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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.

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.

Easily Remember Names and Impress Your Friends

“Oh Hi!”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much, same old. Ya know.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, this is, uh, um, jeez,” blush, “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

Don’t you hate when this happens? How would you like to learn a technique that once practiced, would ensure that you always remember peoples names? Do you think you could find this new skill you’re about to learn useful? Don’t worry, it’s easy, however, it does take a bit of mental practice once you easily remember the simple technique.

It’s similar to the pegging technique from that other article. If you haven’t, you might consider to read it, as it has useful background on memory in general.

This way is specific to remembering peoples names. The first step in remembering somebody’s name is to make the conscious choice to remember it before you hear it. Most people hear a name, and then later wonder why they can’t remember it. Memory is an active process, not an automatic one, unless there is one or both of those magic ingredients I mentioned earlier involved. Then it’s easy to remember.

So here’s what you need to do. When you see somebody that you are likely to meet, grab the first thing that jumps out about that person. Anything. Hair, shirt, tie, shoes, belt, nose, ears, eyes.  Since you are keeping this completely to yourself, it is ok to be a little bit mean, but remember to keep it to yourself. Say you see a guy, and he has a really really really big nose. We’re talking Pinocchio big. So immediately, you think of him as Mr. Big Nose. The more you add to it, the better. Like if he has really overgrown nose hair or something, fantastic.

So you meet the guy, and he introduces himself as Mike. Quick, what do you think of IMMEDIATELY when you hear Mike?  For me it was microphone. (As this example is based on a true story.) So now you have to connect Mr. Big Nose to Mike, or Microphone. In my particular example, I imagined the guy with three or microphones swing out of his nose as he walked around. And every time he turned his head, they would swing and crash into the people around him. After that, it was automatic to remember the name ‘Mike’ when I saw him. If you are worried about thinking unkind thoughts about somebody you’ve never met, keep in mind that remembering a persons name is the biggest compliment you can give them.

Another example. I was at a resort, sitting at the bar. I was going to be there for a week, so I thought it would be a good idea to get friendly with the bartender. The first thing I noticed was his unique hairstyle. While I don’t remember exactly how he had it, just that it was the first thing I remembered. He introduced himself as ‘Fred.” Hmm. Fred. Fred. Fred. I immediately thought of the scene in ‘Pulp Fiction.” Now because in the scene ‘Butch’ says “Zed’s dead,” instead of Fred, I had to include a picture of Fred Mertz from “I Love Lucy” just to make sure. So in my picture, I had this guys unique hair, dragging a bunch of dead people (including Mr. Mertz.) So the next time I saw him, I saw the hair, and the dead people (just like that little kid) and immediately say “Hey Fred!” Of course because I called him by name everytime, I never had any problems getting served right away, and my bill at the end of the week was at least half of what it should have been.

Now if you are worried about coming up with pictures for names on the spot, you can practice by finding a list of baby names and practice with those until you get the hang it. It’s that simple. When you get this technique down it will start to happen automatically, and not only with your old friends be amazed, but you will be collecting wonderful new friends as well.

Be sure to check back often, and read more articles on how you can improve yourself, and get a different perspective on reality. And after you master this simple memory technique and impress your friends, you’ll be sure to tell them about this site, won’t you?

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