The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Have you ever had a fact you know like the back of your hand stick on the tip of your tongue? And has your presque vu (as the French call it) ever been so bad that a completely different thought came to mind? And not only did that other thought come to mind in place of the one you were looking for … It Completely Took Over The Show! Never fear, dear Memorizers. You've been suffering something known as "the ugly sister effect." It's closely related to what mnemonists and memory champions call "ghosting." I prefer to call it "Magnetic fossilization." Either way, if you've ever suffered either of these problems, here's the good news: In this post, you're going to learn … How To Turn That Interfering Memory Into Prince Charming The Ugly Sister Effect gets its name from the Cinderella fairy tale. In many versions of the story, every time Prince Charming tries to get hold of Cinderella for a smooching session (and perhaps a little more), her ugly sisters intervene. Not very cool of those ugly sisters, is it? The reason the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon gets this name is because when this happens with your memory, there's a competition going on. It's a struggle between the cue that causes you to look for the memory in the first place and the target information encoded somewhere in your mind. Worse, these ugly sisters are other information that comes to mind. So, for example, let's say the song Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell comes to mind, but you keep coming up with Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust instead. Annoying, isn't it? Well, as great a song as Diamonds and Rust is, in this case, it's an ugly sister. Good News: There's A Well-Known Way To Deal With This Problem The method has two parts: 1) Don't make a big deal out of it. 2) Carry on with the discussion or change topics. The target information will probably pop into mind shortly after, or at some point in the future when it's no longer relevant. The important thing to realize is that these … Ugly Sisters Are Perfectly Normal! Now, when it comes to the world of mnemonics, we use Memory Palaces to store information. We do this by using crazy, weird and exaggerated imagery to encode the information we want to memorize. No information exists that you can't work with using these procedures. This fact isn't to say that you can achieve a state of perfection in which your mind instantly creates the best possible associative imagery and snaps everything you want to memorize flawlessly into place in your Memory Palaces. Rather, you'll find that you need to massage different kinds of information differently. Sometimes you'll use a Bridging Figure, other times you'll use a cartoonish stream of images across several stations. You need to be flexible, which is why the Magnetic Memory Method is a method, rather than a system. It teaches you to respond to information in an inviting way, to cradle it, to kindly Magnetize it in a way that makes it willing to stay. But here's the thing: Some People Want To Memorize Oodles And Oodles Of Information … … but they only have a limited set of resources upon which they can base their Memory Palaces. Well, no problem. On the How to Find Memory Palaces episode of the podcast, we talked about your endless fountain of Memory Palaces just waiting for you to claim them. And in the episodes about virtual Memory Palaces you can find here and here, you can learn about making Memory Palaces based on nothing more than your imagination. Or, dear Memorizers, you can experiment with reusing the same Memory Palaces over and over again. But watch out … Some Of Your Memory Palaces Might Be Haunted! That's right. And when that happens, you might find yourself running into some Ghosts of Memory Past. Memory champs and mnemonists call this phenomenon "ghosting." But normal people use this term too. For example, here's part of a letter I received a few days ago regarding "images too vivid leaving 'ghost images'". Here's what she wrote: There are Memory Palaces I reuse like an etch-a-sketch, such as the cars for phone numbers (I use the Dominic number system) or my office to remember a grocery list or even the walk to the local shops to remember a speech. My problem is that the images from the last time I used that palace are often very vivid still. I can still see Einstein on his surfboard for example (Einstein being number 15 as you know) so the next time I picture Einstein in the drivers seat I can still see him surfing then it all gets muddled up with a previous set of information. I have tried using the alphabet or months of the year as placeholders, but the abstract letters are not as memorable as locations. Could I have your advice? Thanks and kind regards. Lydia The first thing I would say is that using the alphabet raw for Memory Palaces is a good idea, but it's going to take lots of practice. Better – or at least less abstract – would be to use playing cards. For example, you could have an Ace of Spades Memory Palace, a 2 of Spades Memory Palace and so forth. The linear order of the cards in this manner would serve as an organizational device similar to the alphabet. The advantage is that you can rest more on an Ace of Spades than on the letter A. This ease happens because the Ace of Spades and cards in general are more palpable. If you're going to monkey around with this approach, start small. Create a row of five to ten Ace of Spades and let them hover like flying carpets. Or if you prefer, lay them out on an imaginary forest path, a corridor, or whatever else feels right for you. It will help too if you can somehow bolt these flying carpet cards to a distinct journey. So, using a process I teach in more detail in the Masterclass called the Telesynoptic Memory Palace, you can bolt the cards onto a preexisting Memory Palace station. This procedure is more challenging than others. When you travel the journey, you now need to reconstruct both the original Memory Palace and the added feature of an Ace of Spades at every station to differentiate it from the original version of the Memory Palace. As ever … Practice Makes For Magnetic Perfection! Using a deck of cards like this with your Memory Palaces is one way to deal with ghosting. But I believe that, for most of us who just want to get in with things and skip the radical experimentation, there's an easier way. Relax. Almost all issues with memory work using mnemonics arise from tension in the body and mind. That, and people like to get worried about future skills when they haven't met the basics yet. Let's discuss that together here: So … how do you overcome the fears of danger you might be experiencing? It's easy! … Just Relax! Never, ever memorize if you haven't spent a bit of time meditating, doing some progressive muscle relaxation and ideally, Pendulum Breathing. Next, stop thinking about those intrusive images as ghosts or ugly sisters or any other negative term. That simply does not and cannot help. Rather, think of them as wonderful, beautiful and thoroughly Magnetic fossils. They should be treated with love and respect at all times. Why? Because they're living proof that … You Can Learn And Memorize Anything Using Nothing More Than The Elegant Powers Of Your Natural Imagination! Use those preexisting images to practice what we call in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass, "compounding." So instead of rejecting these glorious proofs that your imagination is happily assisting your memory by coding and decoding information, get that associative-imagery on the side of the new information you want to memorize. In other words, work on letting the old memories support the new ones. If Einstein comes up with old information, invite him to help you with the new. Compounding is especially powerful if you're using and reusing Memory Palaces for language learning. For example, when I study and memorize Spanish words and phrases, I don't have to rely on English alone to benefit from compounding and homophonic transliteration. I can also use, for example, the German words and sounds I know. In fact, at least in my experience, German is especially helpful for creating powerful associative-imagery for Greek. Now, all of the magic Magnetic Compounding creates assumes that you've correctly used Recall Rehearsal to get the target information from your previous pass through the Memory Palace into long-term memory. If not, do that first before you use the power and the glory of Magnetic Memory Method compounding. If, failing all these techniques, you still struggle with ghosting, ugly sisters, fossils or whatever you want to call them … Get Down On Your Hands And Knees And Scrub Your Memory Palaces Clean As If You Were Cinderella Seriously. The same way you can use your imagination to create Memory Palaces based on real or imagined locations, you can imagine yourself with Pine-Sol or Mr. Clean and a mop. See yourself doing the work of getting your Memory Palaces fresh and clean for new uses. Again, relax. Warm up with a bit of card memorization or the childhood memory exercises I gave you a few weeks back. And then get busy. In fact, try everything I've talked about in this issue of the podcast. Why? Because nothing will help you more than one simple little skill. To practice it, all you have to do is … Harness The Value Of Practice That's right. Even if you struggle … Even if you sweat … Even if you strain … And, yes, even if it causes you pain … Practice is the only way to improve … Even If You're The Best Memorizer In The World! There's no turnkey, set-and-forget engine that keeps running once you learn and use memory techniques as part of your daily life. No. What you're doing is learning to play your memory like a musical instrument. Leave that guitar or flute or tuba or whatever you want to play in its case for a week, a month or a year and you're going to feel your talent slipping. But practice every day and run your scales, arpeggios and chord studies every day with a few new challenges thrown in and you will always grow. At the very least, you'll maintain your state and have the potential to push the limits of what you can do now. Doesn't that sound fair? Of course it does. So now that our exorcism of all those evil memory spirits and ugly sisters is through, I'm going to go watch Ghostbusters. What are you going to do? Further Resources How to Keep A Memory Journal And Remember More The post Beginner's Guide To Overcoming The Ugly Sister Effect appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Have You Ever Had A Past Life Experience? Do You Believe In Reincarnation? How Much Karma Do You Spread On Your Mummified Animal Crackers? If so, it's time we had a little chat. And in this one-to-one between just you and me (sorry, no apparitions from times yore allowed), we're going to talk about past life memories, past life regression and how regression is performed in a clinical setting. The emphasis being on how regression is performed to give people the feeling that they're remembering past lives. And to accomplish all this, we're going to see how the entire notion and the culture surrounding past lives fits into the larger context of our shared psychological needs around the globe. Oh … and I'll even tell you about my past life experience too. Warning: Reincarnation Can Make You Fat A few weeks ago, we talked about The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis And Memory Improvement and some of the controversial issues surrounding the topic. For example, hypnosis can produce all kinds of memories, the quality and integrity of which vary. We looked at one of the most consequential ways that hypnotically induced memories play out: in courtroom testimony. Like memories produced by hypnosis, past life memory is a controversial and highly unlikely topic. At its worst, the ability to recall past lives is a sham sold in books, live or online courses and supposedly therapeutic past life regression hypnotherapy. Content creators direct these at the gullible. For example, in Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian Weiss makes the claim that exploring past lives can cure all kinds of ailments, phobias and anxieties. He suggests focusing on clinical results and forgetting about whether past lives are real or not. Easy to say when your wallet is bursting with fees from patients seeking relief and willing to try anything. Then There's The Dark Side On the opposite end of the scale, people have reported bringing back ugly scars from their regressions, or later becoming obese thanks to things seen in visions of the past. But we certainly must admit that that past life regression and the memories it seems to produce may have some legitimate therapeutic value that goes beyond placebo and hypnosis. I'll talk about my experience with descending into a previous life a little further on. Helpful or fraught with danger, to be ethical, the hypnotherapist or "regressionist" must make it clear that the techniques induce dream­like fantasies, not realities. Past life memories, no matter how clear or intense, are mirages produced by the mind, not HDTV memories based on anything that ever actually happened. How To Win A Million Dollars With Just One Of Your Past Lives! And if you feel that I stand to be corrected, please let me direct me to the James Randi Foundation and the Million Dollar Challenge. They'll be pleased to receive your evidence and reward you with a handsome sum upon reasonable validation of your material. In any case, I see no reason to believe that past lives exist. And any value past life regression can probably acquired by other means without questionable sessions with a hypnotist. All the same, let's look at the issue in detail and try to figure out why some people do believe in it. The reasons are fascinating, and we all stand to learn something from them. The first thing we need to realize is that … Past Lives Are Not About The Past! No, no and a million times no. Past life regression is all about the future. It's about life after death and the fantasy that we never really die. As I'm sure you know, your mind has a hard time conceiving of the planet without you. So at its core, past life fantasies drive forward as much as they dive backward to ease the anxiety that when we're gone … We're Really, Really Gone! In case I haven't convinced you that past lives are really about the future, consider Karma. Karma is an idea tied to notions of immortality and rebirth. Karma supposedly brings to the present attitudes, beliefs and actions from another time that you can "read" or interpret. Interpret these signs in just the right way, you stand to have an easier life the next time around. Screw up, on the other hand, and continuous living is not going to work in your favor. You will suffer the consequences of being bad in this life in your next one. Past lives and fantasies of reincarnation also fascinate societies around the world because these beliefs let people hunt for patterns. People Love Patterns! And there are certainly many patterns to find. Look at literature throughout history, for example. Archetypes are everywhere, and for more on that you can check out the research and writings of the delightful Canadian scholar Northrop Frye. Here's a decent rundown of how his theory of archetypes connects different kinds of human character with the seasons. Patterns can make you feel transcendent because there is the oft­ cited saying that those who know the past aren't doomed to repeat it. But is it really true? After all, haven't all kinds of world leaders (both politicians and royalty) been schooled in history? Can Knowledge Of The Past Really Make The Future Better? Steven Pinker has some good and favorable points to make on the matter, but it's still not at all clear that insight about the past helps anyone evade mishaps in the future. So many of the ongoing failures our leaders bomb us into should be obvious as chaps on a cowboy, but still we're lead into quagmires our best schooled in political history should help us avoid. Perhaps, as the Oedipus myth would have it, often evading fate causes us to construct it, something we see in memory as well. For example, trying to run away from troubling memories only adds fuel to the fire. So recognizing past patterns gives us the illusion of choice. It gives us the feeling that if you could just recognize in yourself what you got wrong the last time, due to whatever deeply ingrained archetype, you could escape the wheel of suffering. At least for a little while. But … Does Choice Really Exist? In Free Will, Sam Harris suggests that we can only describe the choices we make, but not explain why we make them. He gives, as an example, having given up martial arts at a certain point in his life, and then for no apparent reason, deciding to practice again. He can describe the transition in and out, but in no way can explain why he made those choices. At best, we can only speculate about why we do the things we do and draw after­-the-­fact conclusions ­ with or without pointing to patterns and archetypes. But at the end of the day, the answers we give can never be more than compilations of possibilities based on self-­interpretation. If Harris is right, then pointing to patterns and archetypes from previous lives is a convenient way for some people to give a "why" to the reasons they behave and make choices as they do. In addition to creating the illusion of choice, belief in past lives also helps people satisfy the need to see the soul as something separate from the body. Even though we now know beyond doubt that the human mind is the product of the body, people ignore the science. They prefer the idea that the essence of a person can float from one body into the next. Likewise, that soul can eventually float into some version of heaven and finally find a place in eternity. Again, we see that the attempt to access past lives is really all about creating visions of a future that features far greater certainty than the present moment ever can. When Philosophy And Religion Should Send You Running For Cover Nearly every religion and philosophical tradition has at one point or another featured reincarnation in some shape or form. Some books you can read include: The Principle Upanishads Bhagavad Gita These Hindu books discuss the need to develop spiritual knowledge and compassion for everyone in the world. Doing so creates illumination, edification and ultimately freedom from reincarnation. From the Buddhist tradition: The Dhammapada. This book is particularly frustrating because it contains so many parables and much centers on the idea that the truth cannot be known. We only get to have words about the truth. In this case, it appears that the words point to ten realms in the mind of all people, including Buddhas. These realms undergo constant change as a person lives and acts in their part of the world. So the game is not so much about avoiding the repetition of wrong actions from the past but doing good things in the present so that more good things can come. From the Judaic tradition, the Kabbalah talks about how a single soul repeatedly visits different bodies between visits to a different world. A Kabbalist is therefore someone who can sense this other world and in effect, live in both of them at the same time. To get to this stage of actualization apparently takes 6000 years, so if you're happy and you know it… raise your hand. As for the Greeks, they had metempsychosis, which is the transference or transmigration of the soul into another body at the moment of death. This process was not thought to be exclusive to humans. It could happen to plants and animals too. In more recent times, the Western world has seen Theosophy and Anthroposophy. In Theosophy, it is said that reincarnation is not immediate, but requires intervals in a place like heaven. This heaven needs to exactly match the person's vision of the afterlife they carried with them throughout life. (Probably not a good thing for many people …) According to Anthroposophy, there are bodies walking with no soul. For whatever reason, the bodies did not receive a reincarnated spirit of a deceased person. Instead, they are occupied by demon­like entities. In fact, the head of Anthroposophy may well have had a demon inside his body. Reports tell us that he threatened people who did not accept his ideas with violence. This fact, in effect, makes Anthroposophy a cult. Weird. How To Regress Into A Past Life In 3 Easy Stages As you know, I studied hypnosis as part of my graduate research. One of the exercises involved past life regression, and the instructors taught us how to use it in a clinical session. Hypnotic regression comes with strict guidelines. To treat someone using the technique, you need to have a note from the client's doctor approving the procedure. The person must be absent of mental illness and not under the influence of alcohol. And above all, as a beginner, you should practice under the direct supervision of an experienced hypnotherapist. To prepare for hypnotic regression, it's important first to create what hypnotists call a "yes set." This technique involves a series of questions for which yes is the only obvious answer. For example, you might ask in relatively rapid order, "Are you feeling awake? Are those new shoes?" and anything else that produces a yes based on whatever the hypnotist can perceive. The idea is that when the hypnotist asks, "Are you ready to go into a deep state of hypnosis and regress into a past life," the client has been primed to say yes. Magicians will sometimes set the stage for compliance using similar sleight­-of­-mouth tactics as well. The hypnotist also wants to create rapport with the client to start influencing the client's unconscious mind before the session has even begun. The hypnotist will hold their body as the client does, try to match the client's breathing and speech patterns and essentially mirror them. Then, with rapport established, they will slowly start changing their behaviors. The hypnotist does this to "pull" the client towards them and into to a state of relaxation and hypnosis to go along with the verbal techniques of hypnosis. Monkey See, Monkey Do If this sounds woo woo, it really isn't. We've all yawned after seeing someone else yawn and walked into traffic against a red light simply because the person beside us started walking. You may have even found yourself leaning in during a discussion on autopilot at the same time as your date. We mirror and influence people in many ways all the time, and it is possible to engineer or at least influence the psychological states of others through body language. Actors and musicians do it to us all the time. Next comes the formal induction. By this point, the hypnotist will have determined which style of verbal hypnosis they want to use language patterns to help the client achieve deep states of relaxation. These methods can include guided visualization, music, aromas and touch. The hypnotist will typically continue to mirror the clients breathing in order to "pace and lead" the progression into deeper and deeper states of relaxation. The exact language and procedures will vary from hypnotist to hypnotist depending on the suggestibility of the client. Lifestyles Of The Young And The Restless They may, for example, encourage age regression by asking the client to imagine themselves at younger and younger ages. They may ultimately have clients picture themselves back in the womb and then move into the immediate previous life or even further back. Or, the hypnotist will simply encourage the client to let images from the past arise, seemingly of their own accord. In therapeutic hypnosis, the material produced by the client is then integrated with the present, usually to help bring insight to a current problem or heal an ailment. The stories that come into memory from the past may be pleasant or terrifying. If the memories have good feelings associated with them, the hypnotist may attempt to transfer those good feelings to a present ailment or concern and anchor them there. Or if the memory is unpleasant, the hypnotist may use a variety of techniques to help the client be rid of the bad memory. Ideally, this expulsion will take the ailment along with it as the memory flees the mind and body. In all cases, imprinting is the main feature of regression, past lives, reincarnation and Karma. Therapeutic past life regression, along with the others, is meant to create detachment and distance if not outright banishment of these imprints. At its most innocent level, the person experiences cathartic transformation. At its most sinister level, forms of this practice show up in cult­like organizations like Scientology, a cult in which they have developed procedures and technology for exorcising imprints from your soul. Scientologists also have developed elaborate terminology to describe what is essentially past life regression performed in an interrogation room with two tin cans in your hands. Operation Clambake has some detailed resources if you'd care to learn more. The Story Of Automatic Jim By now, you've probably noticed that I'm more than a touch skeptical about past lives even though its clear than hypnosis can induce experiences in which you may legitimately feel as though you've made contact with a previous version of yourself. I've had it happen. Following the lessons in past life regression, we heard a fantastic testimonial. One of the instructors claimed he had established contact with a Japanese past life. After establishing contact, he instantly became fluent in Japanese without studying a single character. Mercifully, he didn't demonstrate any of his Japanese, so we took our lunch break and then moved on to curing phobias. Following this lesson in erasing simple household fears, I hypnotized my student partner first to help him overcome his fear of spiders. As a matter of coincidence, as soon as he opened his eyes, he spotted a spider on the wall. He immediately scooped it up and let it run up and down his arm and all over his hands. It Was Miraculous! Well … not really. It was a small spider, after all. But he did seem genuinely transformed and delighted by his new ability to connect so deeply with a spider he'd only just met. When my turn arrived, I elected to deal with my fear of heights. Now, I must admit that I broke the rules ­ naughty naughty ­ because I do have a mental illness and shouldn't have been doing the exercise at all. And my fear of heights, at least at the time, seems to me deeply connected to impulse control. All the same, what happened next astonished me. At some point during the induction, I flashed into a vision so real and intense, it has barely diminished in the twelve years since it happened. As I sat in the chair listening to the sounds of Spiderman's voice, I suddenly found myself in the cockpit of a Vietnam fighter jet. Within seconds, my vessel slammed into another jet or helicopter, and I saw billowing clouds of fire as I fell into the jungle. And that was it. Except that wasn't it at all. In addition to breaking out in a sweat and needing the main instructor to break me out of a near panic, I found that I knew all kinds of information about this fighter pilot. A man I had apparently once been. I knew his first name, his age, the girlfriend he had left behind and what kind of car he drove. I could see his neighborhood, his high school and felt all kinds of physical drives normally foreign to me. I had never been terribly fascinated with legs, for example, preferring buttocks and breasts, but all of a sudden legs were driving me crazy! In any case, I lived in Toronto at the time and had the neurotic tendency to avoid walking over the Bloor­-Danforth aqueduct (or Prince Edward Viaduct as Wikipedia insists on calling it). The bridge near Castle Frank station terrified me as well, even though there are many beautiful trees along that part of Bloor Street to enjoy. But on that day, all fear tossed aside, I decided to walk home instead of taking the subway. For the first time, I felt no fear. I had seen what death was like and it bemused me that my fear of heights could be connected to the violent military death of some dude named Jim. So what did I do? I Wrote The Dead Dude's Autobiography! And to do it, I used self-­hypnosis to reconnect with Jim. Sat at the keyboard and tranced out from deep breathing and the hypnotic suggestions I gave myself, I allowed my fingers to type. Seemingly of their own accord (or Jim's), my fingers produced page after page of semi-­narrative images and situations. Because I was in essence practicing automatic-­writing, I called the piece Automatic Jim and eventually published it in an anthology of my (terrible) poetry called Lex Talionis Schadenfreude. Of course, it was only a matter of a few days before the terror of those two bridges came back and I started avoiding them again. They've since erected a suicide barrier on the Bloor­-Danforth viaduct, so when I'm in Toronto I can enjoy the view of downtown when walking across the bridge, but I often think of the reprieve that Automatic Jim gave me from this irrational fear of heights. Temporary, but powerful and unforgettable. Beware The Human Imagination In sum, our minds are incredibly malleable. Just as a hypnotist can prime clients by using a "yes set," I had been primed to experience a past life regression. I have no idea why my mind produced that particular imagery, but as an avid dream journaler, I know well just how profoundly my mind produces incredibly complete and often reasonably well-constructed narrative fantasies. Plus, plane crashes have been a recurring theme throughout my life and the imagery often very intense. And yet … never have I pulled from a dream so many facts about a figure at once so familiar and foreign to myself. Thus, this experience demonstrates, not that past lives exist and can be remembered, but that context and priming can induce incredible psychological experiences. Although I've since outgrown much ­ though not all ­ of my fear of heights, the therapeutic effects of meeting Automatic Jim were fleeting at best. The writing my experiences with him produced certainly has some interesting imagery and lovely rhythms. But at the end of the day, it's babble and I won't be offered a job as poet laureate anytime soon. What Would The World Be Like Without The Irrationality Produced By Human Needs? The issue here is that we all have a need for meaning in our lives, particularly when it comes to our problems. We want to know why we suffer and memory is an attractive means of finding explanations. Everyone from Freud to Madame Blavatsky, to the ancient Greeks and Scientologists have used memory as cures for real and perceived ailments. And in far too many cases, hoodwinking runs awry. For in reality, humans have managed to revolutionize the world with computers that can remember keystrokes you made twenty years ago in a relatively short period. But the fact that no one has perfected a means of accessing past lives in thousands and thousands of years of civilization suggests that there is no past to access when it comes to the human psyche. The old recordings we have are distributed throughout the media of sculpture, writing, painting, theatre and now film, video and virtual reality. Whatever and wherever the past is, whether in humans or our processing machines … Further Resources Download this post as a PDF How Psychics Abuse Your Working Memory To Rip You Off The post Reincarnation, Past Life Regression And Other Former Life Myths That Go Bump In The Night appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

To celebrate the release of a course I put together with Jonathan Levi called, Branding You: How To Build A Multimedia Internet Empire, we're re-releasing an interview I gave on his Becoming a Superhuman podcast. So when you're ready, hit play and learn … How To Outsmart Forgetfulness Forever With Superhuman Memory Skills! Jonathan: Hello Ladies and Gentleman, and welcome to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. I am your host Jonathan Levi. For those of you who don't know, I teach a course on a web platform called Udemy, which is one of the world's largest online course platforms. It is through that platform and through that platform and through being an instructor that I met my guest today. Dr. Anthony Metivier is an experienced author, consultant and an expert in the field of memory and learning. Dr. Anthony is a fellow instructor on Udemy and he's been a friend of mine since I originally appeared on his highly rated podcast, the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. Anthony's innovations in the field of mnemonics helped him teach people all over the world to exceed in academics, learning languages, memorizing poetry and a whole host of other amazing skills. This podcast goes into a lot of different topics and Anthony and I cover a lot of ground from different mnemonics and memorialization techniques all the way to meditation. So now I am very excited to introduce you to Dr. Anthony Metivier. So Anthony, good evening, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for making the time. I had so much fun with you on your podcast, the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. It was one of the things that actually inspired me to do this show, and I want to thank you for that, and I thought it would be really fun to have you as one of our first guests. So welcome. Anthony: Well thank you for having and I know my audience of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast really responded well to your interview, and I know it sent some people to your course so it was fantastic. Jonathan: It did and thank you for that. It was such a blast and I think the audience picked up on that. You and I kind of having this mind meld, and we had a really good time and I'm sure we're going to have a great time on this podcast as well. Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. I think people really respond to it too because it's not really coming from MENSA or championship stuff, and nothing wrong with that, but it is more down to earth and real application to our studies and so forth from people who use it for those purposes. Jonathan: Definitely. Actually you have been involved in memory and accelerated learning for a long time. Before I was and also before it became kind of a really trendy topic. Maybe share with our audience the story of how you got into this field. Anthony: Well it was just happenstance and a very lucky one because I had been in graduate school in Toronto at York University and these hard Toronto winters and something wrong with my biology sent me into a real bad depression. I couldn't think and I couldn't concentrate. I had the weight of all these exams on my shoulders for my doctoral exams. For people who aren't in a PhD program now or have been, then they would know that there is these committees you have to go and sit in front of and they grill you over hundreds and hundreds of books that you are supposed to have covered, and I could hardly get out of bed. So it was just a crazy time. To avoid life, to avoid facing all of this and to avoid the horrid pain of cracking another book of obscure French philosophy with terms like architectonic tautology and just things that rattle your brain, I was starting to play with cards and magic tricks. I could focus on that. I could watch these videos. I didn't have to read a book or anything like that. You don't get far in the world card magic without coming across one of the holy grails which is a memorized deck and most people to some kind of trick. It's not really memorized but there is another class of people who actually memorize the deck. There is a whole bunch of different techniques. I thought no way this is crazy I thought I would never be able to do this because I can't even read. I couldn't even read Harry Potter which is one of the books I had to read for a course where I was a teacher's assistant and barely able to get out of bed for that. I apologize to all of those students that I misdirected with showing up to class unprepared for Harry Potter. In any case, I tried it and it was incredible. It is like a light saber through all that fog and all the inability to concentrate. That is what really hooked me on memory techniques. It is irrelevant how bad you feel. It is irrelevant how tight you are. It is irrelevant how hungry you are. You can actually just go to this place in your mind and these images that you have created and they are bulletproof so long as you've created them correctly. That was real miraculous for me. It has actually helped with a lot of concentration issues and a lot of mental confusion. Those things are still there and I still have to take medicine for them, but these memory skills when used properly just do not fail regardless of what the mood may be or the condition. I kept using them and studying and I have done hundreds of hours of research, thousands of hours really of application and figuring out the best ways that work. Then through a series of mysterious and unusual circumstances I wound up teaching them at a school and I wrote them down for the students. That wound up becoming a series of books and video courses. That is how I got there. Jonathan: Amazing, and I assume things kind of turned around in the PhD program once you kind of learned how to use and learn how to process all of that material. Anthony: Yes, it got kind of ridiculous because then I was saying things like, "Oh, and by the way that's on page 19." I think for everybody who gets into this stuff there is always a little bit of a showing off period. Nonetheless, it was incredible because I would go to these things and just be able to recall all this information and really crazy stuff. It is a funny story, but when I finally got to my dissertation defense, they call in a person from outside the University and outside the country if possible and he is called the external-external or she is called the external-external which means they are external to the program and external to the university. Anyway he came and they were grilling me really hard and they asked some tough questions and there was someone who even wanted to fail me and I knew she wanted to fail me really badly. At the end he said, "You know, you are cooler then Miles Davis. You hardly blinked during this whole thing and all the stress that these people were putting on you." I didn't know what to say. I didn't even really know that much about Miles Davis, but I just thought, "It was memory, man, that's all it is." There's nothing to be nervous about it all. Jonathan: Amazing, and actually your Magnetic Memory Method rubbed off on me quite a bit. You were one of the people who convinced me to start using these kind of techniques, the spatial awareness techniques to put it into my course and to use it in my own daily life, but maybe our listeners don't know about the Magnetic Memory Method. They might not be familiar with mnemonics and you and I are telling these awesome stories about them. Maybe we can explain what the Magnetic Memory Method is and explain a little bit about how it works. Anthony: There is a lot to it and I don't want anybody to feel cheated if I kind of gloss over certain things but it brings together a whole bunch of elements. The core of it is to actually use locations religiously and make the Memory Palace the foundation of all this. Because there are so many memory techniques is there are stairs to heaven (in the Led Zeppelin song) there is just so many. A lot of them just involve just making mental associations and pictures and they are just floating around in the void of your mind. That never worked for me very well. What always worked very well was combining the basics of memory techniques which are creating exaggerated images and then locating them somewhere so that they could be found and you essentially increase your chances the more that you combine location with these exaggerated images. But then I started to go farther. I thought what if we study this information in a particular way and break it down into components so that you could link sounds with parts of words and create images that are very, very integrally linked to those images and those actions that the images make. Then they are in those locations and make it more and more powerful and it got to like Jedi levels of thinking about this and actually implementing it and applying it. It is a bit involved to learn and it sounds almost insane, but for the people who use it, they get such amazing results. It is incredible and I have just been super pleased that it wasn't just something in my head but something that other people could use. But there is definitely a formula to it and there is a recipe to it. I specifically call it a method rather than a system because there is a need for people to adapt it to their own learning style in their own ways of going about things in their own homes in their own buildings that they are familiar with. So there is universal principles that structure it, but there is a methodology that you need to adapt. It is kind of like the difference between kung fu or karate and wrestling. You have forms in karate and you have certain if-then, this-that kind of interactions with your enemy. But wrestling is more flexible and wrapping yourself around and innovating on the fly and there is not as many rules as such but there is universal principles. Just so that you could flop around like a fish when you need to and get the job done. Jonathan: Definitely. I am actually dying of curiosity. How many Memory Palaces do you have? Can you quantify them are you in the hundreds or? Anthony: Yes there is now 183 actually. Last June was 175 and I added to that since then for some various experiments but there is a go to amount as well. I mean I build some that actually never get used but the actual building of Memory Palaces is an important activity in and of itself even if you don't use them because it just strengthens every other one you have. It strengthens your understanding of how they work and what you can do with them and it's just a great way of preparing yourself. It's like having extra bullets in your gun belt. Jonathan: Of course. So you are kind of walking around your city or cities that you visit and exploring buildings with that purpose? Anthony: Yes, a lot of people ask me, you have this idea that we should be having dozens of Memory Palaces. Where are we going to find them all? I always just think, on my street there are still places that I haven't explored. There is like a clinic I could go into that I've never gone into. So if push came to shove there is one, and that's not to mention the dozens of buildings on the streets around me that I have never really gotten exploited. Every time I travel and make special note of the hotels that I stay in because they are all perfect for their own little tiny Memory Palaces admittedly but they can be quite useful. There is another good reason to use Memory Palaces that you build from travel and that is because when we're in novel locations or new locations we've never been to the brain secrete something called norepinephrine that makes things a lot more memorable when we have this chemical rolling around in our brain which tends to happen when we are traveling. Those can become super powerful Memory Palaces if you choose to focus on them in that way. Jonathan: Incredible, plus the benefit of remembering more of your vacation and that's a huge benefit. Anthony: Yes, it kind of goes along with that feeling where you feel that you can really remember your first time in the city when you first arrived there. Those first couple of days can be very impactful and that has a lot to do with that chemical. Jonathan: Incredible. On of the important steps for me when I kind of became what I call a SuperLearner was to understand the differences between working memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. Now that we understand a little bit about how your method works can you give us an idea of how you managed to create memories that stick not just in your short-term memory, a month or two until you deliver your thesis, but also for years and years and years? Anthony: That is really quite simple. There is different theories and all kinds of things and one of the guys who had theories that are half-correct and half-tested and debunked and still very interesting one way or another is a guy named Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus had these ideas like the forgetting curve and he basically suggested there is something called the primacy effect which is that if you were giving a list of words he would remember the first second and third words very well and then maybe the last three and four words very well but in the middle there would be this decay. I thought about that a lot and tested it and it seems pretty well correct, but I thought there has got to be a way to hack this. So if you had a Memory Palace for example and there were 15 stations you would experience that primacy effect. The way to hack it is to actually go forward through the Memory Palace, go back through the Memory Palace, start in the middle of the Memory Palace go back to the front, and start the middle and go to the end, and the leapfrog over all the stations. You do this about 5 times a day or for a few days. I mean it sounds kind of weird to be doing this, but how many times you go to the washroom and you could do this with a list of really important information. I mean that is just to be bulletproof. You can do a lot less but that's just kind the bulletproof thing if it really counts that you have this information. It is kind of like being a spaced repetition software machine organically and not relying on external technology to do the repetition for you, but deciding what your list is or what kinds of information you are memorizing and actually visiting it intentionally and that is what is going to get it into long-term memory. Dominic O'Brien has a rule of five but I think the rule of five is not enough. It should be a little more rigorous like five times a day for five days and then after that, once a week for maybe five weeks and something like that and then you are really going to get it into long-term memory. Jonathan: Wow. So I know you have some very successful book for learning languages and poetry and again, you have been providing me mentorship and guidance in publishing my own book, but what are some other applications that your students use the Magnetic Memory Method for with success? Anthony: Oh there is so much. For instance, programming languages. I know that is basically language, but the application is quite different in the sense that those are pretty obscure codes and whatnot. Then there is mathematical formulas and just practical things with numbers. A lot of people couldn't tell you what their credit card number is for example and that is an incredibly useful thing to know actually. The amount of time you can spend looking for your wallet and digging it out and going back to the computer and typing it out and getting it wrong, you know you can really change your life just by having your credit card number and the amount of time you spend. Yes, there is all kinds of things. There are people who have used some of the techniques that I teach in my Names and Faces course to memorize or get a better sense of locations that they had visited so that they can actually go and paint them. That is been an interesting thing that I hadn't heard of before. Then there is just the general boost in the critical and creative thinking that. People experience because of how the this opens them up to different ways of using their mind and their creative intelligence. So it spills out all over the place. Jonathan: Definitely. Actually, that raises another question especially talking about creativity and I know some people think creativity is innate. Others understand that it is very largely trained, but my question would be can anyone do this? You know I have some strong opinions on it considering I also teach accelerated learning, but I'm curious to hear whether you have seen a difference in some sort of innate ability and all the students you have worked with or do some people just generally have a better memory out-of-the-box? Anthony: I don't know if anybody has a better memory out-of-the-box, but there seems to be that phenomenon, there seems to be that feeling. I find that when you ask people who just have a "natural memory" they usually describe the process that is very close to what happens in mnemonics. They sort of do it anyway without having to train. It isn't really the case that anybody has some special edge on other people. Because, the people who win all the memory championships, they are as dull as doorknobs without those techniques. They are all great people but they will always be the first person to admit that I couldn't do this without those techniques I'm just a plumber or whatever they may be. There is nothing particularly innate, but there is one kind of criteria I believe and that is actually wanting to achieve the outcome, and it seems being interested in doing the work and getting a kind of kick out of it. Because if you're not having fun, then I don't think all of the cheerleading in the world is going to get you over the hump of doing something that makes you miserable. I don't understand why it would make anyone miserable, but some people just don't have fun with it, and I have to accept that. I've done all kinds of clowning around and jokes and fun and games and there are still people who don't enjoy doing it. I think that that's really the great divide is having fun are not having fun. That applies to just about anything. Jonathan: Definitely. One of the things that we added to our course was an explanation of Malcolm Knowles' work. This guy in the 1950s basically figured out that there are six requirements for information to get in and stay in for an adult learner and one of them is do they enjoy the material and do they have a practical application. Which is to say, you know kids, a lot of kids at a younger age will learn because they are told they have to. With adults it just doesn't work that way. You need to know why you are learning it. You need to feel respected. You need to be able to tie to your day-to-day life and understand how you are going to use it or it's just not going to happen. Anthony: I think that there is two real things that this reminds me of with adults and not having fun with the memory techniques is because they don't always completely understand why thinking about crazy monkeys cutting cheese off of the Statute of Liberty is going to help them remember something. They also often feel very compressed and restricted, and they don't allow their imaginations to produce that kind of imagery. So they can be quite conservative and that is another sort of issue, but if they allow themselves to relax and have fun, then I think that they will find that their imaginations are much more equipped to create the kind of zany images that become memorable that allow you to encode information in order to have this kind of fun. Jonathan: Right. Anthony: It's not that they aren't fun it is just that there are a lot of barriers to finding them is fun. Jonathan: I think, honestly, your method added a lot of fun. You and I talked about it a little bit when I was a guest on your podcast and it kind of influenced me. Since then, first off, I have a lot more fun. I am personally learning Russian right now which can be to put it lightly not very fun. But I'm having a lot of fun and I can learn usually about 20 new words in a 20 or 30-minute session. I use is really fun outrageous visual markers that you gave me. For instance the Russian word for open is открытый. I think about myself with a migraine standing in front of a closed pharmacy just shaking my head in this absolute pain, or I can picture myself with a bullet wound, heaven forbid, and thinking the pharmacy ought to be open because it's critical, right. So with открытый and that's been really helpful. My question and I have a little bit of a personal motive on this, what about learning grammar? I am struggling quite a bit with Russian grammar, and I'm sure you've overcome this in the many languages you teach for your books. Anthony: With the exception of English I haven't produced anything specifically about memorizing grammar, but the principles are more or less the same. So basically if you had a Memory Palace you wanted to focus on some grammar, the first thing to do would be to figure out what grammar you want to focus on. So instead of being overwhelmed by the giant engines of grammar you just pick one. So for instance declensions of verbs or whatever, and then you start in one corner and you and you think about how that is declined for that particular piece of language and you follow that linearly. In Spanish, for example, you have yo for I, and then you have tú for you, and then you have el or ella for he or she and you have all of these things. You put those in corners and then you add the next thing. You know what I'm saying? Like you add what the next word part is. So if you get to ellos which is the last of that list in Spanish then you would see a big sun. So that would be ellos sun. Or tú aires you would see a big statue of Aires in that location doing something really crazy. Jonathan: How interesting. Anthony: You know things like that. I am just going to my own Memory Palaces for that and then you go to the next set of principles and you go to the next set of principles and you just lay them out. In essence you make images to create the examples and you create kind of a crib sheet. Then what you do is go out ASAP once you got the stuff in your memory and you start writing sentences. You start speaking. You start listening to the language every day and to add that memorized material to a flow of other encounters. Because the more you include the memory techniques and the memorization process with reading, writing, speaking and listening then you create an ecosystem and things can get very fast after that. Jonathan: Right, I definitely need to do that. I hadn't thought of actually breaking down the connecting words and stuff like that. In Russian you have I think it is 18 different ways to say "this" which can be very challenging. So I need to start creating these visual images for each one of those different variants it sounds like. Anthony: Yeah, I mean that's what I would do and I would have them patterned out against Memory Palace and then do that exact thing, forwards and backwards, from the middle to the front, from the middle to the back and then a bit of leapfrogging from station to station like one, three, five, seven, or two, four, six, eight and you will really get a lot of speed and quickly wrap it into midterm and long-term memory acquisition, and, then again, reading, writing, speaking and listening. You can use all the memory techniques in the world but it is not going to lead to fluency without those other big four activities. Why that I came up with this is because I am pretty good at those for other four activities. The only problem is I can't remember anything. So it's really been the magic bullet so to speak. I mean it is a magic bullet that takes effort to take it out of your gun belt and put it into the gun enroll the chamber and point it at the target and shoot the gun. That's all effort and so forth, but once that bullet is spinning, I mean that's as magical as it gets. Jonathan: Right. I had kind of a little bit, kind of not argument but disagreement with my partners when we were building our course because I'm of the belief that people need to understand how it works and people should understand just a little bit of the neuroscience behind mnemonics and how do they work and why does your brain respond to this stuff. Do you think that that's the case or do you think that it is something like with a good technology product where the confusion and the technicality should be hidden from the end-user? Anthony: What I had the great honor to interview Harry Lorraine who people probably know that name. He's really one of the kings of the memory-training world, and I asked him the same question. I said you talk in your books all the time about how people don't care about the science they just want to know how it works. I tend to fall on that myself. Although I have had criticism from a podcast listener who said that I have deeply undercut my credibility because of how I dismiss science and the science of memory, but that is not technically true and it is also because I do kind of fall in that camp that if you're interested in the science by all means go and study it, but it in and of itself is not the recipe to get results. I mean there is no right answer to it but I know for myself when I am reading books and I start getting into memory books and they start explaining to me about why it all works and how it all works in the brain I just skip over it because one thing that is very important actually for people to know is that science is a process. It is in process everything that you read about science is going to be improved upon, it's going to be changed but what is not going to be changed are the fundamental techniques of how memory skills work. They are ancient. There are innovations that come now and again when somebody comes up with some things that other people can copy and use for themselves, they are pretty rare but they happen. In principle but universal techniques are not going to change. So again, I don't mean to undercut science but I still fall in that camp that if you're interested in it, there are loads of books about it, but if you want to get the results from memory techniques, the science isn't going to change the fundamental techniques and they are not really going to give you some deep insight about how they work. What is going to give you insight about how they work is learning them in using them and you are going to learn more from using them then you are about reading them. There is more to movement than meditation and reading about the science is a form of meditation rather than taking action. Jonathan: Interesting. You mentioned that there are innovations every year in these techniques and I think that that is one of the interesting things. Also you mentioned that these are thousand-year-old techniques and both of those are topics that come up in Joshua Foer's recent book, Moonwalking with Einstein. I think that is an interesting book because it has really brought to the mass public the techniques that you have been teaching for years or you know that the Greeks were using 2000 years ago. What do you think about the recent popularity of guys like Joshua Foer or Ed Cooke, some of these memory athletes who are winning champions and stuff like that? Anthony: Well I think it's fantastic. There is absolutely nothing to criticize although with Moonwalking with Einstein, if you go and read the reviews a lot of people are disappointed that he doesn't actually teach the techniques. He sort of glosses over them but it is really a book of cultural history and this phenomenon of what is sort of an underworld. Not that many people know about memory championships and so forth. It is a really interesting book and it has brought a lot of attention to these ancient techniques. Ed Cooke also with Memrise and the things that he does. There is a really great interview with him recently on Tim Ferriss' podcast that I recommend people listen to. At least the first hour, after that they kind of get drunk. Jonathan: They end up in the woods as that podcast often does, but it is really enjoyable how Ed kind of walks through and he tricks Tim into memorizing this list of really ridiculous stuff. Anthony: That gets back to the thing about having fun. You've really got to trick yourself into doing it then you see how much fun it is and you get hooked and things really change for you. I think that really what it comes down to, a lot of these people, not Foer or Cooke in particular, but the whole world that has been around for a long time and is just growing and growing, is a lot of people use the word system and there are no systems. There are just methods that allow you to create your own system. I think things would be a lot easier for people if more of these big names in memory would make that clear. So that is really important. I mean it has just been this kind of idea of it being a system since Giordano Bruno did his stuff in the 16th century. I don't know if people are aware of him, but he had these really complicated books that he wrote for royalty, or at least so that they would fund the printing of the books, they are always dedicated to royalty, and he just created these massive systems but he just says use these instead of here's the principles behind how I have used these for you can map your own learning style and your own interests in your own homes on top of them. So that is what a lot of these books have been about. They have been about how the other person used them but not extracting the methodology behind it and making that is clear as possible. Jonathan: I think you are absolutely right. I think the actual nuts and bolts are much more obscure. I mean down to like the nitty-gritty things like what kind of loci or locations or anchor points are better than others? Am I supposed to be storing my memories on a bookshelf or can I put a couple of memories on the bed? It's like to really nitty-gritty details of okay great, I have built my Memory Palace, how do I actually use this thing and what do I put in it and where? Anthony: Basically that has been the core of my success because I go into all of that stuff in detail. I have written more than 1000 pages just with those specifics about can you use a bed, can you use under your bed, can you go underneath the sheets. I mean every possibility I've gone through one way or the other and yet at the same time hardly a month goes by when someone doesn't email me with some new application that they are using that I never thought of before. Jonathan: It's interesting. Anthony: It's pretty crazy. Jonathan: I'd actually be very fascinated, I assume our audience would be as well, can you walk me through may be one of the first sentences you learned in another language and tell me what words are where out of curiosity? Anthony: Sentences in another language. Okay. That's interesting because I actually don't normally memorize sentences, just vocabulary, then because I know the grammar it's not that I really memorize phrase. I'm focusing more on vocabulary so nothing leaps to mind, but I can give something in English because memorizing poetry is more where I would use that. I will explain exactly how it works. There is a famous little book called the Iliad by some guy named Homer. This is a particular translation, this is Dryden's translation, there are others that you will come across is what I'm about to say doesn't quite match what you come across. It says, "Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O muse, / The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece / Unnumbered ills arose." It's not even the first sentence, but it's the first major statement. To do this I created a Memory Palace and actually I was memorizing it to demonstrate to a coaching client I had exactly how this could be done and I used her school, because she had the school, she still has school. I used the coffee room where coffee is made and then decide that there is a wall that has a painting and then there is an office that I sometimes worked in myself and then there was a classroom and that's all that was needed for this particular thing. You want me to go through that and unpack that and how that works? Jonathan: Sure, if you don't mind. I find it very fascinating. Anthony: Here is where I have to actually, because you don't really need the training wheels after a while, but basically what I saw was Brad Pitt who played Achilles in the movie Troy, and he is kicking a pail. So "Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O muse." He's kicking the pail at the Statue of Liberty who is singing and she gets hit in the head by this pail which makes her feel vengeance, and she's also at the same time digging in the dirt, "The vengeance, deep and deadly;" and throwing it at a map of Greece that has replaced this painting that's on the wall in this school. So "whence to Greece" and then I'm standing at this office door wiping away numbers on the chalkboard. "Whence to Greece unnumbered ills arose." You might notice that I'm not accounting for every single word in that line but just enough. That's an important question that a lot of people have. Do I have to have an image for every single word? And the answer is no. You just had need to have enough that you want to honor your mind and let it fill in the blanks. You say potato. I say potato. You can fill in the blanks and your mind has that kind of ability so you give it space. As beginners you might want to do word for word but it's really just a simple image. Brad Pitt kicking a pail of Statue of Liberty who is digging in the earth throwing the dirt at a map and I'm wiping away numbers. Jonathan: I noticed you compressed those symbols. We talk about this a little about this in my course create linkages between them. So it's not a statue of Brad Pitt and then a statue of a pale but rather Brad Pitt kicking the pail and that's in one location in your Memory Palace. Anthony: The real secret to it is it is a vignette that is strung along a journey and it has space in it. A lot of people will try to do that same thing inside of a single room or inside of a single image as you are suggesting, but I think that the fluidity comes from giving it space and obviously the entire Iliad would require a lot more space than this one school would offer, but that's just how it works and if you wanted to, then you could find all that space to do the entire Iliad and people do. It is not unusual actually. When you look into it there's all kinds of people walking around with entire books in their head. Jonathan: Well I think it's interesting that you said "and people do" about the Iliad because people did and one of the things I found so fascinating about Foer's book is he talks about some researchers who figured out that most of Homer's works were written and reproduced for so many years with Memory Palaces. Just by the structure of the text they were able to figure out that you wouldn't really write it this way unless someone was trying to convert it to a visual symbol, and the story would kind of double back on itself if it wasn't being somewhere along the way someone crossed their own memory journey. I think it is so fascinating because these books are known for being huge volumes, very long works that were actually committed for thousands of years to memory. Anthony: Well sure, there was only eating, drinking, going to war and memorizing. That's all they had or reciting what they memorized. Jonathan: It's amazing as a species what we did before we had these tools that in a lot of ways help us but in a lot of ways, who even knows any of their friends phone numbers anymore much less credit card numbers or anything like that. When I was a kid I knew all of my friends' phone numbers and then cell phones came out. So slowly but surely we have completely obliterated the skill of memory as a species and as a culture which is just a shame. Anthony: Well, but at same time, what is so interesting to me is that it is at the same moment that we appear to be eradicating our memory through technology, that memory techniques have basically come into a Renaissance. It is almost like a tidal wave has built the ship that will save you from the storm. Jonathan: Well also in Homer's time, someone was very lucky to come across one, or two or three or ten such stories, the entirety of mythology and stuff like that was just about everything they were learning, whereas today I try to read two books a month and I try to read ten blog posts and articles a day. We don't digest and redigest and reprocess the material. We are really going for breadth more than depth. Anthony: That's true. There was always a saying when I was a student that you are better off mastering one book than knowing 1000. To the extent, and that is a bit exaggerated, but there is that question that I often think about when I read certain things is so much of what I am reading is either ignorant of or grounded in things that I already know from having a more traditional training. That does come from knowing a few books really well rather than 1000 not so well at all, if you know what I mean. Jonathan: Actually that raises another question, if I can kind of dig a little deeper into the Magnetic Memory Method. I think there is two ways to organize. Let's say I do a lot of reading about programming and technology in general. I can organize it by here is a book that I read and every single book gets its own palace or I could be grouping, right. So any blog post that I read goes into a palace about Ruby on Rails if it happens to touch on that, just a just as an example. Do you group information book by book in its own palace or do you kind of take subjects and put them into their own palaces and many sources can feed one palace? Anthony: Well it depends what is going on. When I was studying for my dissertation defense for example, I made Memory Palaces per philosopher. It wasn't as if Jacques Derrida would mention ____ or vice versa that I would somehow have to have this big confusion of what I was going to do. It is they just independent based on who they were and that person. Incidentally those Memory Palaces had what I call a bridging figure and is bridging figures would be those would be those philosophers and just sort of follow them around through their adventures and to be able to recall the stuff. But in terms of like branching out and having tunnels between this and that, I don't deliberately build that because it builds itself anyway. It becomes what I call rhizomatic which a lot of knowledge and education is taught in a top-down tree structure, so you go from the branches down to the truck and into the roots, but a rhizome is something that is more beneath the earth and spreads out laterally and can even pop up new bulbs in ways that don't even seem connected to the original plant. It can go up/down, left/right and center, diagonal and all kinds of different kinds of permutations can just pop out at anywhere, but I think that that is best produced by having kind of a grid that you don't deliberately try to interweave too much other than you interweave it based on your understanding of the world around you using those buildings that you know to deliberately create well structured journeys and memorize stuff there and the actual connections will happen on their own. Jonathan: That is super interesting. Have you ever made a list on pen and paper or on the computer of your hundred and 83 Memory Palaces and what they contain or is that complete blasphemy? Anthony: Again, that depends on what the project is and it is not blasphemy it is insurance. It is actually the best thing to do because you are getting multiple modalities going at the same time. Basically, you asked me before about midterm and long-term memory and this is basically one really great way to use paper and pen or your computer in combination with these techniques. Let's say you've got a list of 50 words that you want to memorize and you have a 50-station Memory Palace and you actually have that Memory Palace in your mind and you have it as an Excel file. So 1 to 50 and it lists the station and it lists the words that you memorized and another column lists the meaning of the word (or one or two meanings, you don't want to overburden it at first, you can go back and add later). Then the next column has the record of the image you created. As you are going along making your associative imagery, you make a record of it you can do it with a pen on paper or you can do it with an Excel file and then you are going to go and remove yourself from that source material. No books, no dictionaries, no computer, nothing. Just you, a piece of paper and a writing device, pen or pencil. Then you reproduce everything from your mind and you go and check it against the record. Jonathan: Wow! Anthony: That's the full-bore method. Again, you can do this the forward and back and from the middle to the end and all those different ways that I was talking about but do it on paper completely from your mind and you are achieving multiple things at the same time. You are deepening your knowledge of your Memory Palaces and your memory techniques. You are deepening your knowledge of what it is that you are studying. You are deepening your ability to use imagination, imagery and actions and you are deepening your discipline to actually sit and be able to reproduce information from your mind and then you are rewarding yourself going back to that list and seeing, oh my goodness, this is 90 percent correct, 98 percent correct, 88 percent correct and it gives you the basis to make corrections and go back and say, well that man hitting a cat with toast is really not working. I have got to make that cat battle tighter or whatever and you can make corrections and that again makes you more imaginative and it gives you more exposure to what it is that you are trying to memorize. So it is just a completely different way of approaching information and working with information that is fun and exciting and more interesting than just trying to hammer it into your head with pure raw repetition. Jonathan: I think you have inspired me. I've been working on Russian with the tips you gave me last time but I think I'm going to try to commit it to actual physical locations in a Memory Palace. The only issue is Pushkin, who the Russians love to admire, and they have this saying that "Pushkin is our everything." Their language is what they are most proud of in their culture. The guy knew 50,000 words, which is why there is a lot rumors about him similar to there were about Shakespeare that there could not have been one person writing this work. So I am going to need to really start accumulating quite a bit of Memory Palaces. Maybe one for words that start with O and one for words that start with P and so on and so forth. Anthony: A lot of people think I'm pretty crazy for suggesting that. But the benefit of doing that is you don't have to learn 50,000 words because when you are using an alphabetized Memory Palace system you are actually studying how those language works in a much more detailed way to the point that you can just start guessing what words mean. You are not going to be right all the time but your familiarity with the structure of the words and how they are patterned out develops really in this rhizomatic that I was suggesting. So you can read quite easily and you know we do it in our own mother tongue anyway. We read and go, "Oh, what does that word mean again or I never heard that word," but you get the context and you just keep going or you make note of it and check it out later. I mean 50,000 words in Russian would be absolutely fantastic but whether it is a requirement to understand Pushkin I don't know. Jonathan: I would be happy with 10,000 words at this point. The words, like I said, are only a very small part of the challenge of such a complex language. You mentioned in the beginning of the podcast memorizing cards and I happen to pick up as I was doing my research for this podcast, you actually just released a new course on Udemy on memorizing cards. Tell me about that. I've never actually had the motivation to do it myself. I know how it's done and some of the latest techniques in compressing but explain why someone would want to learn that skill, and why it might appeal. Anthony: There are lots of reasons why. It is one of those things, again, where it just sounds absolutely crazy. Why would anybody want to do this? Jonathan: Unless they are going to Vegas, in which case you know if you can memorize four decks of cards in order you might be in pretty good shape. Anthony: You would certainly give yourself a small advantage, you know like maybe a 1 to 2 percent advantage but especially if you can do number calculation system as well like with blackjack. I just gave that example from the Iliad and I talked about having space in between things. One thing that makes my card memory a method rather than a system is unique is it teaches you to create that space between things. It is not necessarily the fastest way to memorize cards and I don't teach it as a speed drill as such, although you will get faster. I teach it as a creativity drill and getting better at using locations in combination with images. So if you are interested in memory techniques, that is one thing that it will help you do. You can apply these card drills to everything else you want to memorize and it is something you can do for 5 minutes before you memorize foreign language vocabulary just to get the mind warm. There is other benefits also just in terms of being something you can carry around with you to practice and you can get apps for it as well. You are just studying how your mind is working. You are thinking about your creative imagination. . You are applying your creative imagination and there is also so something to the repetitiveness of it. So it is kind of like running where you get to a jogger's high. You train yourself to feel that and you can apply that feeling to other things. Jonathan: Fascinating. So it's a very good way to practice the entire methodology in a standardized way. Every deck of cards, you know, standardized deck of cards looks the same, has the same characters and so people all over the world I guess are practicing the skill and it is a great way to develop subsets of that skill that can then be applied to memorizing credit cards and phone numbers. Is that what kind of what you're saying? Anthony: Yes and the other thing that is neat about it is it is a real nice combination of concrete and abstract things. That is a really great thing to have mastery of especially if you're going to learn foreign language vocabulary and grammar principles. You recognize it, you know what letters are, you know what sounds are, those are the concrete parts and yet what their meaning is completely abstract. So what is the meaning of seven of diamonds, nothing. But you learn to apply meaning to it because you create it through a process into an image and by taking things that are largely abstract and applying imagery to them you get very good very fast at applying that to anything else. Jonathan: Right and any new piece of knowledge, especially with foreign languages for example, you start out with something like the 7 of hearts that means nothing right now and needs to soon mean something very real and tangible and memorable to you. So I can definitely see how learning to apply that would have huge repercussions, positive repercussions for anything you want to learn. Anthony: The way I teach it is actually quite different than most people teach it. So definitely explore other things and if you do listen to that Ed Cooke interview and see some of his videos on YouTube he has a completely different way of doing it and mine is less arbitrary. So if you are into that kind of way that he approaches or the Dominick method of approaching it, that's totally fine but there is a way that is much less arbitrary and based more snuggly on principles they can reduce some of that arbitrariness. Jonathan: very cool. So I really enjoyed it. Actually the last time I listen to your podcast it happened to be in an episode where you shared a message that you had from a student who was really impacted by your methods and I found that (a) to be a really great thing to include in a podcast, but (B) super inspirational. Do you have any recent stories that you have gotten our recent messages that you might want to share about some student's success? Anthony: I mean almost every day something comes but there was a student who was really stressed out about the exams that he had coming up and it was actually really nice he had never even really bought anything yet but just sort of cobbled everything together from my podcasts and he thanked me and he said, "I got 98 percent on this test and it was just unbelievable." Then he bought my Master Class (www.MagneticMemoryMethod.com) which is not on Udemy but its own separate thing and it was just kind of like this big thank you because of the results that he got from the Magnetic Memory Method. Yes, there is people all around the world. I heard from a guy in Italy who is just super happy that he is making so much progress with the dictionary that he got. I suggested that he look at a particular kind of dictionary that he was able to find. It is just incredible. I heard from a law student today who is working on Latin and in order to get a better understanding of the law and he is doing really great. He is even teaching this approach at school now and the dean has invited him to give a presentation about it. It is really just spreading like wildfire, this particular approach which is great. I am very happy that if it's just even gets interest in memory techniques in and of itself. Because to me that is really the most important thing is that people just start to see the magic and the power of this and just do something because there is so much suffering in the world that has to do with memory and there is so much opportunity that is lost because people cannot achieve their goals without it, and that suffering is simply just not necessary. Jonathan: Definitely. I also struggled a great deal through high school. To a larger extent, you know when a lot of the memory stuff was happening with when I was a lot younger. I just suffered and suffered through history class and through math class largely because of memory. There is no real teaching of this in academia which I just find mind-boggling. Nobody ever stopped and explained to me that I needed to create visual memories not until after college. I was lucky to run into someone like yourself who is an expert, and I tell the whole story kind of in my courses, but I just think what if I had never encountered this and I went through my entire life thinking that there was this huge barrier to learning. Today I am learning how to podcast, and I'm learning how to blog, and I'm learning all this different kind of stuff that it doesn't faze me at all to approach a new language in my free time because learning has become this fun, friction-free process, and I just think what a shame that people think they have to suffer to learn. Anthony: There are all kinds of theories about why schools exist in the first place. I don't necessarily want to get into that. For anybody who is suffering with school, know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and you can start using these things now to make your school experience a whole lot more enjoyable if you are still somewhere in the middle of the road. Jonathan: Definitely. I have also heard from a number of my students, if you are dealing in and at traditional academic setting where concessions are made for the fact that learning is very hard for people who do it wrong to be kind of not politically correct. Once you start using these kind of techniques, the kind that you and I both teach, it becomes like fishing with dynamite. At least 98 percent test results are pretty common among people who know how to apply the proper methods and I just think that is so much fun that you probably have students all over the world who are setting the curve and really angering their classmates and it is simple stuff that is accessible online and takes a little bit of training. Anthony: I think that thing about angering their fellow classmates, one thing that I always try to do in just about every message that I send if you have learned something from this is pass it on because two things happen. You get better at them, because something taught is something learned twice and you also get to help those other people. There is no competition in the world. People who are tied up in competition are really just hurting themselves. But fishing with dynamite is a great metaphor and I think that also raises the important thing that you and I as teachers, and if you do take up these skills, becoming a teacher of them is that we really need people who know how to fish and are not waiting for fish to land in their boat. That has really been my great passion in and how I approach teaching in terms of showing how it is done rather than getting a lot of examples on how to do it. Jonathan: Definitely and that is without a doubt one of the most rewarding if not the most rewarding part of teaching is forget the ego boost, forget all of that stuff is when you get an email from a kid who has been seeing a psychiatrist for years and years about severe ADD and stuff like that and all of a sudden gets to stop seeing that psychiatrist. The psychiatrist cuts him back to once every 2-month meetings because hey, you are getting 90 percent on all of your exams and you are not having suicidal thoughts before every exam. That is a really impactful thing. So what is next for you if you do not mind sharing, what are you working on? Anthony: I am about to release a book on sleeping. Jonathan: Really? That is actually another topic that you and I share a lot of interest in. Do tell. Anthony: Well it is probably one of the more unique books on sleeping that is out there. I've certainly never encountered anything like this and I have been using it for years. The book, and it will eventually be a video course, is called The Ultimate Sleep Remedy, How To Fall Asleep Anytime And Anyplace With Ease, The Life-Changing No-Nonsense Rapid Results Guide To Getting A Better Rest And More Sanity In Your Waking Life which is one of these great long titles. Jonathan: I was going to say do you have a Memory Palace to remember the title when people ask you at cocktail parties? Anthony: Well you have to when you write titles that long. Basically, one of the things about a lot of sleep remedy books and training and stuff like that is if they tell you shouldn't stay in bed if you can't sleep and go out of bed until you feel tired and then go back to bed. That is something that I have found that is true to a certain extent, but there is a better way. I talk about that. The other thing is that there are all kinds of sleep rituals. Like brush your teeth at the same time and go to the bathroom 2 hours before you sleep or whatever. We are not robots. Nobody is going to brush their teeth at the same time every night. What we need is the ability to lay down in bed and fall asleep. So what I teach is being comfortable lying in bed no matter how painful it is to sit there and not be able to sleep and learn to be comfortable in that situation. That is the true path to sleeping at will basically. Is just to think about sleep completely differently and think about lying in bed differently. I wrote a whole book about it. Jonathan: Amazing! I have two questions on that. The first is do you think you can teach to fall asleep sitting up because I'm one of these guys if I am not lying on either my stomach or my side it's not going to happen which makes long haul flights absolutely miserable. Anthony: Well yes, I think this would work for sitting up and I have sort of used it that way in terms of just being generally relaxed but not as a sleep remedy but I am sure that it will address that need as well. Jonathan: My second question, and you've already sold me, my second question is are you a believer in in biphasic or polyphasic sleep? Anthony: I don't know that much about it and I've done some reading about and experiments and so forth. But again, it's kind of one of these things where I'm personally not such a person that has such rhythms and to even try to get on the surfboard and let alone ride the wave is just going to be not something that I would gladly happily do and just the rhythms of my day don't respond it. It would just be a losing battle to do that kind of like hacking. Jonathan: I have found, specifically in grad school, I found that the nap worked really well but anything above that, you know getting into the two, three, four naps a day just completely wreaked havoc on my lifestyle. So I thought I would ask if you similarly had experimented with it. Anthony: Well I certainly have used napping but there is a moment in napping where your brain will start to secrete chemicals that put you into the position of longer-term sleeping so that is why you often feel hung over and worse off than when you went to sleep. I think that meditation has always worked better for me. Jonathan: You read my mind. Anthony: But again, it is not like with the clock, ding-ding time to meditate or anything like that. I think that the real power with meditation is actually to meditate all the time. It's like nonstop shopping. You just develop a kind of awareness and of course that awareness is broken but you can get it longer and longer and longer and become more conscious and aware for greater lengths of time and then combine that was sitting. I always loved Alan Watts' idea of sitting just to sit and as being the ultimate meditation. Jonathan: When you say sit, I mean a lot of meditation enthusiasts use the term "sit" and they actually mean sit meditation. I get the sense that you mean just sit quietly eyes open kind of thing? Anthony: Yes, because basically what happens if you sit just to sit, then you are going to fall into those other sorts of techniques and strategies anyway. You are going to sit there and you are going to be aware eventually that you are just sitting there and you will start to laugh or whatever and you will come into basically "enlightenment" and the enlightenment is only 5 minutes away. It is just sitting just to sit and just wait for something to happen. Don't move until something happens and you will know enlightenment very quickly. At least that is my feeling and I have developed it to a certain thing but I just love these moments were I am just walking around the streets and I went shopping or whatever and I suddenly catch myself not present at all and I just start to laugh because it is just the most hilarious thing to be mindless. Jonathan: Yes and it is the most common thing on the planet as well. I think in a vast majority of people just by the way we live our lives we spend a lot of our time even once we are aware of presence and mindfulness, we spend the vast majority of our time caught up in a lot of minutia that pulls us out of kind of our present state. Anthony: There is no one who is free from it but there are varying degrees of freedom and it is definitely worth cultivating because it can really change your life in some very powerful ways. Jonathan: And your brain, which I think is really interesting and they are starting to do a lot more research. I have my ticklers that send me whenever there is new research about this but they are really starting to understand the neurological changes caused by meditation and presence and even stuff like positive affirmations are literally changing the mechanical structure of your brain. I think that for anyone who is taking anti depression medication or attention deficit medication that is a really exciting prospect like I can sit for 20 minutes a day and I can change my neurochemistry for free. That has got to be one of the most exciting things happening in science to me. Anthony: It is actually pretty amazing because you can get free opium and all you have to do is sit for 20 minutes to get it or even shorter periods of time. Jonathan: Right, without the withdrawal Anthony: In fact it is totally without the withdrawal. It has the opposite effect. It is give me more withdrawal whatever. Jonathan: You sit, and when I say sit I mean meditate, eyes closed, focus on breathing kind of thing. Do you sit every day? Anthony: I do all kinds of things. So I will sit. One of the most powerful medications that I ever learned was the corner exercise which is just to find the corner of something and look at it and then start to be able to look at the space around it and see that air is really a kind of Jell-O that is pushing against everything and that object is pushing against the Jell-O and it is just kind of a neat way to blend yourself into presence in the room and think about that air pressing upon you as kind of like really a Jell-O. Air is an object and in and of itself an object filled with many objects. So I will do that and I also do certain kinds of breathing when I feel like it or I don't and I really like something called psychic nostril breathing which is without using your finger to hold down a nostril, you just imagine the air is coming up your left nostril and out your right nostril and then up your right nostril and out the left nostril and you just sort of cycle that. Then you can combine that with something called Pendulum Breathing. Pendulum Breathing is breeding in and then breathing in again and breathing out and breathing out again and you swing your breath that way and you combine those two things together, it's a little bit like syncopated drumming, but once you get used to it is just an incredible thing in and of itself and you don't do it for any kind of end goal. You do it just to do it while you are sitting just to sit in the most incredible things happen. Jonathan: Right. I think that is really cool because a lot of beginners, myself included, start with a very common meditation practice and you are supposed to sit there just focus on your breathing and inevitably your breathing is not very interesting. So I like the idea of making it a little more interesting. Sometimes my breathing won't captivate my attention so I will listen to our feel my heart rate but I will definitely try that out, in twice and then out twice. Anthony: What do you think about combining meditation with technology? Jonathan: You know I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand you have this very pure beautiful practice that is estimated to be about 5000 years old. In a lot of ways it shares that characteristic with the Memory Palace. You don't need a technological innovation to use a Memory Palace. It is something that we as humans have kind of inherited down from ancestry and I think there is beauty in that. On the other hand, I think it is an amazing way to connect to millions of people and if you look at an app like Headspace or Calm, these apps are all over the news and they are raising awareness and they are creating what some people call the mindfulness revolution. I think that is great. I personally got into meditation because someone told me to try out Headspace and I tried their 10-day trial, at which point I decided that, no matter how lovely Dr. Andy's accent was, I'd probably be better off with just some noise isolating headphones. But I will tell you one piece of technology that I've been very excited and very disappointed by is kind of home ECG. So I have this had been sitting here that is supposed to measure my brain waves and tell me how I am doing and help me understand the changes in my brain. How are my alpha waves changing? How my delta waves changing over time? I think that is really motivating and really exciting. The technology is definitely not there yet and I'm looking forward to a time when that will be there. But I don't know what you think about it? Anthony: I am not that big of a fan either but there is some benefit to it sometimes. I really like an app called Stillpoint, which plays three different kinds of sounds and you can mix them. So you have like a baseline, not a bass guitar line, but a baseline sound and then you can add like some sort of heartbeat or something like that and then you can add a periodic ohm are periodic tootle-lou or whatever. You've got different options and when my mind is really sped up, sometimes I will go to that because it is just really pleasant to listen to and really does provide a point of focus that I may not be able to give for myself. Jonathan: Interesting. Is it a little bit like binaural beats? Anthony: Yes, except for without the binaural stuff. I mean I don't know, to tell you the truth, I didn't memorize the packaging when I got it but it really struck me as being quite interesting because it wasn't really in that sort of fringe of science and I'm not that studied in what research they have done but it was just kind of like this is just sounds that you can put together to help you focus and no real claims above that were beyond it. But you reminded me of something when you mentioned 4000 years of meditation and a lot of people think the Memory Palace technique came from ancient Greece but the reality is that it did, except for that it also came from the ancient East and a lot of the Buddhist meditations used location-based memorization. Jonathan: Really! Anthony: For example, I learned a meditation one time and I thought man this is a Memory Palace. I mean it is one of those specific meditations where you are not just sitting to sit but you are actually doing stuff. The teacher said imagine that you are in this temple and at this particular location there is a bridge and as you walk across the bridge you see all these people at the bottom of the bridge and they are throwing stones at you trying to make you fall down. At the other end of the bridge you are at a party and everybody is cheering you on and offering you food and wine. Then over at this corner of the temple imagine this big black dog and that dog is always chasing you and that is the representation of death, and then it went on and on. I remember this because I am going through my mind right now thinking of all these things. This is 10 years ago that I had done this meditation and so all of these things represent stuff. Like the people throwing rocks at you are reminding you to remember all of the people you dislike or that you consider his enemies and forgive them. The people at the party are also your friends but you forget them they are trying to poison you with all the good stuff or whatever. And the dog is death literally always behind you and you practice the meditation realizing that death is coming. It is a Memory Palace basically. Jonathan: Fascinating! Anthony: And that meditation is thousands of years old. Jonathan: Amazing! So Anthony I don't want to take up too much of your time. I know you are quite a prolific man and you have very much lived up to your Miles Davis nickname from your PhD dissertation. I know you are doing books. You are doing podcasts, Udemy courses. You also have a Master Course that apparently I really need to check out. If listeners want to learn more about you or maybe start training in the Magnetic Memory Method, where did they start finding all this different material? Anthony: Well, what I would really like to do is give listeners to your podcast some worksheets and a free video series which you can find here. Jonathan: Awesome, that would be perfect. I know that there is so much different stuff that you have put out there and you know thousands of pages on whether or not I should be storing Brad Pitt in my bed that I would love to speed read through so I'm actually going to check that link out myself. Anthony: Yeah you've just got to decide above the sheets, below the sheets or Jonathan: I think it depends if it is a female listener or a male listener. Anthony: Yeah, but for people who are listening to this and who are really interested there are worksheets and there are videos that will make it a lot more concrete and you can see what is going on. Jonathan: Awesome and we are going to put up notes to all the different resources, some of which I'm going to research myself, different links we talked about, books, stuff like that, it will all be up on our website. Anthony: Cool. Jonathan: Awesome. Anthony thanks so much for your time it has been a real pleasure as always chatting with you. Anthony: Well thank you and keep up all the good work and I can't wait for the next time. Jonathan: Awesome take care. Further Resources Jonathan Levi's Becoming A Superhuman Podcast Download the transcript of this interview as a PDF The post How To Develop Superhuman Memory Skills appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

The thought of memory improvement excites you, doesn't it? But then you start reading all the books and watching the videos and within seconds … Improving your memory suddenly starts to feel like a lot of hard work! It's understandable. Using a Memory Palace, associative-imagery and practicing Recall Rehearsal can be tough. It involves a lot of moving parts. But if you've gotten hold of my free Memory Improvement Kit, then you know that in reality, it's actually pretty simple. But if you're not interested in beelining directly towards total memory mastery, no sweat. Here are three games and exercises you can play starting today. They will exercise your memory, move the muscles of your imagination and renew access to parts of yourself you've probably long forgotten. Warning! Before we get started, you'll need something to write with. And what you're about to experience could well change your life forever. (In a good way, of course.) And when I say write, I mean "write." Sure, you can play these memory games by writing in Evernote or whatever. But don't. You'll get more from them by using old-fashioned pencil and paper. You can also use your mind on its own too. These exercises can be completed while daydreaming on a park bench or wherever you find yourself. But with writing, the pages you fill will prove to you that your mind is a vast place with many recesses. And you'll enjoy the exercise more when you see what emerges from the depths of your imagination. Plus, you'll be able to feel the weight of your memory in the paper on your hands. And that is a sensation you can't get from any app in the world. (Though a device that gets heavier the more information it contains could be a fun option for those who want to go on a data diet!) Do These Things Now If You Want To Improve Your Memory Without Sweat, Blood Or Tears 1. Make a list of all the places you can remember visiting. Start local and go back as far as you can remember. For example, here are some of the first places that I remember visiting: Where my dad used to train his duck hunting dogs The farm at Tranquille where my mom used to work A chocolate factory we visited on a field trip in Kindergarten Immerse yourself in these memories. Think about colors, smells, textures. Recall the people you were with and call up as many people as you can. Then you can start listing other towns and cities. Again, go as deep into the past as you can. I remember flying to Prince Rupert with my dad where he bought me cowboy boots. Get All The Memory Guidance You Need From Someone Close To Home Next, take these early memories and ask someone in your family to give them your version. When I press my memory for sensory detail, I remember nothing of the flight. But I do have glimpses of how the city looked, and I can smell beer on my dad's breath. For bonus points in your own memory play, move from the deep past up until the present. And do your best to establish a linear time line so you have a feeling for the chronology. But at this point … Don't Worry About Exact Dates … … except for seasons if your sensory memory provides them. For example, in my first memory of watching my dad train one of the dogs, he's wearing the white sweater my mom knit for him. Although there was no snow on the ground on those mountain plains, white clouds were shooshing from the dog's noise as it ran after the dummy. And I remember my dad letting me the starter pistol and how cold it felt in my hand. These details make it safe to assume it was Fall. Once you've gotten your sensory details gathered, come back and add dates if you wish for an extra memory massage. For that you should learn the Major Method for memorizing numbers. Or you can proceed the next of our memory games: 2. Recall the names of every classmate you can remember. Again, go as deep into the past as you can. From preschool, I remember Ryan and Clayton. Ryan moved away with his family in grade one, but I would know Clayton for many years to come. I believe the last time I saw him was grade nine, and we've only had a quick series of exchanges on Facebook since. For each friend you can remember from this deepest place … Fill In As Many Sensory And Narrative Details As You Can … Recall their homes, their parents and your activities together. With Ryan, I remember a white house at the top of a lawned hill with a backyard with white wood fences on either side and a chicken coup at the back. We played downstairs, and he once proudly displayed an American dollar. His mom worked for the Buy & Sell newspaper, and I distinctly remember eating tomato soup. With Clayton, I remember much more. It would take a novella to write it all out, but I find sharp highlights in my memory. These include building blanket tents, watching Chuck Norris movies during sleepovers, going to the pool, smoking cigarettes for my first time and once getting our bikes taken by weird apple orchard farmers for trespassing. Later our bad-ass dads, both bikers, spun by on their Harleys and sorted things out. Clayton's bikes were always cooler than mine, but I was happy nonetheless to get mine back. Amazing, Isn't It? There's a ton of detail tumbling around in the depths of my memory. And yours too! But the point of all these examples isn't to wow you with the details of my life. I mean only to show how much amazing information lays dormant in your mind. Do a little spade work and when you hit a pipe, you'll be amazed by the valuable oil that gushes out. And your memory will get an easy workout. The exercise will expand your sense of place and time. And the more friends and classmates you list, the more you'll enjoy the wines of those times you haven't thought of forever. 3. Recall the Rules of Childhood Games First, list all the games you can remember playing: Tag Hopscotch Hide and go seek Although with these games, there's not a huge amount of rules to remember, you can still pull up sounds, sensations and locations. You may also recall different versions and hear the sounds of your playmates in your ears. Then move on to card games and board games: Go Fish Monopoly Uno I can distinctly remember the friends of my parents visiting to play Uno. The sensory parts are easy, but it's a workout to remember the rules. Plus, it's inspiring to think about how on earth I could have understood those rules at such a young age. From there you can list video games and role playing games. I remember Pong as the coolest thing on earth, Chuck Norris and Tron for Coleco, Pacman and Space Invaders for Atari and Contra for Nintendo. The list goes on and on. The more you press your memory for the details and rules of each game, the more fitness your memory will receive. Did You Like Learning About These Games? I hope so. Obviously, these are memory games you can come back to again and again. And it took me less than an hour to draft what you're reading now. Just think of what you can do yourself in a cafe some afternoon using nothing more than a pen, pencil and that special thing called memory floating between your ears. Want to learn more about how to improve your memory? Check out this FREE Memory Improvement Kit and learn how to build a Memory Palace so you can learn, memorize and recall anything at any time, anywhere and under any circumstances. Further Resources How to Teach Your Kids Memory Techniques 3 Simple Exercises That Make Your Life Worth Remembering 5 Brain Exercises That Ensure Memory Improvement The post 3 Memory Games You Can Play With Your Childhood appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

How Much Would The Quality Of Your Life Skyrocket If You Could Remember More About Your Daily Life? The days rush by, don't they? And it can be hard to remember what exactly happened. Forgetfulness about your own life is not only frustrating, but it's downright painful. At least … It should be. And that's the problem, isn't it? You get bothered by certain things and yet … You Do Absolutely Nothing To Make Changes! But what if I were to tell you that there's one simple thing you can do to remember more about your life? And what if I told you that this one thing is also fun and will even make you more productive too? If that sounds interesting to you, then keep reading each and every word on this page. Why? Because the simple activity I want to share with you is the kind of game changer you simply cannot afford to ignore. Do You Wake Or Sleep? That's what Keats asked himself back in May of 1819 when he wrote Ode to a Nightingale. Check it out. It's well worth memorizing. The cool thing about Keats is that he wrote letters. Lots of them. No email. No fax. Heck, Keats didn't even have a laser jet printer. But he still wrote. Every single freakin' day. And then he got tuberculosis and died. But here's the thing: It's Scientifically Proven That If You Write Every Day You Will Remember More About Your Life! Not only that, but by writing every day about your daily activities, your experience of time expands. In other words, you not only remember more, but you feel like you have had more time on a daily basis in which to remember more. Pretty cool, right? Well, I don't know if it'll be cool for you or not, so … You Absolutely Have To Try It! Seriously, just do it. Here are 3.5 amazing ways to give writing about your daily life a try. Journal When You Get Up Every Morning You know how fitness freaks talk about keeping their running shoes beside their beds so they don't forget to get fit first thing every morning? You can do the same thing every morning with your journaling. Seriously. Go out and buy the fattest journal you can find and the hugest pencil or pen. Plop those puppies on the floor where you normally place your feet when you get out of bed and just try ignoring them every morning. When I've done this, I take the journal with me to the washroom. And yes, even as a man, I sit down for this even if I'm engaging only duty number one. (Hey, if you can kill two birds with one wet stone, why not?) For bonus points, write down any dreams you remember as well. This practice also expands your sense of time because dream journaling expands your awareness of how time passes while you sleep. Trust me. Just Try It There's an entire course about remembering your dreams in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass if you need more help. But even if you don't go through all that training, here's the thing: If you just commit to writing down your dreams, you'll be amazed by what will happen in your life. And if you can't remember any dreams, don't worry. Write that down. It's as simple as one sentence: "I didn't remember any dreams." Believe it or not, that simple exercise will help you remember dreams, no matter how skeptical you might be. But I know, I know. You might be thinking, "What If I'm not a morning person?" No problemo. Here's … The Amazing Secret Of Writing Magical "Remember More" Spells Before You Turn Into Pumpkin I don't know about you, but I have rules about when I go to bed that I try to keep, almost religiously. It helps me keep the blues away, burn more fat, build more muscle and, of course, remember more dreams. And if you want to remember more about what happened during your day, put that plump journal square on your pillow. That way you won't be able to ignore it come bed time. Next, set a timer for five minutes (or even less) and write down everything you remember about your day. Don't Overthink This Activity! Just write whatever comes to mind starting with breakfast. And don't judge yourself. Nothing you write is stupid or insignificant. That little voice in your mind that's always trying to wreck everything will tell you the entire exercise is dumb, but put a gag on it. Trust me. That jerk doesn't have a clue what he, she (or it) is talking about. For bonus points, put the journal where your feet hit the floor first thing in the morning and then write down your dreams when you get up. And yes, you should even make note of it when you can't remember any dreams at all. We know that even one simple sentence acknowledging that you can't remember any dreams can (and most likely will) trigger dream recall. If none of these suggestions appeal to you, try this technique on for size: The Miraculous Memory ­Improving Wonders Of Having An Accountability Partner Sarah Peterson from Unsettle.org is my accountability partner. We write each other 3-­4 times a week, sometimes more. We do this exchange for two purposes: 1) To tell each other what we've been up to. This practice automatically helps us remember more of what we've been doing with our days. 2) To tell each other what we're going to do next. Each simple report on what's coming up for us in our businesses massively increases the chances that we'll actually follow through. And when you follow through, the effects are magical. Stuff gets done. Pretty sweet, right? You Bet It Is. Sweeter Than Candy Wrapped In Magnetic Memory Silver! So here's your homework: Ask a friend who you know is keen on getting more out of life to be your accountability partner. Don't overthink this process. Just whip out an email to the first person that comes to mind. And if you need a quick template to kick your butt into motion, here's a template for you; "Hey [insert name], I was just listening to the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast and Anthony was talking about how having an accountability partner can help you remember more about our life and even be more productive on a daily basis. I know that you're trying to achieve [insert goal] and you know I'd love to [insert goal]. How would you feel about emailing each other every day or every couple of days to check in and see where we're both at. Let me know and I'll send you his podcast with more info on how it works and we'll get our accountability party started. Sincerely, [Your name] Pretty easy, right? Well, you don't have to take my word for it. You can get in contact with Sarah here and she'll give you her side of the story and some cool free stuff that will make you even more productive too. I never tell Sarah about any of the dreams I remember, but now that I'm putting this lesson in remembering more about your life together, maybe I should … In any case … Just make sure to ask permission before you start spilling the contents of your unconscious mind into your accountability emails. You don't want to freak your partner out or distract from the matter at hand: remembering more about your daily activities and becoming more productive in a targeted manner. And if all of these ideas still don't appeal because you're simply not into writing (but still want memory improvement), here's … How To Supercharge Your Memory By Keeping An Audio Or Video Journal It's pretty easy. Here's what you do: 1. Get a device that records video and/or audio 2. Press record 3. Let it all out. And to show you how it's done, I've made made that quick example video for you on the day I wrote this post. Just scroll up to the top and watch it from beginning to end. I show you how to keep a journal and improve your memory in three ways by giving you an example of this third way. No need to share these recordings like I've done on a YouTube channel or podcast, but heck, why not? You never know: It might go viral and you'll wind being the next internet celebrity, win new friends and positively influence people. Stranger things have happened. So here's the ultimate question: Are you down with one of these daily journaling techniques? If so, just get started. I guarantee that you'll remember more about your life and, yes, be more productive. And if all that weren't enough, I invite you to learn how to improve your memory even more by claiming this free Memory Improvement Kit. It'll show you how to create and use a Memory Palace so you can learn, memorize and recall anything in a way that is simple, easy, elegant and fun. Till next time … Keep Magnetic! The post How To Keep A Journal And Remember More appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

How Would You Like A Quote That Will Change Your Life – And Your Memory – For The Better? If the answer is yes, then pay attention to every word of this quote and my commentary on it. But prepare yourself … This quote may well contain the most important set of thoughts you will ever read. "To young writers I give only two secrets that really exist… all the other hints of Rosetta Stones are jiggery-pokery. The two secrets are these: First, the most important book you can ever read, not only to prepare you as a writer, but to prepare you for life, is not the Bible or some handbook on syntax. It is the complete canon of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Holmes mysteries are nailed to the fixed point of logic and rational observation. They teach that ratiocination, and a denial of paralogia, go straight to the heart of Pasteur's admonition that "Chance favors the prepared mind." The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted. From Doyle's stories an awakened intelligence can learn a system of rational behavior coupled with an ability to bring the process of deductive logic to bear on even the smallest measure of day-to-day existence. It works in life, and it works in art. We call it the writer's eye. And that, melded to talent and composure, is what one can find in the work of every fine writer. The second secret, what they never tell you, is that yes, anyone can become a writer…. The trick is not to become a writer, it is to stay a writer. Day after day, year after year, book after book. And for that, you must keep working, even when it seems beyond you. In the words-to-live-by of Thomas Carlyle, "Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou has in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work." All that, and learn the accurate meaning of "viable," do not pronounce it noo-kew-ler, understand the difference between "in a moment" and "momentarily," and don't say "hopefully" when you mean "it is to be hoped" or "one hopes." Because, for one last quotation, as Molly Haskell has written: "language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it." This quote comes from Harlan Ellison. It has got so much packed into it – and that's not even to mention the quotes inside the quote. Why Reading Properly Is The Ultimate Cure To Ignorance Here's a secret: A lot of people read. Except that they aren't really reading. What does it mean to read a book? I talk about this in the podcast episode How To Memorize A Textbook. So if you haven't checked it out, give it a listen. In brief, it shoes you how to memorize the right parts of a book, not every page. A lot of people think they need to memorize an entire book, but it isn't true. There's a circular question that's been going round for thousands of years: Is it better to learn and memorize thousands of books to get a broad education? Or is it better to know just a few books better than most people ever will? The Answer Is Pretty Simple! The best book that you ever read, the most important book you can ever read is the book that you actually read. Of course, it's up to you which book you read. You don't have to take Ellison's advice that it must be Sherlock Holmes. Ellison asks us to see a life lesson in Holmes: "Chance favors the prepared mind." And that's really what Holmes is all about. After all, using Memory Palaces or Mind Palaces is the ultimate preparation. At the same time, it's not really that Holmes has some super intellect or that he uses Memory Palaces or that he is more intelligent than anyone else. It's just that he has a prepared mind. And this leads us back to this idea of reading a thousand books or reading one book. Memorize! Memorize! Memorize! Do you remember the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast episode How to Tap the Mind of a Ten‑Year-Old Memory Palace Master? In it, I interviewed Alicia Crosby, the 10‑year-old who used Memory Palaces to memorize all of the Shakespeare plays in historical order by title. Not the actual content of the plays, mind you, but the title of every play – which is still an extraordinary feat. On the interview, we also heard from her father. Together, they were talking motorcycle rides and making Memory Palaces along the way. These Memory Palaces were filled with beautiful stations found along the way. All done at speed. And that's a beautiful thing. But (and with respect to my speedreading friends) … Reading At Speed Is Not Always The Best Way To Invite Information Into Your Mind! During the interview, I told a story from Kafka. In that story, a young man has to travel to a different city to get to work. Day in and day out, he takes the train. Then one day he misses the train, so he has to take a bicycle. When he gets to the town, he sees this old man who is sitting on a bench. He says to the old man, "My, I have never noticed so much about this journey, but now that I've taken a bicycle, wow, this is amazing. I noticed so much detail. I became aware of so many things that were never evident to me before." The old man says, "Yeah, well just wait and see what you discover when you walk next time." There's No Shame In Slowing Down This story from Kafka is about slowing down. It is about actively noticing the world around you. And being prepared to do so. This man on the bike – he wasn't prepared at all. In fact, as he was constantly taking the train, life was passing him by. All the different details whizzed past so that he never had a chance to memorize anything because he was just not paying attention to anything. But slowing things down by taking the bike, made so many details evident. And for the kicker ending, as the old man suggests, walking makes the details of the world even more evident. The World Becomes Eye-Catching When You Walk "Psychogeographically" Have you ever read Will Self? If not, check out his book Psychogeography. Psychogeography is the idea that you can walk to an airport, for example, get on a plane and then walk to your hotel. According to self, your body will not know that you haven't walked to New York. For example, Self talks about flying from Heathrow in London to JFK in New York and how going by foot to the airport and then walking from the airport to his hotel tricked his body into thinking he walked the whole way. Now, to the extent that Self's procedure actually tricks your mind, I don't know, but the term "psychogeography" certainly is an appropriate because when you walk, you can notice more things. And the more things you notice, the more things you can notice. Just like with learning, the more you can learn, the more you can learn because you have more of a basis upon which to ground more learning. Fantastic, right? Good. Then Just Do It And then take another look at the Thomas Carlyle quote Harlan Ellison gives us. In it, Carlyle is saying, "Produce! Produce!" Do something. Do it. And whatever you have before you to do, do it with your entire mind, and with your entire body. Do it with your entire soul. Get in there and do it. Do it in a way that is whole and complete, in a way that has a beginning and a middle and an end. Why? Because as Carlyle says, "the Night cometh," and nobody can work in the night. What is night in this quote? Night Is Death Look, most of us work with half our butt hanging out of our pants. We're not fully involved in our work. We are half involved in it. We're a quarter involved in it. Maybe we're even just 10 percent involved in it (or less). That's no good. Worse … It's No Way To Live! And so that's why being prepared with memory techniques and Memory Palaces is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Why? Because you are able to focus on information in a completely different way, at a much deeper level, at a 100 percent level. Don't you think that's much better than passively trying to get information into your memory? Or do you prefer hoping or praying or wishing on a cloud that what you need to learn will osmosisize itself into your brain? Here's The Ugly Truth … It ain't gonna happen! Or at least, it's not going to happen in any way that is nearly as miraculous, magical and almost as instantaneously as when you use memory techniques. And When You've Got The Right Memory Techniques Working For You … You can do things with your whole might like Carlyle advises. You can do every completely when you're using memory techniques because of the very nature of this learning practice changes the information. As Wayne Dyer often quotes, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And it's true. When you look at a foreign language word and use memory techniques, it looks completely different than when you don't use them. Why? Because when you don't use memory techniques, you take the word as a whole. But when you use something like the Magnetic Memory Method, you breaking the word apart. You start thinking creatively. For example, what happens if I attach this part of the word to Al Pacino? What about if I attach this other part of the word to Homer Simpson? And what if I have them doing something together to help me remember the meaning of the word? Doing This Makes Learning Tastier Than Candy! The learning process becomes like liquorish in a candy store. You just can't help but suck on every last jawbreaker and you don't want to chew it and you don't want to swallow it because it tastes so good and you want to hold that wonderful taste of knowledge in your mouth much longer. So you hold it in your mind much longer. You become interested in the information in a completely different way. The information becomes part of the theatre in your mind. The information becomes a character. The information becomes real. But You Have To Give It 100% Of Your Attention Not 25% percent of your attention. Not scribbles on an index card attention. Not passive spaced repetition software attention. You've Got To Give It The Attention Of Your Entire Soul And more than that, your whole mind, your whole imagination, your whole being. So get out there. Get prepared with a dedicated memory strategy and at least one solid Memory Palace and never forget: "Chance favors the prepared mind." Further Resources Grab my FREE Memory Improvement Kit Read this book: The post The Simple Reading Technique That Prepares Your Memory For Anything appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

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 The post How Psychics Abuse Your Working Memory To Rip You Off appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

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 post Laugh And Cry Your Way To Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

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 hungry Telling it to a different person Impatient Angry Less certain than the time before about your accuracy More 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 The post The Surprising Truth About Hypnosis and Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

How To Memorize Even The Most Difficult Words In The World Using World Class Memory Techniques 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 about using memory techniques for Basque and it's a great pleasure and enormous honor for me to do so, also in Spanish in a general way: 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 an episode of the Magnetic Memory Method podcast on memory techniques, 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 with memory techniques. 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 memory 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, Basque is a language that's spoken in a small area of the north of Spain and the south of France. Basque sounds like this: The fact is that Basque is apparently unrelated to any of the other European languages. You can take a look on Wikipedia for some of the theories (and use memory techniques and How to Memorize a Textbook to absorb the info), 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 for using Magnetic Memory Method memory techniques 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. Using Anthony's instructions for using memory techniques: I started in a terminal location. Actually the UN building has 9 stories, 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 about using these memory techniques 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 using these memory techniques: 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 with these "Magnetic" memory techniques: 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 Memory Palace is another thing that Anthony suggested: 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 use the memory techniques to repeat 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. Thank goodness for memory techniques! 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, even if you're using memory techniques. 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 Use Memory Techniques! 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 and other memory techniques, 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 to talk about memory techniques. 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 Gabriel Chats With Language Trainer Daniel Welsch The post Memory Techniques For Learning A Hard Language Like Basque appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.