kind of silly at a party walking around with a pencil and a small notebook writing down everything people said to you. They would think you were some kind of reporter or something. Since writing the information down is out, we need a better trick to remember names.

The trick is to apply a mnemonic device, like “all good boys eat cows”, or however it goes for remembering the musical scales. That reason I can’t really remember that is because it’s lacking an emotional component. Remember the deadly banana tree and the hidden water source? Both those came pre filled with a strong emotional component. We need to use those when creating our mnemonic devices. Here’s how you construct an emotionally laden mnemonic for remembering names:

A visualization of the person + a visualization of their name + a funny picture connecting them together = remembered name.

When you first meet somebody, you need to think of one visual thing about them that stands out. This is only private, so it can be as goofy or as derogatory as you can imagine. You won’t be sharing this with anybody, and it’s only to help you remember their name, so whatever you come up with is OK. Let’s say you meet somebody, and the first thing you notice about them is that they have big hair. So before you hear their name, you can think of them as Mr. Or Ms big hair. Now when you hear their name, simply think of a picture to associate with their name. Let’s say their name is Lynne. So you run “Lynne” through your mind until you can think of an easily to visualize item that will help you recall “Lynne.”

Lets’ see… Lynne… Lynne… Lint! Lint from the dryer, all over your clothes. Now you simply attach “lint” and “big hair,” and what do you have? Some poor woman whose hair is filled with lint. So now every time you see this woman, you’ll immediately think of “big hair,” and “lint,” and you’ll have her name in a heartbeat. The funny thing about this is that you only have to go through this process of remembering all the pictures (which really only takes a couple seconds) once or twice. After that, their names will be automatic.

The best time to do this is within a few moments after you meet them, whenever you get a second. Picture associated with the person, picture associated with their name, and hook them together somehow. The crazier, the funnier, the more derogatory, and more sexual you can make either picture, will make it much more easy to remember. If you make your pictures boring, like “all cows eat grass,” it won’t be so easy to remember.

For more powerful tips on how to take charge of your brain, and easily and automatically enhance all aspects of your life, click on the banner below to supercharge your life skills with NLP.

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

Oh, and at the party, I suddenly remembered where I knew the guy from. His name was Mike, and I’d met him a couple weeks earlier at a toastmasters meeting.

Ten Minute Phobia Cure

Become The Director Of Your Mind

Do you have any irrational fears? Would you like to easily and quickly get rid of them? Here I’ll give you the basic recipe for the famous NLP ten-minute phobia cure. This is one of the oldest and most widely taught NLP “procedure,” and is used to give immediate relief to any irrational fears of things like spiders, clowns and red heads.

To understand how this works, it helps to understand how the mind is set up to perceive and categorize “reality,” all that stuff we notice around us all the time.

One of the powerful functions of the brain is to generalize. When you were about two years old, or younger, you learned how to open a door. You figured out, either on your own or with the help of a parent or sibling, that if you grab that knobby looking thing, and twisted it, the door would open. As soon as you figured that, you could open pretty much any door in the world, providing it wasn’t locked.

Even if all the knobs were of different shapes and colors, your brain would recognize them as a door, with a knob. To open it, you fiddle with the knob somehow, usually turning it, and the door would open.

This is great when learning new things and being able to consistently increase your skills, as you get older, but it doesn’t help much when you start to deal with fears and anxieties. Back before we lived in cities, this was very helpful when we needed to be worried about getting eaten by tigers or falling off cliffs, but jumping out of our skin if we see a spider on the dashboard of our cars isn’t a particularly useful response.

There are few fears that are programmed into our brains. Heights and loud noises are considered to be our only pre-programmed fears, but many evolutionary psychologists are starting to believe that we also may be genetically set to fear snakes.

So if there if you have an irrational fear that isn’t a loud noise, heights or maybe a snake, there was likely a time in your life when you weren’t afraid of that, whatever it was. Then something happened, and you learned to be afraid of it, just like you learned to open the door. Just like you were able to generalize to all doors, now all things, like that one thing you are afraid of, will produce the same response of jumping out of your skin.

The trick is to go back in time, and mess with your memory of what’s called the initial sensitizing event. So pick something that you’re afraid of, that you would rather not be. Got it? Good.

Now think back to the very first time you remember being afraid of that.

The next part you’ll need to do with your eyes closed, so read through this and try it when you’re finished.

Imagine that you are sitting in a movie theater, way in the back. The theater is empty, except for one person sitting up in the front row. That other person is you. So in your imagination, you are watching yourself, watching a movie. Or about to watch a movie.

Ok, now you can start the movie. The movie is that first time you became afraid of that thing, or the first time you remember being afraid of that thing. Watch yourself watching the movie, the whole way through.

Now watch it again, but change it up a little bit. Make everybody in the movie wear really goofy looking party hats, including any animals or insects that may be involved. Make everybody ride a unicycle, while juggling. Put a goofy soundtrack to it. Rum through the movie several times, adding some complete nonsense each time.

After you’ve done that a few times, run the movie backwards. Then forwards, then backwards. Do this several times.

What this is doing is taking that initial event, and instead of having fear so your only response, you now can choose laughter, boredom, and entertainment, whatever you want. You will no longer be forced to automatically feel fear when you encounter that “thing” in everyday life.

A way to check and see how well this is to stop, and imagine that “thing” happening now. Does it still have the same fearful effect? If so, run through the movie a few more times, and add in as much nonsense as you can. I once did this with a friend, and he had me turn my movie into a midget clown porno. After that it was impossible for me to experience that “thing” without laughing my head off.

This is just one of many, many “procedures” from NLP that you can use to powerfully enhance your life, in as many ways as you can think of. If you’d like to learn more, then consider investing in the course below. It will help you increase your happiness, effectiveness, and wealth. Click on the banner for more information.

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

This Big Breasted Beauty Revealed A Powerful Memory Technique

The Power Of The ABC’s

There is a radio show I listen to sometimes on the Internet. I work in Japan, and sometimes it’s nice to listen to American style radio. The particular show I was listening has a contest every year called Miss Double December, which is a beauty contest of sorts. The contestants, if you haven’t guessed by the name, must be well endowed to enter the contest.

One by one the girls come into the studio for the interview. That way the listeners can not only judge them based on their pictures, but their interview skills, personalities, and any other traits they may have.

The girl that was on the other night had an interesting skill. If you gave her any word, she could name each letter’s number based on its order in the alphabet. For example, cat would be 3-1-20. C is the third letter, a the first, and t the twentieth.

Now they were treating this as a cute trick, and making references to the movie Rain Man, where the main character was a genius but completely incapable of living an ordinary life without constant supervision.

The truth is that this is a powerful memory technique that can help you immensely to remember lists of items, as well as super charge your creativity, making people think you really are a genius. Here’s how.

First you need to understand something called mnemonics. These are so called memory “tricks” that are sometimes used in school to help you memorize things like musical scales, the order the planets, biological classifications and so on.

All Cows Eat Grass, for example is a mnemonic to help remember the musical notes on the spaces in the bass clef, starting from the bottom. A,C,E,G.

Kevin Put Crap On Fred’s Green Snake, helps you to remember the order of biological classifications:

FPCOFGS

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

These are pre-made mnemonics and can only be used for the particular case they were created. But when you create a system, Like Miss Potential Double D’s, you can use in a bunch of different ways that will make it really easy to remember a lot of stuff. There’s a little work required on the front end, but once you got the basic list memorized, you can use to remember virtually anything.

First you need to construct a list of words that start with each letter of the alphabet. Generally speaking, the best way to do this is to just say each letter to yourself, and choose whatever word comes to mind first. A..a..a..apple. B..b..b..banana (you can tell I’m hungry while writing this) C..c..cat etc. Go through your ABC’s a couple times to make sure you remember each word.

Next you want to connect each word to it’s particular order in the alphabet. So apple, and the number one. You want to make a connection that is as visually interesting as possible, so it will be easy to remember. Maybe you can imagine a birthday party, and everybody is wearing those goofy hats, and they bring out an apple with one of those big candles shaped like a number one. The birthday kid starts crying because he was expecting a cake. Or something like that.

Next, banana, two. Maybe imagine somebody holding their hand in the “peace” sign, except their two fingers have been replaced by bananas. Continue this with each letter, and each word you chose. By now you realize that it’s best to choose easy to picture nouns to fill out your ABC list.

It may take a while to completely commit this to memory, so you can spout off the numbers for the word “Thanksgiving” like the girl did on the radio the other day, but once you’ve got it committed you’ve got a powerful tool. Here’s a couple ways to use it.

Whenever remembering a list of items, either shopping list, or bullet points in a speech, simply attaches them to each particular alphabet picture. Do this in the same way as you did before. Whatever is first on your list, attach it to apple. If you’ve built your list correctly, you won’t need to consciously connect apple and one, whenever you think a, or one, or apple, you will automatically remember the other two items. (A will give you one and apple, one will give you a and apple, etc).

Another way to use this ABC list to help your creativity is whenever you have a problem; think of the main root word of your problem. For example, let’s say you need to write a report, and you have no idea how to start. Look up R, for report, on your mental ABC list. Let’s you chose racquet for R. Just start to mentally free associate anything and everything when you repeat the words “report” and “racquet” and let your mind go wherever your imagination leads. You’ll be surprised how quickly you come up with an answer that appears seemingly out of nowhere.

The trick here is to give your mind room to play around with different ideas and create space for you imagination to fill in the blanks. The way the brain is structured, each neuron is connected to every other neuron in your neural network via only a few degrees of separation. So just going back and forth between these seemingly unrelated words (report and racquet) you’ll be surprised how much you stuff you have up there between your ears.

Like I said, this takes a bit of work at the beginning, but once you’ve got a solid ABC list set up with numbers and objects, this can be very useful in a lot of different ways.

I initially learned this procedure from a product called “The Memory Optimizer” from Learning Strategies Corporation. If you’d like to powerfully expand your thinking capabilities and mental strength, give this program a once over.

Easy Tips To Quickly and Powerfully Skyrocket Your Memory

Have you ever had to give a speech, and prepared as set of three by five cards, all bulleted with the points you wanted to cover? You perhaps practiced in front of the mirror several times, and ever were sure that you had memorized all the main points, only to forget them when you stood up in front of your audience?

How about going to the supermarket? Have you ever made a mental list of things you wanted to get, but mysteriously forget them as soon as you arrived? Then of course, as soon as you got home you instantly remembered what they were, and vowed to write out a list next time?

If you’ve ever had this happen, don’t worry. It’s extremely common. It doesn’t mean that you have a bad memory. It only means you are using it incorrectly. There are two kinds of memory. Short term, and long term. Your long-term memory is largely unconscious, and stores things that are important, and things that you use on a regular basis. Where you live, your friends’ names, all the important stuff.

But when you store something in short-term memory, it has a tendency to get thrown out. It isn’t something the brain deems very important, so it doesn’t use a lot of resources to save for any long period of time. Of course if you repeatedly use the information, your brain will get the hint. If you buy a jar of salsa every single time you go to the store, pretty soon your brain will figure it out that salsa is important, and you will remember it after a trip of two.

But what do you do if you want to be able to remember something you store in short term memory, without all the hassle and repetition usually required to convert short term memory into long term memory?

You want to remember your shopping list, but you don’t want to study it every night for a week before going to the store.

The answer is pegging. This is a memory technique that has been around for a while, and despite most people knowing about this, it is not usually used. Most people have a misconception about memory. Most people are under the assumption that it is the job of memory to recall information, and how you first input the information has no impact on this ability. This probably stems from most schools teaching that the only way to remember something is through rote repetition. As a consequence, most people spend very little effort inputting information, and a lot of effort (usually fruitless) trying to recall the information.

Luckily, this isn’t the case. How you store information has a dramatic impact on how easily you can recall it. And by putting in a little effort up front, you can dramatically increase the ease with which you remember stuff.

Ok, back to pegging. What you do is simply connect the thing you want to remember, to something you are already intimately familiar with. Something that is so deep in your long-term memory, there is no chance you will forget it.
And when you connect them together, do so with in a way that will naturally lead you to make the connection.

In order to do this, you will need to create a “peg list.” This is a list of things that you know by heart. Like parts on your body, rooms in your house, things in your bedroom, or the ingredients to your favorite recipe. Any list of things that you will have no problem remembering the name and order of.

Most people start off with a list of body parts, from the ground up. So lets go with feet, ankles. Shins, knees, thighs, hips, stomach, shoulders, face, head. And lets remember a shopping list.

The first item on the shopping list is tomatoes. So you will need to attach the new information (tomatoes) to the known information (your feet). The best way to do this is to create a fantastic, obscene, graphic, cartoonish moving picture connecting your feet and some tomatoes. Like maybe you are on top of a giant tomato that is rolling down the street, and you are barefoot. And while trying to keep your balance, you feel your feet sinking into the mushy cold wet tomato, and you can feel the tomato juices and little tomato seeds squeezing between your toes.

Next is a bag of flour. New information (flour) to known information (ankles.) So lets imagine that you are being attacked by a ninja death squad, but instead of throwing those ninja stars at you, they are throwing bags of flour. And each time they throw a bag of flour, you do a spinning kick, and burst each flour bag open with your ankles as they come flying at you, covering the ninja’s black ninja clothes with tasty white powder.

Get the idea? It’s really easy to learn, and fun to practice. As an added incentive to make it easy on your brain, when you include images/pictures/elements of pain and sex into your pictures, it will be virtually impossible to forget.

You can really amaze your friends with this after you practice a few times. This is the secret behind those guys on TV that can remember the orders of decks of cards, or the names of everybody in the room. It’s not that they are super smart, or have genetically gifted photographic memories, they’ve just learned this trick, and practiced it enough to get really good. And how you know the secret, you can do the same thing.

Memory Improvement Techniques You Can Use TODAY – For FREE

There are many products on the market today on how to improve your memory. Some are herbal remedies, which are supposed to increase the ease with which your neural networks can effectively work together. Others are more chemically oriented and work through stimulation of the mind. There are several brain-enhancing concoctions you can buy are your local health food store, or online that have been shown to enhance, at least temporarily, your working memory.

Others are non-chemical, and work by manipulating your brainwaves to a better state of memory production and recall. These are somewhat interesting, and I’ve used them with a great deal of success. These work in two different ways. Both involve using sound waves to guide your brain waves into an optimal state.

The first method is used to guide brainwaves into an optimal state while you are actually learning or studying that which you’d like to easily recall later. While this is very effective, it requires the ability to listen to a CD or an MP3 while studying. This is fantastic if you are studying written material, but for anything else, such as a lecture, or a skill, which requires outward focus and dexterity, this can be less than efficient.

The other method is to listen to the same kind of mind programming sound, but during “off” times, when you are not studying. The theory behind this method is the sound slowly restructures and strengthens your neural connections so that later when you do want to recall something, it is much easier. While this takes a bit longer, and has much more subtle effect, it can be a good way to slowly increase both your short term and long term memory.

The next method, and in my experience by far the most effective, is choosing how you store the memories you’d like to remember. How some is inputted into your neural network has a huge effect on how easy it is to recall it later. Curiously, this simple method is not taught in school, where it would do the most good.

It works like this. Instead of staring at a piece of information, and trying to force it into your memory through sheer will power, there is a much easier way. Specifically, you use the power of your imaginative memory. The brain naturally remembers things easier if they stand out. The brain takes all incoming information, and immediatley sorts it according to relevance. Things that it determines is relevant, it tags somehow to make that particular piece of information easier to recall at a later date.

So the trick is to put the information in a way so your brain will tag the information as relevant. This is easily done with colorful, comedic pictures and images coupled with sex and pain. Sex is the number one desire of the human brain, and pain is the number one “away from” motivating factor. Whenever you add these two elements, along with an interesting picture, it will be very hard to forget.

For example, lets say you are studying a foreign language. You want to learn the word for apple in Japanese, which is ringo. So you say to yourself, “ringo, ringo,” until a picture appears. Ringo Starr. So you create an image that involves Ringo Starr, apples (the key to attach all this to) sex, and pain. For example, you might imagine you are at a Beatles concert, and the part of the bass drum that actually hits the drum (that big round white thing) is a large apple. And every time Ringo steps on the bass pedal, the apple slams into the drum making the “thump thump thump” sound.

If that is not a vivid enough picture, you can add in some sex and pain to make sure you recall it. Like maybe he is surrounded by beautiful playboy bunnies, who are naked of course, and every time you try and approach on of them they throw apples at you and hitting you in the face every time.

This might sound a bit too cumbersome to try at first, but after you discover how easy it is to recall something that you’ve inputted this way, you’ll never go back to the old ways of memory again.