Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 38

How Psychics Abuse Your Working Memory To Rip You Off

You’d like to have psychic powers, wouldn’t you?

 

Go on. Admit it. Life would be easier if you could read the mind of your friends and lovers. And you could be rich overnight by divining the insights of the best stock pickers alive.

But the reality is that psychic powers do not exist. Or at least, there’s no meaningful evidence to suggest that they do.

Yet the question is, why do so many people believe in psychic powers? Why are tarot readings and crystal divinations and all kinds of claptrap so attractive to so many people.

Perhaps some of the answer to these questions involves working memory. So in this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, let’s talk about how.

 

What is working memory?

 

Working memory is the system that is responsible for holding and processing new and already stored information – for a short time.

Having working memory is important  for reasoning, comprehension, learning and memory updating.

As a term, working memory is generally used synonymously with short term memory. Yet, the two concepts are distinct and should be distinguished from one another.

Whereas working memory is a theoretical framework that refers to structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information, short-term memory refers to the short-term storage of information, and does not entail the manipulation or organization of material held in memory.

Given these facts about working memory, it seems clear that it plays a roll in why people believe the psychics and their readings.

Here’s why …

 

First off, psychics overwhelm their clients with questions. By asking them to access so much about their past, it can be difficult, if not impossible to remember the questions the psychic asked.

As a result, the person sitting for the psychic reading will only remember the hits and not the misses. “Hits,” just to define this term, is the word used to describe any time a psychic gets something right. “Misses” refers to any time the psychic gets something wrong.

As we’ll see, talented psychics use language as a tool for increasing the recall of hits and obliterating our memory of the misses.

Magicians know how to use this effect as well. For example, they use what is commonly called misdirection. But in reality, they use …

 

Focused Attention

 

By using focused attention, you are not misdirected but rather directed to pay attention on the wrong things. The audience then remembers only the big moves the magician makes, and should they have spotted the small moves in which the dirty work is done, the cognitive overload of the big moves erases the memory of anything else.

In fact, the most rewarding compliment a magician can hear is, “but he didn’t do anything.” In these cases, the big moves have been so natural or ordinary that they have no meaning for working memory to grasp onto.

But “misdirection” isn’t the best word for this technique. A better term would be focused attention. To “misdirect” is to draw attention away from something. But sleight of hand works best when concentration is so focused on innocent movements that it cannot pay attention to the dirty ones.

Psychics use the exact same process, but in this case, instead of calling it sleight of hand, we should call it …

 

Sleight Of Mouth

 

Psychics often hide their moves by asking questions that for most people will generate “yes” answers.

Drawing from Ian Rowland’s excellent The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading, here are some of those questions. Follow along and think about how many of these questions would generate a yes from you.

Have you recently come across some old photographs, some in albums, some that still need to be properly arranged?Have you recently thrown out some medical supplies that had gone out of date or expired?Have you recently thrown out or donated some old books, toys or clothing?Is there a note on your fridge or by the phone that is no longer relevant but you haven’t yet thrown away?Are there any stuck drawers or drawers that don’t slide properly in your home?Do you have keys that you cannot remember what locks they belong to?Do you own a broken watch or clock you’ve been meaning to get fixed?Have you ever had an accident or near-accident involving water?Is the number 2 in your address or does someone significant in your life have the number 2?Do you have a scar on your elbow or knee?Is there a blue car or truck parked across the street from your home or work?Do you carry photos of a loved one in your wallet or purse?Is there a set of earrings that you’ve lost one half of? (For a man, the psychic can ask the same question about the jewelry collection of a girlfriend or wife.)

And so on.

Chances are that you probably answers yes to a significant number of these questions. All of them rely on accessing your long term temporal memory and often your spatial memory.

Whether you say yes or no, the psychic will quickly overload your short term working memory by saying “yes and” or “no but,” a tactic identified by the great magician and mentalist Kenton Knepper.

To illustrate how this works …

 

Imagine the following psychic reading …

 

Psychic: Have you or someone in you family recently experienced an illness?

Client: Yes …

Psychic: Yes and they needed to take some medicine for that?

Client: No …

Psychic: No, but they did eventually get well on their own.

By stringing together a long series of questions linked by “yes and” plus “no but” statements, the psychic creates the illusion of always being right. In reality, the psychic is right about general aspects of life that almost certainly must be true.

They can heighten this effect by gauging the age of the client. For example, if the client is young, the psychic might not ask them about illness in the family. But the older the client is, the more likely they or a family member has experienced an illness.

By asking questions that cause the client to access the general past and then helping the client link their answers to “yes and”/”no but” statements, the psychic completely overloads and distorts the client’s working memory.

The client will not only think that the psychic knew an overwhelming amount of info about them. The client will distort the experience and remember things that never happened during the psychic reading.

Magicians also create this distortion effect. I’ve seen it many times. For example, years later people will ask me to repeat magic tricks I once performed for them. But the trick they describe bears little resemblance to the trick I actually performed. Due to the powers of focused attention and the words I used during the trick, working memory becomes the enemy of reality and long term memory is tricked into remembering miracles better than even the best magicians are capable of creating.
 

Psychics do not have super powers.

Rather, they are masters of memory (just not in the way we would normally use that term). Psychics overwhelm working memory by distorting the present with leading questions and tricky language that creates paths toward their desired results.

They use our memory against us to exploit our desire for certainty in life and create false impressions that encourage us to take out our wallets again and again for more of the same.

 

How to Defeat Psychics At Their Own Game

 

The way to test a psychic is to use the very same tools against them and overwhelm their working memory.

For example, if a psychic gets a hit, you can answer with “yes and” or “no but.” Like this:

Psychic: Have you experienced an accident involving water, either in the recent past or when you were younger?

Client: No, but I did fall off my bike and scarred my knee in the center of the city with no water around. Didn’t you know that?

Or:

Psychic: Am I sensing it right that you or someone close to you had the number 1 or 3 in you address?

You: Yes, we both do, and I also have 4 and 6 in my postal code as does everyone in my neighborhood. Why don’t you know that?

By using the “yes and” and “no but” principle to your advantage, you will overload the psychics own working memory with tracking their own errors.
They will start to seem like a bad lawyer who can’t track any of the details going on in the courtroom and soon lose the case.

And so, now you know how your working memory can be used against you and how you can use working memory against them in your defense. So get out there and have a blast and see how you can’t extend your new knowledge to other areas of life where advertisements, politicians and teachers are also using working memory against you to distort your perceptions and even control entire aspects of your
life.

Further Reading

The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis And Memory Improvement

Laugh And Cry Your Way To Memory Improvement

How To Use Your Emotions To Memorize More Instead Of Letting Them Take Over Your Life And Make A Big Fat Mess Of Everything

 

You’re an emotional person, aren’t you?

Those uncontrollable feelings well up from time to time, perhaps even taking over the show. In other words, emotions replace the you that you know with someone quite different.

At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Emotions are different versions of ourselves. The self that becomes overwhelmed by laughter is different than the self who drowns in sorrow and misery.

But then eventually you find your way back. You become you once again.

 

The Only Problem Is That You Don’t Become You!

 

 

Strong emotional states change you, and I’ll bet you remember at least a couple of times that you’ve been changed so strongly by an emotional state that you’ve had no means of going back. You’re as chemically changed as toast is to bread.

The question is, to what extent is this change due to memory? Has the experience of emotion changed you as such, or does it impact your memory so much that you literally remember to be a different person.

Certainly, post traumatic stress disorder provides some examples of people affected by memories so strongly that constant recall of the traumatic event causes that new version of the person to hold fast.

But that state does have to be renewed. Even if the person feels that the memories are coming back of their own accord, they must at some level be participating in the reconstruction.

And such events don’t mean that trauma has improved memory in that instant so much so that the person remembers everything in sparkling detail. Traumatic memory in no way ensures accuracy and it can also lead to the repression of memory.

 

The Return Of The Repressed

 

Repression and suppression of memory is really intense because it is essentially an attempt to obliterate memories from the mind. But as Sigmund Freud made himself famous for saying, what we repress returns, usually in the form of a monster.

Post-Freud, we have some interesting research about the suppression of memory. For example, test subjects asked to repress feelings of disgust while watching a horror movie remembered far less about the story and with much less accuracy than those not asked to repress their feelings.

And plane crash survivors who remain calm have been said to remember more than people overwhelmed by hysterics.

I’ve experienced this memory effect myself following a near miss trying to land in Toronto. I was going there from New York to sit for a field exam when the plane suddenly pulled up and circled over the city. We late learned that another plane had still been on the runway ahead of us, and thank goodness the pilot pulled us out of there in time enough to avoid a fiery collision.

Although I didn’t go crazy in terms of screaming or crying out, my inner life went nuts, something that affected my memory for days and days after. While sitting for the exam, for the first time I felt a real disruption in accessing my Memory Palaces and mnemonics. All the more so because one person on the committee was in the warpath and doing her best to see me fail.

But luckily, I had relaxation on my side and calmed myself. I reminded myself of the combined power of memory and relaxation and without suppressing or repressing the feelings of terror I remembered from the previous days’s adventure in the sky, I managed to handle that remembered stress and the current stress at the same time.

And this is interesting because I could have broken down into tears or hysterics in that examination room because I was so fragile. But according to some theories, memories and the emotions tied to them don’t force us to act in particular ways. But these emotional memories do influence our actions.

And that’s good news because with the exception of hungry lions and tigers and bears (like during that examination), most everything that influences us, we can influence back.

 

Control:The One Advantage You Can Use When Your Emotions Get Really Crazy

 

Emotions and memories share one major characteristic: they are both highly manipulable.

Think of emotions and memory like blinking and breathing. Both blinking and breathing happen on autopilot. We don’t have to think about them in the least in order for them to happen.

But we can think about them and control them – at least for a while. You can choose to have a staring contest, you can keep you eyes closed even though you are not sleeping or you can flutter your eye lids at anyone you fancy. You can do this entirely at will.

Likewise, you can influence your breathing. You can hold your breath, cause yourself to gasp and deliberately sync inhalations with exhalations as you walk or jog.

And so it is with memory. You can deliberately call up memories of your childhood. You can say, “I want to think about grade one” and deliberately call up – or try to call up – the name of your teacher.

Along with this deliberate action, emotions might also arise. And it makes for a good memory exercise.

 

Try This Amazing Exercise

 

Want to experience memory improvement? Try this:

Think of every teacher you can remember and explore at least one emotion associated with them.

When I did this, I was amazed by how many teachers I can recall by name. From grades one to twelve, the names of only three teachers evade me, not counting substitute teachers, of course.

And for each teacher I can remember an emotion. In some cases, the emotions are similar: frustration at being told what to do. In other cases, it is fondness, or the feeling of being liked by the teacher. And in yet other cases, yes, I can remember even the emotion of lust, even at a young age.

It’s a fascinating exercise, one that will teach you much about the depth and breadth of your memory. Even if you bump up against limitations, that’s okay. Explore them. Feel the borders. Give them a gentle push without trying to force them to extend.

Massage the name out if the woodwork, so to speak, by seeing yourself in the classroom, bringing up all the nuances and details of the atmosphere. Bask in what you can recall and more is much more likely to come then if you give up in frustration.

 

And If You Come Up Totally Blank …

 

…give it a rest. Come back to it. Maybe something will percolate.

And if the memory of bad emotions come up, massage them too. Explore how you can use your imagination to eliminate their power. You can change their shape, remove their color, turn them into a funny cartoon. You can manipulate those feelings in any way you want.

And because the negative feelings you’ll drum up from high school are probably tame, you’ll get good practice manipulating the really dramatic emotions that life will throw at you later. Because the only thing we know emotional states is that they will come. We cannot predict what they will or why they’ll happen. But even so, we can be prepared for them.

So take notes and remember to do these exercises to help you develop emotional control, starting with remembering all the teachers you can and at least one emotion you associate with each.

Then manipulate that emotion. Practice working it out and not so much eliminating it or trying to force it out of memory, but transforming it the way you can turn bread into toast, in a way that it can never return to its original negative state.

Practice this and you’ll soon be able to work with any emotion that comes up in real time with ease. That will help you remember more because you’re not repressing the unpredictable but letting it be.

Further Resources:

Do You Remember Enough To Write An Accurate Book About Your Life?

The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis and Memory Improvement

How Cool Would It Be If You Could Hypnotize Your Way To A Better Memory?

 

Well, good luck. As you’re about to learn, there’s no scientific basis or reason to believe that hypnosis can cause memory improvement.

But to look at this issue, it will be helpful to focus on one area where hypnosis has been used in the attempt to improve memory: court cases.

So our question is, can hypnosis really improve the memory of witnesses? Read every word of this post if you want to learn several key ways that you can still make strides with your memory improvement goals even if hypnosis turns out to be a dud when it comes to enhanced memory.

 

Would You Believe That Hypnosis For Memory Improvement Goes This Far Back?

 

Hypnosis in the courts has a long history. If we can focus solely on America, I’ve read that hypnosis to improve the memories of witnesses was first rejected in 1897 by the Supreme Court of California.

After that, there’s a dark spot until after World War II. Given all that happened during this war, officials wanted reliable ways to enhance the recall of witnesses.

But despite all kinds of testing, to this date, no meaningful evidence supports hypnosis as a reliable means of improving memory. Especially not for providing testimony in a court of law.

Let’s break this issue down into parts so we can get both a broad and specific perspective.

 

This Is The Truth About Memory And Hypnosis The TV Shows Don’t Want You To Know About

 

First off, hypnosis of this kind sets itself up for failure.

Why?

Because you can’t improve something that mostly doesn’t exist.

Think about it. You’re walking down the street and you see a crime. You weren’t expecting anything would happen, but then something does happen. The memories you do form are based on information that you have learned incidentally.

For example, I was riding my bike last Sunday to the Mauerpark. There’s a wonderful Flea Market and I was going to look for some cool postcards to send new members of the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. I usually find something cool there, often old cards with interesting buildings are memorable art that helps stimulate creativity.

Anyhow, I was stopped at a light when all of a sudden two guys ran into the street in front of a car. They asked a group of maybe three people, “This one?” and the group of people said yes.

 

Rage-Fuelled Vengeance On The Streets Of Berlin!

 

Then the two guys approached the doors of the car. One went to the passenger side, the other to the driver’s side. I think the car was blue, but I don’t quite remember. It may have had four doors.

What I do remember is that the guys opened the doors and started yelling.

The driver and the passenger were clearly in shock and didn’t know what to do. Finally, the passenger pulled out a wallet and in a Russian accent, the guy standing in the street said, “Give it me!” He ripped the wallet out of the guy’s hand and slammed the door. As the other guy slammed the driver’s door, the colliding air created a puff of ash from the ashtray. After the two men got back onto the sidewalk, the light turned green and the car sped off.

 

Which Of These These Facts Prove That Hypnosis Has No Chance When It Comes To Improving Memory?

 

What I’ve done just now is to recall an event that I “learned” incidentally.

As I’m telling it to you, there are oodles of things I’m not telling you because there aren’t enough words in the universe to explain:

* The urgent voice in the back of my head telling me to get the hell out of there.

* The fact that the two guys in the car were either Turkish or Syrian.

* The hot girl on the bike in front of me with people who may or may not have been her brother and father.

* My thoughts following the event, such as the concern that someone could have been shot, questions about the crime rate in Berlin and other images and concepts rolling around in my mind.

Shortly thereafter, I forgot about the whole thing until it came time to put together this podcast. In fact, I had already outlined the entire episode before this event happen, and only when I started writing it did I remember this event.

And if I were asked to give testimony about it, my testimony would be deeply flawed because I wasn’t expecting such an event to happen. As Harry Lorayne points out in all his books, you cannot remember what you haven’t paid attention to in the first place.

That’s why I couldn’t tell you:

* Anything about the clothes any of the people were wearing (except for the clothes on the girl on the bike, because I was definitely paying attention to those).

The hair color of the Russian guys.The color of the wallet.The exact color or make of the car.The exact time of day.The name of the intersecting street (though I could take you to it if necessary).

* … and there is probably so much more useful information that the cops might need to know if they were to put together a case.

And in this case, the large amount that I do remember possible has to do with shock, the novelty of the event, the ease with which the event could be made into a linear story and the fact that I have a trained memory. But just as each of these things could support the idea that I’ve remembered things well, each point could also prove me to be a poor witness.

Why?

Because …

 

Shock Must Be One Of The Most Amnesia-Inducing Conditions In The World!

 

In any case, if a prosecutor wanted to use hypnosis on me, he would be making a couple of assumptions about memory.

First, hypnosis for eyewitness testimony assumes that memory is like a video recorder. One of the reasons enhanced memory is not normally accepted in a court of law is that we know memory does not store information for playback.

Rather, memories are reconstructed. Not only that, but memories are a reconstructed pastiche of many things.

For example, memory takes place only the present. You can only ask a person to recall information in their present moment. They cannot recall the information the past and they cannot recall it in the future. Memory only takes place in the present.

For that reason, every time you reconstruct a memory, you are affected by context. You are also affected by language.

Remember how I said that there are too many words for the truth to exist (as such) just a few minutes ago?

It’s true. There are so many words to choose from and so many possible combinations, unless you memorized what you were saying as you said it …

You could never repeat the same memory twice. Your report would always be slightly different.

 

There Are More Villains Of Forgetfulness Waiting To Snatch Your Memories Away …

 

And each time you retold your memories, you might be:

Tired and hungryTelling it to a different personImpatientAngryLess certain than the time before about your accuracyMore certain than the time before … and much, much more

And all this depends on how much of the target information survived your short term memory and made it into long term memory.

And as massive as long term memory is, it is useful only to the extent that you can reconstruct useful and reliable material from it.

Are you interested in diving deeper into this issue?

You are?

Good. Then let’s go.

When we talk about memories moving around in the mind and recall as something that happens only in a certain kind of time (the present), we need to look at the three stages of memory.

 

The People Who Understand The Following Three Phases Will End Up Having A Better Memory

 

These are:

1. Acquisition
2. Retention
3. Retrieval

Acquisition involves encoding information for retention. The quality of the encoding relies upon the attention you’ve paid to the information and to what extent you’ve intentionally memorized it. As I mentioned, everything I recalled from the automobile situation last Sunday was learned incidentally. I made no special attempt to memorize anything and what I do remember was selected by my long term memory from a field of other thoughts, shock and the additional thoughts I added later.

The retention stage involves storing the memories. But this isn’t like storing old baseball mits in a box at the back of your shed. As Dr. Gary Small told us in an interview with him here on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast a few weeks back, memories move around in the brain as they age.

This movement effects the quality of recall, both positively and negatively. It also changes the context of the information and how it will be recalled in new contexts during the reconstruction phase.

We’ve gone through this a bit already with my story from last Sunday, but let’s look at how the memory of witnesses can be affected during all of these stages:

Acquisition is influenced by:

* Age
* Level of rest
* Physical fitness
* Emotional states
* Confidence
* Stress
* Mood
* Attitude

You also have the factor of expectation. Again, if you haven’t expected to remember something, the something you are able to recall will most likely be of low quality.

Another factor involves the characteristics of the material:

* Is it an object?
* Is it a person?
* How many objects or people were involved?
* Are there any moving parts?
* How big or small are these objects or people?

We also have to account for the length of exposure to the the information. Did it take place in an instant, or did the witness have more time to study the event?

Finally, we have the addition of information between the instances of the event and the instances of recall.

 

The Most Comforting Memories You’ll Ever Have Are The Ones You’ve Completely Bent Out Of Shape

 

For example, imagine that you saw The Dark Knight at the movie theatre. You tell a bunch of friends about the movie and you balance your report by giving all the characters equal time.

Then you learn that Heath Ledger died. The next time you tell someone about the film, you’re much more likely to focus on the Joker parts of the film because the additional information about the film will not only change your memory of the film, but also how you talk about it. And each time you talk about a memory, you add more information to it, which changes it even more. You are in effect playing the telephone game with yourself.

Not only that, but you may not have really thought much about Heath Ledger as an actor, but by paying attention to him differently based on the new information, you may suddenly find that you’ve become a fan.

 

How To Influence Someone’s Memory Simply By Choosing Your Words Carefully

 

To look at this differently, you’ve probably heard about the scientific studies where they show people films of car crashes.

When they ask people “how fast the cars were going before they collided,” they answer differently than when they ask people how fast the cars were going before they crashed or smashed into one another.

The way the mind hears the question conditions the answer. And questions count as new information.

So if I say to you, “How did you like the Joker in Batman,” you will select a different answer from your memory than if I ask you, “How did you like Heath Ledger’s final performance as the Joker in Batman?”

 

The Nearly-Miraculous Ways Interrogators Can Control Everything About Your Memory – Even If You’re The Good Guy!

 

So far we’ve covered some of the basic issues surrounding memory and hypnosis. Now let’s look more at the reconstruction of memories during interrogation and on the stand.

Investigators and prosecutors ask witnesses to reconstruct their memories in different ways.

The first is free narrative. The interrogator opens up free narrative by asking open-ended questions. For example, they might say, “tell me what you remember about the incident.”

The research shows that this kind of witness testimony produces surprisingly few errors. But the witnesses also often leave huge gaps.

Next we have controlled narrative. In this case, the interrogator ask for detailed descriptions of the event. They might ask, for example, “what was the assailant wearing?” to guide the witness towards specifics. This kind of testimony may indeed produce more detail, but the accuracy of the detail goes down.

Finally, we have forced choice. These are specific questions for which the witness can only give a limited number of answers. These are yes or no questions or either-or questions. “Was the car red or black?” is a question that requires a specific answer.

Although this kind of questioning provides the highest amount of detail, it produces the least amount of accuracy. When you press people to choose, you cut their ability to describe.

 

You Can Force Anyone To Remember Anything You Wish By Using This Memory-Shaping Technique …

 

Forced choice also leads people to give the answer they think the interrogator wants. And questions like these do indeed force certain assumptions. For example, a question like, “did you see the gun?” implies that there was a gun.

Moreover, the question puts the image of a gun into the imagination of the witness. As we talked about, the addition of new information can cause – and usually does cause – memories to change every time we reconstruct them.

 

Spell-Binding Questions That You’ll Want To Ask Yourself Before Giving Testimony Under Hypnosis In A Court Of Law

 

With these problems in mind, when we factor in hypnosis-aided testimony need to answer several questions. These questions include:

1) Does hypnosis create confidence? In other words, do witnesses become more convinced of the truth because hypnosis convinces them that their memories are more real.

Most of us know from our own lives how this works. Once we are convinced that we’ve experienced something a certain way, it becomes impossible to change back. We cannot go back to questioning the validity of our memory.

2) Does hypnosis help “destroy evidence?” In other words, if hypnosis makes a person more confident in their memory and the introduction of new information changes how they remember, where has the original evidence gone?

3) How to deal with the fact that the memories were not intentionally gathered. The witness was not instructed to learn it as if they were a student in school. These memories are typically the result of highly emotional conflict. And when the witness gives testimony, the future of someone’s life is at stake. If they mess up, an innocent person could wind up in the electric chair.

4) To what extent can the memories of witnesses be trusted even in the absence of hypnosis?

Over time, courts have suggested some solutions to some of these problems. These solutions include:

A) Leave it up to jury decision. The judge needs to point out that hypnosis assisted certain witness testimony and that they should place no more or less emphasis on the testimony as a result of the hypnosis.

B) Reject hypnosis-assisted testimony. Due to the lack of scientific evidence that hypnosis helps memory, some courts have barred all such testimony.

C) Use strict guidelines. In this case, hypnosis must be carried out by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist trained in the practice.

Plus, the hypnotist must not be informed of the facts of the case before the session takes place. This measure is to ensure that the hypnotist cannot influence the testimony.

The hypnotist should also be independent, not someone chosen by either the prosecutor or the defence team.

Everything must be recorded on video, including from the beginning to the end of the meeting to capture any comments that may have influenced the testimony. This will also help reduce the chance of introducing post-hypnotic suggestions.

No one else should be present during the hypnotic session. Other people can unconsciously or inadvertently communicate what they expect to hear the witness say. They might also look startled, upset of disappointed by the testimony, shaping how the witness reconstructs their memories.

An expert in hypnosis must testify before the jury about the use of hypnosis to assist the witness in remembering more.

They must also explain that hypnosis is a suggestive procedure that does not ensure the validity of anything said during the testimony.

As you can imagine, there is a lot more to be said about this topic. But to sum up for now, we can now ask the ultimate question lurking behind this issues:

 

Can Hypnosis Improve Recall?

 

The answer is most likely no. Here’s why:

There’s no objective way to identify the accuracy or inaccuracy of any memory of an event. Memories are reconstructed, can only be delivered in the presence, and most studies show that memories are easily manipulated.

Also, there’s no way to tell if the memories were created by other means. For example, the witness could be lying. They might have heard someone else’s testimony or they saw something on TV. They may have revisited the scene of the crime. Worse, they might simply be unsure themselves of what exactly they saw.

Finally, when hypnosis takes place and memory does appear to be improved, it might not be hypnosis at all behind the improvement. Other factors might trigger recall, such as concentration, better rest, no longer being in shock, other forms of therapy, etc.

 

Warning!The Secret Key To The Goldmine Of Memory Is Not Here

 

IF hypnosis can be said to improve recall, it may be because:

1. People lower the level of what they would normally consider a good memory.

2. People under hypnosis may be praised for any memories they give. This may cause them to give a lot more detail, but the significance of these details may be in questions. The quantity and relatedness of the memories does not necessarily amount to quality and accuracy.

3. Repeated interrogation under hypnosis may improve more recall, but this could be the result of the witness simply giving the prosecutors what they think the prosecutors want.

So with all this said, what can we learn from these issues? How can they help us improve our own memory and reach our goals?

 

Here Are The Real Secrets You Can Learn And Apply From The Memory And Hypnosis Fiasco

 

There are several lessons here:

1. Relaxation does help us produce more detail.

2. We can change our memories by adding more detail. This fact of memory need not be negative. In fact, it is helpful when it comes to using mnemonics. The more we can associate unfamiliar information with familiar information, the easier it is to memorize.

3. We know that consequences count. Just as the stress of helping shape the future of someone’s life affects eyewitness testimony, the stress of texts, exams, speaking a foreign language, etc. shapes how well we recall information. This fact takes us back to relaxation because we can indeed train ourselves to be relaxed under pressure.

4. The importance of scientific validity when it comes to memory. Although there is no real evidence that hypnosis improves memory, we have all kinds of evidence that mnemonics do.

 

The Only Real Secret Weapon Of Memory Improvement You’ll Ever Need

 

But at the end of the day, the only science that matters is based on the experiments you perform yourself. You need to learn the techniques, apply them and track your results. Only then can you make informed decisions about how to change your approach. And only you can do the work of improving your memory. No court of law can force you to it, only your interest, your passion and your need.

So what are you waiting for?

Until next time, I hope that you never have to give eyewitness testimony. I also hope you never have to bump up against the law leading to someone else giving testimony against you.

Keep safe, keep on the right side of the law and until next time, keep Magnetic.

Further Resources

10 Memorization Not So Tricky Tricks

Memory Techniques For A Language Like No Other

How To Memorize Even The Most Difficult Words In The World

Hey everybody, this is Daniel Welsch.

And I’m here today as a special guest host for the Magnetic Memory Method podcast.

Anthony invited me to do the podcast today and it’s a great pleasure and enormous honor for me to do so.

I’ve been following Anthony’s work for about a year and I’ve been corresponding with him for nearly the same length of time and he’s been a great inspiration to me, not only in my memorizing ventures but also in my own work as a teacher and writer here in Madrid, the beautiful capital of Spain.

So when he offered me the chance to do the podcast of course I jumped at it…

So first I’m going to tell you a bit about my language learning journey. And then I’m going to tell you how I became acquainted with Doctor Metivier and his work. And finally, I’m going to take you through one of my Memory Palaces to show you exactly how I memorized some very difficult material from a language that’s like no other language in existence.

Now…  A little bit about me.

Aprende Más Inglés

You probably don’t know me, because most of the work I do is in Spanish.

But I have my own website called Aprende Más Inglés, which you can find at aprendemasingles.com. There I teach English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation—and now, learning techniques and how to be a more effective student and person in general.

You might want to know a bit about me. Well, I was born in the US, specifically in Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the middle of the Sonoran Desert a couple of hours from the Mexican border.

Filling In Blanks On Worksheets Has Never Been One of My Passions

In school I learned Spanish but never took it too seriously. After that I ended up working in a kitchen with some guys from Mexico and found that speaking languages was a lot more fun than learning them in school.

Filling in blanks on worksheets has never been one of my passions.

When I was 21 I moved to Madrid, Spain, which is kind of a long story, and ended up, one way or another, teaching English.

And at the same time I was learning more and more Spanish. I was doing it organically, for the most part. I had some free Spanish classes, which I barely ever went to. And the rest of the time I was walking around, talking to people, reading the newspaper, watching TV, things like that.

At the same time, at work I was teaching English.

And I was kind of startled by how ineffective language learning in Spain was. Of course, back in the US it wasn’t any better, but in Spain learning English is just hugely important for a lot of people. Now that Spain is in the European Union and with the massive amount of international business and tourism that goes on, almost everybody needs to learn English.

It should almost be a strategic objective for all of Spain, to get the general level of English up to the level where they could compete with any country in Europe.

But unfortunately, the system wasn’t very effective at actually creating bilingual Spaniards. And after a few years I started to discover why.

But we’ll get back to that…

Couldn’t Speak, Or Even Worse, Refused To Speak

While I was teaching, I had a website where I was writing about grammar and vocabulary.

And in the meantime, my Spanish was getting better and better. I eventually got the highest level diploma in Spanish offered by the Instituto Cervantes, which is an international organization that teaches Spanish like the British Council teaches English.

And the thing about it was that I never felt like learning Spanish was a chore or an effort. I did the minimum possible in school, and later learned working in a kitchen with some guys from Mexico. And my Spanish really took off when I moved to Madrid and discovered that I could use it to meet girls.

Meanwhile, a lot of my students had studied for years and couldn’t speak, or even worse, refused to speak. They were terrified!

I decided that maybe more grammar wasn’t what people needed.

And after a couple of weeks on vacation in Italy, with my girlfriend at the time, I realized that everybody was going about it all wrong.

A Sort Of Exotic Dialect …

What happened in Italy is that I was in contact with a sort of exotic dialect of Italian that doesn’t sound anything like “standard” Italian. As far as I know there are no textbooks for this sort of thing.

They don’t even really have a literature in this dialect—it’s a small-town thing, and if you want to leave the town and do big things in Italy as a whole you need to learn proper Italian.

So I had been there surrounded by this dialect, and I had found that the book I had read to learn some Italian before going had been pretty useless too, since the pronunciation was so different than what I was hearing in small town central Italy.

In any case, by just listening and imitating and having fun with it, I was able to pick up enough of this dialect to have a sort of conversation pretty quickly.

With my knowledge of Spanish, my knowledge of standard Italian, and just listening, I was able to pick it up.

And on the way back to Spain, my flight was delayed, and I was stuck in an airport in Bologna or something similar and decided to write the outline for a book about language learning.

It took me several weeks to get it all on paper, once I was back in Spain, but I wanted to make it a sort of compendium of everything I had discovered about language learning, both as a teacher and a language learner, in my years of experience.

I called it 6 Claves para Aprender Inglés, which would translate to 6 Keys for Learning English, and I published it on Amazon, followed by a few blog posts.

In fact, I had very low expectations, but the book went to #1 in Education on Amazon in Spain, and eventually to #1 over all.

And one thing leading to another like it does, I decided to leave the grammar alone for awhile and start focusing on learning techniques and writing about how to be a more effective language learner.

So…

A Podcast About Memory

That brings me to how I met Anthony. I was in the park down the street, working out with my friend Jef. My friend Jef is a brilliant guy in his own right. And in between our sets of pullups he told me he was going to send me a link to a podcast about memory.

I had heard about memory palaces before, but it sounded sort of complicated. And I had never gotten into it. But I listened to Anthony, and his enthusiasm for the topic was so convincing that I sat down the next day and started memorizing.

I memorized, just as an exercise, the 50 provinces of Spain, from Álava to Zaragoza. It was surprisingly easy.

And I wrote an article about it for my website, which I sent to Anthony.

The next day, being the kind of guy he is (the on top of his email kind of guy, something which I aspire to imitate him in… some day…) he answered me and said we should do a podcast about it.

You can check out the podcast we did together, where we talk about imagination, pink elephants, Jimi Hendrix, and a lot of other things.

They Had All Used Memory Palaces …

I got some feedback from my readers—the doctors, especially, said that they had all used Memory Palaces to pass their exams back in the day. And that it had worked for them just as well as it had worked for me. So as a next step I decided to use the technique for language learning.

Well, in the course of 10 years teaching English I’ve come across a lot of people who say they have problems memorizing.

I’ve never had a big problem learning new words, because (as Anthony says) I think I automatically form associations. It’s just how my brain works. Maybe I learned it in elementary school and by now it’s just automatic.

This became especially clear when I started learning Italian—I could associate with English and Spanish and it was pretty easy, one way or another.

But I thought, I should do the experiment. For all my students who have difficulty memorizing, why not try the memory palace with some vocabulary?

And to make it more difficult, I decided to try with a language that had no associations at all.

No Associations At All

It’s easy to associate something like “estación” in Spanish with “stazione” in Italian and “station” in English because they’re all very similar words.

I wanted to test the method in a new way, on some truly difficult material.

The language I ended up choosing is Basque. If you don’t know about it, it’s a language that’s spoken in a small area of the north of Spain and the south of France.

The fact is that it’s apparently unrelated to any of the other European languages. You can take a look on Wikipedia for some of the theories, but the one I like best is that the Basque people are the original barbarians who lived on the Iberian Peninsula before anyone else, and who managed to hang on to their mountainsides and their valleys through 2000 years of invasions by a long series of other civilizations.

You really have to admire the Basques, whatever the explanation is, because while virtually all the rest of Western Europe is speaking some dialect of German (English, Dutch, and the other languages of the North) or a dialect of Latin (Spanish, French, Italian, etc) the Basques are still speaking Basque… Or as they call it, Euskera.

They’ve defended their language and identity for, like I said, 2000 years of European history, which I’m sure has been difficult at times.

An Arbitrary Sequence Of A Lot Of Ks And Xs And Ts

And it’s a language with no association to anything else. To me most Basque words just look like an arbitrary sequence of a lot of Ks and Xs and Ts, without any way to make a guess at what they mean.

Nothing like Italian or French or German or Dutch, which you can often get the gist of, either if you see it in writing or if you hear it.

So I asked a Basque friend to make up a list of words, and she gave me 30 words. And I decided on a place to build my Memory Palace: the United Nations building where I give English classes every day here in Madrid.

And I sat down to do the method. I guess you’ve heard Anthony explain the guidelines here on the podcast, so I’ll just take you through my Memory Palace, and some of the things I took into account while constructing it.

Since you’ve all listened to Anthony describing it I guess you don’t need a full explanation, but as he says:

I started in a terminal location. Actually the UN building has 9 storeys, but as a teacher I never have to go higher than the second floor. So I started in the Human Resources office on the second floor and went down from there. I put a mental image that reminded me of both the sound and the meaning of the word in each station I created along the way.

I created a mental path through the building all the way out to the streetcorner outside the door, putting mental images all along the path. From Human Resources, I went down the hall, past the other offices I’ve been in, the photocopiers, down the stairs, to the classroom where I teach, and then out again and further downstairs and out the door.

And finally, I practiced. A few times the first day, a few times the second, and a few times a few days after. And after that I generally had it.

The Most Difficult Thing Was The Set-Up

As I had found in previous experiences with the Magnetic Memory Method, the most difficult thing was the set-up. Once I had organized my list of words, list of stations, and thought of appropriate images, it was easy. I took Anthony’s advice and actually wrote it down, but it’s also possible to do it in your head, at least for me. Whatever works for you!

Now you may be wondering what sort of images I would use for a language with no associations—well, it turns out that the syllables can be associated with one thing or another. And I was able to mix English and Spanish associations with no problem.

For example: the word Entzun, which means listen. I had one of the Ents (those magical talking tree-people from Lord of the Rings). That was the first syllable. And for the second I had Kim Jong-Un, the young dictator of North Korea, who’s pretty memorable with his chubby cheeks and his military uniform and the fact that he’s supreme leader of a whole country despite being in his early 20s. So he was Un.

So I had him climbing up the tree, the Ent, and holding a hand up to his ear to listen for something in the distance. So I had Ents, I had Un, and I had the fact that he was listening to remind me of the meaning.

Another example… Eskerrik asko, which means thank you. I separated that into “scary” and “casco” (which in Spanish means helmet) and I had something like a bicycle helmet with fangs and claws flying onto a girl’s head. The girl was down on her knees praying and giving thanks for something, it doesn’t really matter what, and so I was able to remember: scary casco, eskerrik asko, thank you.

A third example, because three is a nice round number: garagardoa, which is beer. For this one, I had a doe (like a female deer) gargling a glass of beer. Gargle + doe = beer.

Forget The Association And Just Remember The Word

What I found on my journeys through the palace is another thing that Anthony suggested, that once you make the association and practice a few times, you can really forget the association and you just remember the word. You walk through the memory palace in your mind and the word is just there. It pops into your head.

Also, keep in mind I was following Anthony’s recommendation to make things violent, ridiculous, or offensive—in this case not too offensive, but I had violence in the scary bicycle helmet, and ridiculous in the gargling does, and Kim Jong-un climbing a talking tree—all things you don’t see every day, and things you’d definitely remember if you saw them.

I think that’s one of the strengths of how the memory palace works in the end—rather than spending a lot of time creating associations organically (through living in contact with the language) you create an artificial association. And then you can repeat that as much as you want until you remember the word.

Rather than spending a few weeks or months bumping into a word before you’ve created enough associations, you can do it all in a day or two if you want.

My language learning really took off when I realized I could use languages to meet girls—later I found out that there are really only two ways to get things into long term memory: with repetition and with emotion.

And the memory palace works on both of those shortcuts to memory.

Create Emotion In Your Head

As Anthony is always saying: make your images big, colorful, sexy or violent and you’ll remember them a lot easier. It’s just a way of creating emotion in your head, rather than going out and finding it externally.

Of course, finding native speakers to cause strong emotions in you can also be a lot of fun and extremely educational. But the key is balancing your study on the one hand with your contact with the language on the other.

Learning vocabulary is one thing, acquiring fluency is another. As I have said in my books many times, the only way to learn how to speak a language is to go out and speak that language.

I’ve Spent A Large Portion Of My Adult Life Butchering One Language Or Another

And that’s the last thing I’d like to leave you with here.

A lot of people have this unnecessary fear of going out and speaking. They think they’re going to make mistakes and be embarrassed and have to go live in a cave somewhere due to the shame of conjugating some verbs badly.

In reality, I’ve spent a large portion of my adult life butchering one language or another, and I’ve really never had a bad experience because of it. Most people are happy that you’re just trying.

And most native speakers aren’t even aware of their own grammar. I learned years ago that it’s perfectly useless to ask anyone other than a Spanish teacher “Why did you use the subjunctive in that sentence, rather than the indicative?”

Generally, they have no idea—they may not even be aware that they even used the subjunctive.

So when you’re speaking to a person in imperfect Spanish or German or Italian or Mandarin, chances are very good that they’re not mentally giving you a score, like it’s some sort of test.

They’re probably only aware that you’re making a valiant attempt, and they’re trying to communicate the best they can with you.

So…

Make All The Mistakes You Can

Where I’m going with this is that it’s important to go out and make all the mistakes you can. In the worst case, people will laugh at you butchering their language. And you can laugh back. And learn something from the experience.

I don’t know anybody who’s learned a language just by studying grammar until they “knew everything” and were then able to go out immediately and start speaking with no errors.

It never happens. You’ll always make mistakes—you probably even make mistakes in your native language.

The key in my mind is having an objective for your conversations besides the conversation itself—and making your success criteria reflect that goal.

Just as an example, if you’re in Korea and you’re going to the market to buy vegetables, your goal can be to buy your vegetables—not to speak perfect Korean the whole time.

That takes the pressure off… You don’t need your level to be perfect, you just need it to get the job done.

Go Out And Memorize Something!

So, go out there and memorize something! At the very least, you’ll have an interesting experience of what’s possible in your imagination… Whenever I use the Magnetic Memory Method I feel almost like I’m going on an adventure, inside my head, because I’m just so focused and I’m able to forget the outside world for a while and just live in imagination.

Nothing more to say today. I’d like to thank Anthony for handing the podcast over to me for the day. Stay magnetic! as the doctor would say.

You can find more from me at the site I linked to above if your Spanish is good enough, or you can see all my other projects at danielwelsch.com. I write about Spanish culture, American culture, food, politics, and more, on a variety of websites out there.

And if there’s one thing I’d like to leave you with today it’s this: don’t be afraid to communicate—just say what you think and what you feel you need to say, in any language. Life is short, and as Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

So go out there! Speak languages, and be awesome. Life is short to do anything besides live up to your full potential. So, enjoy it.

This is Daniel Welsch, and I hope you have a great day. Goodbye.

Further Resources

How To Train Your Memory To Memorize Any Word

Memory Strategies Of The World’s Top Language Learners

How To Train Your Memory To Memorize Any Word

Sometimes Learning Is As Simple As Asking The Right Questions

Were you one of those students?

You know the kind I’m talking about.

The kind of student whose mind is brimming with questions.

And yet …

You never asked any of them.

Instead, you sat behind your desk, gripped by curiosity, but forever reason, kept quiet.

 

How To Train Your Memory To Memorize Any Word

 

It all begins with getting out of your comfort zone and asking those questions.

But before that, you’ll need to read and test how well you’ve understood something on your own.

And that’s what I admire so much about Jordan.

He sent in this question and really took his time to think things through.

Because here’s a little-known secret for you …

 

The Answer Is Almost Always In The Question!

 

To prove this point, take a moment to go through the following question. Note just how many times Jordan’s fantastic questions create the basis for a powerful answer.

You should do the same whenever you have questions. Write to explore and you’ll find that you know so much more than it might at first seem.

Hi Anthony,

Everything about your associative memory methods is exceptionally clear. I actually developed a near-identical memory system for myself to learn basic Hebrew and Farsi, years ago … 

However, what I didn’t include at the time was my own “spatial / palace” dimension. My images were going ‘into the void.’

For that reason, I’m having a bit of trouble understanding just how it is you use your Memory Palace – in combination with your Excel sheets etc. – when learning a new language.

I’m now learning Russian, so let’s use that as an example here. Sorry for the questions to follow. Just bear with me a moment, and maybe this can help you clarify your method to other future learners.

I’m curious how it is you build your palatial repository, sequentially speaking. Here’s how i understand it… please let me know if I’m getting any of these steps wrong or missing out something crucial.

1) Create one Memory Palace for your new target language (e.g., Russian), and begin by subdividing into 33 ‘locations’ within that Memory Palace (i.e., one location per letter of the alphabet).

The path you walk through the palace at any point in the future will now be by location, by alphabetical order. (I.e., start with ‘A’ location, then ‘Б’ location, then ‘B’ location, etc., linearly, without crossing or doubling back or boxing yourself in)

2) For each ‘location’, identify at least 10 ‘stations’ (i.e., sub-locations?) … These stations are where you’re going to store the associative images for your first 10+ vocabulary words. Respectively, each of which starts with the respective letter of the alphabet corresponding to the location. For instance, in my ‘A’ location I have 10 stations, where I store the words ‘арка,’ ‘афиша,’ ‘аптека,’ etc. (i.e., one word/associative image combo per station).

3) I continue to populate all my locations and stations this way, i.e., organized by initial letter.

4) I write each of my vocab words down in an Excel file, noting the words itself. Plus, the location, the station and/or the image … ? (please advise if I understand this correctly)…

5) Continue ad infinitum and practice my walk through regularly… 

Assuming I have that right, above (please correct me if not), I have a few questions:

i) As you learn any new word, you must create a new station within the appropriate location, and store it there for organizational purposes and ease of access … correct? … So, theoretically, each ‘location’ grows in terms of volume of ‘stations’, infinitely (i.e., it grows by one newly invented station every time you add a new word that begins with the location-relevant letter). 

ii) Assuming what I just said in (i) above is correct, do you subdivide the ‘location’ into ever-smaller, more specific ‘stations’, as your vocabulary grows? Does this result in a sort of infinitesimally divided ‘location’ …

If so, do you have any tricks or techniques for finding ever more, or increasingly small/minute, stations to create and use within your locations as your vocabulary grows? … If not, and I have this wrong, please correct me. 

iii) Assuming (i) and (ii) are mostly correct, what do you do to memorize key phrases, as opposed to just words? Do you store each one in a new station, within a location that corresponds to the first letter of the first word of the phrase (e.g., ‘Что нового’ gets its own new station within the ‘Ч’ location)? I realize this may be different for everybody, but I’m curious how you do it, particularly in terms of Russian, but also for any language, generally. 

iv) Assuming i have the general storage hierarchy system understood correctly, do you tend to store new words/phrases in new stations in alphabetical order within your locations? E.g., if you already know and have stations for ‘аптека’ and ‘афиша’, but then you learn the new word ‘арка,’ do you create a new station for ‘арка’ in-between the stations for  ‘аптека’ and ‘афиша’? (I.e. because the letter ‘р’ comes after the the letter ‘п’ but before the letter ‘ф’ in the Russian alphabet.) .

Or do you just add a new station at the end of all your other ‘A’ stations each time you learn a new ‘a’ word (i.e., within each location, new words get stores in stations ordered sequentially by when you learned them). … Please let me know which system you use/have had the most success with. 

v) Assuming most (i) to (iv) is correct in spirit if not in detail, each time you do a mental walk-through of your Mind Palace, are you actually revisiting *every single station* within *every single location* in your palace? If I understand correctly, this is basically like walking through a dictionary from front to back, in your mind, with each word represented by its own station, nested within one of 33 (e.g., in the case of Russian) sequential locations. … That seems like a lot of walking/remembering!! … maybe I’m missing something here (or maybe its just not as daunting as it sounds) … Do I have this right? 

Generally, I’d just like to know if I have this all understood correctly. I do realize everyone can and will make their own personalized modifications to the system/principles based on how their own minds work, and on their specific target material. That said, I’m very curious to know how you, specifically, structure your Mind Palaces for language acquisition, and–to the degree relevant–specifically in the case of Russian. 

Apologies for the epic email, but I want to make sure I’m building this palace–and these habits–the most effective and adaptable way possible, from the ground up.

Thanks for any insight!!

Cheers,

Jordan

 

How To Avoid Disaster, Make Your Own Discoveries And Find All The Memory Palaces You’ll Ever Need

Hi Jordan,

Thanks for your note.

Yes, you’ve understood everything more or less. I think a re-read of the book will cement things further.

On to your questions:

1) I do not recommend that you create your stations as you go along. This is a recipe for disaster.

Instead, go in with your Memory Palaces prepared in advance. If you want to memorize ten new words, have a Memory Palace with ten stations. If you have to build it as you go along, then you’re going to create cognitive load. Dig your wells before you get thirsty.

2) Subdivision is possible, but you shouldn’t need it because proper use of the MMM will get the words into long-term memory. You can then reuse the Memory Palaces. If you want to hold onto them, which is often the case and perfectly okay, then you can create new Memory Palaces per letter. Easy-peasy.

There’s more help here:

How To Find Memory Palaces

3) Phrases are best memorized by attaching them to words you’ve already got reliably stationed. If you’ve memorized the word for “first,” then later, go back and memorize the equivalent of a phrase like, “first things first,” or “in the first place,” or “first of all.” You can often memorize a number of phrases, assuming the word is actually in the equivalent phrasing of the target language (it isn’t always, but often enough it is).

4) See 3

5) If your Memory Palace is built correctly, you’re not revising every station. You just go there. It’s the same thing as walking from your bedroom to the kitchen. You don’t revise that journey. You simply move to it on autopilot.

Sure, there’s some part of your mind responsible for moving you from place to place and observing everything. But good Memory Palace construction reduces the effort.

As for this being a lot of memorizing and revising, I suggest that anyone time their effort, time spent and results in comparison with rote learning. I doubt that anyone seriously using the Magnetic Memory Method in the right way will be able to say that spaced-repetition software or any other form of rote learning will be faster or easier.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out Noel Van Vliet’s results using the Magnetic Memory Method. He was very skeptical, and yet it worked gangbusters for him:

Judgment Day

As for whether you understood everything correctly or not, here’s the thing:

Go in with the spirit of experimentation using the understanding that you already had and some of my clarifications. If you get results based on that understanding, awesome.

If you don’t get the results you’re looking for, go back to the book for more study and analysis of what you’ve been doing and make changes based on your needs and preferences. When you get results, awesome.

Since this is a method that teaches you how to build your own systems, then it’s really not about how I use the MMM. It’s about how you use the MMM.

The books and video courses already tell you how I use it. I’ve never made any significant changes to how I use it and I doubt I ever well. The basic nature of memory, the nature of the techniques and the nature of language will never change – at least not much. These features of reality really are one of the few things that are impervious to the old rule that change is the only constant. Not memory techniques nor the basic rules of language (words and grammar “rules” might transform over time, but the fact of words and grammar as such most likely never will).

The only thing that ever changes is the extent to which people get busy using these techniques. And I’m very pleased to see that you’re poised to do just that.

And it truly is the best of all worlds because as you learn Russian with the MMM, you learn about your memory and how to use it. As you learn about your memory and how to use it, you learn Russian.

Just make sure that you also read, write, speak and listen to Russian everyday. Otherwise, all the Memory Palaces and memory techniques in the world won’t help you get fluent. Memory techniques are a tool of fluency and the MMM is an imaginative and organic alternative to the old school hammer of rote learning. But both require the same level of daily reading, writing, speaking and listening.

So memorize forth and prosper with this in mind.

Thanks again for your note – hope to correspond again soon!

Further Resources

Download the above as a printable PDF [image error]

Memorize Foreign Language Vocabulary With Big Box Stores

Improving Memory Just Doesn’t Get Any Easier Than This

How To Become More Creative And Remember The Information That Matters In Your Life

 

Would you like to be more creative?

How about in a way that makes you more visual so you can memorize more information faster and with greater accuracy?

You would?

Great. Then this may be the most important episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast you’ll ever experience.

Here’s why:

I’m going to give you two simple ways to become more visually creative so you can use your imagination to memorize anything. Of course, you’ll need to use a Memory Palace. Ideally you’ve already created several.

If not, you can listen to previous episodes of this podcast for help. These include How to Find Memory Palaces and movie and How to Enhance Your Memory With Virtual Memory Palaces. There’s also a full memory improvement course for improving memory in all areas of your life.

But for now, here’s …

How To Improve Your Memory By Legally Stealing Information That Already Exists Using Direct Analogy

The first way to become more visually creative involves creating “direct analogies.”

To use direct analogy, you need only follow five fun steps.

1. Identify an issue or problem. For people interested in using memory techniques for accelerated learning, this step should present no problems.

Chances are that you need to memorize:

Facts for schoolMathematical equations and other number-based information (link to math book)Information about historical figuresProfessional terminology in fields like medicine or law (am links)MusicNames and facesPoetry and speechesForeign language vocabulary and grammar rules

And this list is just for starters. Pilots, teachers, restaurant staff, police officers and a whole host of other people need memory techniques to make them better professionals.

The more specific you are about the problem you need to solve, the more dedicated you can be about shaping memory techniques as your go-to solution.

2. Find similar problems.

You might think it’s crazy to leap from your problem to other problems that only tangentially relate, but trust me. This second step is critical for developing your visual imagination. We’ll explore this point more completely in the next section.

3. Explore the analogy.

Once you’ve picked an example, dive in and start charting out the territory.

For example, doctors need to memorize a lot of terminology relating to the body, diseases, medicines and the cruel instruments related to their trade. How to get that large variety of terms and definitions into long term memory can be hard to visualize.

A similar problem that might come to mind could involve computer programmers. They need to teach computers to store terminology and make it accessible to users with intuitive ease.

You could then create a picture in your imagination of a doctor programming his mind as if it were a computer. Maybe he’s opened his skull and attached some wiring to his brain. And maybe the wires run into a keyboard so he can type the words and definitions, sending them exactly where they need to go.

 

Every Cell In Your Brain Has The Power To Help You Create Powerful Memories

 

By finding an analogy, you help yourself create an image. It’s great exercise and simply achieved.

To take another example, you could think of a painter who needs to place shapes and colors in just the right places. For example, you could see a doctor painting terminology onto a patient.

Or you could think about how novelists observe people in cafes to create portraits of them in prose. How could you use the needs of a doctor to create a visual analogy for comparison with the observation process of a novelist?

Whatever you choose for this part of the exercise, see the computer programmer-doctor or the painter-doctor or the writer-doctor in your mind. Focus intensely on creating that visual image.

If you can’t see a picture using your mind’s eye, take a few seconds to write out a description in words. Or access your other senses. What would it feel like to paint terminology on to a canvas, for example?

Whatever you do, don’t overthink the exercise. Just get started. You’ll learn by doing.

4. Repeat the process and prime yourself for better results

Now that you’ve found and explored an analogy, it’s time to start all over. Do it again. Just do it again.

And up the ante. Here’s how:

Keep giving your mind material that will make you more creative. To become more visual, use the material as a kind of “paint” to spread on the canvas of your mind.

In sum, you need to feed your mind the materials that make up paint.

The good news is that filling your paint factory with raw materials is easy and fun. You can:

Read novels and poetryLook at artGo to a museumWatch moviesSit in a park and study natureBlind contour drawing

Why engage in any of these activities?

 

The Springtime Of Your Imagination Is Just Waiting To Explode With Insane Growth

 

Because when you feed your mind with images, you’re giving yourself more material to process than you consciously realize.

Think of your unconscious mind as a kind of Grand Central Station. Except in this station, only one train comes and goes.

The doors to this Grand Central Station are your eyes, ears, sense of touch, smell, etc.

Every piece of information you encounter enters Grand Central Station. If the individual bits of information were people, they would be bustling around and bumping shoulders.

Some of them would be pregnant, some may even be giving birth. Some would have already had children and be pushing baby carriages. Some would be flirting and some would be pickpockets.

Yet other people would be police. Perhaps there are some Secret Service agents lurking around in your Grand Central Station too.

 

The Agents Of Forgetfulness Are Even More Evil Than You Think!

These are the agents of judgment and disapproval. They try to stop babies from being born. They prevent babies growing up, and worse, from getting on the train at any age.

If there is an upside, it’s that they sometimes stop the pickpockets from thieving booty from unsuspecting passengers. But it’s mostly downside. These agents will stop at nothing to prevent certain people from getting on the train of your conscious mind. Usually, they hinder the most important people that you need to be the most creative at the most important times.

But even with all these agents around, every once in a while, the train of your unconscious mind pulls into the station. Sometimes it stays for awhile. Other times it’s just a short stop. Sometimes it picks up a ton of passengers. Sometimes very few, perhaps even none.

And when it rolls in, there may be few thoughts and perceptions still on the train. But many have left, getting off at various stations along the tracks of your life. This emptiness means that your train is usually in desperate need of new passengers if it’s going to travel anywhere.

Thus, the more information you get into your Grand Central Station, the more of that information can get onto the train of your conscious mind and then step out exactly where you need it in life.

 

Never Let A Good Idea Stand Alone

 

And the more information you’ve got milling around, the more the people in the Grand Central Station can work together to overcome the police and secret agents so they can board the train in the first place.

And the more people on the train – yes, even the pickpockets – the more these people can interact with another and arrive at the right places when you need them. And the more interactions you have on the train, the more these people will be able to spot the pickpockets and shake out their plunder.

And should a police officer or Secret Agent ever make it onto the train, the others will have no problem exposing them and turning them out with the thieves.

In sum, to be more visually creative, you’ve got to feed your mind visual information so that you can create more analogies.

And if you don’t believe me, just think about what I’ve just done. The picture I’ve given you of the unconscious mind as a train station and the conscious mind as a train is an analogy.

It’s a powerful one too.

 

Like King Lear Said: Nothing Can Come Of Nothing

 

But it didn’t come out of nowhere, even though it felt like it had as I was writing it just now.

As I sit and write out this part of the podcast, I become aware of the movies and series I’ve been watching over the past few days. In an episode of Prison Break, for example, Michael Scofield and his brother are in a train station. A fellow escapee – an expert pickpocket – has recently died. There are cops everywhere and secret agents are chasing them.

Plus, I’ve been reading a John Grisham novel. It features a bus station in it. And I had recently watched Jackie Brown, which involves crowds milling in an airport and a shopping mall.

It’s clear to me now that these viewing experiences have influenced what seemed to be a spontaneously produced analogy. But it wasn’t spontaneously produced. It’s the result of the mixture churning in my unconscious mind and getting pumped out into my conscious mind.

And it every element has filtered through my studies of Freud from years ago. Freud, who talked about the “police” who stand between the conscious and unconscious mind. The repressive gatekeepers who prevent our powers of creativity from helping us create the lives we want.

So there are reasons why my unconscious mind is brimming with info. I feed it every day. I read novels, I look at art, I watch movies, I play music and sing.

 

Like Wyndham Lewis said:If You’re Going To Be An Island, Might As Well Be A Volcanic Island!

 

And when I need analogies to help me teach or memorize new information, I never have to stretch. The volcano of raw material raging within never fails to spurt out material that I shape and form into rock hard analogies that do the trick.

And the force of the blast is so hot and so strong, no police officer or Secret Agent standing between my unconscious mind can survive the heat of the blast, let alone prevent it.

And the good news is that you can develop these superpowers of creativity too.

You now have the keys. You now know how to use direct analogies to become more visually imaginative. You now know how to fuel your Grand Central Station. You know how to fill up that train with all the best ideas. You know how to deliver whatever you need at any time, any place and under any conditions.

But let’s not stop with direct analogies.

Next time we’ll talk about how to become more visually imaginative so you can remember even more using personal analogies.

Stay tuned for that on the next episode of the Magnetic Memory Method, and as always, Keep Magnetic!

More Resources

Download this episode transcript as a PDF

Seven Ways To Make Your Memory Swiss Army Knife Sharp

Mindset, Memory And Motivation With Sam Gendreau

On this week’s episode of The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, Sam Gendreau talks about what it takes to develop the right mindset for learning a language, developing solid pronunciation and using mnemonics the right way.

You’ll find the full transcript of the interview below, and check out part of Sam’s award-winning entry to the KBS World Korean Speaking Contest.

How To Win Any Language Learning Contest

 

Anthony: Sam, thank you for being on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast a second time. It was really great the first time. I am grateful for the opportunity to catch up with you again. Not so long ago you won something called the KBS World Korean Speaking Contest. What is the story behind how you got involved with that?

Sam: Well first of all, thanks Anthony. It is a pleasure to be here for a second time. Indeed, I won the KBS World Korean Speaking Contest in 2014 so it’s been a couple months now. The reason why I got involved in the first place is in fact I was just following an organization on Facebook.

I saw that they were advertising this new contest organized by KBS. For those of you who might not know, KBS is the largest broadcasting corporation in Korea. It’s the equivalent of CBC in Canada or the BBC in the UK. I just looked at that, and I thought that maybe I could have a good chance of winning if I were to apply to that contest.

The contest was split into three different parts. The first stage was essentially all of the applicants were submitting a video of themselves speaking in Korean for about three minutes and you had a particular theme around which you had to structure your video.

Following this phase, I essentially made it to the top ten. The second phase entailed the ten participants having separate interviews with a professional Korean radio announcer. You essentially had to talk over Skype with this announcer in Korean. They were testing your speaking abilities just to see whether, as opposed to just recording yourself, in a more natural setting you are able to hold a conversation. I made it to the top three.

The third phase was to submit another video in Korean. I finally made it to the first prize. I was invited to spend a week in Seoul, Korea. I was on the national radio. I visited the KBS headquarters. It was quite an experience and certainly a memorable one.

This year there is going to be a second KBS World Korean Speaking Contest so I encourage people who might be interested in participating this year to certainly register. There is a Facebook page so you can have a look at it and it should be a popular contest this year.

Anthony: What interests you in Korean in particular, and at what stage were you already when you entered the contest?

Sam: My interest in Korean was sparked when I was living in Australia over 7 years ago because I met some Koreans there for the first time actually. I really had never had any interest in Korean in particular, but then I made a couple of friends there in Australia.

That is basically just how it got started. I got to know about Korean food, about some Korean culture and eventually I started to learn the language very gradually. I just purchased one of these little phrase books that you find on the shelves of bookstores. Slowly I started to learn the language, the script Hangul and after a couple of years, I registered in classes in university. For the most part, I really just learned on my own. When I applied to the contest last year, I mean it is always a subjective thing to gauge your own level, but I guess I was probably at a C1 level, so a fairly advanced level at least in terms of speaking abilities.

 

How To Use The Key Learning Strategies To Develop Fluency In Any Language

 

Anthony: Given that level you reached primarily on your own, what have been some of the key learning strategies that you have used with Korean and specifically with respect to speaking at that level?

Sam: That is a very good question. I think, first of all, what is more important even than any strategy or technique is really to keep yourself motivated. I think the primary reason why most language learners do not reach an advanced level of proficiency in a foreign language is usually just because they just give up after a few months or years.

The question is how can you keep yourself motivated and I think it boils down to curiosity, pure interest and really being curious about the culture and about the people who speak your target language. That is what has really been able to keep me going for that many years. I have been really fascinated by the culture. I have been really interested in movies and music, and the history of the country. I am also a fan of international affairs and international relations. That is my major. I am also very much interested in the international relations of Northeast Asia.

 

The Secret Of Using “Massive Input” To Build Build A “Self-Propelling Language Learning Engine

 

Studying about Korea and about the region, learning more about it has acted essentially like a self-propelling engine if you want to put it that way. The more I got to know about the region and about the country and the culture the more I wanted to learn the language. That is the first thing I would want to emphasize is the importance of keeping yourself motivated.

The second thing, in terms of reaching this level of speaking ability, in my case it has been really about the massive amount of input. I have watched a huge amount of movies in Korean, a huge amount of TV series, dramas as they call them in Korea, lots of music as well.

To be frank, I had not had the chance to speak Korean a lot throughout the years because I lived for the most part either in Australia or Canada and so the only time I really got to practice my speaking skills was when I lived in Korea for about a year. Even then it was not like I was speaking all the time but it certainly helped.

I think having this massive input like really listening to the language all the time has helped a lot and reading the news. I really tried to make the language a part of my life so I tried to use read the news every day in the language, read blogs in the language. Whatever kind of interests me in English or in other foreign languages, I can also do it in Korean. I have tried to make the language part of my life and just as an interesting experience overall.

 

The Exact Definition Of Fluency According To …

 

Anthony: Wow, well that is an amazing accomplishment. Real quick, just for people who may not be familiar with what C1 is, maybe you can just explain that and put it into context with the different levels that are B1 and B2 and so forth.

Sam: Certainly. I think that is the European framework of language proficiency. I am not sure if that is the exact term. Essentially, you have six different levels. You have A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, the A’s being either low beginner or high beginner and B1 being a low intermediate, B2 high intermediate and so forth. A C1 level is typically what would be considered as a low advanced or advanced level. C2 would be native proficiency.

Obviously, before you can reach any type of C2 in a foreign language it’s really many, many years of study. It’s typically a level that’s fairly hard to reach. C1 is obviously below a native proficiency but it is still an advanced what you could call a professional proficiency in the language.

Obviously, this also depends. You have different skills in the language. You have writing skills, you have reading skills, and speaking skills. You might be C1 in writing, for example, but you might not be C1 in speaking. These blanket statements like, “Oh, I’m C1 in that language,” it always depends on which skills you are looking at, but certainly, if you pass an actual exam, that might help you to determine whether you are a C1 or a B2 or whatever if that is what you really want to know.

 

How To Speaking And Reading Skills – Even If The Language Uses Crazy Characters

 

Anthony: I think it is good to have a framework if people aren’t familiar with that, so that’s great. I’m curious, what is the relationship between being able to speak and being able to write and read the character set?

Sam: In Korean they use an alphabet just like in English we do or most European languages. That’s certainly very easy to learn. Hangul I think if you study for a few days you can certainly learn it. In that respect, Korean is very easy to learn to read and write. The complicated part is really to understand what you are actually reading.

The relationship between writing and speaking or reading I think obviously the more reading and listening you do the better you will be able to structure your own sentences and so forth.

When it comes down to speaking, I think practice is definitely central to gaining improvements in proficiency. Things such as even reading aloud I think can help a lot. I’ve done that certainly at many instances. Practicing over Skype with native speakers, having language exchange partners, or if you can afford it or you have the opportunity, just going to the country and actually living the language and speaking with natives on a day-to-day basis I think that can definitely help.

 

The Practice Of Pronunciation 101

 

Anthony: A lot of this has to do with pronunciation, and I’m curious to what extent you have just learned pronunciation from hearing and speaking or if you ever used any sort of memory techniques or mnemonics to help with pronunciation as a kind of guide from inside your mind?

Sam: In terms of pronunciation, for Korean it has been mostly just about exposure to the language. The way I see it, pronunciation is really more of something you need to practice rather than memorize, and so in that respect I’ve never really approached it from a mnemonics prospective.

I’m not sure in what way it might help. Maybe you could clarify that with our listeners, but I mean I see the use of mnemonics more for actually memorizing words or characters in the case of Chinese for example. In terms of pronunciation, my personal experience has been just to really listen, pay attention and try to imitate the native speakers.

I think pronunciation is not just about the physical. It’s not just about the way your mouth moves and so forth. A lot of people recommend that you learn the International Phonetic Alphabet also known as the IPA. They recommend that you kind of map your mouth and you really understand which part of your mouth is being used for which consonant and vowels. I think that can be very helpful.

Another aspect that is often not as much talked about, about pronunciation is that of the psychological side of it. I think a lot of people fail to really gain a very good accent in a foreign language because they don’t like to hear themselves sound foreign. There have been a couple of studies done about that.

The studies show that some language learners are essentially scared to sound funny. They don’t want to sound foreign to themselves. It also has to do with your own identity and the groups to whom you belong. It is fairly complicated, but in my case I really tried to imitate how native speakers speak and I’ve really tried to immerse myself in the culture and haven’t been scared to sound foreign or what not so I think that helped. Certainly looking into the psychological aspects of pronunciation I think can be a good way maybe to clear some roadblocks.

Anthony: That is interesting what you say about being afraid to hear yourself with an accent or with poor pronunciation that certainly has been something with my girlfriend where she can’t stand the sound of her German accent in her English and that makes her not want to speak it.

Sam: That’s interesting.

Anthony: It’s a shame because she speaks very well. I had never heard anybody phrase it like that, the way that you mentioned it so that just came to mind. You were talking about how that there’s a psychological element to it and that gets mapped onto the actual biological requirements of the body or the mouth and things of this nature. What I am curious about, is if you think there’s an overall relationship between learning a language and getting fluent and memory at all or is it just a sort of organic thing that grows and doesn’t really have that much to do with memory in your experience and opinion.

 

How To Memorize Thousands And Thousands Of Words By Using Mnemonics And Context

 

Sam: Well, I mean language learning is primarily about memorizing a lot of words. I think that’s for sure. Especially the case of a language that’s far away from your own, that’s in a different language family for example, you really have to start from a blank slate. In the case of Korean, I mean there are very, very few words that sound similar to English and these few words happen to be English loan words.

In every other case it’s really about learning a totally different word than what you are used to in English. Whereas, the case of Spanish or French, a lot of words are actually very similar because they come from the same Latin root.

In that respect yes, language learning is about memorizing a huge amount of words. Native speakers use on average, I think it is at least 3,000 words a day in their day-to-day vocabulary. However, if you are looking at their entire vocabulary of an educated native speaker, the active vocabulary it’s usually around the amount of 20,000 words depending on the languages. A passive vocabulary, which means the vocabulary that you can recognize but not necessarily produce yourself is typically double that, so 40,000 words.

Obviously, if you do want to reach a very high level of proficiency in a language, you need to memorize a huge amount of words. I think looking at it from that perspective, mnemonics and memory techniques can certainly really help to make that process easier.

That being said, I think there a lot of different ways that you can manage to increase your retention, context being one of them. Reading and learning words through context and not just using lists of words that are decontextualized. I think it is very important to learn new words as you come across them as they are used in sentences and not individually.

Other techniques involved, for example, memorizing sentences rather than words. Rather than sentences, you have groups of words that typically go well together. These are techniques you can use to facilitate the acquisition and retention of words. To answer your question, definitely, I think memorization and memory plays a huge role in acquiring a foreign language.

Anthony: Do you have one go-to method for memorizing words that you find very, very reliable and rarely fails you?

Sam: You know, I would say the short answer to your question is no, because I think every language is different.

Again, it depends on your target language. If your target language is from the same language family as your native tongue, then I think you don’t necessarily have to put as much effort into really consciously memorizing the words and I think you could very well do with learning through context and through massive exposure. So reading the news, listening to movies, I think that is certainly something that can work.

If you are learning a language that is very far away from your own native language, for example, if you’re a speaker of a European language and you want to learn an Asian language, then you are going to find it a lot harder to memorize words because they sound totally different. In these instances, I think using memory techniques can be very valuable because it’s going to make the process of memorizing all of this new vocabulary a lot easier.

 

The Short Term And The Long Term Game Plan Of Using Mnemonics As Part Of Learning A Language

 

Just a caveat here. I think of people are reluctant to invest the time necessary to essentially learn about memory techniques and mnemonics. Obviously, it is an investment that you have to make because it is not something that is going to come right away. You have to invest in coming up with these mnemonics, and it can seem like a large investment in time or something that is a little bit cumbersome, but it certainly is something that pays off I think over time. While you are not likely to see the return on your investment, put it that way, very quickly, over the long-term it’s certainly going to be a huge return.

Just to put that in perspective, I think a lot of people say, “Well I don’t want to learn all of these mnemonics and make a story for each word I’m learning. It’s going to take me too much time.” However, if you look at it from a longer-term perspective, I think it is certainly worth it.

Anthony: One thing that really fascinated me that I was reading on your website is something you wrote about the Hedwig von Restorff, and I wonder if you could just go into that a little bit and what she concluded in that topic you were writing about.

Sam: Yes, I think if I remember correctly in that article I mentioned the so called von Restorff effect and so that’s the isolation effect that essentially she discovered through some of her research. I believe she is a German psychiatrist who did a number of studies on memory and these kinds of things.

What she found was that it’s kind of a standout effect. Things that really stand out from others, they’re typically going to be a lot easier to remember.

 

How To Make Words Stick Out Like A Sore Thumb

 

This can come in the form of humor, for example. When you go and you listen to somebody talk (maybe it’s a TED talk, maybe it’s just professor at school), if that person suddenly in the middle of his or her talk makes a huge joke, then everybody starts laughing and the joke is related to some material being covered in that talk, then you are more likely to remember that particular episode in the talk. Whereas, the rest is more monotone and everything, but if something really stands out, then you are more likely to remember it.

That applies to a lot of different areas or contexts. For example, even if you have a grocery list of things that you want to buy and one of them is highlighted in green or in pink or whatever, then because this, by its nature, will stand out to you, then you are more likely to remember it.

I think that it can help when you are creating mnemonics for yourself to create stories that really stand out that are really different. You have to be creative. When you are imagining a mnemonic of a kick, you can imagine it the size of your cell phone or really make it stand out so that you remember it and that really actually works, trying to make things stand out.

When you are creating your own mnemonics, just play with your imagination and don’t bind yourself to existing sizes and shapes as you see them, or even flavors or smells. You can just experiment with your imagination and throw in some stuff in there so that it really stands out and that should make it easier for you to remember whatever it is you’re trying to memorize.

 

Can Grammar Be Memorized?

 

Anthony: That is a great principle. Using these sorts of strategies to memorize individual words is one thing and I think we can see how that all that works. Certainly many of us have had that experience, but I’m curious if you can think of any ways to apply mnemonics and this kind of principle from von Restorff to memorizing grammar rules, something so abstract that it’s almost like a mathematical formula. Do you have any idea how we get those principles to stick out in our mind as if we had marked them with a green highlighter?

Sam:  That’s a good question. I mean typically, from my own experience, I have been using mnemonics fairly lightly, but mostly for vocabulary or memorizing things like Chinese characters. In terms of actual grammar rules, I’ve never really felt the need to use mnemonics in that case. As you say, it’s a little bit more abstract. It’s more like a formula.

For example, I don’t know, in French maybe you’re going to have feminine words, which end with a certain vowel and plural words are going to end with an “x” or an “s”. I mean, these are the kind of rules that, frankly, I think would be more easily assimilated through exposure, through just going through texts and assimilating the grammar rather than just memorizing it. I think that would be the best.

From my own experience, I found that when you’re learning grammar, a winning strategy is to be exposed to the language first. This is going to bring you a couple of questions. You’re going to be wondering, “Okay, why is this word coming there? Why is this word ending in such consonant?” When you’re actually going back and you’re learning about the grammar, you’re going to have these “aha” moments, because you are finally going to figure out, okay now I understand why what I read was like that.

Most people essentially do it the bottom up approach. They learn the grammar rules first before being exposed to the language. I think that is a mistake because unless you are exposed to the rules and to the language, even if you tried to remember these grammar rules, you’re not going to have any context to put them in, and it is not going to be very meaningful.

Once again, I would like to emphasize that personally I found it works a lot better if you get exposed to the language first and then you go and try to understand the grammar rules. You read about them and then you are going to be able to memorize them a lot easier.

Anthony: Basically back to context.

Sam: Exactly. I think context is really king in language learning. You definitely have to make good use of it. I think it’s a good strategy.

 

How To Develop A Mindset That Matters

 

Anthony: One thing that I really like on your website, and just talking to you, and the previous interview that we did and this great achievement with the world Korean speaking contest, is that everything seems a lot to have to do with mindset. The success that you’ve had comes from a way that you think about language learning and you think about languages themselves.

I wonder if you have any advice for people who don’t have the – well right or wrong is not really the answer – but they don’t have an optimal mindset. How do you go about developing that and keeping yourself motivated as you earlier suggested is such a key critical component of language learning?

Sam: That’s a very good question. I definitely agree that mindset is really going to set the foundation for success in language learning and in fact in many other areas of your life. I think, first of all as I was mentioning before, it boils down to curiosity and that’s something that you can cultivate, but it’s not necessarily going to come naturally but you have to – it depends I guess from people to people – but it’s about really getting interested in learning, in knowledge and in new things. Seeing things from a different perspective and learning about a different culture.

A lot of language learners see language learning as a very mechanical exercise where they are just learning grammar tables and lists of vocabulary and they see it as a chore. They forget that learning a language is about having fun and really discovering something absolutely new.

I always like to remind myself that it’s an exercise that is really mind opening and that really brings a lot of different opportunities. It’s an opportunity to learn about new things and to enlarge your vision, to enlarge your world, to expand your comfort zone.

One thing that I’ve been using often to motivate myself has been listening to other successful language learners and motivational speakers. One thing that I like is listening to TED talks for example. That has been a strong motivator not only for language learning, but also for a host of other things, but essentially listening to successful people who have gone through the process and who speak many languages I think can be certainly a strong motivator.

 

The Only Person On The Planet You Should Compete With When Learning A Language

 

Ultimately, what you have to do is to challenge yourself and compete with yourself rather than with other people. I think that’s important because there’s always going to be people who are better than yourself. The question is can you be better than yourself the next day, the next month, and the next year. It is about competing with yourself and trying to push your own boundaries rather than pushing somebody else’s boundaries, because if that is what you are trying to do then you’re obviously going to be failing and that can be a demotivation certainly.

Another thing, as I say, I think it boils down also to the culture and having this interest in learning more about the people. What is their mindset? What is their world? Everybody sees the world from a different perspective. I think different cultures and different nations also see the world from a different perspective based on their own historical understanding of the world and based on the way they’ve been brought up by their parents and by the society in which they live in. Trying to understand these things, I think, can really bring an interesting ingredient into language learning.

You can watch documentaries about the language that the people speak. You learn about the history. You can purchase books about history. There are so many thing on the Internet available these days that it’s just amazing. Just be curious. Learn about the culture, learn about the people who speak your target language, keep an open mind and just see it as an enjoyable process rather than as a chore. I think this is going to go a long way in keeping you motivated.

 

Dealing With Frustration, Demotivation And Irritants When Learning A Language

 

Anthony: I wonder, given all you have said and the powerful advice that you have given and insight, what is something that has frustrated you with language learning that you’ve been able to overcome and maybe it still frustrates you when you are studying the language that you have a tool for overcoming when it arrives?

Sam: That’s a good question. One of the things I’ve come across in Korean, and I haven’t come across this in any other languages so far is, well first of all Korean uses two types of words. One is pure Korean words and one is Sino-Korean vocabulary, words that are rooted in Chinese. Essentially, you have two different words for almost everything. Whether it’s a chair, whether it’s a collar you will have the Chinese-rooted word version of it and you are going to have the pure Korean word version of it.

That’s quite interesting because in more casual and everyday conversations most people will use the native Korean words, the pure Korean words. Whereas when you read the news and more technical material, they use the words that are rooted in Chinese.

I was even speaking to a Foreign Service officer who had been through extensive language training in Korean and what she told me was that even after these years of study and she had been working at an Embassy in Seoul for many years, she told me that she had these black holes. In everyday conversation, she could understand everything, but then suddenly she could be reading the news or maybe she could go to a talk that was a little more technical topic and suddenly she would not understand anything. That is something I have come across in a number of instances in Korean. That’s been quite frustrating.

It’s a constant reminder that you have so much more to go. The road ahead of you is infinite essentially because language learning is not something that is finite and there’s no goal to reach that one day you’re going to say, “Oh, I’m fluent and now let’s forget about it.” It’s really a lifelong process.

You can always become more proficient even in your own native language. I mean if you compare yourself to Shakespeare, obviously I think all of us have a long way to go if we want to create this kind of work or be as proficient as this kind of artist. The question is where do you want to stop or do you want to keep going? That’s been a reminder to me that I still have a long way to go.

At first, I think it was a strong irritant or demotivation because I could sometimes read through an article and I could not understand anything. It’s a little bit demotivating, but the way I’ve tried to overcome this is essentially about finding material that is suitable to your level.

 

Avoid This Seductive Mistake When Learning A Language

 

 

I think some people will try and jump ahead too quickly. They are going to try and read articles maybe about international affairs or things that are, even for an educated native speaker might be hard to talk about. Then if you are trying to read this and then you don’t understand 50 percent of the words that are in there, obviously it’s going to be very tedious to go over single word and try to understand every single sentence.

To proceed step by step and try to find material that is really suitable to your current level but not too easy because then you get bored, but not too hard because you then you get demotivated. It’s about finding this right middle so that you consistently push yourself, but at the same time you remain interested and you keep learning new words and you keep learning about new things. I think that’s a winning strategy. Just remembering that finding material that is suitable to your level I think is important.

 

The Road From Here

 

Anthony: Is there a language that you’re in love with so much you think you’re going to stick with for the rest of your life, for instance Korean?

Sam: Yes, I think Korean is definitely one of those languages I will definitely keep learning it for my entire life, at least for the foreseeable future. It’s not something I really see about studying. Some people really see language as studying, but once you reach a certain level I think it’s just about making it a part of your life. I don’t think about it as study in any kind of way. It’s really just about being exposed to the material and content that I like. That can be the news or it can be movies but certainly, I don’t plan on stopping to get exposed to Korean language material.

Other languages, I mean Spanish is an interesting language and it’s spoken by so many people around the world that obviously I think I’m going to continue to use it and learn it in the future, but I’m very drawn to Asian, Southeast and East Asian cultures and languages. In the future, I’m looking forward to learning additional languages that are spoken in that region.

Anthony: So what’s coming up next for you on with your language learning adventure?

Sam: In terms of Lingholic.com, I have been running the website now for over two years. It’s been doing fairly well. I am going to continue to be active on social media. In fact, you can find me on Twitter or Facebook, and I will continue posting articles as regularly as I can handle. As of recently, I have been very busy so some of you might have noticed that I haven’t able to post articles as often as I would have liked, but I’m going to keep having interviews such as with you, with other polyglots and language learners. I’m going to share my stories and the stories of other people who are interested about language learning, and hopefully, that is going to keep people interested about language learning and that may serve as a source of inspiration.

In terms of what’s ahead of me, in terms of languages I’m currently working at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development here in Canada. In the future, I would love to get posted in a country in Asia abroad. Certainly as I was saying, I’m very much interested in Southeast Asian and East Asian cultures and languages. That would certainly be a good opportunity to essentially immerse myself into a new language and a new culture. However, for the time being I’m going to keep learning Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, it’s a very interesting language and obviously a very rich culture.

In the future, I am looking forward to learning other languages. It’s definitely something that I think is going to be following me for my whole life. I think language learning is just such an enriching experience that I would recommend it to everybody.

Anthony: Thank you so much for all of this, for your great insights and for being here. I really am grateful that you could share these ideas with the listeners of this podcast, and I hope everyone goes and visits you on your site and follows you on all social media. I look forward to speaking the next time.

Sam: Thanks Anthony, it’s been a pleasure to speak with you, and hopefully this has been interesting to our listeners. Once again, I’m happy to come back on the show anytime. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you.

Further Resources

Lingholic on Twitter

Lingholic on Facebook

Sam Gendreau Talks About How To Get Addicted To Language Learning

Sam Gendreau on Backpacking Diplomacy

Sam Gendreau on The Laziness Paradox

How To Improve Memory Power And Concentration By Eliminating Stress

Who Else Wants To Get Rid Of Stress-Induced Memory Loss Forever?

 

Have you felt stressed out lately?

I’ll bet you have.

Me too.

Stress sucks, and worse than being a drag, it’s a memory killer too.

But not always.

On occasion, stress can make certain things memorable. Car accidents, terrorist attacks and riots can make many things impossible to forget. Such events can can even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Usually, though, stress punishes our bodies and minds without the need of catastrophe. Work, relationship problems and health can all create stress.

 

How Safe Are Your Goals And Dreams From The Destructive Powers Of Everyday Stress?

 

Stress gets in the way of goals and dreams. Important professional missions like:

Studying for exams and professional certifications.Learning a language.Remembering the names of the important people you meet.

But stress distracts from these activities. Stress makes paying attention difficult and learning new information becomes almost impossible.

If anything, all you learn is how to be more stressed out.

 

How To Increase Your Chances Of Getting Dementia or Alzheimer’s

 

So we’ve established that stress can create memory loss by making it impossible to pay attention. In other words, you’ve lost what you wanted to remember because you couldn’t pay attention to it in the first place.

But isn’t it strange that memory loss is one of the symptoms of stress that far too many don’t know about?

How about these symptoms that also seem to have fallen off the radar:

AnxietyFearTensionPanicAngerConfusionDepressionImpatienceIrritability

Worse, you might experience pain, insomnia, develop heart disease, and elevated blood pressure.

Even just one of these can lead to diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s.

 

8 Signs That You’re WAY Too Stressed

 

So how do you know if you’re stressed?

Chances are you already know when you’re stressed. You don’t need a checklist.

But just in case, here are some of the symptoms so you can see how to improve memory and concentration power starting today.

Loss of appetite

More than just losing the desire to eat, stress can make it impossible to eat. Swallowing even a mouthful can become difficult.

Overeating

On the other hand, stress can make you eat too much. Some people use food as a coping mechanism, something that places even more stress on your system. The heavier you are, the harder your bones and organs have to work. Plus, not feeling positive about how you look is psychologically draining.

Headaches and Backaches

Think that pain in your head or at the base of your spine is just part of life?

Maybe, but it could also be the symptom of stress.

Indecision

Having a hard time making decisions? It’s not necessarily just part of your personality. People who can’t define a clear path and follow it could be experiencing stress.

Pessimism

It’s little wonder that stress makes it hard to see the cup half full. If you’re doubtful that your current situation will ever improve, it’s not necessarily depression. Stress could be at the core of your dark thinking.

Obsessing Over the Nuts and Bolts of Life

It’s good to pay attention to detail. But it can also be a symptom of stress. If your perfectionism is getting in the way of your ability to contribute to your family and society at large, you might want to check in with your stress meter.

Impatience and Irritability

Have you flipped out and chewed someone’s head off lately? Such bursts of irritation rarely come from nowhere, so be sure that you aren’t acting out based on stress. You probably have other solutions.

Muscle Tension

Are your shoulders all bunched up? Do you have pain in your neck? Do you slouch when you walk?

If so, you’re probably holding stress in your body.

And along with muscle tension comes shortness of breath, cramps and even nervous twitching. Even your eyebrows can show signs of muscle tension. Having your face twisted and scrunched up can lead to others thinking that you’re grumpy or angry, stressing you out even further.

Horrible, right?

You betcha.

 

5 Simple Ways To Reduce Stress From Your Life And Improve Your Memory

 

The good news is that solutions exist for each of these stress symptoms. Let’s look at some of them.

1. The first step is to learn the signs of stress and look for them in your life.

2. Next, train yourself to tune into your emotional state. You can best accomplish this awareness through meditation and journaling.

3. Seek out an accountability partner. An accountability is someone you contact daily or nearly every day to talk about your commitments, proclaim victory when you’ve accomplished something and admit your guilt when you’ve fallen short.

At first, accountability might sound more stress inducing, but it isn’t. Your accountability partner will encourage you and act as a kind of coach. They’ll notice when you’re pushing too hard, criticizing yourself too much, need to take a break and help you recognize just how well you’re doing. You simply cannot have a bad day when you’re being held accountable and committed to holding your partner accountable too.

 

The Truth Really Will Set Your Free!

 

It’s also freeing to be able to say that you haven’t completed something. It’s off your chest and you’ll hear similar stories from your partner. In other words, you both grow stronger because you report on your efforts to succeed, and together the successes grow while the failures diminish.

Plus, you help each other see that you’re never failing at all. Every action and every lack of action that you’ve observed and labeled (which is itself a form of taking action) lays another brick along the wall of your accomplishment.

I interact with my accountability partner by email because we’re thousands of miles apart. But you might be able to meet with yours in person a few times a week.

And meeting with people is another way of alleviating stress. These people need to be positive, fun and bring different ideas and perspectives into your life.

Such interactions sharpen your brain, help eliminate stress and create future-minded thinking. Whenever you learn new things, you create a new future that was not possible before. And the more positive the people you hang out with, the more positive a future you can create.

 

The Zen of Giving Up Freaking Out (Over Nothing)

 

4. Practice breathing and meditate. I’ve talked with you before about pendulum breathing, reverse psychic nostril breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.

You can practice better breathing while meditating. Meditation is a powerful activity because it improves neural connections, preventing the degeneration of your neurons and protects your hippocampus. Some scientists believe that the hippocampus is a kind of memory central command centre, but even if not, it’s worth protecting this part of your brain in addition to all the rest.

And meditation is easy to do. You don’t need anything fancy. Just your body and a floor to sit on.

Contrary to popular belief, you also don’t need to try and control your thoughts. As Alan Watts once pointed out, sitting without thoughts amounts to being a stone. Wouldn’t you agree that turning yourself into a mindless stone is a useless goal?

Instead, focus on using the breathing and muscle relaxation exercises to become aware of your body and the flow of your thoughts.

Don’t try to control your thoughts. As William S. Burroughs once said, “control seeks to control control,” which means that you only give your thoughts more power by trying to force them into shape.

You’ll get more from your meditation practice by simply breathing. The distance this creates between your physical awareness and your thoughts will let you realize that the flow of ideas differs little from the beating of your heart. It just happens.

 

How To Use The Immutable Power Of The Memory Palace For Reducing Stress

 

5. Chill out. Just as you can influence the speed of your heart with exercise, you can exercise the speed of your thoughts. For this reason, I recommend that you wander your favorite Memory Palace as you meditate.

You needn’t practice recall during these sessions though you certainly can. The point is to simply give your thoughts a point of focus. In this case that point of focus is a mentally constructed journey through a familiar location.

And if your mind wanders to some other line of thinking, no worries. Let it go and soon you’ll become aware of the fact that you’re sitting on the floor and realize that you’ve been lost in thought.

These moments of realization will amaze you with their power. Soon you will find similar moments taking place throughout the day.

 

How To Make The Most Frustrating Taxi Ride In The World A Path To Stress-Free Enlightenment

 

For example, I was sitting in a taxi earlier today and found myself irritated with the traffic. On top of that, it was irritating that the current transit strike had forced me to get into a taxi in the first place. Stress ha started building within me.

But then suddenly a moment of awareness washed over me. I realized that I am nothing more than a body – an animated object sitting inside of another moving object commanded by another being. Looking out the window, I saw only other objects moving through space at various rates of speed. In some cases, they weren’t moving at all.

There was no point in forming an opinion about these objects. No amount of thought or stress could change the situation. Frustration could only make it worse. As the moment of realization grew in strength and duration, my stress and irritation dissipated.

And I’m confident that you’ll experience the same reductions in stress and useless anger when you make meditation a part of your life too.

 

How To Walk, Talk And EliminateThe Stress Of Multi-tasking

 

To sweeten the deal, add exercise to your life. It can be simple stretching every morning or daily pushups or elaborate sports like martial arts.

They say that walking with a friend a few times a week is one of the healthiest things you can do, especially if you make sure to walk rigorously enough to make talking difficult and do it long enough to break a sweat.

You can also reduce stress by eliminating multi-tasking. You’ll make fewer errors by focusing on one task at a time. And focusing on one thing instead of many will help stabilize your mood and improves your memory because you pay more attention to that singular activity.

Completing one task at a time also promotes organization. Being organized reduces stress, and if you throw removing clutter into the mix, stress goes down even further. You should check out my friend The Declutter Lady for more help with that.

And there’s so much more you can do:

Laugh oftenPractice forgivenessAsk for help when you need it instead of struggling on your ownTalk positively to yourself.

If all of this sounds complex, here’s the reality:

If you can meditate just five minutes a day, stretch for just five minutes a day and walk for about twenty minutes a day three or four times a week, you’re looking at next to nothing in terms of time commitment. You need only build consistency with these activities and you’ll make a huge impact on the quality of your life.

You’ll reduce stress, create a better future and a better memory. And when you can create a better memory, you can learn more. And the more you learn, the more you can learn. Due to the associative way that memory techniques work, the more you memorize, the more you can learn and thereby the more you can memorize.

 

Begin Anywhere

 

It’s a perfect circle.

All you have to do is begin anywhere to enter the dance. And the dance is so easy, so elegant, so effective and so much fun.

So pick just one stress-relieving activity from this list and just do it. Then add another, and another and another. Until you’re satisfied that you couldn’t be freer from stress if you tried.

And memorize information as you go along.

Track the results.

You’ll be amazed by how your memory improves.

And I hope you’ll get in touch and let everyone in the Magnetic Memory Method know all about it.

Further Resources

How To Lower Your Vocabulary Memorization Hurdles

Try Every Memory Technique At Least Twice Before Giving Up

 

How To Enhance Your Memory With Virtual Memory Palaces

Can You Really Trust Memory Palaces You’ve Made Up Entirely With Your Mind?

 

Remember Dorothy?

Of course you do.

That innocent young woman. Skipping through the Land of Oz. Meeting new friends. Tackling Wicked Witch. Reigning forever as the most beautiful Queen with Ruby Slippers who ever lived …

Oh no wait … that’s not the way it went.

And that’s exactly the point. When we use our imagination, we can change anything. We can invent things too.

Including Memory Palaces.

So if you want to know how to enhance your memory using a very special kind of Memory Palace, download the MP3 and keep reading this post all the way to the end.

 

3 Kinds Of Virtual Memory Palaces And The Little Known Factors That Affect Your Success

 

Let’s kick this discussion off with a question I recently received:

Hi Sir,

Could you give me an example of how to create an artificial memory palace?

Thanks.

 

Thanks for this question!

There are many, many ways to create artificial Memory Palaces.

 

What Do We Mean When We Call A Memory Palace “Virtual”?

 

First off, by “artificial” we are talking about either Memory Palaces built from scratch or based on fantasy locations.

To begin with the latter, you could use the layout of Homer Simpson’s house or the house of any sitcom. Fantasy layouts like these are great because we can quickly become familiar with the living room, kitchen, dining area and the bedrooms of each character. We can then simply study the layout of these rooms with great intensity the next time we are watching the show and create a journey throughout the house.

Some people have used video games too. When I use them, I prefer simple platform games like Donkey Kong.

I find these best because you can see the entire journey and all of its stations at a single glance. You can also set rules much easier, such as that there will always be three stations per ramp, etc.

 

Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

 

However, if you’re keen on first-person shooter games or games that use vast expanses of space and can remember these journeys, I encourage you by all means to experiment with them.

You might also want to check out this interview. Ten years old at the time we spoke, Alicia Crosby talked about using Minecraft for building Memory Palaces.  Here’s a video showing how that might work for you:

 

Is Hollywood The Ultimate Untapped Resource For Foolproof Memory Palaces?

 

Movies sometimes have good potential for creating stations, but not always. I’ve talked about how to enhance your memory using movies before on this podcast called How to Increase Memory By Watching Movies and TV Series.

On the main, movie and TV scenes are usually too broad. Not only that, but characters constantly cross their own paths. Plus, you have to hold large parts of the narrative in your mind as part of the journey.

That said, you can experiment with a “then this happens and then this happens” structure to build a journey. For example:

Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, then …

Dorothy meets the Tin Man, then …

Dorothy meets the Lion, then …

Dorothy meets the big green head of Oz, then …

Dorothy battles the witch, then …

Dorothy meets the real Wizard of Oz, then …

Dorothy goes home.

These meeting points all serve as pseudo-stations. They might work well because the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, Oz, the Witch and even Dorothy herself can easily be combined with other associative-imagery elements. Plus, Dorothy meets them at specific locations in the movie that are easy to visualize.

I’ve done a bit of experimentation with this method and for short lists of information, it works gangbusters. However, I wouldn’t expect to amass huge amounts of information using movies unless you are very, very familiar with the journey the characters take throughout the story. Again, characters often cross their own paths, or, as in the Wizard of Oz, completely double back.

Is It Worth It To Build A Mega-Memory Palace From Scratch?

 

Moving from Memory Palaces based on pre-made fantasy locations, you can build virtual Memory Palaces from nothing. In fact, the classic Memory Palace method, which I do not endorse, involves creating a single Memory Palace with multiple doors that lead into multiple rooms or buildings.

Using this approach, you build a Memory Palace and a long corridor with many doors. When you go through the first door, you find yourself in your childhood home. When you go through the second, you find yourself in your first school. The next door opens onto your high school, then your workplace, your sports club, etc.

I can’t fully enunciate why I don’t like this idea, but it’s never worked for me.

 

The Alphabetical School Of Memory Palaces 101

 

As readers of my books and participants in my video courses know, I prefer structuring my Memory Palaces around the alphabet. The alphabet is somewhat like a conceptual corridor in the Memory Palace of my skull, and it’s both pre-built and built by the user using the Magnetic Memory Method principles.

Because we know the alphabet so well from a young age, we don’t have to think about what comes next. We can easily know what comes before and after each and every letter of the alphabet. Therefore, if we want to leap to words that we’ve memorized that start with the letter K …

Boom! We’re There …

… and zooming along to the station where the letter K resides.

In other words, if you’re going to build virtual or imaginary Memory Palaces, I encourage you to think in advance of how you’re going to bind them together.

In the first example, I was already suggesting a chronological rather than an alphabetical spine, and that can work well depending on how long you’ve lived and how many buildings you’re familiar with. With the alphabet, you can reuse it again and again by differentiating each alphabet from the other (A1, A2, A3, etc.)

But when it comes to having an invented room behind one of those doors, be it linked by Grand Memory Palace Central or an alphabetized list, it’s really up to the user to experiment.

 

The Little Memory Palace Engine That Could

 

My greatest success with Virtual Memory Palaces has been what I call “The Locomotive Method.” I use the technique exclusively for memorizing poetry.

The Locomotive Method involves creating a train car that is linked to another train car. You add as many train cars as you need. The stations in each car are fixed. They are:

Entrance to car

Left corner

Right corner

Middle

Front right corner

Front left corner

Exit

Coupling

Followed by

Entrance to car, etc.

This works very good for poetry on a perfectly conceptual level because you don’t need a real journey for poetry in the way that you need for other kinds of information. The poetry is the journey.

This also works for song lyrics. For actors, however, I think a traditional journey through a Memory Palace based on a real location is best for remembering plays and movie scripts if you are an actor.

Plus, an actor can always use the stage or studio where the acting takes place. If that doesn’t present the perfect combination of real and invented space for figuring out how to enhance your memory with virtual Memory Palaces, I don’t know what would.

If even with all of this info tugging your train you’re still stuck in the Kansas of forgetfulness and want a Magnetic Wizard to show you the ropes, feel to join the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.

Until next time, keep those Ruby Slippers and then teach someone else what you’ve learned about Memory Palaces. Teaching a skill is one of the best ways to learn it and helping people improve their memory is one of the best ways we can make the world a better place. The more we remember, the more we can remember. And the more we learn, the more we can learn.

Further Resources

How To Find Memory Palaces

Memory Strategies Of The World’s Top Language Learners

These Memory Strategies Can Quickly Boost Your Foreign Language Fluency … Even If You Wind Up Throwing The Mnemonics Away!

Have you ever wished someone would just inspire you and give you exactly the tools you need to succeed in one blast of self-empowerment at the same time?

Well, if you’re into language learning, what I’m about to tell you may be the most important episode of this podcast you’ll ever hear. And of course if you’d like the transcripts in handsome PDF form, you can download them here.

You can also scroll all the way to the end for the links mentioned in the podcast for a power-packed injection of inspiration and practical guidance. Plus, I’ve got something cool to teach you at the very end about using hats to increase your productivity, so go all the way through for that.

Here’s How Philosophy Can Double Your Fluency When All Other Techniques Fail …

Last week I attended the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin.

Among the many talks, Christopher Huff’s struck me the most. All of the other presentations were great, of course. But because Christopher drew some language learning ideas from philosophers I know very well.

He also had some great ideas about memory techniques and more importantly, memory strategies. Taken in the context of philosophy, Christopher presented some exciting ideas you can start applying to your language learning and overall life right away. You may even experience results overnight.

Here’s why:

The Undercover Secrets Of Minimalism And Hedonism

Christopher talked about two kinds of philosophers, which we could call the minimalists and the Epicureans. The first group like to toss out everything unnecessary and the Epicureans fill everything to excess. What they share in common is that only the now exists.

You might want to check out philosophers like Plato and Aristotle for more info on this matter. For example, Plato’s Republic has many passages on frugality in many aspects of life (including thought). Aristotle talked about minimalism in terms of the Golden Mean and eudaimonia, a special definition of happiness.

When it comes to learning a language, minimalism helps you concentrate on the essentials by using only the essentials.

Sell Everything!

Being minimalist also helps you identify what is essential. If you’re only working on mastering one language learning book, after all, you’re more likely to discover what’s essential in that book in a meaningful way than if you try to find out what’s essential in twelve books. You can learn more about this powerful form of whittling down in How to Memorize a Textbook.

By focusing on just one thing, you’re more likely to get a concentrated vision of what you’re lacking. So minimalism creates focus, understanding and diamond-hard clarity about what you don’t know yet. You can make much more powerful decisions because you’re a minimalist. You’re only going to acquire one more book, one that you select well based on your well-developed knowledge of what you need.

Epicureanism, on the other hand, allows for excess. So long as it’s linked to pleasure, epicureanism happily encourages maximalism.

How to Over-Exaggerate Everything And Still Get Results

Although it might sound wild, excess can be done intelligently. Christopher pointed out the value in giving yourself rewards of excess (which is different than giving yourself an excess of rewards).

Christopher also implied that having a library of special books you’ve collected, even ones you’re never going to read, is not really clutter. Each book is a memory of the passion behind why you got the book in the first place.

So even though Christopher (and probably you) may never study some of the language learning books in his collection, they serve as part of a language learning whole. It is a specific library, one that contains many touchstones that point to the larger goal of gaining fluency in many languages.

In other words, overkill can be an effective memory strategy.

So there is a sense that bigger is better, especially if people who amass such enormous collections of language learning materials also practice minimalism.

The “Stubborn” Principle That Can Make Your Language Learning Soar

When people select just one book from that collection and work through it in a dedicated manner, they may need to buy a new book thereafter. But they are strengthening the collection as a whole by adding material that is now much more targeted. It’s kind of like growing as a content specialist as you allow the maximalism to inform your minimalism and vice versa.

The Golden Mean between these two extremes is what Christopher called the Stubborn Quintile. It basically refers to the percentage of words that language leaners struggle with no matter what.

This concept allows you to identify the material that eludes you and figure out what techniques will best help. Be it certain difficult words, phrases, grammar concepts or other issues, by identifying this 20%, you can approach getting them into memory minimalistically.

And That’s When Things Got REALLY Interesting!

Christopher talked about certain memory techniques and gave some mind-boggling demonstrations. He sang, for example, the names of the American presidents in historical order. He also showed how he used some of those presidents to remember tones in Chinese.

It was brilliant because he was following one of the fundamental rules of memory: rest new information on information you already know.

For example, he used a very familiar song to assist the recall of all the presidents.

With the presidents in tow, he used them to help memorize tones.

Were he to push the technique further, he might find a way to use the memorized tones to memorize something else. For example, a set of tones might be used as an anchor point for developing perfect pitch. Or it could be used to find a note in a song to help with transcription study.

For example, Scott Devine has talked about memorizing the notes of Stand By Me so well that you can see them on the fretboard of your bass. Then, when you hear a song on the radio you want to learn, you can use that anchor point to figure out a great deal of how other songs might be played.

In other words, by having an Epicurean mass of information in our minds, we have many more opportunities to use that info in explosively minimalist ways.

I loved Christopher’s talk very much and was grateful that he attended my own. He’s going to be a guest on the MMM Podcast in the near future, and I hope our conversations about memory will continue.

About the 20% concept, I was pleased to dine with Richard Simcott and Lea Tirard-Hersant.

Richard’s the man behind Speaking Fluently and you might want to head over to his site for information about the Polyglot workshop he’s holding with Alex Rawlings in Budapest.

Richard echoed Christopher’s great point that for people who don’t have a difficult time remembering words and other aspects of language learning, memory techniques still have a place. There is always an elusive number of words that don’t seem to stick in the mind no matter what one does. At least not without the ease that these words could have.

Richard seemed very interested to give Memory Palaces a closer look with the Magnetic Memory Method principles in mind. This is a huge treat for me because he is one of the most respected polyglots in the world and I think he’s going to bring insights back to the Magnetic Memory Method headquarters that’s going to help us all.

Fill Your Vocabulary Coffers With This Special One-Syllable Memory Strategy

Léa Tirard-Hersant had some exciting ideas too. As she shared at the end of my talk, you can leverage the power of rhyme.

Take a one-syllable word like loon, for example. Loon in English is a one-syllable word that can be rhymed with a one syllable word in French, like une.

To get started with minimal pairs for this exercise, you can find a pile of one-syllable words that rhyme within your own language. The example she and I played around with were “ache” sounding one-syllable words, words like:

Lake

Break

Bake

Cake

Snake

Rake

Flake

Take

Make

Jake

Fake

Sake

Blake

You could compile a list like this and then ask your language learning partner or teacher to help you find words in your target language to pair these with. I really appreciate Léa’s idea and am looking forward to exploring it further.

Until I have her on the podcast, you should check out a book she worked on with Benny Lewis called Why French Is Easy.

Sticking With The Program May Be The Best Memory Strategy You Ever Use …

Finally, I had some very nice talks with Olly Richards from I Will Teach You A Language. He’s been on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast before and we’ve since developed a great friendship. We’re in fact now officially collaborating on a Magnetic Memory Live event to take place in London, so stay tuned for news about that.

Anyhow, in talking with Olly about some of my language learning plans and memory experiments for the rest of the year he made a great point. What he suggested is that instead of leaping all over the place, I might do more experiments with languages I’m already fluent in. He suggested that I work with our mutual friend Kerstin Hammes to act as an analyst and coach.

So that’s what I decided to do. I emailed her and explained that I want Magnetic Memory Method 2.0 to address more intermediate and advanced issues.

But in order to do that, I need help from an expert German native speaker to help me get a precise picture of where I need to improve and how I should approach it. From there, it’s my job to figure out how to make Memory Palaces an advantage, track the processes and share the results.

And since she’s in …

It’s going to be great!

But Wait! There’s More!

You might be thinking … hold on there Magnetic Cowboy. That sounds like a lot of hard work. How are you going to manage all of this with the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, new books and all that other things you do?

The answer is …

It’s actually pretty easy. In addition to Christopher’s minimalism, maximalism and his ideas about The Stubborn Quintile, I’m going to use de Bono’s six hats.

In case you’ve never heard of them, here’s a brief overview and how I aim to make these hats work.

The Amazing Learning Secrets Of A Hat Fetishist From Malta

De Bono talks about six hats, each of a different color. Each color denotes a different function. Like this:

White = ObjectivityRed = EmotionsBlack = Critical thinkingYellow = The sunny positivity huge projects requireGreen = Growth through creativity and the generation of new ideasBlue = Organization

To apply these principles, I’ll spend about 15 minutes on all of these at the beginning of each week.

White Hat: For me, being objective means looking at things realistically. Do I have too much on my plate? Do I really need to be doing x when I would be better off doing y. For example, I’ve got:

A weekly podcast to write, record and release …

Books to write and others to edit …

YouTube videos to create, cut and upload …

Emails to answer …

So wearing the what is all about seeing things for how they really are.

It’s not about judging them or making changes. It’s just about assessing the status quo and creating a solid picture.

Red Hat: The red hat is all about checking in with the emotions. As someone with Manic Depression, I feel everything in extremes and I need to be aware of that.

The white hat helps here, but the main goal is to be aware of the emotions and shape them. I use this hat to make sure I’m getting enough rest, nutrition, exercise and meditation and time to memorize. These are the key factors that have kept me alive during some insane times.

When it comes to critical thinking, I wear the …

Black Hat: This hat is about critical thinking, which means creating strategies. You can only do this when you’ve got all the other hats along for the ride.

Yellow Hat: For sunny positivity, meditating and thinking happy thoughts isn’t enough. I need to gratitude journal, do my daydream journaling with the non-dominant hand, make sure I’m spending time with my bass and Bach and with friends. The Polyglot Gathering reminded me of just how isolated I am so much of the time and just how much better things would be if I socialized more.

Gross … But True!

Green Hat: In many ways, I’ve got the green hat on 24/7. I write thousands and thousands of words every day and almost exclusively either from bed or in cafes between walking. I call this Magnetic Roadwork: writing until I have to pee and then moving on.

Finally, the …

Blue Hat is all about organizing. I could use this hat to free up space on my phone, for example.

I have one organizational tip to mention here. The other I talk about on the podcast. These are having an accountability partner and time-tracking.

The Number One Way To Make Sure You Get Everything Done

My accountability partner is Sarah Peterson from Unsettle.org. What we do is email a report of what we’ve worked on throughout the day. Because we’re 9 hours apart, she often gets my report in the afternoon and I get hers in the morning.

No matter when they arrive, the timing is always perfect. And we almost always say exactly what the other needs to hear in terms of encouragement and the like.

And it’s addicting, so much fun to work and look forward to that email at the end of the day that summarizes what happened and makes a statement about what’s going to happen the next day. The productivity benefits have been very rewarding.

Then there is time-tracking. Listen to the podcast for the full description of how that works.

Finally, I’m officially adding a new hat to the color spectrum …

Transparent hat: Transparent is the day of rest, a regular occurrence that is somewhat foreign to me. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it, but I’ll give it a try.

And of course I’ll let you know all about how it goes.

So until then, dear Memorizers, grab the PDF version of this episode, and, as ever, keep Magnetic! [image error]

Further Resources Mentioned Throughout The Podcast

Last week’s episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, Memory Improvement Tips From Dr. Gary Small

The Accursed Share by George Bataille

Dan Sullivan talking about Speed of Implementation