6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Memory
Do you find yourself struggling to remember what you did last weekend? For many of us, using our phones and devices to recall information means that we’re losing the ability to train our brain.
Chester Santos
World-leading memory expert, Chester Santos, has developed techniques for making the most of your knowledge retention. Here are his top six tips:
1 Visualise – take whatever you are trying to remember and turn it into a simple image or series of images. We are very good at remembering things that we see.
2 Involve additional senses – the more senses that you involve, the more of your brain you’ll be using and the more connections in your mind you’ll be building to the information, so it will be much easier to remember.
Pic: iStockphoto
3 Use your imagination – make what you are seeing in your mind crazy, unusual and extraordinary so that you can take advantage of the psychological aspect of your memory.
4 Build a story – Let me show you what I mean by trying to remember this list of words – monkey, iron, rope, kite, house, paper, shoe, worm, envelope, pencil.
Instead of memorising the list with brute force, try and visualise the story I describe. Picture a monkey dancing around making monkey noises. The monkey picks up an iron. The iron starts to fall but a rope attaches itself to the iron. You look up the rope and see the other end attached to a kite. The kite now crashes into a house which is covered in paper. A shoe appears and starts to walk on the paper. The shoe smells bad so you look inside to find a worm crawling around. The worm jumps into an envelope and a pencil starts to write on the envelope.
Read through the story just one more time whilst visualising everything described. See it like a movie or cartoon playing in your head. Now, go ahead and recite all of the random words from memory simply by going through the story in your mind and recalling each major object that you encounter.
5 Review before you sleep – review important information just before you go to sleep. You’ll wake up the next morning knowing the information much better than you did the day before.
Pic: iStockphoto
6 Use it or lose it – using your memory more will strengthen it; your brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with practice.
Chester Santos is a world leading memory skills expert, speaker and author See http://www.InternationalManofMemory.com for more information.
Moira Chisholm
I'm the Health Editor on My Weekly and am always interested to hear what's new in this fascinating field. I also deal with the gardening, shopping pages, general features, our website content and the Ask Helen problem page. I have a special interest in Christmas content because I'm on the team for Your Best Ever Christmas Magazine, too!
