Category Archives: Memory Skills

You Can Always Find Your Way Back Home

Where Am I?

So what do you do when you suddenly find yourself lost? That’s what happened to me once. I heard from a friend of a friend about this magnificent party, and he’d heard from another friend some convoluted directions to get there. Both of us, and the friend, had only been living in the area for a few weeks, so it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. They were going to go straight after work, which was about 6 PM, while I had to work until a couple hours later.

I remembered the directions as best as I could, and decided I’d figure out how to get there on my own. It didn’t take long before I had no idea where I was, no idea where I came from, and no idea how to get back home.

I had a really interesting experience a couple of weeks ago. I had just moved to a new city, and a new apartment. I mean new for me, as well as a new building. Everything was new and modern and really cool. I had spent a few hours driving to this new town from my old town, which involved driving over this huge bridge (several miles long) since my previous apartment was on this big island. A really big island.

So there I was, about to drift off to sleep, when an idea hit me. I had spend all day packing moving, unpacking and setting things up in my new place, I looked around at my new familiar surroundings, and I predicted I would wake up in the morning and experience a few moments of absolute disorientation. When you look around and for brief moment, you don’t know where you are, how you got there, or the last few things that happened before you found yourself in your particular situation.

That has only happened to me a couple times, all after waking up in a strange place. Probably the most pronounced event was a night of heavy, um, entertainment after a Who concert. I woke up in my friends house, and for about five or ten seconds (which is a long time to have no clue where you are or how you got there) of complete discombobulation.

But as I lay in my apartment a couple of weeks ago, I looked around at my new furnishings, and actually predicted I would wake up in the morning and draw a complete blank for the first few moments.

And when I woke up, just as I thought, I drew a complete blank. But here’s the cool part: Before I remembered where I was and how I got there (moving and driving over the bridge) I remembered predicting that I wouldn’t remember, only then did I remember everything else.

It was like back in the old days of when they had to bootstrap the first computers. They had these giant machines that ran off of punch cards, and they had no memory at all. They didn’t have enough memory to turn on all their systems.

So the guy who was using the computer had to feed it a punch card that was only to tell the computer how to turn itself on and get started, and how to read the other punch cards. Once that “memory” was loaded into the computer, then you could stick other, more complicated, punch cards into the machine so it could finally be able to do what you wanted it to.

We take all that for granted, as all of our computers today are pre programmed with complex operating systems and software that makes virtually every machine plug and play. There’s a reason Bill Gates is one of the richest dudes on the planet.

That was a truly odd sensation, waking up in a strange looking around in complete and utter cluelessness, and then remembering that I wasn’t going to remember anything, and then starting to remember everything else.

And when I finally figured out enough to back track to someplace familiar, I was able to use that familiarity to backtrack to a road that I actually knew. And from there finding my way was home was easy. I had given up on going to the party (which I later heard wasn’t all that exciting, anyway) long ago.

No matter how far off track you get, your brain will always find ways to get back to what is familiar. That seems to be an underlying prime directive of our brains. Familiarity.

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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.

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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.

Is Your Brain Stuck?

How To Make All Things New

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about language. He is a fellow teacher, and we were discussing the best way that children learn. There are those that believe there is a small window of opportunity, about three or four years, where a kid’s brain is especially compliant and flexible, and that they can learn pretty much anything. After that, teaching them something new is much more difficult and complex. Some say that during this time period, much of a child’s outlook on life will be determined, their beliefs, ideas, beliefs about their own capabilities and other core mental components will be pretty much set.

Then there are those that believe that it only appears that way, because during this time period of a kid’s life, they aren’t really expected to do anything except soak up information. They are supposed to hold down a job, or pass any university entrance exams, or even do any household chores. It is because kids are given a free pass that they can devote their whole lives to learning different things and ideas. This particular school of thought holds that if you took any adult, at any age, and put them in the same environment, and they would produce the same amount of learning.

This of course would require they have all their needs taken care of, and don’t need to produce anything whatsoever, and any failure is met by complete acceptance and encouragement by those around them. Like just being a kid.

It’s easy to imagine this being the case. Imagine going off to some foreign language camp. You are subjected to the new language twenty-four hours a day. You don’t have to worry about doing anything, not even learning the language in a “school” type environment. You are in a place where there are others around you, going about their business, learning the language, and every time you use it correctly you are given smiles and praise. And if you mess up, there are no negative repercussions. And all you have to do is eat, sleep and play, and follow other people around and try and pick up the language they are speaking.

If you’ve seen the movie “The Last Samurai,” that’s kind of what happened to the character played by Tom Cruise. For the first few months, he wasn’t expected to do anything except wander around and try to fit in as best he could, so naturally he picked up the language fairly quickly.

Those that argue against this idea will say that the brain changes somehow, and that after a certain age, usually around seven or so, the brain is pretty much frozen. You try to teach an adult a foreign language, and they’ll be studying for years and years and still not get it right.

I’m sure you could make equal arguments for each case. The problem with things like this is that you can’t really do proper scientific studies, as that would be out of the question. You could scarcely get any funding for an experiment that would take several adults and put them into a situation where they would be like Tom Cruise’s character for a year or so. And you couldn’t take a kid out of his or her natural upbringing and subject them to different ideas at the whim of an experimenter.

Human studies like this can only be done in retrospect, with naturally occurring events that weren’t planned by any scientist. Which of course makes it easy to “prove” any theory simply by looking for the right data to support it.

My friend tends to believe in the biological view, that the brain physically changes at a certain age, making it much harder to learn new things, as we get older. I tend to think that it is more of an environmental issue, at least more so that his idea gives credit to.

I’ve known people that have come to the United States as teenagers, not speaking a word of English, and successfully learned accent free English in a couple of years, simply by immersing themselves in language learning above all else. I’ve also known people that have been in the United States for ten years or more and can barely speak English.

The Jesuits used to say that if you gave them a child, they would make him a solider of Christ for life by the time he was seven. This was clearly a belief in the biological model of learning, that after a certain age, the brain is closed off to new ideas and ways to look at the world.

But the past is filled with individuals who, through late in life conversions, changed the course of history through simply taking on new ideas. Saul, Mohammad, and Malcolm X are just three individuals who come to mind who experienced late in life conversions, or inspirations that changed the course of history. Of course, one could argue that each of these received “divine” help, and that the brains of normal individuals, which are not exposed to these divine interventions, don’t qualify for late in life learning.

Various social experiments show time and time again that as humans age, choices and habits become less and less flexible, but what is causing what? Does aging cause inflexibility, or does inflexibility cause aging?

Personally, I’m off the believe that it’s never too late to learn something new, and that you really can teach an old dog new tricks. So long as you put yourself in an environment that is conducive to learning, the sky’s the limit to the things you can put into your brain.

Of course this gets harder and harder as we get older, and pick up more and more responsibilities and restraints on our time. But that only means you need to get more creative with how you look at the same things every day.

One trick is to spend a few minutes every day looking at normal, every day objects, and specifically giving them names that don’t fit. For example, look at a book and call it a frog, and then look at your shoe, and call it a taxi. If you do this a few minutes every day, with ten or twenty objects, you’ll be building lots of new neural pathways in your that can give the same old boring stuff you see every day a new perspective. Many people report that after doing this mind experiment for a couple weeks, the world begins to look a lot more brighter and more interesting, just like when you were a kid and you got a new toy.

And if you can look at the same stuff every day the same way a kid looks at a new toy, you’re doing pretty good.

The Parable Of The Migrating Birds

Why It’s Ok To Lose Your Way

Once there was a group of birds. They were the kind of birds that migrated quite a long distance every year. They crossed oceans, rivers, mountains, and large flat areas that took several days to cross. They would instinctively leave their homes once the cold air of the winter signaled it was time for their departure. Once they arrived in the warmer areas, the boys and girls would hook up and make baby birds. Of course birds don’t pop right out fully formed, like people do.

They are not quite done when they come out, they need a little bit more work. So they finish cooking in the next inside their protective shell. When they are ready to face the world, they break out of their shells, and start to make noises. Usually these noises mean, “Give me food!” but sometimes they just like to make noise. It’s fun to learn to do things and watch how the world reacts to you.

Then, if all goes well, when everybody can fly on their own, and not get lost, they all pack up their stuff and head back home when the weather starts to warm up.

Now here is the curious part. While they’ve been studying the migration patterns of birds for quite some time, they aren’t exactly sure how they remember how to go back and forth. Some argue that because many birds make the same trip several times in their lifetime, they follow others the first time, and then remember if from there. But that would mean that bird have some kind of long term memory. While possible, some argue that that is unlikely. Another problem with that theory is that after the new birds are hatched and learn to fly, they can find their way back “home.”

It’s important to remember that “home” is sometimes several thousand miles away, and over various different terrains. How in the world do the baby birds know where to go? The most accepted theory is that they follow all the grownups.

But if you are like me, I can ride along shotgun with somebody several times and not remember how to get there. The idea that birds that get it right the first time on their own is mind-boggling.

But however it works out, this story is about one small bird who had some troubles his first couple of trips. His first trip was no problem. He just stuck with his group, did what he was told, and got back to his home (for the first time) safely. The next year came, and it was time to return and mate and nest.

That’s when the problem started. He was the kind of bird that was easily sidetracked. He couldn’t really focus on where he was supposed to end up. He kept noticing all the scenery around him. Several times he would be watching the hills rolling below him, only to look up and find that he was all alone. This panicked him, of course, and he flew as fast he could until he could see his group. Usually he found them within a couple of days, but sometimes he flew for several days without seeing anybody. This was terribly distressing for him. He would always chastise himself for being so stupid, and not paying attention.

When he finally caught up with the group, he felt happy again, and forget his mistakes. But then a couple days later, the same thing would happen. He’d be lazily watching the scenery pass by, and lose his way again. And the would yell and curse himself for being stupid, fly around in all directions out of fear for a few days until he caught up with group again.

Finally they arrived at their winter home. He, like all the other male birds, found a suitable female and knocked her up. When the eggs came, he started feeling a deep, gnawing fear in the pit of his belly. As they day of the great hatching came closer, the fear became bigger and bigger. One of the older birds noticed this and came over to speak with him.

“What seems to be troubling you?”
“I don’t know. This just doesn’t seem fun any more.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This whole thing,” he said motioning to all the expectant mothers sitting on their eggs.
“I mean,” he continued, “what if I get lost again, and people are following me? We could all die.”
The old bird paused.
“I suppose you could,” he finally said.
The young bird looked at him, his fear growing.
“Do you remember how you got here?” The old bird asked.
“Well, I remember when I got lost, and all the places I tried to find the group, and ..”
“No.” The old bird cut him off.
“How did you get here? Not how did you get lost. How did you get here? What do you remember?”
The young bird stopped, thinking. Suddenly his mind flashed with all the landmarks when he was overcome with joy at being reunited with the flock. He suddenly understood.
“All those points. Of course. Just go from one of those points to the next. It seems so easy now.”
“That’s the secret,” the old bird said, smiling (insomuch as birds can smile).
“You have a memory filled with many different events. Some are bad, some are good. Simply focus on the good memories, and you will always remember your way.”
“Will he lose his way?” the young bird asked, motioning towards his young sons and daughters, still wrapped in their protective shells.
“We all lose our way.” The old bird said.
“That is the only way we can learn.”

With that he flew off, and the young bird never felt fear again.

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.

Change Your Filters – Change Your Life

Filters are a very important and necessary part of life. Filters are used in a variety of ways, in a variety of situations. They can be extremely beneficial to sort out what you don’t want, but they can also keep out things that you do want.

Some examples are coffee filters, low bypass filters (used on stereo components, oscilloscopes and computer based audio software), and those pans that old timers used during the gold rush to filter the sludge from the river bed from the gold nuggets they were hoping to find.

Other filters are the filters that are in your brain. When you go to the store for example, if you happen to be a vegetarian, you filter out all of the meat products and focus only on those derived from plants. Or if you like to drink alcohol, and had a particularly painful experience with, say, tequila, then you’ll likely not spend too much time lingering in the tequila section of your local supermarket.

Some filters are completely out of our conscious awareness. One way to do a quick check of the filters that are operating in your head is to simply do a quick inventory of your life. What things do you have? What things are you experiencing on a daily basis? Whatever you have going in your life is a result of your filters. The people, jobs, living conditions, cars, everything you have is a result of a filter of some sort.

The interesting thing is that filters are operating completely below conscious awareness. And they were likely picked up, or learned below conscious awareness as well. Usually from parents, or teachers, we tend to pick up our major beliefs in life without even questioning them.

So how do you go about changing your filters? Practice filtering on a conscious basis. Just like any skill, when you elevate it to the conscious level, you can change it, and drop it back down to the subconscious level where you won’t have to think about it.

Take your golf swing for example, or any other sports related skill. Unless you have taken lessons, or focused on a specific component of it, you likely learned through trial and error. You kept changing your method without much thought, until you got a result that was acceptable to you.

But what happens when you take lessons from a pro? He or she will show you exactly what you are doing wrong, and exactly what to do to correct it. Then you must practice, focusing only on what you are supposed to be doing. This is slow and frustrating at first, but the more you practice, the more it becomes natural. Becoming natural is when your new behavior is slipping back down into unconscious behavior.

Filters work the same way. When you focus specifically on something that you are filtering, you can slowly change the things you filter automatically. Next time you go to a fast food restaurant, watch the people in front of you. They will likely not have any clue what they want to eat until they get to the front of the line. Even then they will usually take some time making a decision. They only know that they are hungry. They have put off sorting through their environment for what they want until the last possible moment.

Next time you go to the supermarket (if you don’t usually do this already) make a mental list in your head of exactly what you want. Get only what you chose, and nothing else. When you are shopping, pretend you are the terminator (from the first movie) where they show him sorting through looking for Sarah Connor. Pretend you are scanning the supermarket to get what you want as efficiently as possible. Don’t waste any time looking over things you are not going to buy.

Believe it or not, this is exactly what your subconscious is doing all the time. Sorting through your environment just like the terminator. When you are not able to make a decision, it is because you haven’t identified what is important to you.

When you make a clear and solid choice exactly what you want before you enter into any situation, you are practicing selecting conscious filters. Another way to practice filtering is go outside for a walk, and see how many red things you can mentally collect.

Most people never take the time to examine their filters and see if they are working for them. They have such vague filters that they end up in relationships that don’t serve them, jobs they don’t like, and life situations that are less than spectacular. By practicing your filtering on a conscious level, you will become more and more skilled.

And the more you practice, the more detailed you can get in your filtering. You’ll be amazed how well this works. Instead of filtering for red things, you’ll be filtering for jobs that pay you good money to do exactly what you want, or life partners that can satisfy you sexually and emotionally in ways you never thought possible. You’ll never again have to “end up” with anything. You can actually choose your life.

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.

How to Easily Improve Your Memory and Always Remember Names

Have you ever been talking to somebody, and halfway through the conversation, you suddenly realize that you’ve completely forgotten their name? Maybe you looked around and hoped you would see somebody that knew them, so you could later ask what their name was. Or maybe you lost track of the conversation completely as you racked your brain trying to remember their name.

Of course, the worse thing that could happen is that a friend joins the conversation, and you are suddenly on the spot of making the socially required introductions. You can either admit you’ve forgotten their name, and look foolish, or you can ignore the introductions and hope they introduce themselves, and look rude. Either way, forgetting somebody’s name is an almost certain way to put you into a bind.

Luckily, because you are reading this you are about to discover how to remember names so that you will never find yourself in an uncomfortable position again. And one cool thing about this trick is that it can be applied to any situating where you need to remember important facts or details, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to write them down.

Before I explain the simple trick, one important, and often misunderstood concept about memory needs to be addressed. Remembering things, names, places, dates, etc, is not a passive process. You have to make a conscious choice, combined with conscious mental action if you want to remember anything, at least at first. Just like riding a bicycle, once you get the hang of it, you can do it without thinking.

Memory is no different. If you are having problems now, you can take simple steps that consciously remember things, just like you had to remember to hold the handle bars and pedal and steer so you wouldn’t crash into things or fall over. But just as you soon were able to ride a bike without thinking, you will soon be able to remember things without thinking.

The idea behind this is called pegging. A peg it simply something you hang something. Physically a peg is something on wall that many people use to hang their keys on, so they won’t forget where they are. You can do the same with names.

The idea is to make a decision that you want to remember their name before you get it from them. It may seem cumbersome at first, but once you get the hang of it will be second nature.

The trick is to give somebody a name before you meet them. And not just any name, something specific about the way they look, or walk or talk. The key here is to be as humorous, demeaning, politically incorrect as possible. This is ok, because you won’t be sharing this name with anybody. Then when you hear their name, you will need to connect their actual name in some way with the politically incorrect name you gave them before.

This requires a bit of mental flexibility, as you will need to take their name and create a mental picture of something associated with that name.

For example. Let’s say you are at a party, and you see somebody you might meet. You look at him, and he has a big nose. So right away you think of him as “Mr. Big Nose.” (Remember, you aren’t going to share this with anybody). Then when you hear his name, you create a picture based on his name, and attach it to “Mr. Big Nose” in your mind.

Let’s say his name is Mike. You can think of a microphone, and imagine a cluster of microphones dangling from his nose. Or lets say his name is Dave. You can think of a wave (rhymes with Dave) and imagine a giant thirty-foot tsunami exploding from is nostrils. Or if his name is George, you can imagine either the monkey, curious George, playing his hose, or George of the Jungle, swinging on vine from his nose, or George Washington, and imagine a cluster of rolled up one dollar bills stuck in his nose.

This may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you can master this. You can practice this a couple ways. One way is to look online for baby names, and practice thinking of pictures to associate with common names you might hear. And when you are out in public, like at Starbucks or wherever, you can practice giving people politically incorrect names like “Mr. Big Nose,” or “Mr. Blue Shirt,” or “Miss Big Hair,” or “Miss on sale shoes,” or whatever. You will only need to practice this a couple of times before you get really good at it.

If you need motivation, just imagine what it will be like when people think of you as the person that always remembers people’s names. And when you realize that remembering somebody’s name is the absolute best way to make an impression, you’ll also really increase your popularity.

Three Tricks to Supercharge Your Memory

Everything was perfect. Down to the second. Log off the internet. Jump in the shower. Brush my teeth. Get dressed, get ready to leave, so I show up at work right on time, and…oh crud…where’d I put my keys? Pocket? No. Backpack? No. Freezer? No. Aha! Jacket pocket! No. Wait, over on top of the stereo? Next to my little statue of Buddha? What in the world? Hey Buddha, why’d you steal my keys? The Buddha doesn’t answer. Maybe because they didn’t have keys back in Buddha’s day. But guess what, that reminds me. Here are three tricks to remember the three things you forget the most. Ready?

Car Keys

Where’d they go? Well, this trick, as with the other two, require that you decide before you put your keys down that you want to remember where you put them. This trick won’t work if you throw them down while talking to your friend on your cell phone while checking through the mail for that big check that is supposed to come. The trick? Simple. Imagine the keys are made of some highly toxic alien blood metal, or some kind of advanced explosive, and whatever you set them down on gets completely and absolutely destroyed. I know a person that imagines her keys to be a little tasmanian devil, and spins around and eats through whatever surface she puts them on. Make sure the destruction is really fantastic. So when you think of your keys, you can easily remember what you destroyed with them. (Only in your mind, of course.)

Remote Control

Use the same method, but involve the buttons and some kind of a death ray coming out the front of the remote. Choose something you’d like to destroy before you set it down. Something that doesn’t move, so the cat won’t work. Like a big plant, or your stereo, or your homework. Anything. So when you come looking for the remote, you’ll automatically remember what it is you wanted to destroy with your Death Star remote control.

Car

This one requires a little imagination, but it’s the most fun. Say you park in section A4. Usually when you leave, you look up at A4 and think, ok, no problem. But when you come back, problem. A-what? In this case, A4, think of a noun that starts with the letter A.  Acrobat. Astronaut. Aerobics teacher (choose your favorite.) Then think of something related to the number four. Four leaf clover. Four legged elephant. Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Four members of the Beatles. Choose one for each, and make a crazy story connecting the two. Like your Aerobics teacher riding an elephant who is crushing your car. Or an astronaut with his space suit filled with killer carniverous alien four leaf clovers. It sounds complicated, but it only takes a couple of seconds, and your friends will be amazed. Just be careful not to mumble your secret memory picture too loudly while you’re walking back to your car. Your friends might suddenly want to call a cab.

These are just three simple techniques that can easily help you increase your skills when you use the amazing power of your mind. To find out many more ways to use your brain in new and fascinating directions, have a look through my other articles, or check back for more, as I update this site daily. And be sure to tell your friends, too.

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