Have a Memory Like a Pro

Techniques on how you can have a better memory.



There are many ways to improve your memory especially if you are a musician, public speaker or a business executive. Yes repetition is a great key to memorization but there are some shortcuts and techniques that will get you there faster. The main key to quick memorization is to use "pictures". Yes a picture is worth a thousand words and more when it comes to memorization. If fact it's worth it's weight in gold. Your mind is designed to work in images not numbers or letters. So if you can associate images or pictures to something you want to remember you are half-way there. In the following text I will point out several techniques that I have learned over the years on how to put words to memory. You can pick the methods that suit your taste and adjust them to your liking.

The first key you need to do to be able to remember anything is to use an image that is "way too wild or unreal that you couldn't forget it". For example you want to remember a paragraph to a speech or song that is about "love". Well that's pretty intangible so we'll have to come up with an image or series of images that will help us. The first sentence could be about how you met at a bowling alley and the person knocked you off of your feet. Well the image that you use to start with could be someone at a bowling alley and when they started bowling you were the pin and they knocked you down. It's silly but it works.

The next step is to be able to link those pictures to a sequence of other pictures to match a sequence of words. There are several methods and I will hit a couple that I use. One method is called the "room method" where you link a series of images in a home to the story. For instance the first thing you want to remember you could put a picture (make it as silly as possible) on your front doorstep. It could be a funny picture on your doormat. Then the next picture could be as you enter the living-room. You can have several rooms in the house and use silly pictures that link what you are wanting to remember together. You can even link objects within rooms like tables and lamps to have rooms within rooms. You can get elaborate as much as you like.

Another method is association by a series of rhymes. For instance the 1st thing is number 1 and run. You associate a person running a relay race and the thing you want to remember is a silly image of what you are handing to the next person in the race instead of the relay wand. The no. 2 could be Zoo and you associate with what you want to remember with a monkey grabbing something from his cage. No. 3 could be something in a tree and so on. You can go as high as you want to and make your own list. Just remember you have to make the images as silly as you can to make the method work. You can even remember a grocery list or a to do list using this technique.

One further method is to associate numbers in order with pictures that look like the numbers and associate something silly with them. For example the number zero could be a balloon and the picture in the balloon could be a silly image of what you want to remember. The number 1 could be a pencil and an image could be on the top of the pencil. The number 3 could be a Swan or handcuffs etc. You can make up what works for you. These are just a few methods use today by many professionals to help them remember anything from lists, words, songs etc.

I hope this helps you and please feel free to add comments and suggestions.

Creative Thinking