Secrets
to a Good Memory
by Gayle A. North, CH
Positive Change Coach
I hear
people complain about their ability to remember things.
Use these tips and secrets to be able to remember anything you want to
remember.
In order for
your memory to work for you and for you to be able to trust your memory, you
need to know the following:
1.
Where you are going to store the information
2.
How to retrieve the information WHEN we want to retrieve it.
Often in
school, we are asked to remember some important information.
This may be spelling words, vocabulary words, math facts, dates, names,
etc. The student may work very hard
to memorize the information and still may not remember it when test time comes.
The most common cause of this struggle is that the student does not know
how the memory works or how to store and retrieve information in the brain.
Many people have no way of knowing for sure that they know the
information they wish to commit to memory.
They may have
VERY inadequate strategies for storing and retrieving the information.
Our
choices of where to store desired information are limited to our five
senses—visual (seeing pictures), auditory (“hearing” sounds), kinesthetic
(touch and feeling), smell, or taste.
For learning new information, for all practical purposes, you are limited
to auditory, kinesthetic, and/or visual.
The auditory
field has a major limitation. That
is, storing information in the auditory field allows us to consciously process
only one piece of information or word at a time and it has to be in a particular
order. Many students try to learn
auditorially by repeating information over and over out loud or to themselves.
The disadvantage is twofold – it is boring and it is slow.
The auditory field is most useful in singing, drama, speech and other
subjects requiring auditory recall. It
is most useful as an information retrieval system.
The kinesthetic
field is very useful in sports, typing, auto mechanics and other use
the body subjects. For most
academic subjects it is difficult to store information in the kinesthetic field
and it is very slow.
While the
auditory, kinesthetic, and visual all play an important part in memory, your
visual field has many advantages. The visual
field is the fastest. It
is also the most interesting for people of today who are used to TV, movies,
computers, etc. We can store vast
amounts of information in one picture and access any of it instantly.
So for
remembering information and for academic subjects like spelling, vocabulary,
history, math, etc, the best field to store the information in is the visual
field. That is, make pictures in
your mind's eye of whatever it is that you want to remember.
It may be the actual word or date or a picture that conveys the meaning
of a word or set of data.
Making good
pictures in you mind is the key to learning and memory.
Some people think they cannot see pictures in their mind. If you happen
to be one of these people, be assured that you can be shown how to do it.
Everyone sees pictures in their mind. If
you think do not see pictures, ask yourself how you know which car in the
parking lot is yours. What does an
apple look like? Picture a red apple and a green apple.
You may not have realized that you have the ability to see things
in your mind.
Now
for the retrieval system.
Many requests for information in life and certainly some tests in school
are given audibly – that is, the teacher asks the question or the student
reads the question and sounds out the words.
Therefore, we want the sound of the words to hook or bring up the picture
of the information so the student can answer the question off his internal
picture. Say the word, the name,
the date, WHILE looking at the picture in your mind.
This logically connects the sound to the picture.
Long
term memory usually comes from repetition of the thought of the picture in which
the information is stored.
So, if you have a picture of a word (the actual letters), for example,
stored in your mind's eye, bring the picture of the word up several times OVER
TIME. Pulling up the picture and
describing it several times and it will drop into long term memory and then you
will always spell the word correctly.
In
every situation in which you are memorizing data, visualize the contextual
setting and embed the facts and data in the picture in logical places. By
telling yourself what is in the picture, you will automatically retrieve the
information when you need it.
Parts
of this article are taken from an article written by Dr. Don Blackerby, Director
of Success Skills and innovator of the Joy of Learning program.
You may find more articles about memory, learning and dealing with ADD,
ADHD, Dyslexia and other learning challenges as well as more information about
Joy of Learning solutions to these problems at
www.NLPOK.com
