Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 37

3 Unconventional Brain Training Techniques Guaranteed To Help You Conjure Your Best-Ever Ideas

[image error]Do you get overwhelmed and frustrated every time you need to come up with new ideas?

You know what it’s like. It can feel a bit like pulling nails out of dead wood with a pair of rusted tweezers.

And what really makes the pain so bad is that you know that your brain is teeming with ideas.

Great ideas …

If only you could catch them.

Here’s the good news. In this post I’m going to teach you how …

 

You Can Catch More Great Ideas Than The Most Successful Fishing Fleet In The World (Catches Fish)!

 

Just pick and choose from these super simple activities and start with the most appealing. We’re going to go deep into each one so that you’ll have the fullest possible understanding.

Add one or more per month over a year’s time and you’ll enjoy an overflow of ideas so powerful it will take ten lifetimes and thousands of employees to handle them.

 

Just Kidding – Most Will Be Crap!

 

Seriously.

As awesome as having boatloads of ideas can be, the real power comes from refinement. (We’ll talk about that too.)

But you can’t refine what you don’t have.

And you can’t get more ideas to refine if you aren’t already producing a lot of ideas in the first place.

That’s why you need an unending flow of ideas that you can turn on at will and focus into form with laser intensity whenever you choose.

Here are 3 unconventional ways how.

 

1. Milk Your Mind For Ideas Each And Every Morning

 

Most people flush their most vibrant ideas down the toilet as soon as their feet hit the floor.

It’s true.

By the time you hit the head, you’ve forgotten most, if not all, of a valuable stream (pun intended) of ideas you’ll never get back.

I’m talking about your dreams.

Of course, most of what we dream makes little sense, at least not without practicing the art of dream recall. Even then, dreams remain fundamentally surreal and devoid of fixed meaning.

But just because they may be meaningless, doesn’t mean your dreams can’t help you create meaning.

Au Contraire!

 

Since the early beginnings of literature, for example, Daniel in the Bible, making dreams meaningful has been a practice powerful enough to direct the choices of kings.

And Freud created an entire industry by empowering people to interpret their dreams and generate ideas about what to do and how to live in the world.

You don’t have to use the dreams you remember to influence world leaders or deal with childhood trauma. You can simply jot down what you remember and then free-associate to the images and vignettes.

Here’s a quick way to get started:

1. Get a dream journal and pen/pencil. Make it exclusive to your dream capture practice.

2. Place the journal where it’s impossible to miss near your bed. You can even date it before you go to sleep and leave it open at the page you’ll write on.

3. Make the commitment to remembering your dreams. Just say your personal version of, “I remember my dreams. I write them down.”

4. Free-associate to one or more of your dreams. It helps if you get relaxed first. Let ideas come to mind and jot them down. Don’t think about it or try to guide them. Let them breathe.

If you recall no dreams …

 

No. Big. Deal.

 

Write down, “no dreams” and perhaps a few notes about how you slept. Before you know it, you will start remembering your dreams with depth and intensity. And when you practice associating with these dreams, you’ll always be able to come up with new ideas.

The best part is that you’re journaling your dreams. This practice means that you don’t have to associate only with recent dreams for new ideas. You can go back through those pages for as long as you’ve been journaling. You’ll have a treasure trove of images, narrative snippets, and longer sequences as often as you please and always find some new angle on the material.

To give you an example, years ago I dreamed about the pyramids. I saw them filled with a scented lava that poured down the sides, creating a river.

When I finally got to visit Egypt, for some reason, I remembered the dream and started to explore it for ideas. I was there to research ancient Egyptian culture for its relationship to memory and reincarnation, past lives, etc.

That was all fine and dandy and I learned some great stuff in some of the museums I’ll be telling you about soon. But the fact that I remembered this dream and the lava was scented led me to think about aromas, and I wound up wondering if there is a relationship between scent and memory.

It turns out there is. I have found a wealth of research material on the matter, much of which centers on the use of oils in mummification – one of the most memory-centered activities in all of history.

Would I have thought to connect scent and memory without this dream?

Maybe yes.

Maybe no.

But the point is that without the practice of dream journaling, I probably never would have thought about scent and memory in the context of mummification and essential oils in Ancient Egypt.

Deliberately remembering your dreams is a way of engineering happy accidents and generating new ideas that come power packed with resonating value. It’s easy, fun, quick and easy to do. It creates long term value and can change your life in many other ways too.

 

2. Pull Ideas Out Of Thin Air Like Pushups Pack Muscles On Your Arms

 

If dream recall doesn’t appeal, there’s always brute force.

And that’s the way the following approach may feel at first.

But once you get into it, things get faster, easier and more interesting.

You just have to be willing to do it.

Here’s how it works, as adapted from the original exercise taught by James Altucher in Choose Yourself:

Write down ten ideas every day.

The benefits of completing this exercise will become plain. Just like doing consistent sets of even just ten pushups on a daily basis cannot help but strengthen your muscles …

 

Writing Out Just Ten Ideas A Day Will Pump Up Your Thinking Pipes

 

Will the ideas be any good?

Many times no.

But that’s not the point. And often enough, the ideas will be good. Or they will become catalysts for betters ideas, or at least be amusing. As with pushups, so long as you keep good form, you can’t go wrong.

Interested?

Good. Here are more specific instructions.

1. Get a special notebook and pen exclusively for this exercise.

2. Write 1-10 along the side of the page.

3. Don’t overthink the process. Start with the first blank space and write something down.

4. Write another idea down and keep going until you’ve reached 10.

As with nearly every exercise you’re learning now, coming with a relaxed body and mind will make a huge difference. By meditating first, or running in place, or even after performing some real pushups, your brain will be bursting with oxygen.

In this state …

 

You Can Experience Monumental Levels Of Creativity

 

More importantly, the volume of your critical voice will go down, if not disappear altogether.

You know the voice I mean.

It’s the voice that says, “I can’t. This is stupid, pointless and useless. Why bother?”

When it comes to listening to this voice, why bother, indeed? Didn’t this voice already batter you with these same enthusiasm-destroying sentences yesterday?

Meditation will help get that voice out of the way, letting new ideas flow with greater ease.

For bonus points, you can use the same notebook you use for dream journaling. Just imagine compounding the value of the ideas nature gave you during sleep with your Altucher-style brute force ideas.

Quite frankly, the value of combining the two is awesome.

What’s that? You want an example?

 

Well … okay …

 

Here are three of my ten ideas from earlier this morning. Remember, I don’t judge these or even think about them too much. Just as with pushups, I’m concerned only with executing the moves with good form. In this case, good form means nothing more than …

Doing. It.

1. Construct a highway from the earth to the moon out of Levi jeans. People will travel to the moon in vehicles made out of zippers and buttons. The speedbumps will be made from pockets and stitches, and all traffic lights will be made from the red Levi’s tag. But they will never mean stop, only, “go faster.”

2. Professors who shoot pancakes from maple syrup guns get arrested by the Spatula Police and taken to a prison made from sticks of butter.

3. All the American presidents in history suddenly appear in the present and start tattoo parlors that specialize in squeezing the Declaration of Independence onto the surface of any body part you wish.

Silly stuff, right?

Of course it is.

But as goofy as these ideas may be, they came lightning fast and in multilayered formations. Speed and depth come from nothing more than making idea generation a practice, an art and a habit. There are no true Eureka! Moments in creativity, only ongoing processes.

The longer, the better.

And so whether you want to have more ideas for working with mnemonics, your work or building a better future, all you have to do is start by writing down nothing more than ten ideas.

You can get started today.

 

3. Copy, Amplify, Transform, Delete Or Downright Mutilate And Abuse The Ideas Of Others

 

If for any reason you can’t come up with any ideas at all or hit a dry spell, no stress. The world is filled with ideas already put out there. Sure, they’ve poured their heart and soul into creating them, but that’s no reason not to …

 

… Mess With Them!

 

Think of Bansky. He’s a master at monkeying with logos, brands, royalty and all manner of preexisting images. He copies, transforms and sometimes deletes parts of images to create new effects that lead to new feelings and ideas.

Let’s go through each of these approaches and see how you can make them work for you.

 

Talent Borrows, Genius Steals, Creatives Copy

 

Have you ever studied music? If so, then you’ve probably played compositions written by someone else.

If you’re an artist, or tried to be one, then you’ve probably copied at some point the works of a pro.

But if you’re a writer …

Copying the works of others is the last thing you’ve ever wanted to do.

Enter Kenneth Goldsmith. In this video, he talks about “uncreativity” and why you should copy, word for word, the works of other writers the way musicians and artists so all the time. (I’ve fast-forwarded the video to the interesting part.)

Notice that Goldsmith isn’t talking merely about copying the works of others. He’s talking about analyzing your choices. You get an education from writing about what you copied and how the exercise made you feel while at the same time imprinting your mind with the rhythms and metaphors of writers you admire.

In other words, by studying your choices, you get ideas.

Incidentally, Goldsmith’s “uncreativity” exercises may sound controversial in the world of literature. Copying the writing of others to write at a higher level and produce stunning writing without hesitation has been on the radar of marketers and copywriters for decades. You can read about Gary Halbert’s “neurological imprinting” and how to dig the writing of others even deeper into your mind here.

But as with Goldsmith, the point of such exercises is not to clone. It’s to train your mind to find connections and spontaneously produce new ideas of great wealth.

 

Cut Out The Best, Mess With The Rest

 

Sometimes the best way to milk existing ideas for new ones is to cut them to pieces.

Take Dan Walsh’s Garfield Minus Garfield, for example.

What makes Walsh’s work so brilliant is the consistent comedy gold he mines from a preexisting comic strip simply by removing its famous namesake. You get a completely different reading experience, and your perception of John completely shifts.

To take another example, try and find The Matrix DeZionized. Some people wanted to like The Matrix sequels but found the representation of Zion to be a deal-breaker. So instead of griping about it, they put all three movies together and removed Zion entirely.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that creates new ideas about The Matrix series that I couldn’t have had otherwise.

How do you use this technique to create an endless stream of your own ideas on demand?

Easy.

Pick your favorite novel or movie and then think about what it would be like without the lead character or some other critical element. What would Superman be like without Lois Lane? How would Anne of Green Gables play out if the Cuthberts hadn’t adopted her? How would Columbo endlessly introduce himself back into the lives of his suspects if he couldn’t say, “Just one more thing”?

In some ways, this exercise relates to the “how many uses can you find for a paperclip?” game. But instead of adding ideas, you’re deleting them.

And when you delete, you can transform through replacement.

Imagine, for example, if the “creator” of Garfield — had replaced the cat with Conan the Barbarian. Or James Bond? Or Julia Roberts?

[image error]

Okay, So You’re Creative …
Now What?

By now, you’ve got a wealth of procedures, games and activities you can use to make your mind a machine of perpetual ideas.

Rest assured, the powerful effects of exercises like these don’t stop here. These creativity drills infuse with everything else you do throughout the day. You will notice constant creative energy as new ideas show up left, right and center.

Of course …

 

With Great Ideas Comes Great Responsibility!

 

After all, these ideas are like your children. It would be criminal to neglect them.

That said, you do need to get rid of every idea that doesn’t scale.

Or rather, reshape it somehow.

Instead of thinking of the culling process as tossing your children out into the cold, just imagine that you’re trimming their hair.

That’s all it is. Shaving wool from a flock of sheep, weeding out the dud strands and using the rest to knit …

 

A Wearable, Warm And Wonderful Idea Sweater

 

The question is … How?

It’s actually quite easy …

Assign each idea with a value.

To keep things easy, create three categories. 1, 2, 3. Green for “go,” yellow for “caution,” red for “forget it.”

Or you can use a gold coin, silver coin and a copper coin. I like this model in particular because ideas are currency. Whether it’s a scratched up penny or a hundred dollar bill, you can spend all your ideas somewhere, sometime, somehow.

So here’s an experiment adapted from something Dean Jackson talks about in his amazing 50-minute Focus Finder video:

Using the idea generation techniques you’ve just learned, get out three envelopes and three coins.

Next, stick those envelopes to the back of the door in your workspace or on a wall or any place you’ll regularly see them. Stick one coin on each envelope to indicate their value.

Then, using index cards or slips of paper, sort your ideas into the envelopes based on how much value you’ve attached to them.

You’ll have to decide on your own valuation system, but …

 

Keep It Loose And Flexible

 

Flexibility means that you allow your ideas to appreciate. What starts off as a copper coin could easily wind up becoming silver or even leaping straight up to gold.

Likewise, ideas that may have seemed gold, may downgrade over time. But no matter how things evolve on the Stock Exchange of your ideas, all of them can stay in trade and hold potential.

And anytime you feel like you’re lacking in ideas, you’ll have three heavy bank accounts from which you can draw.

You know that you can become more creative right now … right?

Good. Then go out there, gather some ideas and make something special for the world.

Do it now. [image error]

Extreme Memory Improvement: How Nelson Dellis Pushes The Limits Of Recall For The Good Of Humanity

[image error]This Man Shows You How To Unlock The Extreme Power Of Your Memory

Interested?

I thought you might be.

The man in question is Nelson Dellis. He climbs mountains,memorizes playing cards underwater and works to solve Alzheimer’s by collecting data through the Extreme Memory Challenge. Take it now.

Not only does Nelson use his memory talents to create good in the world, he’s also on a mission to help and inspire you to do the same.

Because the fact of the matter is, when you have improved memory skills, you won’t be able to stop yourself from contributing to the world at a higher level.

Just remember …

With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

Please enjoy this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast by downloading the MP3 and listening to it. You’ll find the full transcript down below with some links throughout to help continue your education into the world of Extreme Memory Improvement.

Let’s get started and feel free to download the entire transcript as a PDF to your desktop for future reference.

Anthony: Nelson, it’s great to be able to speak with you. I’ve been following some of the things you’ve been doing for quite some time. Maybe, just for people who don’t know you, give a brief overview of what got you interested in memory and how you came to achieve what you’ve done and take it to the level of basically bringing social good out of the achievements you’ve had with memory.

Nelson: Yeah, you know this all started back when my grandmother was struggling with Alzheimer’s as she lived in Europe. I wouldn’t see her all the time but I think that made a bigger  impression on me because I would go visit every six months to a year and she had drastically changed, deteriorated immensely. That made a big imprint on me. Then she passed away the summer of 2009.

At that point, I had kind of dabbled in memory. I decided to take what I had read about and really drive it home and see if I could, at a young build a strong memory, a healthy brain, and I set the goal of myself winning the memory championship. That seemed like a good milestone to try to get to and to judge, test, and base all of my training scores on. I did, and I got very good at it and all motivated by my progress and eventually I ended up winning the U.S. Memory Championship four times. That’s now what I do. I teach people how to unlock their memories.

Anthony: That’s very cool and you know one of the things that is so extraordinary is that you also turn it into social good, which we’ll talk about. Talk a little bit about the book that you’re working on and who it is for and why developing memory abilities is so important for the audience that you’re creating it for.

 

What If Memorizing Could Be The Most Exciting Activity In The World?

 

Nelson: You know I still get a lot of people who approach me and talk about their father, their mother, or grandmother has early onset or has Alzheimer’s, and they ask me if it’s something that I can train their parents to improve their memory. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about that. In my opinion, I think learning these memory techniques is a habit thing. You’ve got to learn it, I think, at an early age. That is something that just sticks with you.

When you go into your higher education, you already know how to memorize. It is a skill that you were given in school. Right now, obviously, you see if you have a class or a teacher who gives you tips on how to improve your memory you just do it. Memorize this song. You go home. You struggle with it. You repeat it over and over and then you come back and you’re excited and it’s the most frustrating process.

What if you lived in an age where your teachers actually had a class or spent some time teaching you memory techniques at a young age? When it would come to that poem or med school textbook that you’ve got memorize, you would have some toolbox in your brain to figure that out faster and more efficiently. I’ve been working on a book. I actually wrote a book, it’s not published yet for normal people of normal age.

The one I’m really excited about is this one I’ve been working on for kids which is teaching them memory techniques at a very young age. It’s geared towards a first grader in a picture book style. Because I feel like if you can get that in the head of a kid who already has a fantastic imagination and memory, that those things could stick with them and help them be successful throughout life.

Anthony: I think that’s fundamental because often adults feel that they have lost their creativity somehow. It’s pounded out of them through work or whatever the case may be. How do you think the people could resuscitate creativity if they felt that they have lost it?

 

The Truth About Memory Techniques And Creativity

 

Nelson: I know that feeling. I have felt it myself over the years. A lot of people tell me creativity is hard for me. It is hard for me to do these techniques, for example, which take a lot of creativity and imagination, but I honestly believe that anybody can do this. If you’re not good at, or if you think you’re not good at being creative, I think it’s one of those things it is practice.

I was always pretty good. I was very artistic, but I would still say I’m not the most creative person. I knew a lot of people who were a lot more creative than me. When I first heard about these techniques, a little bit skeptical and maybe thought okay this might not be up my alley or something that I might be good at, but with all the practice I’ve done, yeah, I’m practicing memory techniques, but for sure I’m also practicing creativity techniques. My mind is, I feel now, way more creative than it was six or seven years ago when I started this.

Anthony: I’m curious about your process if we can talk shop a little bit. One of those issues really is being creative. I’ve always thought that, and I encountered this in Harry Lorayne is you’re just doing associations. At so many levels, creativity really isn’t the issue. It’s more of being able to pool associations together so like famous actors or politicians or football players or whatever. I’m just curious to what extent you rely on information that you already know like pop culture images, or whatever the case may be, as opposed to things you invent on the fly or fantasy images that are not really reality so to speak.

Nelson: Well, when I train for these memory competitions there’s a few events. One of them is the deck of cards. How fast can you memorize them? They give you a massive number and you’ve got five minutes to memorize as much of it as you can. For things like that, I have systems where they are already set out. I sat down one day and decided to give each three-digit number 000 to 999 a specific person.

When I came up with that list and when I use it, it’s all celebrities, fictional cartoon characters from books, shows, people, friends that I know. They’re all associations to things that I already know. There are other events where you have to kind of make stuff up on the fly, for example, a list of words or names. Most of that is where you have to be very creative because you don’t know what you’re going to get.

You’ve got to come up with the pictures, but what I do is I’ll look at a pair of words or a name and a last name, and I’ll come up with that association to something I know but on the fly. If I can’t, then I break it down into something smaller that is recognizable. That’s always the process  is to break it into something I know. It’s still a creative process whether you already have associations to things or not because you still have to interweave those images with, for example, a Memory Palace or some narrative that is totally make believe.

 

Why You Should Go Climb A Mountain If You Want To Find More Memory Palaces

 

Anthony: To what extent do you prefer Memory Palaces based on real locations you’ve actually visited to just made up Memory Palaces, or even based on places that exist but you’ve never been to.

Nelson: Right. I know some people who do all those that you mentioned. I’m more of the real places that I’ve been to and had a memorable experience there. To me, I love going to these places. I climbed Everest a few years ago, and I have a Memory Palace where I’m on the mountain going through base camp and the higher camps and all that. I love the fact that when I train I get to go to that place. I think that’s very important at least for me to make my memories, when I memorize stuff, that much more memorable. I do know some people who use video game settings or even fictional rooms. They maybe design them on their computer or draw it or whatever. It is not a real place but it works.

Anthony: One question a lot of people have is can you reuse a Memory Palace and what’s your experience with that?

Nelson: When I’m training, I do multiple decks a day so I’ve got to have a large collection of Memory Palaces. If I were to have just one and I use it over and over and over again, I’m going to get some echoes and some confusion. I’m sure if you practice, you could probably eliminate some of that. I like to have fresh Memory Palaces come competition time. I’ll use a few and then leave those alone for a few days while I use other ones and then cycle back to them so that they empty themselves out.

That being said, if I have something that I want to memorize forever  so this is what I’m talking about for training is temporary. I’m memorize a deck of cards, I recite it and then I don’t really care to keep that particular deck of cards any longer. It’s meaningless almost. That’s why I cycle through them. If it is some trivia set or something for school or something really important that I want to keep forever, then I typically take or design or find a Memory Palace specifically for that information and I use it only for that. I would never tape over it. I’ll just use it as this hard drive, external hard drive, if you will, to store that piece of information.

Anthony: How often do you feel you need to revisit or rehearse that information or to keep it fresh and overcome the forgetting curve?

Nelson: You know, probably when you start out review is essential frequently, but over time it’s something I – maybe every six months I’ll go back and check it out. If there are gaps in it, I can go back and kind of relearn it just to solidify it.

 

Why The Real Magic Of Memory Is In Keeping It Real

Anthony: Do you ever experiment with adding a condition to a Memory Palace so you can reuse it? I’m sure you are familiar with the procedure of taking an original Memory Palace and then having a version made out of ice, a version made out of wood, grass, or maybe there would be a blue version, a red version and a yellow version. You ever mess around with that stuff?

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve heard of that. More like you make it big or you imagine yourself miniature inside of it or something. I’ve heard of that. I’ve never actually tried it. I don’t know. I just like to do it as real as the place is.

Anthony: Right, that’s exactly how I like to work as well. One thing too, just if we can be nerdy about this a little bit more, I’m curious do you see yourself walking through the Memory Palace? Do you have a first person viewpoint or is it like a bird’s eye view of a blueprint? How is it working for you, or do you do all three in different situations?

Nelson: I’m not there. I guess its first person but looking at a location in this Memory Palace and something is happening there. It’s not like it’s me seeing it. It’s just like a security camera.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s cool. I mean that is just one question that I get again and again is how that people are supposed to navigate it and how they’re supposed to see it. I often try to encourage them to not see it at all but rather think of it as a star in a constellation that you’ve carefully crafted and reduce the reconstruction of the Memory Palace to the bare minimum so you can focus on those weird and crazy images that you’ve put there.

Nelson: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. I don’t really think about whether I see it or who is seeing it or what angle it is. It’s just I just think of that slot, I create the image, and I move along.

 

How To Snag Anything You Want To Memorize By Associating It With Feelings

 

Anthony: That must be important for speed since you’re often engaging in speed drills.

Nelson: Yeah, when you first start out you linger and you make sure you have it in your head, but as you try to cut down your times to get faster at this process you really have to, like you said, cut these images down to their bare minimum where it’s almost just a fleeting part of that image. We were talking about it last week. There was a UK Championship and some of us were saying that it’s almost a feeling. When you get fast at it, and that’s honestly, we go really fast and sometimes we forget things.

When you have a really good run through say a deck of cards and it’s fast, what you’ll find is like the images that you were picturing were just all feeling. There’s my dad at this location. It’s not him per se at this point. It’s the essence of him or I guess how he makes me feel when he’s in my presence. Whatever, but he’s there. Which is interesting because when I first tell somebody how to do this technique, I tell them to sit there, close their eyes, really imagine your dad, if that’s what you’re picturing, his hair, how he smells, how he talks, all these little details to make that image memorable. Once you get faster at it, you’ve got to cut some of that out and really just cling on to the things that are what make it stick.

Anthony: One of the things that I think pushes people away from these extraordinary techniques is the element of let’s call it rigorous cartoon violence. To what extent do you find that’s necessary or are you able to use softer, gentler imagery to trigger the target information.

 

How To Safely Use Your Taboos For Extreme Memory Boosts

 

Nelson: Yeah, it’s funny. I did a talk once, and I feel like a lot of my images are violent/sexual. I’m not a violent person by nature but my images they tend to be. I was leading an audience through an example and one woman just couldn’t get it, and she was like I just can’t picture gruesome things. I just can’t do it. What she did from then on, she was a very spiritual person, she kind of related it all back to religion and that seemed to work for her.

What I pull from that is that everybody’s minds are different. I often encourage that you should go for pictures that are bizarre and silly, over the top and if you can, sexual or gruesome, grotesque in nature just because those stick because of them being so out there and loud. For me, I think that’s an important part. For numbers and cards, I have actions that are violent or sexual for sure.

Anthony: But you still manage to be a good citizen of the planet?

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve heard people say I don’t want to do that because I feel like it will take over my mind and I’m going to become a bad person, but that never happens.

 

Is Every School In The World Evil For Not Teaching Memory Techniques To Children? 

 

Anthony: Going back to the book for young people and the issue of getting them young to at least have exposure to these techniques, a lot of people ask me and have probably asked you. It’s one of the biggest questions. Why aren’t these memory techniques taught in school? It’s really easy to fall back on the idea, and there’s probably a truth to the idea, that we are stuck in a Victorian education system that was designed to create obedient factory workers and so forth. What’s you’re take on it?

Nelson: It’s interesting because on the flip side every time I go up to a school or university and I demonstrate or I talk to someone who has seen what I can do and they want me to come talk about it at the school, there’s always an excitement for it. They can’t believe it’s not in their school, that kids don’t know about.

But then what happens is, we get down the road, conversations, I do a few little talks and there’s times maybe working together involving these techniques into the curriculum and then it falls flat. I don’t understand it. It recurs a lot.

It’s just a funny thing. I guess memory because it’s so abstract I guess in a way and it’s not as tangible as say math. You can write your solutions on the board and then the work can stepped out. Whereas memory is very – everybody like I was talking about before is very different. You can’t really see how another student is memorizing. You guide them and hope that they’re following along.

I don’t know if that’s the reason why it still hasn’t caught on. I’ve been at this for a number of years and I’ve had so many people interested and promises and ideas and they just – some have gone through of course but not as many as I would like.

You know at first I did this just because it was a personal thing. I wanted to improve my memory and my brain health. Then I realized it’s a bit hard to train when you don’t have kind of the end goal. With memory improvement, if I want to have a competition what am I really training for? Yeah to improve my mind, fine, but I’m a very quantities person so how do you measure that. When is it good enough? To be honest, I don’t know actually have the answer. But at least with the memory championships I knew numbers and times that I had to achieve in order to be competitive for the title. That kept me very motivated in terms of driving me to compete.

 

Why Advanced Memory Skills Are The Best Addiction You’ll Never Want To Kick

 

The thing is this stuff is so addicting. Once you realize you have this power to memorize more than you ever thought you could, and then you train and get even faster it, it’s a hard thing to let go of and then when you see other people in your circle, your memory circle improving you want to stay up with them especially when you are already at the top. That’s my problem right now. I won it four times, and I keep saying I’m going to stop because I don’t want to end up losing. I always wrestled with that problem. Do I keep training? And if I do, I’ve got to train harder because the competitive levels keep rising versus just calling it quits. I’m just doing it for myself.

Anthony: Have you ever plateued?

Nelson: Oh yeah, I’m at a pretty big plateau or I have been this past two years. I think a lot of it has to do with difference in motivation from previous years. Whereas before I never won, I wanted to win, and then I won. I wanted to win again and then I lost the next year so I wanted to come and win that time. Now it’s like okay four is a good number. Why would five be any better? Do I really have to train that hard anymore? When you have that feeling that’s when you plateau. You’re not really trying to find new avenues to get better because where you’re at has been good enough. I don’t know how I won the U.S. Championship this year because – well I did very well in the names, but something I used to be the best at which is numbers and cards I was okay. Lance Tschirhart, another American, he broke the U.S. record 29 seconds in cards which is crazy. I’ve done that once in training. Then 360 digits, I’ve done that in training but never in competition. I need to push forward to break this plateau. I’m kind of where I was  around 300, around 30 seconds for cards. I need to change some things, which I’ve started to do and I’m seeing improvements now. It’s been a lot of work to break this particular plateau.

Anthony: What does a typical training session look like? Is there a fixed daily routine or how do you drill yourself to reach something like the 30-second area for 52 cards?

 

The Best Memory Routine Advice You’ll Ever Get

 

Nelson: It depends on where I am in terms of what’s coming up. Is there a memory competition down the road or is it off-season so to speak. I used to just train always. Like four to five hours a day, I’d do sets of numbers, cards, names, words, just every day. Then I pulled back a bit. I think after I won in 2014 it was the first time I took break and I didn’t touch anything for like six months, which made it really had to get back into.

Now that I’m training for The World Memory Championships, which has more different or varying disciplines, I have a lot more to train. I’ll kind of split up my weeks by Monday/Wednesday, Tuesday/Thursday and then Friday and one of the weekend days I kind of leave for experimenting and working on systems. All the days I will usually do speed numbers and speed cards, just memorizing cards and numbers.

Then on the Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll work on the longer disciplines. In the World Championships, they test you for an hour on how many numbers you can memorize and how many packs of cards you can memorize. I work on that. It just ends up being, when I’m really down to it, a five-hour training day.

Anthony: Wow! That sounds intense. Given that amount of investment, do you think memory competitions should be included in the Olympics, or do you have any ideas why it isn’t already in the Olympics?

Nelson: Yeah, I think so. I think the reason why it’s not though is because it’s horribly boring to watch. That’s not to say that you can’t make it exciting. I’m working on that, but the World Championships is extremely boring to watch. I love to compete in it of course, but compared to staring at someone for three days straight for eight hours a day watching them stare at a piece of paper taking tests.

 

How To Make Dudes And Dudettes Memorizing Stuff Look Sexy, Stimulating And Exciting As All Hell

 

That’s not the most exciting sport to watch but there’s a memory tournament that I created two years ago called the Extreme Memory Tournament and we try to make it somewhat of a spectator sport. I think we’re doing a good job so far.

The XMT, as we call it, is a two-day competition and everything is digital first of all. It’s all one-on-one matches. Everybody who is competing is split up into groups kind of like the World Cup. On Day 1, you play everybody in your group in each of the disciplines. There are cards, numbers, words, names and pictures. They are all short disciplines like one-minute memorization.

The cool thing is – so I’m going up against you for example. Let’s say we’re memorizing a deck of cards. Here we are on our laptops racing through this deck of cards as fast as possible and on the screen it’s broadcasted to the audience so people can see exactly how fast I’m going through my deck of cards versus you. Who finishes first and then during recall while constructing those decks, trying to remember their correct order, it’s who can get the most right. If we both got it right, who did it faster? It makes it very visual. It’s short. It’s exciting. It’s this battle. It’s not so much test taking anymore versus  there’s a little bit of strategy involved and it’s a lot more exciting that way.

Anthony: That sounds like it would be very exciting. Like speed chess basically.

Nelson: Yeah.

Anthony: Cool, well speaking of the word extreme, and your predilection for names talk about the Extreme Memory Challenge and the research that’s going on that you’re involved in.

 

Are There Genetically Superior Memorizers Roaming The Planet?

 

Nelson: Going back to this tournament, we started it because this company called Dart Neuroscience, they’re in San Diego. They were doing some research with Washington University in St. Louis, and I was part of that study amongst other memory experts. What they’re trying to do is to try to find and create a drug that improves memory and brain health and cognition. Not an easy task, but they have a lot of their funds going into a lot of universities for research and they’re doing their own research as well. I’ve worked with them obviously to help put together the tournament.

They were the key sponsor those two years we ran it. They are also working, and I’m helping them with this because I totally want it to succeed, is they developed a memory test. It is long-term memory test, and they’re just trying to get a million at least, honestly as many people to take the test as possible. The idea being we’re trying to locate or identify people who have naturally good long-term memories. That’s a very rare thing to find. Maybe not even somebody who we’ll find, but you will only know if you get enough people. Once we find those people, we’ll be able to do a lot of DNA testing to figure out what separates these people from the norm. That’s the idea.

It’s called Extreme Memory Challenge. It’s a pretty easy fun test. It doesn’t hurt. It’s easy. You’re helping research and if anybody is listening to this, I would love for you to just take the test and share it. The more people that take it the better and you can actually see how you compare to me. I’ve taken the test as well.

Anthony: We know that there are people who are extraordinarily good with mnemonics, mnemonists, and are you split testing them so that you have results from people who aren’t using mnemonics compared to those who are to take the test.

Nelson: At this point, we’re just honestly getting as many people to take the test. Once we have people who have scored highly, we’ll be more careful in how we weed those people out. That’s when we’ll investigate further whether they were using memory techniques or not. The goal is to find the people who were not using memory techniques. Right now, we’re just trying to get people to do well on the test.

Anthony: What do you think about the claims and the studies that say technology is now doing so much of our memory work that we’re going in the opposite direction where our memories are degrading? Have you found that for yourself and had that observation?

 

The Most Outrageously Powerful Definition About Memory Is Just One Word Long

 

Nelson: Definitely. The one thing I’ve learned about memory through this whole journey is that it’s attention. That’s all it is. When you talk about techniques, Memory Palaces and number systems all you’re doing at the very basis of it all is paying a lot of attention to something. You’re building this elaborate system for one specific thing. You’re sitting there thinking about it really hard. That’s paying attention to something and that’s what memory is. If you’re not paying attention to something, somebody says something that you should remember you’re not going to remember it.

This era is all distractions. Just think of when you’re out having a conversation with a friend. You usually have your phone out, whether it’s on the table or in your hand or in your pocket. It’s going off, it’s lighting up. Maybe theirs is lighting up to, versus when you would actually go out with someone back in the day, and you maybe didn’t have text messages awhile back. You’d have to say we’ll meet here at this time. You did and then actually paid attention to that person. That exchange was probably more memorable or easier to remember than ones you have these days because of that technology. I definitely believe that this day and age it is so hard to pay attention to things.

We’re constantly being bombarded. It’s just making memory that much more difficult. We don’t have to use it as much as well, so all that together just kind of makes our memories so along this journey as well I try to figure out a way to give back and to educate people on all the things I have kind of figured out.

As we talked about before, it’s shocking that this stuff isn’t in schools and that people don’t know about it. We all can do it. It’s all latent within us, the skill. I tried to figure out a way. How can I share this with people? I thought okay maybe I can create a blog/website where I post all these kind of tips and talk about memory and how do I make it a little more exciting. I tied it to another passion of mine which mountain climbing.

 

How To Memorize Safely – With Almost No Oxygen In Your Brain!

 

That’s where Climb for Memory came from. I started climbing mountains and updating my blogs about my trips and photos. I was trying to get people to be drawn to the site. Climbing Mt. Everest, things like that, things that people are kind of fascinated by and don’t always get the opportunity to learn about. It’s kind of a diversion. It’s like hey look here, but what you’re really looking at is this cause I’m climbing for, which I also happen to know a great deal about it. Here’s how you memorize this and that and keep your brain healthy. It was an effort to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s and also funds as well.

Anthony: If I understand correctly, you’re also doing some experiments and as you climb with different altitudes and how your memory responds or is that something you’re starting in the future.

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve done that on some of my higher altitude climbs. Since I train all the time. I kept doing it on these long expeditions. For example, Mt. Everest, not many people know but it’s a two-month expedition, so you’re at high altitude, 17,000 feet or higher for about six weeks there. Your body goes through some serious changes and near the top of the mountain, you’re getting a third of the oxygen you would at sea level. You need oxygen. Your body needs oxygen to function properly and to think straight.

If you ever see these videos online of pilots, they simulate oxygen just dropping. They test them and they just become idiots within seconds. It’s crazy. They can’t put a square peg through a square hole. They put it through the triangle you know something like that. They can’t do basic arithmetic.

For climbers, we spend a lot of time acclimatizing so that when we do get to the top we’re not like that. That’s not to say we’re not stupid but we can think a little better. I’ve have been testing that with memory. What’s surprising to me is I’ve actually done as good or better as I went up in altitude. I have no idea why, but I just love to test that kind of stuff to see how these techniques fair with the elements.

Anthony: They say that norepinephrine is produced in novel situations, which is thought to be an aid to memory, that chemical in the brain.

Nelson: Yeah, I’ve had some thoughts about it, and that’s the one that’s come up. It’s the most extraordinary experience being up there. You put yourself in some really memorable hairy, scary situations constantly for six to eight weeks. You walk away with an experience that is super memorable because of how novel it is, and I’m sure that plays into all your thoughts while
you’re up there including when I would do my memory training.

 

How Big Is Your Memory?

 

Anthony: Now you know personally the size and the dimension of Mt. Everest, do you have a sense or a feeling of the size of your memory?

Nelson: No, I don’t think so. Obviously, it’s contained to that thing that’s inside my head which has a finite size. But in terms of how many Memory Palaces I can have and how many bits of information I can store there, I have no idea.

I mean there can always be some way that I can press information into bigger chunks and Memory Palaces that, like you said, you know you alter things in your Memory Palace and you can memorize something totally new inside of it. Where is the limit?

These memory competitions are a great example because when they first started in the early 1990s the records there were, at the time, very impressive, but now they are a joke. At the time, you thought okay you can’t really go that much faster with a deck of cards and then somebody broke a minute. Now people are getting under 30 seconds like it’s the easiest thing in the world and people are approaching the 20second, people even in training getting 19, 18 seconds.

 

 Breaking The Speed Limit Of Memory One Card At A Time

 

Now you’re like, okay I don’t think you can get much faster than that. Who knows, at some point somebody is going to come up with something that allows you memorize a deck of cards in 10 seconds, which is crazy. When does it end? Obviously, you’ve got to look at the cards so there is a limit to that, but in terms of how much you can store and how limitless the memory is, it’s crazy to think about.

Anthony: I have an interview on the podcast with Phil Chambers who is chief arbiter of the World Memory Championships …

Nelson: Sure, yeah.

Anthony: He said that they’re working on an app (I guess it would be) that’s going to be able to show the cards faster than the human hands can move, which it sounds like you already have some version of that if you’re doing a digital read of the cards in your competitions.

Nelson: Yeah, I mean that’s what that would be, right. It’s a digital version that you could just click through. There another couple of training sites online that people use, and when we talk about personal bests, who has been able to do this a lot of them are doing faster times on the digital format because you don’t have to like thumb through the deck. You’re just moving an arrow, clicking an arrow to go to the right and you can go a lot faster.

Anthony: I think what he was talking about is that they would set a speed so you would not have any manual control over when or for how long the cards were displayed. Do you think you would be able to handle someone else controlling or an automatic process controlling the duration of the exposure?

 

It’s All A Matter Of Training

 

Nelson: It’s all a matter of training. If you tell me you’re going to show me a deck of cards, one every quarter second, okay, I’m going to train that. Maybe I can’t do it immediately. Maybe I’ll train with – well I can do it in about 30 seconds, so maybe that’s approaching a half second per card. I would start there and cut it down.

When you put these boundaries and these limitations is when people suddenly improve. You see somebody run the 4minute mile for the first time and then suddenly you can do it as well because it’s possible or it’s a barrier and now people have something to work towards. I don’t think it’s too hard unless you just don’t practice.

That’s it. I do a lot of cross training and some of these guys that end up winning, there’s a guy named Rich who won four times in a row. I mean these guys just work day in and day out lifting, working out crazy. I love watching videos of him  just how he trains and his mentality through it. I think that’s the only way to get better is practice with anything, honestly and that’s the biggest thing with memory.

People think it’s a natural thing or I have some talent for it naturally. Honestly, I don’t think so. I think it’s training. Yeah, maybe some people need less training to get to where I am or to get even better than me. If you train and you are gung ho and so motivated to do a certain thing, you can do anything.

Anthony: Do you have a favorite quote?

Nelson: Favorite quote? Yeah, I think every year before the memory championship I always Tweet and stuff. Let me see if I can say it right. It’s dumb, it’s so dumb, but it’s from, what movie is that? It’s one of those movies that came out in the 1990s. It’s a spoof.

Anyways, this guy is going out on the football field and he’s kind of down on himself. He doesn’t believe in himself, whatever. He sits on the bench and Mr. T comes up to him who is this high school janitor and he says before he goes out, he like “Believe in the ball and throw yourself.” Which you hear it and it’s like he’s just saying it backwards.

The guy looks at him kind of confused, but I always loved that because it’s kind of true. I think usually you’re supposed to say believe in yourself and throw the ball, or whatever it is, and that’s how you succeed. I think when you want to succeed you’ve got to train a lot. You’ve got to practice properly. You’ve got to really make this your life if you really want to achieve it.

When it comes down to performing in a competition, it’s not about believing in yourself, it’s believing in the thing that you know instinctively. You just believe in the ball and you just throw yourself into it. That’s what I was saying before. When I memorize and I get a really good time, it’s when I thought or memorized the least. It’s like I didn’t even feel like I was memorizing. It was just so natural. That’s what you strive for through your training. That you’ve done it so many times that it’s just a matter of throwing yourself out there and doing what you know.

Anthony: Something really interesting came up when you were searching in your mind for the quote and even the movie that it came from, and I was interviewed myself last night and there’s slips of the mind that come. Well, it some book I read at some time at some point, but people seem to expect that people using mnemonics wouldn’t have these same lapses.

 

There’s No Such Thing As A Bullet Proof Memory Champ

 

Do you ever prepare yourself for social situations? Like I presented about language learning and memory techniques at the polyglot conference in Berlin, and I went there prepared because I knew people were going to come up to me and give me some crazy phrase and I would be put on the spot. Of course, I want to demonstrate the validity of these techniques so I was really on the ball. It was successful the whole weekend, but there’s this pressure of performance. Do you ever have that or people throw you curve balls to see where you’re at? They somehow like in an example where you can’t quite recall the name of movie they say come on. What’s your experience with that kind of stuff?

Nelson: Yeah, over the years I’ve been caught off guard and kind of made a fool of. I’m not a tape recorder. A lot of these things and you can attest to this, is you’ve got to turn it off. It’s to me a memorizing machine. You’ve got to be actively doing it. Sometimes I just don’t want to do it. I’m tired and don’t want to focus and pay attention. I just want to veg out. When I have these talks I have to be on because I want to practice what I preach and I have little tricks that help me.

You know people catch me off guard. Most of all it’s just I turn it off. I really focus on being on point. If somebody comes up where they’re like hey what was your favorite movie and I’m like oh the one with the memory and I can’t remember. It’s just I feel like a situation like that kinds of make me seem human and normal which is what people want to see as well. It’s nice to see someone who seems superhuman, but on some level if there’s too much of that then you almost feel like I can’t do that. I think that’s actually maybe good to motivate someone. It’s like okay. I can do that. It doesn’t seem like he’s 100 percent but it’s still very impressive.

Anthony: Speaking about that, a lot of people they doubt themselves, they doubt that it’s possible for them. What do you think is just one little thing that a person could do that would give them a quick victory so they have a taste of what’s possible?

 

Two Ways To Turn Your Memory On And Keep It Humming

 

Nelson: I’ll give you two things. The first one is pay attention. It’s the most elementary thing of course but if I’m telling you that most of memory is paying attention, and you go out and say you have a meeting or a party you’re going to, and you tell yourself I’m going to pay attention and remember ten people’s names.

That’s my goal. Make it a game or something. You will. You will just from the fact that you’re telling yourself to do that. You’re wired, you’re turning it on to complete that particular task. You will perform 100 times better than if you just hoped to remember people’s names and you didn’t really think about it.

The second thing is the Memory Palace. Think of your house. It’s a quick thing. Think of your house. Start at your front door and whenever you want to memorize a list of things just picture each item along a path of your house. Then when you want to recall it, you just imagine yourself through that house and like you said, you can’t forget how to get from your front door to your bedroom or whatever. You will remember what was there. It’s surprisingly simple and surprisingly powerful as well.

Anthony: What’s the one question you wish that someone would ask you about memory that no one ever seems to narrow in on?

Nelson: Oh, that’s good. Another question that people should stop asking me and that’s do you play in Vegas? I don’t. I don’t think it would be much of a help to have a good memory there. What’s the one that I hope they would ask me is when can we start training?

Anthony: Very good. This has been a wonderful experience getting to speak with you and I know the people who listen to this podcast are going to love it and find it very inspiring. How can people who want to learn more about you, about Climb for Memory, about the Extreme Memory Challenge and your upcoming book, how can they find you online and get in touch with you and maybe there will be some people who love to ask you about hiring your help as a personal trainer.

Nelson: Yeah, the easiest way is to Climb for Memory. You can contact me through there. There’s a lot of information on there about memory and my climbs and stuff like that. Then I have my YouTube channel where there are a lot of videos of my climbs and little snippets of memory talks that I’ve done. There’s a lot if you just Google memory. You can throw my name in there too if you want to look at something specifically for me. Otherwise, there’s a lot of memory resources out there these days, there’s no shortage of it.

Further Resources

Nelson Dellis on Twitter

Man With The World’s Strongest Memory Crusades Against Alzheimer’s

USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis On Memory, Tenacity & Conquering Anything on Jonathan Levi’s Becoming Superhuman Podcast

Nelson Dellis Interview On The Jeff Rubin Show

The Darkside And The Brightside Of How Marketers Manipulate Your Memory Every Single Day

Have you ever purchased something and hated it? And yet, for some reason, you gradually …

… started to love it?

Or have you seen a movie that thrilled you, only to find that your opinion suddenly sours?

If so, then it could be that …

 

Someone Is Seriously Messing With Your Memory!

 

And there’s bad news. The people involved in changing how you feel about products and media you’ve consumed hold more than one weapon of memory destruction.

Let’s look at just one of the ways advertisers manipulate your memory. But please understand that I am in no way talking about subliminal advertising. The tools we’ll explore rely solely on images and procedures that rehearse, train and retrain how you think by accessing your memory in particular ways.

One tool, for example, involves …

 

Blatant And Phoney Misinformation About The Competitors

 

Do you remember the Pepsi Taste Challenge? How thinly they disguised the fact that they were testing Coca Cola with the poor citizens they ambushed on the streets with Coca-Cola? How Pepsi used to call Coke, “the leading cola?”

By representing their main competitor in these challenges by association, Pepsi was capitalizing on the fact that human memory is constructed. Our memories don’t come from one location in the brain, but several.

This means that as our memories come to the fore, they can be changed by the catalyst responsible for summoning them. And because the advertisements make use of nostalgic images, rousing music and cleverly placed sound effects that also invoke nostalgia (the sound of a soda can being cracked open or bubbling pop snapping against ice), they create feelings.

These feelings cause your brain to associate positive experiences with the product and negative feelings with the competition.

Because as this documentary reveals, it’s not about selling a product. It’s about selling an idea:

At least, that’s the theory. Scientists and marketers call this effect “memory blending.” At its highest level, the injection of blended memories into your mind makes you think that you’re the one who formed your preferences.

And if advertising can change how you feel about something you’ve purchased in the past, you can be led to buy more and …

 

… Think It Was Your Idea!

 

Soda companies aren’t the only ones to use product comparison and misinformation to create blended memories. Many companies do, including airlines, stereo and speaker manufacturers and fashion designers.

The craziest part of all is that in so many cases, the difference between the products is marginal to none. If information is to be perceived by consumers …

 

It Must Be Done By Advertising

 

And because what matters most in these advertisement campaigns rely on how we feel about past experiences, advertisers constantly make references to childhood experiences. Playing with toys, camping in the woods, munching on cereal. You might see a mother with a child, a doctor with a patient or athletes with their trainers.

Or the ads may feature running on the beach, playing tennis or eating in a restaurant. These iconic, universal cues apply to almost everyone living in the West. Even when traveling in countries like Egypt, I have seen ads nearly indistinguishable from those we see in North America and England.

 

Two Routes To Radical Memory Change

 

Let’s look deeper at how all of this memory change works.

As we’ve already discussed with the Pepsi Taste Challenge example, the ads work at altering your subjective experiences if the past.

Secondly, the ads change how you think about an objective experience from your past.

Many ads, especially the Pepsi challenge, blend the two together.

To take another example, let’s look at an interesting experiment conducted by Kathryn Brown and reported upon in 1997.

In the experiment —- demonstrated that consumers will take second-hand information and use it to reconstruct memories of past experiences. They will do this completely outside of conscious experience.

Here are the basics of the experiment:

2o female and 30 undergrads at a university in Iowa were shown the trailer for a Johnny Depp movie called Nick of Time.

https://youtu.be/3ylx6aTM2hU

The researcher chose this movie because:

1. The plot and marketing were shaped to appeal to Generation X.

2. The movie had not been released in Iowa, reducing the likelihood that students were aware of it.

After viewing the film, the researcher asked the students to give their opinion of the film. They were asked to rate the trailer on traits such as acting, directing, pacing, etc. Brown also asked the participants if they would like to see the film in the future.

The researcher then thanked the participants for their time after a twenty minute period given for watching and rating the film. For all intents and purposes, the participants thought the experiment was over.

Next, however, the students were given reviews of the film to read. Although the reviews were professionally written, students were not given the names of the reviewers or the names of the newspapers or magazines from which the reviews were taken. Students, for example, might have a positive association with Rolling Stone magazine that could influence the experiment.

The reviews given to the students were either thumbs-up with 5 stars or thumbs-down with 0 stars.

After reading the reviews, the students were given a surprise memory test. The test asked them to reevaluate the movie trailer and then talk about how much they felt the reviews affected them. Although it was an option to say that they couldn’t remember their previous evaluation, less than a measurable percentage took this option.

As a result, students who received the positive reviews shifted to more positive evaluations the second time around. Likewise, students who received the negative reviews downgraded their opinion of the film.

Overall, when questioned, most participants believed:

1. That they had been consistent with their original evaluation.

2. Their original evaluation had not been affected by the second-hand information.

The results of the experiment suggest one thing:

 

Your Memory Of Opinions You Once Held Can Be Eradicated!

 

Not only that, but in addition to changing your thoughts about past opinion, your future choices can be altered too. Those who said they would like to see the film based on the trailer but were given negative reviews tended to change their mind.

And we’ve probably all had this experience. I remember being very excited to see Jupiter Rising after watching the trailer at the Sony Center Cinema in Berlin. But the reviews completely decimated that desire and to this day, I’ll never really know whether I might have liked the movie or not until I maybe one day watch it.

All this said, there’s one big fat white elephant in the room …

 

Is This Experiment Valid?

 

It seems so, but we need to question:

* The likelihood that they would not have seen the trailer on a national TV station. They do not appear to have been quizzed about their television viewing habits.

* They were university students, so we can assume that at least some of them came from another state. We do not know when they might last have traveled to another state.

* When people can’t properly remember their previous opinions, how can we trust them to remember whether or not they’ve seen a movie trailer before, let alone the entire movie?

Nonetheless, as worthy as these considerations are, I don’t think these problems affect the experiment too deeply.

But everything we learned about today does raise one very important question …

 

Is Selling Evil?

 

One of the world’s most successful marketing “gurus,” Dan Kennedy, often says that people selling products need to come to grips with one essential fact:

Marketing is always manipulation.

However, the extent to which manipulation to buy through the use of product comparisons, nostalgia and reviews is unethical or even insidious has much more to do with the product than the marketing.

Joe Polish sums it up best when he said in a video that …

And so if the product is crap – and let’s face it, soda pop does rot your body – then the marketing of the product may well seem to be evil.

But if the product is awesome and makes your life better, than you may have had that experience of saying, “I’m glad I saw that ad.” And in fact, here at the Magnetic Memory Method Headquarters in Berlin, hardly a day goes past when I don’t get an email that starts something like, “thank god I found you.”

So even if the quality of products may differ, the tools of effective marketing – the written ads, radio jingles and video presentations that get you itching to buy …

 

These Tools Of Unabashed Manipulation Are Exactly The Same!

 

And so at the end of the day, you’re truly on your own. You can do nothing more than decide for yourself.

And that’s why guarantees are so essential in today’s world. Whether it’s Amazon’s 7-day return policy or the Magnetic Memory Method 1-year guarantee, not trying items is that interest you is relatively risk-free in today’s world. Just don’t be a jerk and ask for a refund when you’ve used a product and gotten value from it.

In the words of the Fonz and one of my favorite marketing mentors (Frank Kern) …

Always.
Be.

Cool.

And if you’d like to grab my four free video series and Memory Improvement Kit, then you’re more than willing to do that. I promise, I’ll improve your memory, not bend it.

These 5 Kinds Of Memory Make The World Awesome

Memory is not what you think it is.

Whereas we often use the word “memory” as if it’s a singular, globular entity, memory is more than one thing. It’s a collection a multiple entities that deal with different kinds of information, even …

 

Information About Things That Haven’t Happened Yet!

 

First we have, prospective memory. Prospective memory is that wonderful device that helps you remember tasks you need to complete and events you’re booked to attend in the future.

The only problem is …

… prospective memory isn’t necessarily all that good.

For example, how many times have you forgotten an appointment, to take a pill, to wash the shampoo from your hair?

These slips happen, but even more interesting is how prospective memory tends to fail us most in areas that it should be the most reliable.

I’m talking now about routinized tasks.

For example, most of us do our own shopping. And yet, why is it that we so often forget items we need and know we need?

Even pilots have this problem. Without checklists, even the most routine – and absolutely necessary operations for flight safety – would be forgotten as easily as you can forget eggs or milk.

 

Spend One Dollar And Benefit From This Memory Exercise Forever 

 

For prospective memory to work, you also need retrospective memory.

Retrospective memory helps you recall information that you learned in the past. Your home address, directions to a restaurant or where you put your medication all rely on your ability to recall where things are located in space. Without this kind memory, even if you do remember to take your pills, you won’t have a clue where they are.

Prospective memory and retrospective memory work together, and it’s quite easy to keep them fit. Here’s a fun exercise:

Go to a dollar store and buy an object. It could be a ball, a pack of clown stickers or hair elastics.

Next, visit a friend and ask them to let you hide the object in the back of a closet or somewhere deep beneath a bathroom sink. The more of the home you must navigate to reach the object, the better.

In other words, don’t put your object in the hallway closet directly inside the entrance. Put it down in that creepy basement bathroom where a hole in the wall exposes all those rusty pipes.

Then make an appointment to come the next day, the next week or even the next month to reclaim the object.

When you get home, replay the entire journey in your mind. See the entire path from your home to the store to the creepy basement in your friend’s home.

At the same time, see the object you placed in the home and nourish that image. Make it big, bright and colorful. Infuse it with a crazy energy, almost to the point of bursting.

Then, use the Major Method in combination with Dr. Jim Samuels‘ method for memorizing appointments and associate the object with the date and time of the appointment you made for pickup.

To complete the exercise, keep your appointment and claim your object. Then go hide it somewhere else and repeat the exercise as often as you like.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Not really.

It’s the way you use to exercise your memory as a kid, after all.

Only back then, you called it a treasure hunt.

 

And Now For Another Episode Of The You Show On The Brain Channel

 

Having gone to the store and the secret hiding place, you now have a nice little story in your head.

Your ability to recall that story is called episodic memory. Always connected to time, episodic memory makes it possible for you to recall elements of your last vacation, going to the movies and just about any expanse of experience that features a beginning, middle and end.

Then there’s semantic memory. This kind of memory trades in general facts that aren’t bound with time (as such). Vancouver, for example, is a city in British Columbia, one of several provinces in Canada.

Of course, if you’re a historian and can rattle off the dates of when Vancouver was founded and when British Columbia became a province, then you might be blending in a touch of imaginary episodic memory,

For example, when I think of places like Vancouver becoming a city, a little flash of story enters my mind. I see stiff European dudes with quills and parchment tricking the Natives into giving up all that precious territory for a few bottles of whiskey and a stack of shiny dimes.

To take a more practical example, if you know that Vancouver is in British Columbia, Canada and Seattle is in the American state of Washington, and you’re also aware of the fact that a ferry runs between them …

… you can take the ferry and then use episodic memory to recall all the beauty you saw along the way.

But here’s the weird thing …

 

Episodic Memories And Semantic Memories Are Stored In Two Completely Different Parts Of Your Brain!

 

Do you remember that interview on the Magnetic Memory Method podcast with Dr. Gary Small?

In that interview, he told us that our memories go into different neighborhoods of the brain. In those neighborhoods are tiny little houses in which parts of memories live.

In order to simultaneously remember facts about places and episodes of time that you may have experienced, your memories have to leave their respective neighborhoods and come together in yet another part of your brain. It’s like having a family reunion where everyone comes in from different cities to eat at Recall Restaurant on the tip of your tongue. (link to tip of tongue podcast)

And last but not least, there’s a very strange kind of memory, a kind of memory that often …

 

Doesn’t Require Your Conscious Awareness!

 

We fall this mysterious form of recall “procedural memory.”

Some experts disagree whether it is a kind of memory all on its own, or a subset of semantic memory.

I don’t know about you, but the ability to ride a bike without thinking about it seems quite different than the semantic knowledge of how and why bicycles work as they do.

The same thing goes for guitar. Knowledge of where to find notes on the fretboard and how to form chords requires a different kind of memory than the procedural memory that takes over when some maestro is ripping it up on the stage.

Of course, even though procedural memory can be accessed without conscious awareness, episodic memory can intervene.

For example, your mind can wander during rehearsal or performance, breaking the flow of the song and causing you to mess up.

Likewise, bike riding on autopilot while daydreaming can cause you to sail through a stop light or crash into another cyclist.

And then these too become episodic memories. Like, for example, the time I was hit by a car crossing an intersection on my bike and how vomited into my mouth the last time I performed on stage because my joint pain had gotten so bad.

 

Fun Stuff All This Memory Business, Isn’t It!

 

It sure is.

And now that you know about these different kinds of memory, you are truly empowered. You can exercise each of these special memory types and improve them.

And if you use the Magnetic Memory Method, you can probably already see exactly how my unique approach to encoding, storing and recalling information lets you harness the power of each kind of memory you’ve just learned about.

But if you don’t know about the Magnetic Memory Method, why then now is your chance to avail yourself of my special Memory Improvement Kit and 4 FREE video series. Grab hold of the magic of these truly special memory techniques right here.

And until next time …

Keep Magnetic!

The Five-Fold Path To Memory Improvement

Wouldn’t it be great if you could experience memory improvement …

… almost on auto-pilot?

Here’s the good news:

Even if you don’t use elaborate memory techniques and mnemonics, the following 5 ways will help you improve your memory almost without effort.

 

1. When Darkness Falls …

 

Go to sleep with the sun.

Seriously. What have you got to do after dark anyway?

Netflix? How boring.

Drinking in bars? How destructive to your memory.

Playing Scrabble? Well … okay. That’s at least halfway good for your brain.

But the reality is that we’re killing our memory by stating up late and waking up early.

And when you kill your memory, you murder something else too:

 

You Murder Your Intelligence!

 

And as with all acts of murder, you will get caught and you will be sentenced to life in the prison of stupidity and forgetfulness.

Mark my word.

Next to getting more sleep, it’s essential to …

 

2. Keep Your Brain Moist As The Soil Of A Mighty Rain Forest

 

That’s a fancy way of saying, drink lots of water.

All too often we forget to imbibe the world’s mightiest drink.

Oddly enough, some people don’t even like it. This strange, but true fact is responsible for forgetfulness around the world.

But it doesn’t have to be you.

And if for any reason you struggle to remember to drink deep from the tap in your kitchen, the solution is simple enough. You can create a visual mnemonic by placing a big fat bottle of water on your desk. Or you can print out a picture of a bottle of water and stick it on the wall or window directly behind your computer.

In addition to this …

 

Use Every Bit Of Technology You’ve Got To Remind You

 

Smart phones …

Dumb phones …

Computer calendars …

All of these of these come equipped with programmable alerts. Most of them can be set to repeat every hour on autopilot.

It’s easy enough to ignore these alerts, however, so it helps to get theatrical. Instead of “drink water,” program in something like:

 

Drink Water Or Else All The Cats On YouTube Will Suffer One Thousand And Seven Deaths!

 

If that doesn’t get your attention, I’m not sure what else will.

Well … maybe this:

 

 

3. Funnel Words Into Your Mind Like The Wind Shapes The Desert

 

One of the beautiful things about living in Berlin is that they still have bookstores all over the place. Not only that, but you still see people reading books too.

Here’s a quick guide on how to read a book:

Buy a book. No, it doesn’t have to be a book by me.

Beginner’s Guide To Overcoming The Ugly Sister Effect

Have you ever had a fact you know like the back of your hand stick on the tip of your tongue?

 

And has your presque vu (as the French call it) ever been so bad that a completely different thought came to mind?

And not only did that other thought come to mind in place of the one you were looking for …

 

It Completely Took Over The Show!

 

Never fear, dear Memorizers. You’ve been suffering something known as “the ugly sister effect.”

It’s closely related to something mnemonists and memory champions call “ghosting.” I prefer to call it “Magnetic fossilization.”

Either way, if you’ve ever suffered either of these problems, here’s the good news:

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method podcast, you’re going to learn to overcome both.

 

How To Turn Your Memory Into Prince Charming

 

The Ugly Sister Effect gets its name from the Cinderella fairy tale. In many versions, every time Prince Charming tries to get hold of Cinderella for a smooching session and perhaps a little more, her ugly sisters intervene.

Not very cool of those ugly sisters, is it?

The reason the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon gets this name is because when this happens with your memory, there’s a competition going on. It’s a struggle between the cue that causes you to look for the memory in the first place and the target information encoded somewhere in your mind.

Worse, these ugly sisters are other information that comes to mind. So, for example, let’s say the song Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell comes to mind, but you keep coming up with Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust instead.

Annoying, isn’t it? Well, as great a song as Diamonds and Rust is, in this case, it’s an ugly sister.

 

Good News: There’s A Well-Known Way To Deal With This Problem …

 

… in any conversation. The method has two parts:

1) Don’t make a big deal out of it.

2) Carry on with the discussion or change topics. The target information will probably pop into mind shortly after, or at some point in the future when it’s no longer relevant.

The important thing to realize is that these …

 

Ugly Sisters Are Perfectly Normal!

 

Now, when it comes to the world of mnemonics, we use Memory Palaces to store information.

We do this by using crazy, weird and exaggerated imagery to encode the information we want to memorize. No information exists that you can’t work with using these procedures.

This fact isn’t to say that you can achieve a state of perfection in which your mind instantly creates the best possible associative imagery and snaps everything you want to memorize flawlessly into place in your Memory Palaces.

Rather, you’ll find that you need to massage different kinds of information differently. Sometimes you’ll use a Bridging Figure, other times you’ll use a cartoonish stream of images across several stations. You need to be flexible, which is why the Magnetic Memory Method is a method, rather than a system. It teaches you to respond to information in an inviting way, to cradle it, to kindly Magnetize it in a way that makes it willing to stay.

But here’s the thing:

 

Some People Want To Memorize Oodles And Oodles Of Information …

 

… but they only have a limited set of resources upon which they can base their Memory Palaces.

Well, no problem. On the How to Find Memory Palaces episode of the podcast, we talked about your endless fountain of Memory Palaces just waiting for you to claim them.

And in the episodes about virtual Memory Palaces you can find here and here, you can learn about making Memory Palaces based on nothing more than your imagination.

Or, dear Memorizers, you can experiment with reusing the same Memory Palaces over and over again.

But watch out …

 

Some Of Your Memory Palaces Might Be Haunted!

 

That’s right.

And when that happens, you might find yourself running into some Ghosts of Memory Past.

Memory champs and mnemonists call this phenomenon “ghosting.” But normal people use this term too.

For example, here’s part of a letter I received a few days ago regarding “images too vivid leaving ‘ghost images’”.

Here’s what she wrote:

There are Memory Palaces I reuse like an etch-a-sketch, such as the cars for phone numbers (I use the Dominic number system) or my office to remember a grocery list or even the walk to the local shops to remember a speech.

My problem is that the images from the last time I used that palace are often very vivid still.

I can still see Einstein on his surfboard for example (Einstein being number 15 as you know) so the next time I picture Einstein in the drivers seat I can still see him surfing then it all gets muddled up with a previous set of information.

I have tried using the alphabet or months of the year as placeholders, but the abstract letters are not as memorable as locations. Could I have your advice?

Thanks and kind regards.

Lydia

The first thing I would say is that using the alphabet raw for Memory Palaces is a good idea, but it’s going to take lots of practice. Better – or at least less abstract – would be to use playing cards.

For example, you could have an Ace of Spades Memory Palace, a 2 of Spades Memory Palace and so forth.

The linear order of the cards in this manner would serve as an organizational device similar to the alphabet. The advantage is that you can rest more on an Ace of Spades than on the letter A. This ease happens because the Ace of Spades and cards in general are more palpable.

If you’re going to monkey around with this approach, start small. Create a row of five to ten Ace of Spades and let them hover like flying carpets. Or if you prefer, lay them out on an imaginary forest path, a corridor, or whatever else feels right for you.

It will help too if you can somehow bolt these flying carpet cards to a distinct journey. So, using a process I teach in more detail in the Masterclass called the Telesynoptic Memory Palace, you can bolt the cards onto a preexisting Memory Palace station.

This procedure is more challenging than others. When you travel the journey, you now need to reconstruct both the original Memory Palace and the added feature of an Ace of Spades at every station to differentiate it from the original version of the Memory Palace.

As ever …

 

Practice Makes For Magnetic Perfection!

 

Using a deck of cards like this with your Memory Palaces is one way to deal with ghosting. But I believe that, for most of us who just want to get in with things and skip the radical experimentation, there’s an easier way.

1. Relax.

Almost all issues with memory work using mnemonics arise from tension in the body and mind.

Never, ever memorize if you haven’t spent a bit of time meditating, doing some progressive muscle relaxation and ideally, Pendulum Breathing.

Next, stop thinking about those intrusive images as ghosts or ugly sisters or any other negative term. That simply does not and cannot help.

Rather, think of them as wonderful, beautiful and thoroughly Magnetic fossils. They should be treated with love and respect at all times.

Why?

Because they’re living proof that …

 

You Can Learn And Memorize Anything Using Nothing More Than The Elegant Powers Of Your Natural Imagination!

 

3. Use those preexisting images to practice what we call in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass, “compounding.”

So instead of rejecting these glorious proofs that your imagination is happily assisting your memory by coding and decoding information, get that associative-imagery on the side of the new information you want to memorize. In other words, work on letting the old memories support the new ones. If Einstein comes up with old information, invite him to help you with the new. 

Compounding is especially powerful if you’re using and reusing Memory Palaces for language learning. For example, when I study and memorize Spanish words and phrases, I don’t have to rely on English alone to benefit from compounding and homophonic transliteration. I can also use, for example, the German words and sounds I know.

In fact, at least in my experience, German is especially helpful for creating powerful associative-imagery for Greek.

Now, all of the magic Compounding can bring you assumes that you’ve correctly used Recall Rehearsal to get the target information from your previous pass through the Memory Palace into long-term memory.

If not, do that first before you use the power and the glory of Magnetic Memory Method compounding.

If, failing all these techniques, you still struggle with ghosting, ugly sisters, fossils or whatever you want to call them …

 

Get Down On Your Hands And Knees And Scrub Your Memory Palaces Clean As If You Were Cinderella

 

Seriously.

The same way you can use your imagination to create Memory Palaces based on real or imagined locations, you can imagine yourself with Pine-Sol or Mr. Clean and a mop. See yourself doing the work of getting your Memory Palaces fresh and clean for new uses.

Again, relax. Warm up with a bit of card memorization or the childhood memory exercises I gave you a few weeks back.

And then get busy. In fact, try everything I’ve talked about in this issue of the podcast.

Why?

Because nothing will help you more than one simple little skill. To practice it, all you have to do is …

 

Harness The Value Of Practice

 

That’s right.

Even if you struggle …

Even if you sweat …

Even if you strain …

And, yes, even if it causes you pain …

Practice is the only way to improve …

 

Even If You’re The Best Memorizer In The World!

 

There’s no turnkey, set-and-forget engine that keeps running once you learn and use memory techniques as part of your daily life.

No. What you’re doing is learning to play your memory like a musical instrument.

Leave that guitar or flute or tuba or whatever you want to play in its case for a week, a month or a year and you’re going to feel your talent slipping.

But practice every day and run your scales, arpeggios and chord studies every day with a few new challenges thrown in and you will always grow. At the very least, you’ll maintain your state and have the potential to push the limits of what you can do now.

Doesn’t that sound fair?

Of course it does.

So now that our exorcism of all those evil memory spirits and ugly sisters is through, I’m going to go watch Ghostbusters.

What are you going to do?

Further Resources

How to Keep A Memory Journal And Remember More

Reincarnation, Past Life Regression And Other Former Life Myths That Go Bump In The Night

Have You Ever Had A Past Life Experience? Do You Believe In Reincarnation? How Much Karma Do You Spread On Your Mummified Animal Crackers?

 

If so, it’s time we had a little chat.

And in this one-to-one between just you and me (sorry, no apparitions from times yore allowed), we’re going to talk about past life memories, past life regression and how regression is performed in a clinical setting.

The emphasis being on how regression is performed to give people the feeling that they’re remembering past lives. And to accomplish all this, we’re going to see how the entire notion and the culture surrounding past lives fits into the larger context of our shared psychological needs around the globe.

Oh … and I’ll even tell you about my past life experience too.

 

Warning: Reincarnation Can Make You Fat

 

A few weeks ago, we talked about The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis And Memory Improvement and some of the controversial issues surrounding the topic. For example, hypnosis can produce all kinds of memories, the quality and integrity of which vary. We looked at one of the most consequential ways that hypnotically induced memories play out: in courtroom testimony.

Like memories produced by hypnosis, past life memory is a controversial and highly unlikely topic.

At its worst, the ability to recall past lives is a sham sold in books, live or online courses and supposedly therapeutic past life regression hypnotherapy. Content creators direct these at the gullible.

For example, in Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian Weiss makes the claim that exploring past lives can cure all kinds of ailments, phobias and anxieties. He suggests focusing on clinical results and forgetting about whether past lives are real or not. Easy to say when your wallet is bursting with fees from patients seeking relief and willing to try anything.

Then there’s the dark side. On the opposite end of the scale, people have reported bringing back ugly scars from their regressions, or later becoming obese thanks to things seen in visions of the past.

But we certainly must admit that that past life regression and the memories it seems to produce may have some legitimate therapeutic value that goes beyond placebo and hypnosis. I’ll talk about my experience with descending into a previous life a little further on.

Helpful or fraught with danger, to be ethical, the hypnotherapist or “regressionist” must make it clear that the techniques induce dream­like fantasies, not realities. Past life memories, no matter how clear or intense, are mirages produced by the mind, not HDTV memories based on anything that ever actually happened.

 

How To Win A Million Dollars With Just One Of Your Past Lives!

 

And if you feel that I stand to be corrected, please let me direct me to the James Randi Foundation and the Million Dollar Challenge. They’ll be pleased to receive your evidence and reward you with a handsome sum upon reasonable validation of your material.

In any case, I see no reason to believe that past lives exist. And any value past life regression can probably acquired by other means without questionable sessions with a hypnotist. All the same, let’s look at the issue in detail and try to figure out why some people do believe in it. The reasons are fascinating, and we all stand to learn something from them.

The first thing we need to realize is that …

 

Past Lives Are Not About The Past!

 

No, no and a million times no.

Past life regression is all about the future. It’s about life after death and the fantasy that we never really die.

As I’m sure you know, your mind has a hard time conceiving of the planet without you. So at its core, past life fantasies drive forward as much as they dive backward to ease the anxiety that when we’re gone …

 

We’re Really, Really Gone!

 

In case I haven’t convinced you that past lives are really about the future, consider Karma.

Karma is an idea tied to notions of immortality and rebirth. Karma supposedly brings to the present attitudes, beliefs and actions from another time that you can “read” or interpret. Interpret these signs in just the right way, you stand to have an easier life the next time around.

Screw up, on the other hand, and continuous living is not going to work in your favor. You will suffer the consequences of being bad in this life in your next one.

Past lives and fantasies of reincarnation also fascinate societies around the world because these beliefs let people hunt for patterns.

 

People Love Patterns!

 

And there are certainly many patterns to find.

Look at literature throughout history, for example. Archetypes are everywhere, and for more on that you can check out the research and writings of the delightful Canadian scholar Northrop Frye. Here’s a decent rundown of how his theory of archetypes connects different kinds of human character with the seasons.

Patterns can make you feel transcendent because there is the oft­ cited saying that those who know the past aren’t doomed to repeat it.

But is it really true?

After all, haven’t all kinds of world leaders (both politicians and royalty) been schooled in history?

 

Can Knowledge Of The Past Really Make The Future Better?

 

Steven Pinker has some good and favorable points to make on the matter, but it’s still not at all clear that insight about the past helps anyone evade mishaps in the future. So many of the ongoing failures our leaders bomb us into should be obvious as chaps on a cowboy, but still we’re lead into quagmires our best schooled in political history should help us avoid.

Perhaps, as the Oedipus myth would have it, often evading fate causes us to construct it, something we see in memory as well. For example, trying to run away from troubling memories only adds fuel to the fire.

So recognizing past patterns gives us the illusion of choice. It gives us the feeling that if you could just recognize in yourself what you got wrong the last time, due to whatever deeply ingrained archetype, you could escape the wheel of suffering. At least for a little while.

But …

Does Choice Really Exist?

 

In Free Will, Sam Harris suggests that we can only describe the choices we make, but not explain why we make them. He gives, as an example, having given up martial arts at a certain point in his life, and then for no apparent reason, deciding to practice again. He can describe the transition in and out, but in no way can explain why he made those choices.

At best, we can only speculate about why we do the things we do and draw after­-the-­fact conclusions ­ with or without pointing to patterns and archetypes. But at the end of the day, the answers we give can never be more than compilations of possibilities based on self-­interpretation.

If Harris is right, then pointing to patterns and archetypes from previous lives is a convenient way for some people to give a “why” to the reasons they behave and make choices as they do.

In addition to creating the illusion of choice, belief in past lives also helps people satisfy the need to see the soul as something separate from the body. Even though we now know beyond doubt that the human mind is the product of the body, people ignore the science. They prefer the idea that the essence of a person can float from one body into the next. Likewise, that soul can eventually float into some version of heaven and finally find a place in eternity. Again, we see that the attempt to access past lives is really all about creating visions of a future that features far greater certainty than the present moment ever can.

 

When Philosophy And Religion Should Send You Running For Cover

 

Nearly every religion and philosophical tradition has at one point or another featured reincarnation in some shape or form.

Some books you can read include:

The Principle Upanishads
Bhagavad Gita

These Hindu books discuss the need to develop spiritual knowledge and compassion for everyone in the world. Doing so creates illumination, edification and ultimately freedom from reincarnation.

From the Buddhist tradition:

The Dhammapada. This book is particularly frustrating because it contains so many parables and much centers on the idea that the truth cannot be known. We only get to have words about the truth. In this case, it appears that the words point to ten realms in the mind of all people, including Buddhas.

These realms undergo constant change as a person lives and acts in their part of the world. So the game is not so much about avoiding the repetition of wrong actions from the past but doing good things in the present so that more good things can come.

From the Judaic tradition, the Kabbalah talks about how a single soul repeatedly visits different bodies between visits to a different world. A Kabbalist is therefore someone who can sense this other world and in effect, live in both of them at the same time. To get to this stage of actualization apparently takes 6000 years, so if you’re happy and you know it… raise your hand.

As for the Greeks, they had metempsychosis, which is the transference or transmigration of the soul into another body at the moment of death. This process was not thought to be exclusive to humans. It could happen to plants and animals too.

In more recent times, the Western world has seen Theosophy and Anthroposophy. In Theosophy, it is said that reincarnation is not immediate, but requires intervals in a place like heaven. This heaven needs to exactly match the person’s vision of the afterlife they carried with them throughout life. (Probably not a good thing for many people …)

According to Anthroposophy, there are bodies walking with no soul. For whatever reason, the bodies did not receive a reincarnated spirit of a deceased person. Instead, they are occupied by demon­like entities.

In fact, the head of Anthroposophy may well have had a demon inside his body. Reports tell us that he threatened people who did not accept his ideas with violence. This fact, in effect, makes Anthroposophy a cult.

Weird.

 

How To Regress Into A Past Life In 3 Easy Stages

 

As you know, I studied hypnosis as part of my graduate research. One of the exercises involved past life regression, and the instructors taught us how to use it in a clinical session.

Hypnotic regression comes with strict guidelines. To treat someone using the technique, you need to have a note from the client’s doctor approving the procedure. The person must be absent of mental illness and not under the influence of alcohol.

And above all, as a beginner, you should practice under the direct supervision of an experienced hypnotherapist.

To prepare for hypnotic regression, it’s important first to create what hypnotists call a “yes set.” This technique involves a series of questions for which yes is the only obvious answer.

For example, you might ask in relatively rapid order, “Are you feeling awake? Are those new shoes?” and anything else that produces a yes based on whatever the hypnotist can perceive.

The idea is that when the hypnotist asks, “Are you ready to go into a deep state of hypnosis and regress into a past life,” the client has been primed to say yes. Magicians will sometimes set the stage for compliance using similar sleight­-of­-mouth tactics as well.

The hypnotist also wants to create rapport with the client to start influencing the client’s unconscious mind before the session has even begun. The hypnotist will hold their body as the client does, try to match the client’s breathing and speech patterns and essentially mirror them. Then, with rapport established, they will slowly start changing their behaviors. The hypnotist does this to “pull” the client towards them and into to a state of relaxation and hypnosis to go along with the verbal techniques of hypnosis.

 

Monkey See, Monkey Do

 

If this sounds woo woo, it really isn’t. We’ve all yawned after seeing someone else yawn and walked into traffic against a red light simply because the person beside us started walking. You may have even found yourself leaning in during a discussion on autopilot at the same time as your date.

We mirror and influence people in many ways all the time, and it is possible to engineer or at least influence the psychological states of others through body language. Actors and musicians do it to us all the time.

Next comes the formal induction. By this point, the hypnotist will have determined which style of verbal hypnosis they want to use language patterns to help the client achieve deep states of relaxation.

These methods can include guided visualization, music, aromas and touch. The hypnotist will typically continue to mirror the clients breathing in order to “pace and lead” the progression into deeper and deeper states of relaxation.

The exact language and procedures will vary from hypnotist to hypnotist depending on the suggestibility of the client.

 

Lifestyles Of The Young And The Restless

 

They may, for example, encourage age regression by asking the client to imagine themselves at younger and younger ages. They may ultimately have clients picture themselves back in the womb and then move into the immediate previous life or even further back.

Or, the hypnotist will simply encourage the client to let images from the past arise, seemingly of their own accord.

In therapeutic hypnosis, the material produced by the client is then integrated with the present, usually to help bring insight to a current problem or heal an ailment.

The stories that come into memory from the past may be pleasant or terrifying. If the memories have good feelings associated with them, the hypnotist may attempt to transfer those good feelings to a present ailment or concern and anchor them there.

Or if the memory is unpleasant, the hypnotist may use a variety of techniques to help the client be rid of the bad memory. Ideally, this expulsion will take the ailment along with it as the memory flees the mind and body.

In all cases, imprinting is the main feature of regression, past lives, reincarnation and Karma. Therapeutic past life regression, along with the others, is meant to create detachment and distance if not outright banishment of these imprints.

At its most innocent level, the person experiences cathartic transformation. At its most sinister level, forms of this practice show up in cult­like organizations like Scientology, a cult in which they have developed procedures and technology for exorcising imprints from your soul. Scientologists also have developed elaborate terminology to describe what is essentially past life regression performed in an interrogation room with two tin cans in your hands. Operation Clambake has some detailed resources if you’d care to learn more.

 

The Story Of Automatic Jim

 

By now, you’ve probably noticed that I’m more than a touch skeptical about past lives even though its clear than hypnosis can induce experiences in which you may legitimately feel as though you’ve made contact with a previous version of yourself.

I’ve had it happen.

Following the lessons in past life regression, we heard a fantastic testimonial. One of the instructors claimed he had established contact with a Japanese past life. After establishing contact, he instantly became fluent in Japanese without studying a single character.

Mercifully, he didn’t demonstrate any of his Japanese, so we took our lunch break and then moved on to curing phobias.

Following this lesson in erasing simple household fears, I hypnotized my student partner first to help him overcome his fear of spiders. As a matter of coincidence, as soon as he opened his eyes, he spotted a spider on the wall. He immediately scooped it up and let it run up and down his arm and all over his hands.

 

It Was Miraculous!

 

Well … not really. It was a small spider, after all. But he did seem genuinely transformed and delighted by his new ability to connect so deeply with a spider he’d only just met.

When my turn arrived, I elected to deal with my fear of heights. Now, I must admit that I broke the rules ­ naughty naughty ­ because I do have a mental illness and shouldn’t have been doing the exercise at all. And my fear of heights, at least at the time, seems to me deeply connected to impulse control.

All the same, what happened next astonished me.

At some point during the induction, I flashed into a vision so real and intense, it has barely diminished in the twelve years since it happened.

As I sat in the chair listening to the sounds of Spiderman’s voice, I suddenly found myself in the cockpit of a Vietnam fighter jet. Within seconds, my vessel slammed into another jet or helicopter, and I saw billowing clouds of fire as I fell into the jungle.

And that was it.

Except that wasn’t it at all. In addition to breaking out in a sweat and needing the main instructor to break me out of a near panic, I found that I knew all kinds of information about this fighter pilot. A man I had apparently once been.

I knew his first name, his age, the girlfriend he had left behind and what kind of car he drove. I could see his neighborhood, his high school and felt all kinds of physical drives normally foreign to me. I had never been terribly fascinated with legs, for example, preferring buttocks and breasts, but all of a sudden legs were driving me crazy!

In any case, I lived in Toronto at the time and had the neurotic tendency to avoid walking over the Bloor­-Danforth aqueduct (or Prince Edward Viaduct as Wikipedia insists on calling it). The bridge near Castle Frank station terrified me as well, even though there are many beautiful trees along that part of Bloor Street to enjoy.

But on that day, all fear tossed aside, I decided to walk home instead of taking the subway. For the first time, I felt no fear. I had seen what death was like and it bemused me that my fear of heights could be connected to the violent military death of some dude named Jim.

So what did I do?

 

I Wrote The Dead Dude’s Autobiography!

 

And to do it, I used self-­hypnosis to reconnect with Jim. Sat at the keyboard and tranced out from deep breathing and the hypnotic suggestions I gave myself, I allowed my fingers to type. Seemingly of their own accord (or Jim’s), my fingers produced page after page of semi-­narrative images and situations.

Because I was in essence practicing automatic-­writing, I called the piece Automatic Jim and eventually published it in an anthology of my (terrible) poetry called Lex Talionis Schadenfreude.

Of course, it was only a matter of a few days before the terror of those two bridges came back and I started avoiding them again. They’ve since erected a suicide barrier on the Bloor­-Danforth viaduct, so when I’m in Toronto I can enjoy the view of downtown when walking across the bridge, but I often think of the reprieve that Automatic Jim gave me from this irrational fear of heights. Temporary, but powerful and unforgettable.

 

Beware The Human Imagination

 

In sum, our minds are incredibly malleable. Just as a hypnotist can prime clients by using a “yes set,” I had been primed to experience a past life regression.

I have no idea why my mind produced that particular imagery, but as an avid dream journaler, I know well just how profoundly my mind produces incredibly complete and often reasonably well-constructed narrative fantasies. Plus, plane crashes have been a recurring theme throughout my life and the imagery often very intense.

And yet … never have I pulled from a dream so many facts about a figure at once so familiar and foreign to myself.

Thus, this experience demonstrates, not that past lives exist and can be remembered, but that context and priming can induce incredible psychological experiences.

Although I’ve since outgrown much ­ though not all ­ of my fear of heights, the therapeutic effects of meeting Automatic Jim were fleeting at best. The writing my experiences with him produced certainly has some interesting imagery and lovely rhythms. But at the end of the day, it’s babble and I won’t be offered a job as poet laureate anytime soon.

 

What Would The World Be Like Without The Irrationality Produced By Human Needs?

 

The issue here is that we all have a need for meaning in our lives, particularly when it comes to our problems. We want to know why we suffer and memory is an attractive means of finding explanations. Everyone from Freud to Madame Blavatsky, to the ancient Greeks and Scientologists have used memory as cures for real and perceived ailments.

And in far too many cases, hoodwinking runs awry. For in reality, humans have managed to revolutionize the world with computers that can remember keystrokes you made twenty years ago in a relatively short period.

But the fact that no one has perfected a means of accessing past lives in thousands and thousands of years of civilization suggests that there is no past to access when it comes to the human psyche. The old recordings we have are distributed throughout the media of sculpture, writing, painting, theatre and now film, video and virtual reality.

Whatever and wherever the past is, whether in humans or our processing machines …

 

Further Resources

Download this post as a PDF

How Psychics Abuse Your Working Memory To Rip You Off

3 Memory Games You Can Play With Your Childhood

The thought of memory improvement excites you, doesn’t it?

But then you start reading all the books and watching the videos and within seconds …

Improving your memory suddenly starts to feel like a lot of hard work!

It’s understandable. Using a Memory Palace, associative-imagery and practicing Recall Rehearsal can be tough. It involves a lot of moving parts. But if you’ve gotten hold of my free Memory Improvement Kit, then you know that in reality, it’s actually pretty simple.

But if you’re not interested in beelining directly towards total memory mastery, no sweat. Here are three games and exercises you can play starting today. They will exercise your memory, move the muscles of your imagination and renew access to parts of yourself you’ve probably long forgotten.

 

Warning!

 

Before we get started, you’ll need something to write with. And what you’re about to experience could well change your life forever. (In a good way, of course.)

And when I say write, I mean “write.” Sure, you can play these memory games by writing in Evernote or whatever. But don’t. You’ll get more from them by using old-fashioned pencil and paper.

You can also use your mind on its own too. These exercises can be completed while daydreaming on a park bench or wherever you find yourself.

But with writing, the pages you fill will prove to you that your mind is a vast place with many recesses. And you’ll enjoy the exercise more when you see what emerges from the depths of your imagination.

Plus, you’ll be able to feel the weight of your memory in the paper on your hands. And that is a sensation you can’t get from any app in the world. (Though a device that gets heavier the more information  it contains could be a fun option for those who want to go on a data diet!)

 

Do These Things Now If You Want To Improve Your Memory Without Sweat, Blood Or Tears

 

1. Make a list of all the places you can remember visiting.

 

Start local and go back as far as you can remember. For example, here are some of the first places that I remember visiting:

Where my dad used to train his duck hunting dogsThe farm at Tranquille where my mom used to workA chocolate factory we visited on a field trip in Kindergarten

Immerse yourself in these memories. Think about colors, smells, textures. Recall the people you were with and call up as many people as you can.

Then you can start listing other towns and cities. Again, go as deep into the past as you can. I remember flying to Prince Rupert with my dad where he bought me cowboy boots.

 

Get All The Memory Guidance You Need From Someone Close To Home

 

Next, take these early memories and ask someone in your family to give them your version. When I press my memory for sensory detail, I remember nothing of the flight. But I do have glimpses of how the city looked, and I can smell beer on my dad’s breath.

For bonus points in your own memory play, move from the deep past up until the present. And do your best to establish a linear time line so you have a feeling for the chronology.

But at this point …

 

Don’t Worry About Exact Dates …

 

… except for seasons if your sensory memory provides them.

For example, in my first memory of watching my dad train one of the dogs, he’s wearing the white sweater my mom knit for him.

Although there was no snow on the ground on those mountain plains, white clouds were shooshing from the dog’s noise as it ran after the dummy. And I remember my dad letting me the starter pistol and how cold it felt in my hand. These details make it safe to assume it was Fall.

Once you’ve gotten your sensory details gathered, come back and add dates if you wish for an extra memory massage. For that you should learn the Major Method for memorizing numbers.

Or you can proceed the next of our memory games:

 

2. Recall the names of every classmate you can remember.

 

Again, go as deep into the past as you can.

From preschool, I remember Ryan and Clayton. Ryan moved away with his family in grade one, but I would know Clayton for many years to come. I believe the last time I saw him was grade nine, and we’ve only had a quick series of exchanges on Facebook since.

For each friend you can remember from this deepest place …

 

Fill In As Many Sensory And Narrative Details As You Can …

 

Recall their homes, their parents and your activities together.

With Ryan, I remember a white house at the top of a lawned hill with a backyard with white wood fences on either side and a chicken coup at the back. We played downstairs, and he once proudly displayed an American dollar. His mom worked for the Buy & Sell newspaper, and I distinctly remember eating tomato soup.

With Clayton, I remember much more. It would take a novella to write it all out, but I find sharp highlights in my memory. These include building blanket tents, watching Chuck Norris movies during sleepovers, going to the pool, smoking cigarettes for my first time and once getting our bikes taken by weird apple orchard farmers for trespassing.

Later our bad-ass dads, both bikers, spun by on their Harleys and sorted things out. Clayton’s bikes were always cooler than mine, but I was happy nonetheless to get mine back.

 

Amazing, Isn’t It?

 

There’s a ton of detail tumbling around in the depths of my memory. And yours too!

But the point of all these examples isn’t to wow you with the details of my life. I mean only to show how much amazing information lays dormant in your mind. Do a little spade work and when you hit a pipe, you’ll be amazed by the valuable oil that gushes out.

And your memory will get an easy workout. The exercise will expand your sense of place and time. And the more friends and classmates you list, the more you’ll enjoy the wines of those times you haven’t thought of forever.

 

3. Recall the Rules of Childhood Games

 

First, list all the games you can remember playing:

TagHopscotchHide and go seek

Although with these games, there’s not a huge amount of rules to remember, you can still pull up sounds, sensations and locations.

You may also recall different versions and hear the sounds of your playmates in your ears.

Then move on to card games and board games:

Go FishMonopolyUno

I can distinctly remember the friends of my parents visiting to play Uno. The sensory parts are easy, but it’s a workout to remember the rules. Plus, it’s inspiring to think  about how on earth I could have understood those rules at such a young age.

From there you can list video games and role playing games. I remember Pong as the coolest thing on earth,  Chuck Norris and Tron for Coleco, Pacman and Space Invaders for Atari and Contra for Nintendo.

The list goes on and on. The more you press your memory for the details and rules of each game, the more fitness your memory will receive.

 

Did You Like Learning About These Games?

 

I hope so.

Obviously, these are memory games you can come back to again and again. And it took me less than an hour to draft what you’re reading now. Just think of what you can do yourself in a cafe some afternoon using nothing more than a pen, pencil and that special thing called memory floating between your ears.

Want to learn more about how to improve your memory? Check out this FREE Memory Improvement Kit and learn how to build a Memory Palace so you can learn, memorize and recall anything at any time, anywhere and under any circumstances.

How To Keep A Journal And Remember More

How Much Would The Quality Of Your Life Skyrocket If You Could Remember More About Your Daily Life?

 

The days rush by, don’t they?

And it can be hard to remember what exactly happened. Forgetfulness about your own life is not only frustrating, but it’s downright painful.

At least … It should be.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

You get bothered by certain things and yet …

 

You Do Absolutely Nothing To Make Changes!

 

But what if I were to tell you that there’s one simple thing you can do to remember more about your life?

And what if I told you that this one thing is also fun and will even make you more productive too?

If that sounds interesting to you, then keep reading each and every word on this page. Why? Because the simple activity I want to share with you is the kind of game changer you simply cannot afford to ignore.

 

Do You Wake Or Sleep?

 

That’s what Keats asked himself back in May of 1819 when he wrote Ode to a Nightingale. Check it out. It’s well worth memorizing.

The cool thing about Keats is that he wrote letters. Lots of them.

No email.

No fax.

Heck, Keats didn’t even have a laser jet printer.

But he still wrote.

Every single freakin’ day.

And then he got tuberculosis and died.

But here’s the thing:

 

It’s Scientifically Proven That If You Write Every Day You Will Remember More About Your Life!

 

Not only that, but by writing every day about your daily activities, your experience of time expands.

In other words, you not only remember more, but you feel like you have had more time on a daily basis in which to remember more.

Pretty cool, right?

Well, I don’t know if it’ll be cool for you or not, so …

 

You Absolutely Have To Try It!

 

Seriously, just do it. Here are 3.5 amazing ways to give writing about your daily life a try.

 

Journal When You Get Up Every Morning

 

You know how fitness freaks talk about keeping their running shoes beside their beds so they don’t forget to get fit first thing every morning?

You can do the same thing every morning with your journaling.

Seriously. Go out and buy the fattest journal you can find and the hugest pencil or pen. Plop those puppies on the floor where you normally place your feet when you get out of bed and just try ignoring them every morning.

When I’ve done this, I take the journal with me to the washroom. And yes, even as a man, I sit down for this even if I’m engaging only duty number one.

(Hey, if you can kill two birds with one wet stone, why not?)

For bonus points, write down any dreams you remember as well. This practice also expands your sense of time because dream journaling expands your awareness of how time passes while you sleep.

Trust me.

Just Try It

 

There’s an entire course about remembering your dreams in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass if you need more help.

But even if you don’t go through all that training, here’s the thing:

If you just commit to writing down your dreams, you’ll be amazed by what will happen in your life.

And if you can’t remember any dreams, don’t worry. Write that down. It’s as simple as one sentence: “I didn’t remember any dreams.”

Believe it or not, that simple exercise will help you remember dreams, no matter how skeptical you might be.

But I know, I know. You might be thinking, “What If I’m not a morning person?”

No problemo.

Here’s …

 

The Amazing Secret Of Writing Magical “Remember More” Spells Before You Turn Into Pumpkin

 

I don’t know about you, but I have rules about when I go to bed that I try to keep, almost religiously. It helps me keep the blues away, burn more fat, build more muscle and, of course, remember more dreams.

And if you want to remember more about what happened during your day, put that plump journal square on your pillow. That way you won’t be able to ignore it come bed time.

Next, set a timer for five minutes (or even less) and write down everything you remember about your day.

 

Don’t Overthink This Activity!

 

Just write whatever comes to mind starting with breakfast.

And don’t judge yourself. Nothing you write is stupid or insignificant. That little voice in your mind that’s always trying to wreck everything will tell you the entire exercise is dumb, but put a gag on it.

Trust me. That jerk doesn’t have a clue what he, she (or it) is talking about.

For bonus points, put the journal where your feet hit the floor first thing in the morning and then write down your dreams when you get up.

And yes, you should even make note of it when you can’t remember any dreams at all. We know that even one simple sentence acknowledging that you can’t remember any dreams can (and most likely will) trigger dream recall.

If none of these suggestions appeal to you, try this technique on for size:

 

The Miraculous Memory ­Improving Wonders Of Having An Accountability Partner

 

Sarah Peterson from Unsettle.org is my accountability partner. We write each other 3-­4 times a week, sometimes more. We do this exchange for two purposes:

1) To tell each other what we’ve been up to. This practice automatically helps us remember more of what we’ve been doing with our days.

2) To tell each other what we’re going to do next. Each simple report on what’s coming up for us in our businesses massively increases the chances that we’ll actually follow through.

And when you follow through, the effects are magical. Stuff gets done.

Pretty sweet, right?

 

You Bet It Is. Sweeter Than Candy Wrapped In Magnetic Memory Silver!

 

So here’s your homework:

Ask a friend who you know is keen on getting more out of life to be your accountability partner.

Don’t overthink this process. Just whip out an email to the first person that comes to mind.

And if you need a quick template to kick your butt into motion, here’s a template for you;

“Hey [insert name],

I was just listening to the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast and Anthony was talking about how having an accountability partner can help you remember more about our life and even be more productive on a daily basis.

I know that you’re trying to achieve [insert goal] and you know I’d love to [insert goal]. How would you feel about emailing each other every day or every couple of days to check in and see where we’re both at.

Let me know and I’ll send you his podcast with more info on how it works and we’ll get our accountability party started.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

 

Pretty easy, right?

 

Well, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can get in contact with Sarah here and she’ll give you her side of the story and some cool free stuff that will make you even more productive too.

I never tell Sarah about any of the dreams I remember, but now that I’m putting this lesson in remembering more about your life together, maybe I should …

In any case …

Just make sure to ask permission before you start spilling the contents of your unconscious mind into your accountability emails. You don’t want to freak your partner out or distract from the matter at hand: remembering more about your daily activities and becoming more productive in a targeted manner.

And if all of these ideas still don’t appeal because you’re simply not into writing (but still want memory improvement), here’s …

 

How To Supercharge Your Memory By Keeping An Audio Or Video Journal

 

It’s pretty easy. Here’s what you do:

1. Get a device that records video and/or audio

2. Press record

3. Let it all out.

And to show you how it’s done, I’ve made made that quick example video for you on the day I wrote this post. Just scroll up to the top and watch it from beginning to end. I show you how to keep a journal and improve your memory in three ways by giving you an example of this third way.

No need to share these recordings like I’ve done on a YouTube channel or podcast, but heck, why not? You never know: It might go viral and you’ll wind being the next internet celebrity, win new friends and positively influence people.

Stranger things have happened.

 

So here’s the ultimate question:

 

Are you down with one of these daily journaling techniques?

If so, just get started. I guarantee that you’ll remember more about your life and, yes, be more productive.

And if all that weren’t enough, I invite you to learn how to improve your memory even more by claiming this free Memory Improvement Kit. It’ll show you how to create and use a Memory Palace so you can learn, memorize and recall anything in a way that is simple, easy, elegant and fun.

Till next time …

Keep Magnetic!

The Simple Reading Technique That Prepares Your Memory For Anything

How Would You Like A Quote That Will Change Your Life – And Your Memory – For The Better?

 

If the answer is yes, then pay attention to every word of this quote and my commentary on it.

But prepare yourself …

This quote may well contain the most important set of thoughts you will ever read.

“To young writers I give only two secrets that really exist… all the other hints of Rosetta Stones are jiggery-pokery. The two secrets are these:

First, the most important book you can ever read, not only to prepare you as a writer, but to prepare you for life, is not the Bible or some handbook on syntax. It is the complete canon of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Holmes mysteries are nailed to the fixed point of logic and rational observation. They teach that ratiocination, and a denial of paralogia, go straight to the heart of Pasteur’s admonition that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.

From Doyle’s stories an awakened intelligence can learn a system of rational behavior coupled with an ability to bring the process of deductive logic to bear on even the smallest measure of day-to-day existence. It works in life, and it works in art. We call it the writer’s eye. And that, melded to talent and composure, is what one can find in the work of every fine writer.

The second secret, what they never tell you, is that yes, anyone can become a writer…. The trick is not to become a writer, it is to stay a writer. Day after day, year after year, book after book. And for that, you must keep working, even when it seems beyond you. In the words-to-live-by of Thomas Carlyle, “Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God’s name! ‘Tis the utmost thou has in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.”

All that, and learn the accurate meaning of “viable,” do not pronounce it noo-kew-ler, understand the difference between “in a moment” and “momentarily,” and don’t say “hopefully” when you mean “it is to be hoped” or “one hopes.” Because, for one last quotation, as Molly Haskell has written: “language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it.”

This quote comes from Harlan Ellison. It has got so much packed into it – and that’s not even to mention the quotes inside the quote.

 

Why Reading Properly Is The Ultimate Cure To Ignorance

 

Here’s a secret:

A lot of people read.

Except that they aren’t really reading.

What does it mean to read a book?

I talk about this in the podcast episode How To Memorize A Textbook. So if you haven’t checked it out, give it a listen.

In brief, it shoes you how to memorize the right parts of a book, not every page. A lot of people think they need to memorize an entire book, but it isn’t true.

There’s a circular question that’s been going round for thousands of years: Is it better to learn and memorize thousands of books to get a broad education? Or is it better to know just a few books better than most people ever will?

 

The Answer Is Pretty Simple!

 

The best book that you ever read, the most important book you can ever read is the book that you actually read.

Of course, it’s up to you which book you read. You don’t have to take Ellison’s advice that it must be Sherlock Holmes.

Ellison asks us to see a life lesson in Holmes: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

And that’s really what Holmes is all about. After all, using Memory Palaces or Mind Palaces is the ultimate preparation.

At the same time, it’s not really that Holmes has some super intellect or that he uses Memory Palaces or that he is more intelligent than anyone else. It’s just that he has a prepared mind.

And this leads us back to this idea of reading a thousand books or reading one book.

 

Memorize! Memorize! Memorize!

 

Do you remember the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast episode How to Tap the Mind of a Ten‑Year-Old Memory Palace Master?

In it, I interviewed Alicia Crosby, the 10‑year-old who used Memory Palaces to memorize all of the Shakespeare plays in historical order by title.

Not the actual content of the plays, mind you, but the title of every play – which is still an extraordinary feat.

On the interview, we also heard from her father. Together, they were talking motorcycle rides and making Memory Palaces along the way. These Memory Palaces were filled with beautiful stations found along the way.

All done at speed.

And that’s a beautiful thing. But (and with respect to my speedreading friends) …

 

Reading At Speed Is Not Always The Best Way To Invite Information Into Your Mind!

 

During the interview, I told a story from Kafka.

In that story, a young man has to travel to a different city to get to work. Day in and day out, he takes the train.

Then one day he misses the train, so he has to take a bicycle.

When he gets to the town, he sees this old man who is sitting on a bench.

He says to the old man, “My, I have never noticed so much about this journey, but now that I’ve taken a bicycle, wow, this is amazing. I noticed so much detail. I became aware of so many things that were never evident to me before.”

The old man says, “Yeah, well just wait and see what you discover when you walk next time.”

 

There’s No Shame In Slowing Down

 

This story from Kafka is about slowing down. It is about actively noticing the world around you. And being prepared to do so.

This man on the bike – he wasn’t prepared at all. In fact, as he was constantly taking the train, life was passing him by. All the different details whizzed past so that he never had a chance to memorize anything because he was just not paying attention to anything.

But slowing things down by taking the bike, made so many details evident.

And for the kicker ending, as the old man suggests, walking makes the details of the world even more evident.

 

The World Becomes Eye-Catching When You Walk “Psychogeographically”

 

Have you ever read Will Self?

If not, check out his book Psychogeography.

Psychogeography is the idea that you can walk to an airport, for example, get on a plane and then walk to your hotel.

According to self, your body will not know that you haven’t walked to New York.

For example, Self talks about flying from Heathrow in London to JFK in New York and how going by foot to the airport and then walking from the airport to his hotel tricked his body into thinking he walked the whole way.

Now, to the extent that Self’s procedure actually tricks your mind, I don’t know, but the term “psychogeography” certainly is an appropriate because when you walk, you can notice more things.

And the more things you notice, the more things you can notice. Just like with learning, the more you can learn, the more you can learn because you have more of a basis upon which to ground more learning.

Fantastic, right?

Good.

 

Then Just Do It

 

And then take another look at the Thomas Carlyle quote Harlan Ellison gives us.

In it, Carlyle is saying, “Produce! Produce!”

Do something.

Do it.

And whatever you have before you to do, do it with your entire mind, and with your entire body. Do it with your entire soul. Get in there and do it.

Do it in a way that is whole and complete, in a way that has a beginning and a middle and an end.

Why?

Because as Carlyle says, “the Night cometh,” and nobody can work in the night.

What is night in this quote?

 

Night Is Death

 

Look, most of us work with half our butt hanging out of our pants.

We’re not fully involved in our work.

We are half involved in it.

We’re a quarter involved in it.

Maybe we’re even just 10 percent involved in it (or less).

That’s no good.

Worse …

 

It’s No Way To Live!

 

And so that’s why being prepared with memory techniques and Memory Palaces is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Why?

Because you are able to focus on information in a completely different way, at a much deeper level, at a 100 percent level.

Don’t you think that’s much better than passively trying to get information into your memory?

Or do you prefer hoping or praying or wishing on a cloud that what you need to learn will osmosisize itself into your brain?

 

Here’s The Ugly Truth …

 

It ain’t gonna happen!

Or at least, it’s not going to happen in any way that is nearly as miraculous, magical and almost as instantaneously as when you use memory techniques.

 

And When You’ve Got The Right Memory Techniques Working For You …

 

You can do things with your whole might like Carlyle advises.

You can do every completely when you’re using memory techniques because of the very nature of this learning practice changes the information.

As Wayne Dyer often quotes, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

And it’s true.

When you look at a foreign language word and use memory techniques, it looks completely different than when you don’t use them.

Why?

Because when you don’t use memory techniques, you take the word as a whole.

But when you use something like the Magnetic Memory Method, you breaking the word apart.

You start thinking creatively. For example, what happens if I attach this part of the word to Al Pacino?

What about if I attach this other part of the word to Homer Simpson?

And what if I have them doing something together to help me remember the meaning of the word?

 

Doing This Makes Learning Tastier Than Candy!

 

The learning process becomes like liquorish in a candy store. You just can’t help but suck on every last jawbreaker and you don’t want to chew it and you don’t want to swallow it because it tastes so good and you want to hold that wonderful taste of knowledge in your mouth much longer.

So you hold it in your mind much longer.

You become interested in the information in a completely different way.

The information becomes part of the theatre in your mind.

The information becomes a character.

The information becomes real.

 

But You Have To Give It 100% Of Your Attention

 

Not 25% percent of your attention.

Not scribbles on an index card attention.

Not passive spaced repetition software attention.

 

You’ve Got To Give It The Attention Of Your Entire Soul

 

And more than that, your whole mind, your whole imagination, your whole being.

So get out there.

Get prepared with a dedicated memory strategy and at least one solid Memory Palace and never forget:

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

Further Resources

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