You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

the memory gymnasium
V
isualize for a minute 10 billion neurons in your brain. Think how, as you read
the words on the page, electrical impulses streak through your cerebrum, making
the millions of connections necessary for you to understand the meaning of this
text. Now imagine how wonderful it would be if each one of those connections
could be stronger. Doing just that is what memory training is all about – tapping
into latent brain power to make our minds faster, brighter and altogether more
powerful.
Apart from learning how to memorize and recall information properly, there
are many other benefits to be gleaned from mem ory training. The constant
stimulation of the mind improves all our mental faculties, from our ability to
concentrate on a novel or rationalize an argument to our aptitude for appreciating
a work of art. As we memorize we make new neural connections in our brains so
that the transfer of chemicals between neurons takes place faster and more easily.

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In this way, when we come to access information, our brains can work much
more efficiently.
The brain is not a muscle, but for the purpose of demonstrating the changes
that memory training can bring about, muscles provide a good analogy. The
more we use our mind, the “stronger” it appears to grow. We all know what it
feels like to have all our mental faculties concentrated on a particular situation –
time passes quickly, we take pleasure in the resolution that our own mental
efforts are bringing about, we have a sense of being fully engaged, and of being
mentally “fitter”. But whereas muscles have a threshold of potential, our
memory has limitless power – we are physically unable to use up all the space
that lies available within it. However, if we do not stimulate our brains by giving
them enough work to do, like an unused muscle our mental capacity grows
weaker and certain mental tasks that once seemed easy now seem beyond our
grasp. Try testing this by spending a week doing a simple puzzle every day –
say, the quick crossword in your daily newspaper. As the week progresses, the
puzzles should become quicker to solve. Then, stop doing the puzzles for a week
or so. When you begin again, do they seem more difficult than they were just
before you stopped?
The changes that occur are not just in the realm of mental agility. Research
has shown that the more we use our brains in this way, the denser and larger they
actually become.
Spend fifteen minutes a day sharpening your ability to remember simple
events. Last thing at night, try to remember the order of the things that you did
during the day. Zoom in on specific conversations, your surroundings and even
what you were thinking or feeling in each of the day’s situations. With practice,
as you begin to recapture and concentrate upon the events of the day, the details
should more readily flood back to you.