Don’t Be Stuck With A Bad Memory, Train It!



Posted: Sunday, July 27, 2008

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 Have you been forgetting things lately?  Do you feel that your memory lets you down now and then?  Then perhaps you need to learn new memory skills.  Boosting your memory will make your life a whole lot easier and it can be fun.  Where did I put the car keys?  Where is the TV remote control?  What was I suppose to pick up from the store today?  Most of us know all too well that memory lapses make life inconvenient and can cause embarrassment.  As the years go by, we also worry about becoming more and more forgetful.  You start to wonder if your occasional memory lapses are perhaps the first signs of the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.  Does this mean you have suddenly become elderly?  You start to have haunting thoughts like these as you find yourself in positions where you cannot remember even the simplest of things.

 You can improve your memory with simple memory techniques.  One of the most popular techniques is the Roman Room system (the Romans developed their own mnemonic technique based on Greek research).  It's helpful because, after names and faces, forgetting objects is one of the biggest categories of forgetfulness.  The idea is to use the rooms in your house or sites in your neighborhood – anything you know really well, as links on which to mentally hang things you want to remember. 

 If your memory suddenly refuse to do what you have asked it to recall, there is no cause of alarm.  A bad memory is usually one which is untrained.  If you can exercise the smallest of discipline, like brushing your teeth in the morning,  you can find that you will have an excellent memory.  All it takes is a bit of ingenuity and a lot of imagination and a bit of discipline.

 There are some very effective ways to train your memory and your concentration.   Let's start with a simple technique.  Let's say you don't want to forget three things you need to pick up: rice, egg and bread.  Picture walking through your front door and there's rice thrown all over the front welcome mat.  Proceed to your living room and imagine eggs smashed on your floor and TV.  Continue down the hall and picture slices of bread glued to the walls.  The more ridiculous the images, the quicker the recall.  Once you've done this, take a mental walkthrough of your home to help with the memorization process.  Since these elaborate pictures, which you create in seconds, have sprung from your own imagination, they are much harder to forgot.

 Elizabeth Gray, a 31-year-old senior project manager for a Toronto company that designs business software, took her memory for granted until she agreed to develop and promote a new piece of software.  Used to excelling at whatever she did, Gray suddenly found herself forgetting major marketing points during presentations to clients and unable to recall their suggestions for product modications.  She also forgot what she planned to follow up on, back in the office.  "I thought there was something wrong with me. "  She didn't want to seem unconfident by taking notes, which would also create awkward dead time during presentations while she reached for a pen and paper and jotted things down. 

 Instead,  Gray signed up for a two-day memory workshop, and after learning applying the association-imagination principle, she immediately saw positive changes.  Now she can easily remember ten to-do things by creating images.  For example, to remind herself to mail out a follow up survey after a presentation, she uses the image of a peppermint stick; peppermint-lick-envelope-mail-survey.  It might not work for somebody else, but it does for her because she's the one who made it up.  The benefits have been measurable for Gray.  "I speak more confidently now because I can remember the points," she says.  "I'm also able to use my humor since I'm not worrying about remembering everything."

 While there are many causes for a bad memory, a healthy person can usually expect the cause to be a lack of concentration or attention for the matter at hand.  Whether you are a student struggling with bad grades, a professional seeking to stop embarrassing moments during a presentation or just someone seeking to stave off Alzheimer in old age, you should consider some form of memory training.  Any student can excel in school with proper study skills and almost any healthy individual can boost his or her memory with proper memory training or memory techniques to improve memory.  Any good technique should not take more than a weekend to learn and it should be fun to learn!
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