Would you like to be able to give a speech directly from memory?

It’s an amazing skill, after all, and something many people in business need to be able to do in more than one language.

Since ancient times people have been using Memory Palaces to give their speeches. In fact, as Jim Samuels has talked about, we get the convention of saying “in the first place” in a speech from the Roman orators who were using Memory Palaces.

Well, let me ask you this:

What If You Don’t Have To Give A Speech From A Memory Palace On Its Own For Your Speech To Benefit From Using Memory Techniques? 

 

Sunil Khatri raised this question in my mind when he wrote to me after giving this speech:

 

I was so impressed by Sunil’s explanation of how he used the Magnetic Memory Method and Memory Palaces to help him with the speech, that I asked if he would record an episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.

He agreed! As you’ll learn, you can get great benefits from memorizing a speech in advance, even if you still recite it from the page.

The same thing is true of reading from a teleprompter, which the best directors and producers always advise people giving speeches to do: Know where you’re going, but don’t appear like you’re recalling during delivery. It looks weird.

I’m super-excited by Sunil’s results and look forward to hearing your stories of triumph when you use the Magnetic Memory Method to help prepare for your next big speech.

Episode Transcript

Anthony, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk about some of the things I’ve been doing with the Magnetic Memory Method. I just also wanted to also say thank you very much for the support that you’ve given me directly through email interaction has been really, really useful and amazing.

I started learning Korean maybe a little over a year ago I would say and mostly for work purposes. I’ve been traveling back and forth to Korea, and it is a really tough language in my opinion. When I started studying, I would read things like verb conjugations. There could be up to 500 verb conjugations based on the level you are at in society, in your office, your age group, all of these different things come into play in the written language and speech. It was pretty tough.

I started learning and for the 6 months it was through rote memorization, flashcards, and things like that. Then I was trying to figure out is there a better way. Because I had spent the better part of 6 to 7 years learning Japanese and it was all through rote memorialization and talking to people and so forth.

I came across your website and from one link to another to another and it ended up being at your site. I took your intro classes and so forth and it was actually pretty good. Then I started reading up on Memory Palaces more and things like that.

“Korean Words Just Sort Of Magically Appeared In My Brain As I Was Talking … I No Longer Use Flashcards” 

 

What happened was about 6 to 7 months ago, I think that was the first time we communicated, I basically started building a small Memory Palace and expanding that. Korean words just sort of magically appeared in my brain as I was talking, as I was remembering to the point where I gave up using flash cards. I no longer use flash cards.

I put everything into an Excel spreadsheet and categorize them based on my Memory Palace. I come up with a mnemonic picture, crazy picture, whatever it is and associate the word to that crazy picture and there it is. I go through my Excel spreadsheet once a day to put it into long-term memory and it’s been amazing.

 

“Even My Teachers Are Freaking Out.”

 

Even my teachers are freaking out. How am I learning all this stuff so fast? But that was vocabulary. Then I started looking at grammar and things like that. Really in about 6 months I achieved over 500 words through the Memory Palace techniques. It was amazing.

Then I was handed a request to do a speech for my office to a bunch of our clients. Essentially what happened was I said, okay and this was about a week and a half prior to me giving the speech. They said, okay you can do it in English. We’ll have a translator and everything for you. I said well, that’s great thank you. Then I thought about it. I said, wait a minute let me try this in Korean and see what I can do.

 

“Actually A Lot Of This Was Beyond My Vocabulary”

 

The speech was about 3.5 to 4 minutes, 5 minutes long. Rather than say, “Oh my god, I don’t know any of these words,” because actually a lot of this was beyond my vocabulary. It really focused on a lot of different types of grammars that you would use in a very formal setting. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of these structures or things. Some of the words were quite new.

What I basically said was, I said all right I am going to think about doing this in Korean. Let me try and see if I can break this down. I guess when I said I think I’m going to do it, it really meant I’m going to do it and there was no looking back for me.

I took the words, basically got the meanings of what the speech was in English and then took the Korean statements and broke it down into an Excel spreadsheet. So rather than reading everything as you would normally do, I took small phrases and put them in a cell in the Excel spreadsheet and then I created the mnemonics associated with that. Those wordings and so forth.

 

“It Was Pretty Daunting”

 

It turned out to be several hundred cells in the Excel spreadsheet with phrases and so forth. Then I started memorizing, and I did this in about a week. I got about 70 percent of the way through it, and then started working with a person on my team to kind of walk me through how to say the phrases. Where are the emotions, where are the intonations and so forth.

Then from there I kind of build up what I say, how I say it, where I would put the stresses and so forth in a natural language type of view. It really was quite amazing. Then I just went through the Excel spreadsheet and started practicing over and over and over again to get that into memory. The remaining 30 percent was sort of rote because I just didn’t have time to do the mnemonics. Because it was only in about 5 days I put all this stuff together.

The day of the speech came, and I got in front of couple hundred people, all Korean. I started talking and I used the notes. Because it was pretty daunting. Standing in front of a crowd and just trying to remember all these things and the stresses of speaking. Speaking in front of a crowd is difficult anyways.

I had my notes but what my notes were the Excel spreadsheets. It was basically two pages just printed out, and I started just working through it. It was incredible. The crowd reaction was great. Everything was good. I just had a great time because all of this stuff was right there. The way that you pronounce things, even though I was referring to my notes. It was really amazing.

 

How To Experience Boosts In Confidence From Your Memory

 

It just gave me a huge new level and boost in confidence. I’m nowhere near fluent but I can guarantee you that this is all I’m doing now. I don’t use flashcards. I don’t do anything. All my learnings, not just in Korean but even beyond Korean, are based now on how I use Memory Palaces and your teachings and so forth. Really, really amazing.

I’m continuing to focus on Korean but I’m also looking at other languages later. I really want to look at Mandarin Chinese as you’re doing. This is, again, I feel only after about 6 months of working with the Memory Palace techniques.

It took me years to get to be able to speak in Japanese in front of people and even now I’m hesitant. But I’m going to back and apply these techniques to that too. Really amazing stuff. Thank you for the opportunity and I will continue to converse with you and get your advice on all the problems that I know I’m going to continue to have. Thank you so much.

============

Anthony, just one more thing I wanted to add if it is possible to edit it in or do something.

I had mentioned about 70 percent of the speech I had done using a Memory Palace and 30 percent because I just did not have the time. I just sort of started reading the end of it.

There was actually a noticeable difference in that 70 percent versus the 30 percent that people were telling me. They said, “Oh, the 70 percent that you did, the first part of the speech sounded so good, rhythmic, everything was there. The 30 percent sort of trailed off a little bit.”

I owe that to the fact that I didn’t go through the mnemonics for that last bit. Even though I was able to continue doing it, reading it and kind of working through and people were still excited that I was being able to do this whole thing in Korean.

So the application to Memory Palaces and so forth is really critical, I think, from a grammar perspective as well as from a comfort level. Because once you ingrain those things in your head, whether it’s subconsciously or whatever, when you’re reading it, those emotions and that structure come out.

I just wanted to add that statement. But once again, thank you so much. Take care.

Sunil’s Speech In Korean

안녕하세요.  AKL HQ의 IT를 총괄하는 순일 상무 입니다.

여러분들의 뜨거운 열정과 도전으로 한국 암웨이가 25주년을 맞이 하였습니다.
한국 암웨이와 함께 걸어온 25주년을 축하하고자, 대구경북 ABO 리더님들을 모시고
암웨이 프라자에서 ‘A Happy Birthday Festival’ 행사를 개최하게 되었습니다.

많은 ABO 리더님들께서 이렇게 말씀하십니다.
“ 암웨이 사업은 분위기를 타는 사업이다. 요즘은 그 어느 때 보다도 사업하기 좋은 분위기이다 “
실제로 한국 암웨이는 25년 전 오픈 당시에 비해서, 제품 수는 5개 에서 500 여개로,
매출액은 50억원 대에서 1조가 넘는 마켓의 독보적인 리더로서 지속 안정적으로 성장하고 있습니다.

아마도 이렇게 지속 안정적으로 성장 할 수 있는 원동력은
여기 참석하신 ABO 리더님들의 열정과 도전 정신을 기반으로, AKL과 함께 일구어낸 소통과 화합이
있었기에 가능하다고 생각합니다.
이번 25주년 기념 행사가 또 하나의 소통과 화합의 장이라 생각합니다.

암웨이 프라자에서 일주일간 진행되는 다양하고 신나는 이벤트에 많이 참여하시고,
마음 껏 즐겨 주시기 바랍니다.

내가 먼저 우리 함께 !!!   신나는 암웨이!!!    감사합니다.

 

What About You?

 

Do you have a story of using a Memory Palace to give a speech?

Or how about your struggles with speeches in public? How would better memory skills help you in this area? Take a moment to leave a comment below and get the discussion started.

As Sunil’s experience demonstrates, memorizing even a speech you intend to read from the page improves your delivery beyond belief. Keep that in mind the next time you need to give a speech either in public or on the screen.

The post Speech Success Story Using A Magnetic Memory Palace appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Can You Improve Your Memory At Any Age?

 

The answer is a resounding “Yes!” and Brad Zupp’s story proves it!

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, Brad Zupp joins us to talk about everything from language learning and memory techniques to the philosophy of education.

Brad Zupp is a wealth of information about memory, so after downloading the MP3 and reading or downloading the transcript, be sure to check out the fascinating memory improvement articles on his blog. One of the things that makes Brad so unique in the memory field is his candid revelations about using memory techniques as he ages.

As you start opening multiple tabs and start absorbing all of this memory-boosting information, you can also follow Brad Zupp on Twitter and follow his author page on Amazon to be notified when the new books he mentioned on this interview appear. I’m all hooked up and as a serious student of memory improvement, you should be too.

Enjoy this episode with the stellar memory athlete and educator Brad Zupp and be sure to say hello in the comments below!

 

Will Unlocking Your Memory Begin With Names? 

 

Anthony: Brad, thank you so much for being on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. As you know, I was really enthusiastic about your book, which is incredible. It is called Unlock Your Amazing Memory: The Fun Guide That Shows Grade 5 to 8 How To Remember Better And Make School Easier. I reviewed it. You were kind enough to follow up on that with this interview. So thank you for being here.

Brad: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. I really appreciate both the chance to talk about memory improvement and the kind review of my book.

Anthony: For people who aren’t familiar with Unlock Your Amazing Memory yet, tell us a little bit about your story. Maybe, what’s your first memory about being interested in memory?

Brad: The first memory about being interested in memory was when I was myself in about the fourth or fifth grade I was horrible at numbers and names. Names were not helped in that we moved a lot. My dad was an executive in a company. He was he was a fixer. He was someone that they’d say well that division or that office branch is having trouble. We need someone to go fix it, so my dad would get tapped for that. So we moved a lot.

I remember third grade I guess was the first time it really came to me that memory is important. It was the end of the school year, and I gone to that school for the first time in the fall. The third grade, it was at the end of the school year though the teacher asked me to hand out papers on Friday. We must have written some type of paper or book report or something.

 

The One Memory Problem That “Freezes” Just About Everyone

 

She said, “Okay, Brad, you can hand out papers this week.” I just froze because I knew I didn’t know everybody’s names in class. Now as adults, we introduce each other to each other or introduce ourselves to each other. Kids don’t do that. Kids will come up and say, “Hi, my name is Sally.” So part of it was I had never met people.

But I had a horrible memory with names and with numbers. I was up at the front of the class and I had the papers. I was going, “Oh, Sally you got a B. Way to go.” You know, kind of looking up with my eyes to see who of the girls in the class was going, “Oh, I got a B,” Because that’s how I knew it was Sally. I didn’t know people’s names.

That continued all my life. Numbers, I was always bad at math in large part because I couldn’t remember numbers. I could do the calculations. But if it any of it involved storing a number in my head to add it or anything, I couldn’t retain that number long enough to do the second step of the calculation. If I could write the first part down or use my fingers, I was fine. The calculations weren’t the problem. It was remembering numbers was the problem.

There was no solution for me back then. That’s in part one of the reasons I wrote the book I did first instead of writing a book for adults first is that there’s a lot of kids like that. They can’t remember something. Maybe they’re good with math, but they can’t remember the spelling of their vocabulary words, or they’re great with spelling but they, for whatever reason, cannot remember numbers like me. That’s why I wrote the book. That’s my first memory.

 

How Do Kids Deal With Memory Problems? 

 

Anthony: This is fascinating. I wonder how do you think that kids enunciate their frustration with their memory, because you know you were aware of it and that’s quite an early memory, but to what extent do you observe that young kids are aware of that as being a memory problem and how do they express it?

Brad: Back when I was experiencing that, there wasn’t really a way to express it. I mean I didn’t go home to my parents and say, “I can’t remember names. Let’s get a book and help me or let’s look on the Internet.” We didn’t have any of that back then. I think it was kind of suffer in silence. It wasn’t something that traumatized me, but I remember it very clearly to this day being up in front of class and the embarrassment of the end of the school year not knowing my classmates names. That was just horrible.

These days, kids with the Internet, more libraries, more books available on Amazon and other online availability of books, kids know that they can find solutions online. One of the things I do when I go into schools for presentations, I say something like, who thinks they have a bad memory? Who has studied for a test, been very confident, then you sit down in your classroom, the teacher hands out the test, you look at the first couple questions and go what? Am I in the right class? Am I in the right school? Because you cannot for the life of you remember these things.

Kids as young as seven, eight, nine years old are experiencing that. They’re confident, they’ve worked hard and then they blank out. So they know, I think kids these days are more aware about things like money. They’re more aware of this is it working for me, and I can get help with this.

So I think kids these days are willing to tell their parents, teachers or a visiting presenter like me, “Yeah, that’s me. I have that problem. Fix it! I want to get better grades.” That’s one of the joys I have is going into schools and helping kids realize the memory, as you tell people, young and old, memory isn’t something we’re stuck with. We can improve it.

 

Why Memory Improvement Is Easy And Fun To Do

 

It can be easy and fun to do. It doesn’t have to be boring, because I think that’s where a lot of the kids, as they get a little bit older, is that they catch on remembering, or they give up they say remembering is hard, studying is hard. I hate school. This is boring. The teacher says, “Oh, you can’t remember it? That’s okay, just read it again.”

If you don’t read well, or you don’t enjoy what you’re reading, which is pretty common I think across the ages, anybody going to school, there’s always a few subjects you like why am I learning this. If the teacher says well read it again, you read it the second time you’re even more bored than you were the first time, and the teacher says you still don’t have it. Read it a couple more times. At some point, you just go no. I’m just not good at this. I’m just going to give up. It’s great that people like you and me and a lot of other people are out there saying there’s a different way.

Anthony: Right and I think that’s one of the things I admire so much as you’re out there and you’re bringing this message. That leads me to a question that I think everybody who works in memory education encounters all the time. I certainly get it at least once a week, which is why aren’t they teaching these techniques in school? You are actively actually going out and teaching it in schools. How did you get into proactively making sure that memory techniques are taught in schools?

Brad: I was a financial planner for a while. I got really tired of sitting in an office and not being able to use my creative side. Sometimes I struggled as a financial planner with memory, with remembering some of my clients’ names. I remembered my top several clients’ names. But, if someone just did something with me once, it was sometimes hard to remember their name. So I was already struggling with that. Of course, the number problem continued to haunt me, which is pretty important for a financial planner. But I also just hated it in the office.

One day I told my wife I should get out of this, and I should go back to doing something fun. I had been a professional juggler for a number of years before getting into real estate and then finance. I told my wife I should go back to doing something fun like juggling, but I wanted to do something important. So maybe I should combine them and do a fun show about money for kids. I said it just kind of as a joke to make her laugh, but she paused and said that’s a really good idea.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a good idea. I eventually found other financial planners for my clients. I gave my notice. I sat down and wrote a school assembly show about personal finance. I did that successfully for a few years. Then I was thinking, what’s another show? Money is so important for kids.

But what’s something else that’s so important for kids? If I were back in third, fourth, fifth grade, and I could have any type of presenter come, whom would I have come? I wish I could say my first thought was yeah, someone to explain money, which is what I was already doing. But it wasn’t. It was someone to help me remember better –math, science and names.

I thought if I had that problem, maybe other kids are having that problem. I did some market research by calling a bunch of my friends that had kids anywhere from seven to seventeen years old. I said, “Do your kids have this problem?” The universal response was, “Oh my gosh, yes. They can’t remember anything from schoolwork to bringing home the parent signature that they have to have the paper signed for their field trip, to pick up their clothes. I tell them hey we’re going to do this on Saturday. Then an hour later, they’ll come back and say, hey what are we doing Saturday because they were completely forgotten.”

So I thought well I might have something here. I just sketched out a few of the things that wanted to do with the show. I realized the way to present this is to make it fun. I can’t just go in and lecture kids, because kids don’t want to be lectured. I’ve got to make it fun.

 

Why The Fun Is In The Pudding (With The Proof)

 

To make it fun, I really have to demonstrate that I know what I’m doing. I have to be able to do kind of some phenomenal feats of memory. That means that I need to improve my memory, because I don’t like just to preach. I want to walk the talk.

How Brad Zupp Went From Bad To Great In Record Time

 

I said, “I need to make sure this works.” It coincided with me turning forty, and my already bad memory in some areas getting worse. I thought okay this is great. I’ve got this idea for a school show. My memory is getting horrible as I turn forty. I still can’t remember numbers. I still can’t remember. Let me make sure this works.

I don’t want to be going into schools and telling kids yeah do this and then have a horrible memory. I want to have an outstanding memory. I want to go from bad to great and say it worked for me. Here’s how I did it. It can work for you.

So I threw myself into memory training. Shortly after I kind of started with this stuff, I remembered reading an article about a memory competition. So I on a lark signed up for that, went and did relatively well for someone with no training. That kind of started my love affair with memory competitions as well, which we can talk about if you want.

Eventually, I got good enough at the memory feats where I felt I could present it in a school, impress the kids and show them that I’m not just some guy talking. I’m some guy who knows what he’s talking about and can do it.

I continued writing the show. I started practicing the show in little bits and pieces. I started memorizing the names of students when I would go into schools for my personal finance show. Gradually over a couple years got better at it and good enough at it where I could actually do the show. It took off from there.

Anthony: So a large part of this was learning to teach.

 

Secret Memory Improvement Ingredient:
Be Driven By The Passion To Help Others

 

Brad: Yes, I mean, as you’ve shown, we have to be able to do this. There are a lot of memory people out there. I would say almost all of them, maybe a few aren’t keeping up with it, but almost all are really passionate about not just helping others, but also making sure their minds stay sharp as they get older.

Finding the deficiencies where were they struggle and saying, “Well I’m a memory guy. I should be able to fix this. What would I do if I had a coaching client that said I’m having trouble with this? Well, I’d tell them to do this. I’m going to do that. Look, it’s fixed. It does work.” The next time we have a coaching client, or someone asks us for advice, we can say yeah that happened to me and I fixed it. Here’s how you can to.

Anthony: Right and I think that’s a great way of going about it. I would say that’s almost a scientific way of going about it. You are analyzing the issue, trying something out, checking the results and then improving from there or just going with what works. Would that be sort of a fair assessment?

 

You Don’t Have To Be A Scientist To Benefit From
Performing Memory Experiments On Yourself

 

Brad: I think so. I don’t usually think of myself as a scientist, but I certainly experimented on myself through this whole process. Because for me, it’s not enough to read the scientists say this, or the scientists say that, or another memory guy I once read said this or said that, I really have to prove it for myself.

If someone says well this works, well I’ll try it. The things I’ve continue to show others are the things that have worked for me. I do keep in the back of my mind, as I think you’ve said with a couple things in your podcast, this this may not work for you. This is how it works for me, but here are some other ways that don’t work for me that might work for you. It’s important whether it’s a yoga class or a dance class or whatever to say, okay if you’re having trouble with this part, do it this way. Oh yeah, that works for me.

It’s important to know what works for other people as well. But for me, it really has to work for me or I can see how it could work for me if my situation were little bit different before I’m on to share it with someone else.

Anthony: I think we’re having a great shift in education due to the Internet. So we’ve had an authoritative education system where people really needed someone to say this is how you do it, these are the steps and now follow them one, two, three. Where we’re now online and we’re getting a much more demonstrative education system or education networks that are people really living out what they want to learn and then just showing their journey and opening doors into many possible avenues.

That seems to me to have a lot of pros but it also has the cons of no real authoritative guidance. As someone who teaches young people, what do you think is, if there is, the ultimate point of entry to memory techniques? Specifically, for young people and if it’s universal to everybody, what would that be or what would be a better point of entry for adults to memory techniques?

How To Understand Need Versus Desire
When Seeking Memory Improvement

 

Brad:  Well that’s a good question. For me, in my life with anything there has always been both a need and desire. So I might desire to learn to speak French because I’m going to go to Paris for a week’s vacation. But if I don’t really need to learn how to speak French, well I always have my phone, I can I was type something in the phone, it will give me a translation and they’ll speak English anyway, then there’s no learning.

If I have a need, like I really need to learn some minutiae about computer programming or something, but I don’t really want to, I could probably hire someone to do it instead. Yeah, I’m going to do that. If there’s a need but no real desire, I don’t learn either.

So for me it’s need and desire. I think it’s a typical bell curve. Usually, at least in my experience at schools, there’s a group that knows they need it because their grades are suffering, and they want to have better grades. So they’re receptive.

Then there’s a bunch that their grades are suffering and they don’t really care. Maybe their home life isn’t supportive of getting better grades or they just don’t see the benefit of it. They’re really not motivated to learn.

There’s another group that they already get good grades. They’ve somehow stumbled upon either our techniques or a way that they have done it themselves and it just works. They don’t think about how to remember they just read a couple times and for some reason they got lucky and it sticks. So they don’t really see a need.

So I think need and desire when they combine. If someone is out of shape physically and their doctor tells them well you know you should probably lose ten or fifteen pounds is that often enough. Not usually in my experience, but when the doctor says that and you know the kids say that and they have a heart attack scare, then it’s usually time to make a change in our lives.

 

Does a Healthy Body = A Healthy Memory?

 

So I equate a lot with the same question about physical health improvement. What’s the point of entry for that? Because we see are we see our bodies in the mirror every day, and for the last sixty years or so, fifty, sixty years since the mid-sixties, early seventies we’ve been told eat better, exercise, do this, do that, floss, brush your teeth, see the doctor, all these things. There are still people who don’t take care of themselves physically.

I think it’s an even harder uphill battle to say let’s take care of ourselves mentally, because we can get away with faking it, outsourcing our memories to our phones and going oh yeah I remember your face better forgotten your name. Oh, I have a horrible memory and everybody goes along with that. We do that for years until all the sudden we’re much too early being faced with memory being a real problem.

At that point, it’s even harder to kind of pick up the pieces and start learning these techniques. They still work. It’s just at that point, it’s kind of like instead of being twenty pounds overweight, it’s being two hundred pounds overweight and now it’s time to start exercising. It’s just a lot harder to get there.

 

Memory Techniques 101 With Brad Zupp

 

Anthony: There’s so much in what you just said that I want to unpack, but the thing I really want to leap on first is that you use the phrase “our memory techniques,” which to me is a beautiful way of phrasing that. But how would you describe our memory techniques more specifically.

Brad: I think to me the techniques come down to what many of us talk about and what you talk about, and then we all put our specific spin on them. Basically, converting the information into a picture, associating it with something you already know so you can then reclaim it easily and reviewing it on occasion to it to tell your mind basically hey this this part’s important let’s transfer this into long term-memory. Then we put our particular spin on it.

My little spin is making sure people identify where they’re going wrong first, because back to the physical. If you want to look like more physically fit with your upper body, it’s important to do a full body workout but do you really want to be doing squats for hours on end if you want to have larger biceps. No. You want to do arm exercises if you want to have larger biceps. You may do squats occasionally to stay kind of whole body healthy.

 

The Need For Specific Memory Training Arises When …

 

But if you want something specific, you need to do a specific type of training. So if you’re having trouble, you think you have a bad memory, you need to identify the problem. Is my problem getting the information? Am I not focusing well enough? Am I multitasking? Am I not pay attention to what my kids say and that’s why I can’t remember what they told me yesterday?

Am I getting the information? I pay really close attention but my mind is so disorganized that it goes in there and there’s really no system for holding onto that. It’s just kind of just everything gets piled up in there. It’s kind of like piling everything up in a closet.

Yeah, you can get it out of there, but if you need to get something quickly and you don’t know if that the top of the pile or the bottle pile or the middle pile you’re throwing things around trying to find it, you’re not going to get it. If your problem is that, you really need to focus on finding a method to organize your mind and your storage.

You’re concentrating well. You’re getting the information. You’ve stored it well, but when you’re put on the spot, you blank out and you can’t recall the information. But soon as the person walks away, you go, “Oh, his name is Anthony!” and it’s too late. If that’s your problem, you need to work on that.

 

Find Out Where You’re Going Wrong

 

My particular take on it is identifying where things are going wrong, helping people figure that out and directing them toward that. But I think our memory techniques pretty much go back thousands of years to placing interesting, crazy, memorable pictures in a certain order or location using Memory Palace technique, linking them together or just associating the question with the answer. You know going back to students. I know you work a lot with students and vocabulary words for foreign languages.

You know you don’t necessarily need a Memory Palace for that, though that can work in certain circumstances, but if you can just associate the English word with the German word. If you can picture the two them together and create an outlandish image, you’ll have that. You will have that bridge to long-term memory.

Anthony: This raises an interesting question because for me the number Memory Palace is essential to memorizing vocabulary. Just as a quick example. I was in Tel Aviv and recently got back. Just as you mentioned that, I just thought of phrase that I learned there which is “Where’s the washroom?”

When I learned that, I used the spot that I was in right there as a Memory Palace. I placed that image right there which gives me an additional chance to find that image in my mind. That’s one of the major powers of the Memory Palace and why I advocate and use it so much myself. Because now it’s almost ten days since that I first learnt that and I can still recall it just by having revisited a few times.

 

Brad Zupp’s Harry Loryane/Japanese Connection

 

I raise the point or I jump on the point also because I want to go out on a limb. In additional research that I was doing with you, and not having taken any notes, if I remember correctly you have some history with Japanese.

Brad: Yes.

Anthony: Something was connected with Harry Lorayne there.

Brad: Yes, that’s true.

Anthony: I would love if you would tell that story a little bit and talk about any language learning experience that you have with memory techniques and if you tried a Memory Palace and how you would see building out a vocabulary memorization approach on master phrases or what’s your language learning story with mnemonics?

Brad: My language-learning story with mnemonics is exactly what you correctly recalled, very well done. After my struggles as a student, really the next time I delved into memory improvement was when I was working in Japan. I was there seven different times over the course of five and a half years, seven different trips for a total of about three years living there. The first trip was ten days or so. Then a month or two went by and I was going back. I was going back for six months.

I’m a big proponent of if you’re going somewhere we should make the effort at least to learn some of the language, as much as we can. That was daunting at the time. I said, well I need help with this. It was Japanese. Everybody perceives as a very hard language to learn.

 

“It’s Just Pure Memorization” …

 

I went to the college bookstore and I got a book, a basic how to speak Japanese book and learn Japanese. I also found a book at a bookstore by Harry Lorayne about memory improvement in general. It really piqued my interest because there was a there’s a whole chapter on memorizing foreign languages. I’m like that’s great.

I don’t have time to do this now, but I’m going to be there for six months. When I get there, I’ll have lots of spare time. I will take these two books and I will learn as much as I can. A week or so into it I got out both the books. Reading just the Japanese book here’s how you say this and here’s how you say this. It was a pronunciation guide with some simple vocabulary. This is just like any language, there’s really no sense, especially if it’s not a Roman type language, there’s really no sense to it.

It’s like why does that equal that. It doesn’t sound alike. It doesn’t start with the right letter. There’s no rhyme or reason. This is just pure memorization. Well thank goodness I brought this book. I read Harry Lorayne’s book.

It said you want to do this, if you want to learn this, do this. So I started basically picturing a word in English and then finding that word in Japanese, translating it as you suggest a lot in your training, and we have that in common. I think you take it to a better level of breaking the word down into things that I can picture, syllable by syllable if necessary.

It’s better if I can do a bigger chunk, but if I have to picture more that’s fine. If I have to take it two letters at a time, whatever, I can make a picture out of that. So I started picturing and connecting them together. I think it was kind of bad. I don’t even think I read the rest of the Harry Lorayne book. I just read that section.

 

Hold The Presses:
You Might Not Even Need A Memory Palace!

 

I didn’t learn about Memory Palaces. It wasn’t even in my vocabulary at the time. I just said I’m going to picture this word in English. I am going to picture of these syllables in Japanese. I am going to create a funny picture together and go.

I have these cute little things in Japan. I don’t know if you have seen them. You will see them in your travels. They are like a little key ring and a tiny little flash card not even the size of like half of my finger. You write down on one side the one word, on the other side the other word and it’s a little key ring you get like fifty or a hundred of these at a time.

I just got a bunch of them and I started filling one of these up a day. In between writing out the Japanese word and the English word, picturing the crazy combination, and then reviewing them and testing myself at the end of the day, I was learning fifty to a hundred vocabulary words a day. Language experts I’ve read often say that to be conversationally fluent you need about two thousand words. If you learn a hundred words a day, it doesn’t take that long to get conversationally fluent.

People were spellbound, the Japanese people I was working for, and the English-speaking people I was working with. At the end of the first week when I had four or five hundred vocabulary words, they are going how are you learning to speak Japanese. How are you doing that?

Why Memory Techniques Are Easy – Even For Japanese

 

They were saying you’re a genius. I’m like no, I’m not a genius, trust me. I’m like here. Let me let me show you. See with this word I pictured this, and then I pictured this. They were like oh, that’s pretty easy. I would teach them five or ten words and they learn them.

That’s where it comes back to earlier discussion about the need and desire. They didn’t really have the need because we had interpreters, nor did they really have the desire. The technique was there, the concept was there, but they never bothered to pursue it because it wasn’t important to them.

But for me, I am a vegetarian. I’ve been a vegetarian since shortly before I went to Japan. This was essential. I needed to know how to say fish, how to say meat. How to say I can’t eat this. I can’t eat this. Does this have fish broth in it? Is this pork? I needed to know all that stuff as quickly as possible. The translators and interpreters didn’t go out for dinner with us. I needed to be able to say please bring me this type of thing.

So there was a real need and a desire there. That’s how I picked it up. After the first month or so, I was answering the phone in our office room in Japanese. The Japanese people that were calling would say, “Is so and so there?” I was like no she left. Okay, will you give her the message when she comes back? Here’s the message and thinking I was a Japanese person.

I’d take down the message and the Japanese person would come back in. I would say so and so called (all in Japanese) and this is what they said to tell you. The first time that happened, she picked up the phone and called. It was one of our higher-level bosses and he was confused. He said well whom did I talk to? She said well you talked to Brad.

He said, she related it to me later, she said Brad the American, well not the American, the foreigner. She said yeah. She said no you’re wrong. I spoke to a Japanese person. No, you spoke with Brad. Really! They were just amazed. Especially, back at that time in the late 1990s, that an American, a foreigner could learn to speak their language that well that quickly.

I’m not a genius. I totally attribute it to Harry Lorayne’s teaching and the Japanese textbook I got and just needing and desire to get it done.

 

The True Definition Of Genius

 

Anthony: I think there is genius in actually taking action and following through. Just to share a little bit of my own story. I’ve never been mistaken for being a Chinese speaker, but in two and a half months, I went to China. I was able to say to my future father-in-law that I liked his daughter very much and asked his permission to marry her in Chinese. He knew what I was saying. It’s just desire, as you’re saying, and action. But I think the genius is in actually following through, taking action and then having techniques that get you the result you want. I myself would call you a genius for doing that.

Brad: For that part, but not for the other parts. You could ask my wife if I’m a genius. But see, you get into a good point there. We were talking about the educational system earlier. That’s the really tricky part, because here in America we have common core, and the last, even before common core the last several years if not the last decade or two there’s been a real discussion about whether memorizing is important. When I went to school, we had to memorize certain speeches. We had to memorize poems.

I go to some schools still to this day where they make memorizing an important part. Where in fifth grade usually in the early spring, March or April, they have to do – in in higher education we call it thesis – but it’s not that in depth but basically, an in depth book report about a topic. Then they have to get up in front of their class, just their class, not the whole school, just their class of twenty to thirty other students, and talk for five to ten minutes about their topic and what they’ve learned. Not just off the cuff, but they have to give a speech.

 

The Two Things That Terrify People Most About Giving Speeches

 

That terrifies people because they can’t remember their speech, (a) because of the pressure, and (b) because they don’t memorize. A lot of students and from what I hear, the parents push back and say memorization isn’t important. We have computers. We have our phones. We can Google anything we want. Facts aren’t essential. This is stupid. We don’t need to teach kids to do memorization.

That’s kind of something I get once in a while when someone will call about my school show. They will say well I really want it because my kid struggles with remembering, but you got to help me sell this to the other parents in the parent teacher organization or to the principal because we don’t ask kids to memorize things anymore.

Memorizing facts, memorizing formulas isn’t important. Knowing how to use the formula is important, but we don’t say memorize this formula and use it on the test. We say here’s the formula. Do you understand the math concept behind it enough to get the correct answer? Show us your work.

I think both are valid, but for me the essential part is that while we may not need to memorize facts the way we used. Well any fact, because it’s relatively easy, my phone I can just enter “what’s the population of Denmark?” How many whatever is in whatever? I don’t need to know that. So there’s an argument to be made for that.

 

Why Memory Is About So Much More Than Facts

 

But memory is about so much more than facts. I know I’m preaching to the choir here with you because as you know this as well. But for others who may have considered that, memory is the feel of the air as summer turns to fall, remembering that. Remembering to look not just in the rearview mirror as you change lanes, but to turn your head and look as well. It’s the smile of a friend or a loved one. It’s the directions on how to get home if your phone battery dies.

We use our GPS on our phone to get to where we’re going. What if the battery dies or the connection is gone. Can we find our way back? It’s not just here’s a bunch of facts. Memorize this. Oh, those memory technique techniques might be important. We can use a Memory Palace or visualizing something we need to remember, not just with facts but also with anything in life.

I think all of life is a comedy. I do to some comedy in my act, and I like to consider myself somewhat funny when I’m not talking very seriously. The basis of comedy is being able to associate things and come up with a twist. You take thing A and you take thing B because in your mind, you’ve connected them and it’s a funny connection. Then you share that and you get a laugh because people have not connected A and B.

 

The Most Important Part Of Memory Training

 

So you have to be able to have both A and B somewhere in your memory to then bring your sense of humor to bear and make that connection and share it. If you can’t keep things in your mind, you can’t make those connections. I think that’s the essential part of any memory training.

Yeah, we can learn foreign languages. We can learn all these things, but just being able to keep things in mind whatever they are, whether they are facts that you that you can easily look up on Google or whether there are things that you need to keep in mind just because they’re valuable to you. The exercising of the mind is the important part.

Anthony: Absolutely. And again, there’s so much in what you just said, and I want to pre-book you for the next interview because there’s just so much to cover if you’re willing.

Brad: Definitely, this is my passion. I love talking about it. To people my age, I think were of a certain age, once you’re over forty, and I get people coming up to me going oh I could never do what you do. That’s amazing. My memory is horrible. As you and I have proven individually and with the many, many thousands of people we’ve helped, as well as other memory coaches have helped, it’s totally possible. This can be done. We don’t have to accept the natural decline as we get older.

 

The Ultimate Decision Is In Your Hands

 

But it does take effort. I’m not even sure it takes all that much effort. I think it mostly takes just a decision to try.

Anthony: I think the most exciting thing for me in helping people is that they’re memorizing stuff anyway no matter what. It’s just how are you going to do it. How are you going to pay attention to how you’re already doing it and then make some slight modifications and shifts based on an education about how you’re remembering things already anyway?

Brad: Definitely, but I do see, maybe this is getting a little bit off track, but I know you like to think about these things as well. I do see a lot of people leaning away from wanting to learn anything in general. I stumbled upon a group, and I’ve gotten really connected with a group of late twenty somethings, early thirty somethings.

How many of them, they are five to ten years out of college, brag about thank goodness I’m out of school. I never have to read another book, which to me is alarming.

Okay, say you don’t want to read a nonfiction book. Really? You don’t want to read a fiction book? But especially the number of people I talk to who are passionate about reading, you say, oh no, I only read science fiction, or I only read romance, or I only read thrillers. I can’t wait for the next Tom Clancy or the John Grisham book. But no, I don’t want to read nonfiction. Why would I want to do that? I’m not in school anymore.

 

The True Path To An Educated Life

 

To me just the idea of underlying the memory, taking it back a step further is the willingness to experience more of the world, and one aspect of that are books. Another is travel. I know you are a big traveler. I live in upstate New York. I live about three and a half to four hours outside of New York City. It’s a semi-rural area. There are probably a million people surrounding Albany, which is the state capital of New York. But out here, I’m about an hour outside of Albany itself.

I can’t tell you the number of people who when I tell him oh I’m going here for a memory competition or I’m going to go down to New York City for this or that. Oh really, I’ve never been. Oh where? You’ve never been to China. Oh no, New York City. Well you’re three and a half hours away and you’ve never been to New York City? Oh no. Well where were you been? Well nowhere really.

I think for some people that is fine. But I think that disturbs me in many ways because I don’t think that person is going to be open and receptive to expanding their mind with memory techniques of any sort. Whether it’s the simplest here’s how you pay more attention so your natural memory takes over, to maybe the next step up of here create a few simple Memory Palaces.

When you’re driving down the road you hear a new song and you want to remember the artist, you know picture the name of the artist in the passenger seat of your car and when you get home you can you know look her up because you will remember her name. I think people who are closed off about things like travel or reading, I think that excuse is going to extend to being closed off with learning simple, very simple techniques that can help them remember better.

 

The Unkown Future Of Memory

 

Anthony: I’m actually really glad that you went in that direction, because as unanticipated as it was it connects with some things that are in the air that I’d love quickly to tell you about.

Brad: Yes please.

Anthony: The first is that I interviewed Tony Buzan last week. He was talking about similar things of this nature. So people listening to this they will have had the chance to hear that about a week or two weeks before that they hear this interview they’re hearing now. I think you personally are going to be fascinated with what he has to say. It’s near the end of the interview we get into some kind of dark territory. I was quite surprised but with a big hopeful bang at the end, no hopeful whimpering but just amazing Tony Buzan sized bang.

The other thing is when I was in Tel Aviv with Jonathan Levi, which is where I interviewed Buzan from although he was in the UK, I was sitting with some friends and we were talking about you know the coming explosion of singularity and all of this jazz. They were saying you know machines are going to create our art for us, and the machines are going to do this and that for us.

I said, “Yeah and are they going to gamble for us too?” I was kind of being sarcastic in that moment. But for me, the reason that I work so hard at teaching these memory techniques is because I think that we are moving into a place where the human mind is going to become so soft. Those of us who have trained our brains and our minds are going to be the ones who have at least that last hold on owning the machines that may or may not create the art for us.

Because we’re going to be the ones who not only can still create our own art, but we’re going to own something, and we’re going to be influential on the things that are influential on us rather than just being a consumer. I was just wondering in a loose jazzy kind of way, what you think about all that connecting with what you’ve been saying.

Brad: I agree. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Wall-E?

Anthony: Yes.

Brad: In the movie Wall-E, it’s a great movie, humanity has escaped earth, which has suffered and is uninhabitable. They’re in a starship and everything is done for them by machines. So they have nice comfy chairs they recline in. A machine brings them or a robot brings them their soda drink, their food, their entertainment and they’re glued to their screens, which is not that far from current reality.

Obviously, they are pictured being physically soft. What’s not as well pictured in that movie is the mental softness. I fear us going there. I fear us getting to the place where we don’t really need to put that much effort into thinking. We have in America, we probably don’t need to get into, but we have a lot of people talk about having a warrior class because there are many wonderful people dedicated to defending our country.

Some of them have expressed to me that they feel under-appreciated because the rest of society moves on and the small group of people who are dedicated to serving their country have become their own their own caste. It is often passed down from generation to generation where father is in the military, the daughter goes into the military and then her daughter goes in the military. That’s kind of a distinct area now where those people are very dedicated to that. I’m grateful for them.

 

Will You Belong To The Intellectual Caste? 

 

It just got me thinking along the lines of are we getting to an intellectual caste where there’s a small but very dedicated group of people who are really focused on thinking basically and learning, and absolving the rest of us from having to do too much of that. Kind of like there’s, I think less so, but even an athletic caste where there’s a lot of people who are really truly dedicated to physical fitness like the Olympics.

How many of us watch the Olympics, which are wonderful, and use it for inspiration to get out in the next couple days and go do something physical ourselves? How many of us watch the Olympics and sit for four, five, six, seven hours at night and never use that as a motivational tool to do something ourselves.

So I think these are philosophical questions more so than memory questions, but they’re interesting to think about, and I like thinking about this. I like reading for a variety of different approaches and topics and viewpoints. I don’t think there’s one right answer but it’s certainly something to keep in mind and decide individually. Who do I want to be?

I, in particular, don’t need to be the smartest person. I could probably do more nonfiction reading, but I try to lead read at least one nonfiction book a month and think. I like to listen to books on tape, especially nonfiction books on tape when I’m driving to and from my presentations. That’s not for everybody and more power to them.

 

The Power Of Focus

 

But I think it really shows what we’ve put our focus on grows. If we’re very focused on physical fitness, our physical fitness gets better. If we’re focused on creating art, our artwork tends to get better. If we are focused on creating more connection amongst other people, deeper relationships, bringing people together that grows. So I think that maybe being a little bit of all things is better than being just a memory person or just a physical person.

Anthony: All amazing thoughts and you remind me of my idea that I really need to get back and read Republic again. I don’t know if you’ve read it, Plato’s Republic.

Brad: I have not.

Anthony: It touches on these ideas of caste like the bronze people and the silver people and the gold people, and there’s a lot in there about who is going to rule and why, and the Philosopher King idea. If I recall it correctly, it’s been since 2001 or even earlier, maybe 1999, since I read it.

The Republic has a lot to do with the difference between being able to juggle information in your mind because you’ve memorized poetry and you understand poetry. You’ve learned poetry or philosophical texts because they want to get rid of the poets in the Republic. It’s kind of a mixed bag that book, because it’s not even clear what they’re saying about whether poets should be allowed to write or not.

But nonetheless there is something in there that if you have internalized poetry and the lessons in poetry or literature and so forth, then you are much more suited to being one of the ruling class people, or the gold people. I am really exposing my memory loss on that book. But it’s in that direction and I want to reread it. Maybe that’s something fun we could do is to book a time to both read it, and then have a discussion about it through the lens of memory because it’s well worth your time to read the Republic.

 

Why Memory Techniques Are A Means To An End

 

 Brad: Definitely, I really like how you said that. It brought to mind is the connections. With me, the memory techniques are not necessarily an end to themselves. They are a means to an end. The end is having a very active mind both now and in the future, as I get older. In staying physically fit, which I work on in a variety of ways, but also mentally fit.

The same way we have kids hopefully getting recess, gym or physical fitness class as they get into the later grades. That gets less time devoted to it. Here in America we have a lot of TV ads that encourage kids to get out and exercise or play physically for an hour a day at least. We’re encouraging that because we all know the benefits that come into a physically healthy body.

I think reading and just thinking about these things and going oh, Plato didn’t know what he was talking about, that’s complete bunk, hated the book. But in reading it, whether we love the book or hate it, just you know putting something else in our brain to think about creates more connections.

We go okay that kind of reminded me of what my friend in high school said. Then, you know that reminds me of what my boss mentioned the other day. I don’t know how this relates but oh you know they’re kind of somehow makes me think of this. We get all these connections. We have a physically active mind that’s thinking and it’s not doing the Wall-E movie where we’re just kicking back in our chair not thinking.

Because I notice, as I get older, that it’s harder to want to focus on things. It’s harder to want to exercise my mind. I mean it’s my job. I really need to do this and even for me for the last year or so as I get closer to fifty, I see that I’m less inclined really to want to buckle down and focus.

 

How It Feels To Have An Aged Memory

 

Talking with my in-laws who are both in their late eighties, they’ve told me about as they’ve aged what their minds have been like. So it’s been wonderful to kind of ask them, well how do you feel? How do you think now? What are you thinking? What are you remembering?

They are very much interested in big picture, and they do have their passions, gardening and some politics and they will learn some detail. But overall, they are kind of big picture people and they need don’t drill down, buckle down and truly focus.

I think it’s really interesting how that happens. I’m cognizant of what’s going on in my own mind and willing to look at that and see what’s going on.

Anthony: That’s one thing that I have certainly loved about what you do and in interviews that I’ve heard with you elsewhere talking about your inner process, your inner experience. That forms part of how you get it out or why that you get out into competitions and I do want to get into that. But I think we should save that for another interview.

But to sort of bridge, what I would love to ask to kind of round off a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about, particularly the issue you raised about the pedagogical concern between is memorizing learning? Part of competition is memorizing a deck of cards. I have competed once myself. I surprised myself by both how well and poorly I did.

But there was something that happened when I did it that made me understand what it is to memorize a deck of cards. So I would like to know, given what we have mentioned about this pedagogical concern of is memorizing information, understanding and is it learning, I would like to wrap this particular interview up as a bridge to talking about competition in at the beginning of our next to our chat. What have you understood by memorizing cards?

 

The Truth About Memorizing A Deck Of Cards

 

Brad: I take cards and the other disciplines that I’ve worked on, as basically, to go back to the physical analogy, they are weights. They are barbells. They are dumbbells. They are Nautilus and other brand machines.

Memorizing a deck cards is similar to bench pressing. It’s a way for me to increase my ability to remember other things that are actually important to me. Again, whether it’s something my wife said that oh, there’s a new song out she loves. Okay, you know I am want to listen to that. I am going to go online. I’m going to find the video and I’m going to listen to that and see the video or hear it because if it’s important to her it’s important to me.

I am not the best competitor in the world because I don’t see it as the end. It’s, again, another means to the end of being able to exercise my mind. So is memorizing learning? I think it can be, but I think just because I know the steps to do something because I’ve memorized them, doesn’t mean I understand it well or could even do it. So I think memorizing is learning and memorizing is not learning.

I think memorizing can help us and certainly knowing more allows us to do more of the connections in our minds. Like I have mentioned before, you can’t you can’t on Friday talk to a child about the realities of World War II if on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday they don’t remember who you told them fought in World War II. So there has to be the foundation before the higher-level discussions.

I think having a base of knowledge of reading books and meeting people and remembering how the sun changes over the course of the year because you’re outside a lot. Oh yeah, it’s grayer and darker in the winter. I remember that, having that base that allows us to form higher-level thoughts and have higher-level discussions. Without that base, it’s not as much fun.

I mean talk to a child or a young person who hasn’t traveled or hasn’t learned. It’s not as much fun as having a conversation with someone who’s traveled the world at whatever age and learned a lot of stuff, because it creates a depth of mind, a depth of thought that is for me personally a lot more fun to talk about and talk to.

 

Brad Zupp Leaves Us With The Feeling That With
Memory Improvement Anything Is Possible!

 

Anthony: Absolutely, and to bring this full circle you do have a foundation for people who are dealing with younger students and that’s Unlock Your Amazing Memory: The Fun Guide That Shows Grades 5 To 8 How To Remember Better And Make School Easier. I want to encourage everybody to pick that up. I have a full review of this book by Brad Zupp on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast if you have any doubts about rushing to Amazon or your favorite book dealer to grab that.

Brad: It’s much less deep than what we’ve gotten into today. It’s a very lighthearted, fun, simple book without a lot of jargon or technical things. It just very clearly and simply states how memory works and how we can improve it especially for the young people. I get a lot of people that I present to who are adults who claim they bought it for their child or their grandkid, but I read it first and I loved it. I had to get another copy for them because I’m keeping mine.

We got into a lot of really deep stuff today and just to assure any listeners there’s very little philosophy or anything like that. It’s just a really fun helpful book.

Anthony: Absolutely. As Tim Ferriss often says on his podcast when he gets into these conversations, he says we got deep into the weeds. That is perfectly fine and wonderful, but what’s coming up next for you. I understand that there are some books for a more adult audience. Is there going to be jargon in that or is it also going to be clear and easy to understand for us adults?

Brad: I pride myself on being jargon free. I’m not a scientist. There are neuroscientists who have written some many wonderful books about how the brain actually does things. What I’m good at is saying this is how my brain did it, and how when I helped other people what happened with them and what seems to work best. Give it a shot. If that doesn’t work, try this. If that doesn’t work, try this because one of these things is really going to help you improve your memory.

So there are two books coming out. I won’t get too into them, but one is going to be for a specific career, type of career, and another one is going to be a more general type of book. That will not be too jargon filled. In fact, it will be a fun book similar to my kids’ book but fun for adults.

I have a memory competition coming up in November. I’m going to be doing some teaching at a university in September as a as a guest lecturer, I guess at the end of September or October. In September, depending on when people are listening to this, I’m going to be attempting a world record, which I don’t want to say more about now. But hopefully by the time your listeners hear this, or September comes along, I’ll have set a new world record on memory.

Anthony: Well I want to catch up on that then in November or December and hear everything about it. Just on a personal note to you, I really admire your writing style. I loved Unlock Your Amazing Memory. It helped me in several ways just because every book that I read on memory techniques, particularly the well done ones, I always pick up something new. But in your case in particular, because you write so well, so clearly and with such great direction, it inspired me to pick up my own game.

I’m always working to be a better writer, because in reality I’m not a particularly good one especially when it comes to explaining difficult things. So it is inspired me to pick up my game as a writer. I really appreciate it on that account as well because there’s obviously a lot of care and craft in how that you present these ideas. I know, as a writer, it is not easy to be jargon free. The clarity that you bring is incredible. Again, Unlock Your Amazing Memory is great.

I can’t wait to hear more about the record that you’re going to break and the new books and catch up on everything that we’ve talked about. I have a list of questions that we haven’t even looked at because we just hit the ground running. I know people are going to love this.

So we both, I think, agree that we encourage you to read. So that will be there for you to check out. I really want to thank you for being on the show. Any last words of wisdom from your perspective for people who are suffering with forgetfulness and want to get that out of their life.

Brad:Whether it’s my book, your course, Anthony, or anybody else’s, I just encourage people to look around and take advantage of Anthony’s free videos. Check out my book or anything, even just a Google search on the Internet, because as both you and I Anthony have discovered, shown and taught, memory can be improved and it can be easy and even fun to do so.

Anthony: Absolutely. Those are excellent words. Thank you again, and I look forward to speaking next time.

Brad: Thank you so much Anthony.

The post Brad Zupp On Memory Techniques And Memory Improvement For All Ages appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

If You Don’t Know Tony Buzan And His Mind Map Technique, Here’s How To Learn Faster and Remember Everything!

Actually, it’s unlikely that you haven’t heard of Tony Buzan before.

But even if you’ve never heard of Tony Buzan, this is almost certainly true:

Your life has been touched by someone whose creativity and intelligence was revived by the ideas, processes and incredible inspiration found only in the Buzan troposphere, stratosphere and infinite universe of imagination and inventiveness beyond.

Either way, today’s your lucky day, because you’re about to learn:

• How Tony Buzan transformed himself from thinking he was stupid to knowing he is extraordinary. (You’ll be modeling this simple tactic before you know it.)
• How to create an imagination so valuable that you would never sell it – not even for a trillion dollars!
• How to use your mind to deal with the dark times. No matter how deep the valleys go, with Tony Buzan’s approach, they still can be fascinating and even fun.
• … and much, much more.

In this interview, Tony Buzan also reveals one of his personal heroes and gives clues on how to maximize the power of your own. We talk about threats to the future and exactly how you are already equipped to deal with anything and everything that could ever come your way.

Make sure to download the MP3 to your desktop and revisit this episode often.  You can also download a PDF of the transcript and go over it using the same speed reading skills you’ve learned from the master himself. I recommend that you print out a copy and share it with your friends.

And as you do, be sure to visit Tony Buzan on Twitter, Amazon and check out the World Memory Championships homepage for details of this years event and all of the incredible records over the past 25 years.

Plus, don’t forget World Mind Mapping Day. Here’s a beautiful and amazing mind map about it created by Phil Chambers:

Tony Buzan On The Paradise Of Multiple Intelligences

Anthony: Tony, thank you so much for being on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. It’s been in the making for a while. I’m really excited, actually, that we have done it after I had a chance to meet you and attend one of your trainings, which was so pivotal for me even after some time in the world of memory training. It was just a delight and an honor to learn from you directly. So thank you for being here.

Tony: Well, thank you for being on my course, and thank you for having read so many of my books. Thank you for being such a good beacon really for other people who need to follow the development of their own mental literacy and the empowerment of their memories, their mind mapping skills, their reading, speed reading, their study skills, and their mind-body coordination. You are a lovely example.

Anthony: Well thank you very saying that. It kind of circles back to you, because I remember in high school first just being fascinated by your name and the covers of your book, and they’re really adventures to get into once you’re in there. They are so unique because of that. I know that there are ideas behind how you even design your books to make them feel that way. It’s just amazing how the world works and how fate puts you in certain places.

 

“I trained myself very cleverly to become stupid, and
I was very successful.” 

 

Tony: It does doesn’t it. It’s almost odd that when I was in school I didn’t like schoolwork. I didn’t like homework. I didn’t like taking notes. I didn’t like studying. So you would think that the person who has written books on studying and thinking would have loved it, but he didn’t. That is actually the beginning of my journey, because I had begun to realize that the way that I was being taught in my school, like in many other hundreds of thousands of schools, I was being taught in a way that turned me off my brain, tuned my brain out. I tuned it out very well. I trained myself very cleverly to become stupid, and I was very successful.

Anthony: Talk about that. What do you define as stupid and how did that feel?

Tony: I think probably stupid, which is a word that ideally should not need to be used anywhere, means being unable to use the natural skills and intelligences with which the brain is gifted. We are, i.e., we humans are astonishingly brilliant, beautifully multiply intelligent.

When the brain is given misinformation, because it learns so fast and when it believes people who tell it what it is, when they are told things that are wrong and they believe them, then they train themselves to become less intelligent. I did that brilliantly.

 

The Only Stupid Thought Tony Buzan Has Ever Had

 

It was aggravating because I had dreamt of being bright. I had dreamt of being successful. I wanted to be. Yet I would do poorly on certain exams. I couldn’t remember the dates in history. I couldn’t remember the formulas in chemistry and physics. I began to think I was stupid. That perhaps was the only stupid thought I had.

We are all basically naturally brilliant and it started me on the journey. When I began slowly to realize I am actually brighter than I think I am, that my studying methodology was not only not helpful, it was the opposite of being successful. It helped me get worse and worse.

Anthony: What was the tipping point that enabled you to have a change of mind and set you on the path to thinking more positively and starting to learn in a more optimal way and then design optimal learning strategies?

Tony: There were a number of tipping points. One was my best friend. We were seven years old and my best friend and I only loved nature. That was our main hobby. My best friend could identify the flight patterns of any butterflies or birds. He could identify them with machine gun like accuracy. That’s a sparrow. That’s a cabbage white butterfly.

But, in school, he was called stupid because he was illiterate, he was innumerate, he was dyslexic. But I didn’t know those terms existed. He was just my brilliant friend. I began to think, hold on. How can they possibly be calling this best friend of mine stupid, and sometimes calling me quite bright when I knew that he knew more than I knew about nature? So that was turning point one.

 

Where Not To Look For Your Brain’s Operating Manual

 

Another major tipping point was the fact that when I was at university I went into the library, because I was panicking about exams. I thought I’d go find out how to use my brain. I walked in the library, and I said to the librarian, “I need a book on how to use my brain.” She pointed to the medical section and said the medical section is over there. I thought what? I don’t want to take my brain out. I don’t want to operate on it. I want to know how to operate it. She said there are no books on that. That made me think … what?

Whatever I buy, whether it’s a pack of aspirins, or a little radio, or a washing machine, or a car, what am going to get? I am going to get an operations manual. But for this delightful extraordinary gift of a brain, I get no operations manual. That’s when I began to write.

Thank you for your kind words about the covers on the books, because once I wrote one book, people were asking for another book. My first book, Use Your Head, which really was the operations manual, was really written for my brother, my friends and me. It included chapters on memory, chapters on creativity, on reading, on speedreading, on studying, on note taking, and on the origination of mind maps.

 

How One Book Become
One Hundred And Forty-Two Others

 

Another tipping point:

People said Tony don’t write that book because as soon as you’ve written it, everybody will copy it, will learn from it and you won’t have any more books to write. It was exactly the opposite. I wrote that book, Use Your Head, and as soon as people and publishers had read it, they would point to me and say, “You’ve got a chapter here on memory. Why don’t you do a full book on memory?” I’d say yeah, okay.

Sure enough within a few months people were saying, that chapter in Use Your Head on mind maps, why don’t you have a book on mind maps? So I thought, yeah, okay. Then when I’d written the mind map book, which was the child of Use Your Head, people read the mind map book and said have you done a book for children on mind maps?

I said no, you know some of it is in the book. They said no, no, a full book just for kids. So I said okay. Publisher came up and said could you do three mind map books for kids. One on mind maps the introduction. One on mind maps memory. One on mind maps for studying. Every book gave birth to more books.

As you and I are speaking right now, I am now on book No. 142. I’m sitting in my garden, and for this afternoon I’ve been working on two books, and in the next hour I’m going to be meeting with a designer, co-designer and co-editor this evening to work on another book.

Anthony: Wow, this is incredible and it reminds me and connects me to some other things that I wanted to ask you. You’ve written about multiple intelligences. You were a huge figure in developing that field. I think that not enough people really recognize how, or at least in the material I’ve read, how that you actually are a demonstration of all these multiple intelligences, because it’s not just about books, right?

You have written books but you’ve been responsive to the audience that wanted more books. But not just through books, you’ve gone into various parts of media such as television, and then you’ve produced software for people and are using the Internet in creative ways, and the mind map itself, the things you’ve done is art and you’ve also been a proponent of art itself.

 

How To Find Your First Multiple Intelligence

 

You brought beautiful art to the training that I attended. It’s just incredible. Then you turn people into artists. Just how do you explain your interest in all of this and the energy that keeps you going and enables you to do it? I know it is multiple intelligences and I know that it comes down to things that you’ve classified – creativity, personality, the social, the spiritual, the physical and so forth. But a lot of people just see this from a person like yourself and they’re like, where’s the alpha here? Where do we begin?

Tony:  That’s a lovely question because it is a question worth me thinking about. Because when I was a 7‑year-old, 10‑year-old, 12‑year-old boy, I was a kind of good above-average kid, but I was poor in sports. I was virtually hope less with art. Socially I was fairly good but not fully aware of how to get on with other people.

I gradually began to realize, for example with my first intelligence, I began to become very attracted to young girls. The spark in my eyes started when I was about 5. But I didn’t know anything about that.

By the time I was 12, most of my other male friends became interested in girls and so did I. I began to think well I want to get a good girlfriend so I better get strong. So I then went into the gym and I learned how to run. I learned how to swim. I learned how to build my muscles because I wanted to be a good guy on the beach that girls would find attractive because of my good built-up body, my biceps and my six-pack.

 

The Real Secret Of Verbal Intelligence

 

I was at a party and I developed my verbal intelligence. So I was pretty good at that stage of talking, fairly good at writing and I was getting strong. So I thought the girls would immediately gravitate towards me.

I noticed that some kids who were not doing well in school, not doing well in sports, but they were funny. They were telling good jokes. They were making people laugh and girls would go more for them than they went for me. And I thought how can they be possibly more interested in an unfit kid doing badly in school when I’m doing now well in school and I’m strong.

It quickly dawned on me that being humorous having a sense of humor was a massive creative and social intelligence. I thought well I better build up the package. I better learn how to tell some jokes, learn how to be funny, learn how to make a fool of myself. Not try to be so clever, so good and so always top.

Over the years, and it was years, I began to realize about multiple intelligences. Then my hero in my early teens, throughout the teens and the rest of my life was Leonardo Da Vinci. Who would I really like to be? Sometimes people teach us in saying who would you like to be. I was thinking who would I like to be.

 

When and Why Being A Copycat Is Good For You

 

Would I like to be a fabulous artist? Yes, I would. Would I like to be a physically fit man? Yes, I would. Would I like to be an architect? Yes, I would. Would I like to be an astronomer? Yes, I would. Would I like to be a sculptor? Yes, I would. Would I like to be a top scientist? Yes, I would. Of course, they were all wrapped into Leonardo Da Vinci. So he became my hero and I began to study him. As any kid does, try to copy my hero.

So that was part of my journey into multiple intelligences and some of the tipping points in my life that led me to where I am. I now know, it’s not even just think, I know that nearly every kid on the planet can develop into this multiply intelligent wonderful human being.

Anthony: It seems like there is a bit of a code that can be extracted from what you’ve said which is essentially becoming an observer of your desires, observing the observation and then figuring out a way to take action. Would that be fair to say?

Tony: That would be a good beginning summary. In fact, Leonardo said something dead on that. He said, I’ll put this into different words, but basically what Leonard was saying was, look guys, don’t keep calling me an artist. I’m not just an artist. I am more than that. The word artist means a surface level somebody with paintbrushes who paints.

He said but I am a student of nature, and what I do is I notice that people don’t look and don’t see. We need to look and see. So he said I am simply a student of nature. I, Leonardo, am a student of nature and I observe her. When I observe her, I study her, I analyze her, I remember her, I copy her and then I add to whatever she’s given me and that is action. That’s what he did.

He would go into the woods, into the fields and he would observe flowers or animals, and he would observe them. He would then study them. He would analyze them and then he’d measure them. He would then copy them. When he had copied them that helped him remember them, and when he copied and copied say this kind of flower or this kind of face, then he would begin to change it in his own mind’s way. Those were his actions, a total genius. If anybody wants to learn to draw, copy Leonardo because he said copy nature. So go out there and learn how to copy. It’s wonderful.

 

How To Be A Real Teacher
And Touch The Lives Of Millions

 

Anthony: I think a common idea that we come up with, and it certainly is in the air already, is something about the way that we are put into schools interrupts this process that you were just talking about which is so elegant and simply has certainly helped you lead an incredible life that has changed so many lives.

Sometimes one wants to point the finger at the Victorian sort of nature of the school education system that has somehow made it’s made its way into the 21st century, but where do you see things now. What do we do to help people regardless of why? If it is the school, or they are not eating properly, or however things are playing in their lives, how do we help people participate in this procedure that you described so beautifully, into what you have called, actually to quote you, a mentally literate planet? At the core of things, how do we get this to more people?

Tony: Good question and an immediate answer is what you are doing now. You’ve got a podcast. You are contacting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of people. You are spreading global mental literacy. That’s one wonderful way to do it. Another is to be a teacher, but a real teacher, a teacher who is a beacon to a child. A teacher who is someone who launches the child on the exploration of their internal universe. A teacher is a harvester of questions so being a teacher is a wonderful most important profession. Mind mapping is another way.

Let me give you the hot off the presses two bits of information. We are now approaching the beginning of August. August 19 is the day. It’s a global mental literacy day and on that day, two things are going to happen.

No. 1, I have just been nominated and going to be given the Toastmaster Award. The Toastmaster organization has 15,000 members in 135 countries. Their simple goal for each individual Toastmaster is to learn how to present and to learn how to become confident. As soon as someone learns how to speak publicly, and obviously mind maps are a wonderful way to do that, and as soon as they do that, they then become more confident. When they get to that stage, all they have to do is to help another person do the same. So it’s like a wonderful positive brush fire, a positive viral.

The Toastmasters are going to give me the Golden Gavel Award in Washington, D.C. on August 19 this year. I will be speaking to 2,000 people from 135 countries and all of them know about mind mapping. They are anointing me as like a new leader for them to help the planet learn how to communicate and how to give birth to more leaders. Because people who can communicate, are confident and know how to think can help the world.

So on that day, the 19th, I’m going to be given that award and will be connected to 15,000 people who believe in human beings and believe in helping them to help each other, how to communicate, how to learn and how to become a leader that’s an ultimate global goal. So, please come to Washington and be with me there.

Announcing The First Ever World Mind Map Day!

 

On that same day, that day is now also going to be announced as the World Mind Map Day because there are global days for football and global days for golf and global days for politics or whatever. But this is the World Mind Map Day on August 19, 2016. On that day, the goal is for every mind mapper on this planet and there are already well over 300 million mind mappers, the goal is to have every mind mapper get as many mind maps out in as many ways as possible.

For example, if you’re an individual who mind maps, you don’t do an enormous number of big things, but you could get mind maps on your Skype, on your Twitter, on your Facebook, you could put mind maps on your car, when you go into a restaurant you could give them a fabulous mind map to stick on the window. You could put mind maps on billboards. You could give them to schools, give them copies, and/or send them virtually.

If you’ve got a little database of a thousand or ten thousand people, send mind maps to every one of them saying welcome to the World Mind Map Day. On my Twitter, my Twitter home page is @tony_buzan. The World Mind Map mind map is there so you can retweet that.

It is going to be like a super nova. It is going to explode mental literacy around the world, and I am really happy with that because in this modern age, despite the fact that the information age has given us a lot of information overload, it can do wondrous things. One of the things it can do is to spread good news to every brain, igniting every brain to become a flame with a beauty, the magnificence of the human mind.

Anthony: This is absolutely true and I’m glad that you raised the topic of people just getting their own podcast or getting out there and Tweeting at whatever level that they can to help spread the good news about these techniques and about the people who are really expert at explaining them.

 

The Power Of Lineage In The World Of Memory,
Multiple Intelligence And Creativity

 

Tony: The power of podcasts is a good phrase. You could use that, the power of podcasts because it’s very powerful. You know, if you, for example, Anthony influence one person on one interview you have, and that person transforms the world, it might have been a little Thomas Edison, it might have been a little Maria Montessori, it might have been a little Mandela, it could have been any child who you influenced and ignited. Then one podcast with one person changed and evolving it would be wonderful.

Anthony: I just wanted to tell you, to make a concrete example for people and I should really give a shout out to someone special. I’m here in Tel Aviv, and I have this podcast and maybe we came into connection because you were in British Columbia where I grew up. So maybe there was something in the air about that. Having grown up with your influence and then learning all this time and I’m in Tel Aviv.

I just let people know on my podcast and through my email that I’m here and a guy named Eldon Clem emails me.

He’s in Jerusalem and we haven’t managed to connect yet, but I really want to meet him because he’s taken my training that he found out because that I spread the word about these things, and I’m almost choking up here because he emailed and he said that what I’ve done has changed how he teaches Semitic languages.

I’ve talked to him over a year ago and he told me that he memorized a thousand words in six weeks of ancient Ethiopic and this is a very difficult language where the words have three letters. He said it was no problem even without an online language learning course. I just went on to read a thousand words and then I just started incorporating your stuff into my classes and now I heard that he’s even using the Memory Palace as a technique to give quizzes.

So this is how the lineage works. From me seeing your books as a kid in British Columbia to ultimately getting to meet you and already having had the podcast in action and then somebody gets involved in my stuff and then they start passing it on to students. He said they are getting great success because it enables them in the testing period. So I just want to take this opportunity to give a concrete example that’s happening right now and I hope to meet him and let him know that I spoke with you. It’s amazing what can happen.

Why You Should Come To The
2016 World Memory Championships

 

Tony: Wonderful. I mean your story links in with the World Memory Championships, because that was just an idea that I had many decades ago. Why are there tidily winks championships? Why are there chess championships? High jumping championships, long jumping championships, weight lifting championships, you name it there’s a championship and nothing on memory. I thought we’ve got to have a World Memory Championship. I discussed that and people said Buzan you must be crazy. What’s the point of having a memory competition? Nobody will be interested in that.

This year is the 25th World Memory Championships. It is the Jubilee year, No. 25, and there are tens of thousands of competitors and there are multiple grand masters of memory spreading around the world. All the people in the World Memory Championships, like you Anthony, are busting all the barriers that are placed around the human brain.

It’s like balustrades, pickets that are staked around the human brain and it is fenced in like a trapped animal, when in fact when the brain knows how to think, knows how to remember, knows how to learn, knows how to be intelligent, it will break all those barriers. I’m sure you’re going to be at the World Memory Championships this year, which are now going to be in Singapore this year December 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, World Memory Championships. Please, both you and me, invite everybody from your podcast group, team to come to Singapore.

Anthony: Let’s do it! Maybe you can help make it concrete for people. What is the No. 1, or by all means add more than one if it comes to mind, but what would you say is the top benefit of participating in the World Memory Championships for someone who is already feeling that sense of resistance? Like I could never go what’s the tipping point for them to get in there and just give it a try.

Tony: One of the great events in your life, when you compete you will naturally meet all the greatest memorizers in the world. You’ll meet every Grandmaster. You’ll meet Dominic O’Brien, eight-time World Memory Champion who as a kid in school who was told you will never succeed. You can’t remember. You can’t concentrate. You are useless. Get out of this school. He became the eight-time World Memory Champion because he suddenly realized, oh, they say I’m stupid but I’m not.

If you went to the World Memory Championships, you would meet all the people. You would meet me because I will be there. You would meet Anthony Metivier. I mean what a wonderful opportunity. You would be meeting people who would charge something like £1,000.00 or £2,000.00 an hour for their time and you would be meeting them as new friends.

It would be like going into the United Nations where all the presidents of the countries were coming together and you’d just be with them. Same in the memory championships and as soon as you competed, you would learn that your memory, no matter how poor, weak and bad you think it is, it’s powerful and all you need is the correct formulas for unlocking the doors of your genius.

 

How To Create A Trillion Dollar Brain

 

I’ve asked people sometimes how much would I have to pay you to promise that you’d obliterate your memory of the World Memory Championships. You just wipe out your memory of it. If you met all the world champions, the national champions, all the best memorizers and they taught you how to remember.

If you met all the top competitors in the world, you met Tony Buzan, Anthony Metivier, Grandmaster Raymond Keene, the ultimate chess, mind sports, Times journalist and writer, how much would I have to pay you if you promised to forget all of it?

People said, no matter how much you pay me I would choose to remember it all. It’s changed my life. It would destroy me if I forgot all that I now know about memory and my new friend Dominic O’Brien. People have said if you offer my £100,000.00, I would still say no. It’s priceless. That’s how important it is.

Anthony: I feel the same way about having attended your training. You couldn’t pay its way out of my memory. It’s just too valuable.

Tony: Thank you for saying that, because if you and all the people on the podcast here said listen Buzan we’ll give you a trillion pounds if you promise that you’ll never use a mind map again, you will never use anything in your books, you wouldn’t use your speed reading, you won’t use your studying skills, you won’t use your creativity, you won’t use your multiple intelligences, but we’ll give you a trillion pounds. I would say you must be mad! What’s the point of wiping my brain out for a trillion pounds? My brain is infinitely valuable and that’s how important it is.

Anthony: Absolutely. One of the things that I want to point out is that I went to the training that I went to as someone who already used the techniques, and I’m just so devoted to learning as much as I possibly can. I was blown away not only by how little that I know but how little that I knew about what I know. Let me put it that way.

Tony: There is that kind of a common saying in most cultures including the Arabic culture, Japanese, Chinese, European cultures. The common saying is the more you know the less you know.

 

The Truth About What You Know About What You Know
About What You Know About …

 

That is a complete misinterpretation of what actually everybody meant. The real saying is, the more you know the more you know, and the more you know the more you know that there is even more to know than you thought you would have to know.

Anthony: That is a much more empowering and profound and useful way of using that phrase.

Tony: So I now know that I know a lot more than I ever knew before, and I know that now that I know all that, I know now know there that there are an infinite number of infinite number of infinite number of other things I don’t yet know and would love to know.

Many people are saying about old age, people are saying I don’t want to be old. I don’t want to be over 80. It would be terrible. My brain would rot and I don’t want to learn anymore. My brain is stuffed which is sadly tragic. Because the fact is, the human brain can learn an infinite number of things.

 

Why Tony Buzan Wants To Live Forever

 

Therefore I want to live forever because would like to be a concert level violinist? Yes, I would. Would I like to be a concert level pianist? Of course, I would. Would I like to be a brilliant gymnast? Of course, I would. Would I like to be an Olympic level swimmer? Of course, I would.

Would I like to be a bestselling novelist of detective stories like Sherlock Holmes? Of course, I would. Would I like to be a top children’s author with 100 books? Of course, I would. Would I like to go to every country? Of course, I would. Would I like to spend years in each country, in different cities?

Would I like to spend 10 years in Paris learning French, learning French cuisine, learning French philosophy, French poetry, French literature, and French music? Of course, I would. How many years is that going take me? Trillions of years. I would love to live forever.

Every day of my life is wonderful even when I’m in pain or sad or depressed or melancholic, or contemplating suicidal thoughts, I’d far rather be alive than not.

 

How To Deal With The Darkness
Without Pills Or Psychiatrists

 

Anthony: Let’s go in this direction a little bit. How do you deal with those challenges that you’ve just mentioned, the dark times? We give this impression always these super incredible intellects they just have it all and live in paradise. But, it’s not the case. So what do you do? How do you use your multiple intelligences to deal with the down sides?

Tony: When I’m down, I explore the bad. You know for example, if I give you a simple example about having nightmares, and let’s say things are going pretty awfully and friends are dying, personal situations are difficult, sickness or illness causes nightmares, and people wake up screaming in the middle of the night with monsters howling or whatever.

Rather than waking up screaming and trying to block out the nightmares, I now think, because I used to try to stop them, but then I began to think hold on a minute, among the most popular movies on the planet are horror movies. Horror movies and how much do they cost to make? It costs $250 million to make one horror movie.

What is my nightmare like? It’s a lot better than that one $250 million movie. It’s fabulous. It’s got monsters in it that I’ve never even imagined before. It has unbelievable pain. It has all the horrors. So I now think, wow, what a great story that is, wat a great poem that will be. You know like the American author Edgar Allen Poe. His horror stories, he got those from his nightmares. Wonderful.

I recently had a big molar wisdom tooth taken out, which was infected, broken, so it was literally a bloody mess. I was asked to take paracetamol or any other painkiller to prevent the pain because for two days it would be really painful after the numbness disappeared from the eight needles I had to have.

I said no, I’m not going to take any painkiller because pain is information. It’s a friend of mine. My mouth is telling my brain I’m in agony. I am bleeding. I am ripped apart. I am in asunder. I am still bleeding and I’m trying to tell you Tony, please look after me. You know rinse me, listen to me, hear me, and so I had all night conversations with pain.

What was fascinating was that the pain in my mouth was a giant pulse – roomph, roomph, roomph. Why? Because the blood was pumping and it was all open and damaged, and it was roomph, roomph. The more I got into it the more it was like a wonderful music, roomph, roomph, and sure enough after five hours of listening to that, I went to sleep. I was sent to sleep by my pain.

 

The Magic Of Rowing 

 

When I went sculling, you know, rowing sculling in the morning, I was told do not do any big exercise for two days because it will break open all the sealing. But on the third day, I went sculling and every time I put my oars in the water, where I took all the strain, roomph. Every time I took a stroke my mouth, my crater went roomph, roomph, roomph. So it was telling me exactly the moment that I put all my effort into rowing. Stroke, stroke, row, row, and it was in my mouth. I mean it was phenomenal.

Anthony: Rowing has been a fascination of yours and something you’ve been deeply involved in for a long time. Where did that begin and how has it been that it fascinated you so deeply that you still do it to this day? You did it even the morning before you came into the training that I attended.

Tony: I fell in love with it because I saw a superb male athlete sculling in a single boat. In your life, you suddenly see things, and it’s pretty well the same for everybody. Everybody sees something and wow, I want to be like that. I just saw this athlete sculling and it was the most beautiful sport I have ever seen.

I just thought I want to do that. I want to be able to skim across the water like one of those fabulous insects that skims across the water. I wanted to do that with all my gymnastic muscles rippling but not going solid but more flowing. It was wonderful. I did it this morning. This morning I rowed 4,000 meters on the River Thames.

Anthony: I remember you telling us that your doctor said you were definitely in prime territory to keep going for a long, long, long time to come.

Tony: I would invite all the podcast people. Put in your diaries guys June 2, 2042. Second of June, 2042, that’s my 100th birthday. Make sure you come.

Anthony: Absolutely, I can’t wait for the 100th birthday of Tony Buzan!

Tony: What I would love to do is do another podcast with you.

 

The Greatest Challenges To Planet Earth And Humanity

 

Anthony: I would love that as well, and the time has gone so fast and I really appreciate that you’ve been able to be here. If I could ask one last question before we go, what in your future do you feel is your biggest challenge and as a person with so many tools to tackle them, what is your No. 1 tool for tackling that challenge?

Tony: That’s another book of a question. The greatest challenge to this planet is the destruction of intelligence. It can be destroyed in a number of ways. It can be destroyed in schools where like I taught myself to be stupid and I was very successful. Children have to be taught to learn how to learn and then they will think intelligently and they will deal with all the future problems and they will find solutions. That’s one.

Another threat is technology used in the wrong way. So for example, when technology is used, consumes all the hours of a day that has people become couch potatoes, diabetic, fat, nonathletic, that’s the negative side of technology. Technology when used well, like you can use mind maps with technology to your advantage. That’s another wonderful threat and opportunity.

We must learn how to use technology intelligently. So we have to use information intelligently. We have to use agriculture intelligently. We have to use knowledge intelligently, and we have to use intelligence intelligently because the threat is that if we don’t use intelligence intelligently, we lose intelligence. If we lose intelligence, we die. It’s as simple as that. Think intelligently or die.

Anthony: Absolutely.

 

How To Eliminate The Manipulation Of Thinking

 

Tony: Another big threat is the manipulation of thinking. So for example, in politics all the arguments are spun. Truth is manipulated. When truth is distorted, being destroyed, intelligence becomes destroyed.

So in politics for example, if there is some wonderful evidence that when people eat a lot of junk food, all the statistics show that the brains in the wombs of pregnant women, the brain in the embryo get destroyed or damaged. There are masses of incontrovertible information, studies done on hundreds of thousands of pregnant moms, and we know that if someone keeps on stuffing themselves with dangerous food, the body bloats and basically explodes.

There are many people when they are given information like that, they say yeah, yeah, yeah that’s what those statistics say, but statistics always lie. I know and I believe that eating all the food that I eat is good for me. I know it. I believe in it. You’ve got to believe in it. I mean I am still alive. I may weigh 400 pounds, but so what? I enjoy that food and those statistics must be wrong. I believe in what I believe.

That is intelligence hypnotized, mesmerized and destroyed and it goes blind. So blinding intelligence is another hyper-dangerous threat. All we have to do is ignite the intelligence and get it working, the intelligence working well and the world will be fine. We have to work hard to do that.

 

The Path To Becoming A Warrior Of The Mind
Begins With This …

 

What we’re doing today, what you’ve been doing, more and more tens of thousands people, millions of people are beginning to think about thinking intelligently which is wonderful. What I’ve just said wouldn’t be true if you did not have a thousand podcast people because people wouldn’t be interested. But I’ve never met anybody who isn’t interested in intelligence as long as it is explained properly.

Anthony: I do hope that you will write a book on the topic and since you called me a Warrior Of The Mind, I’ve been thinking that that would be an amazing title for a book. So, I don’t know if that will trigger anything, but I think it’s certainly in line with the solution is for people to become a warrior of the mind. I am going to do everything that I can to get the people listening now and the people that will find my website in the future also linked up with what you do.

Tony: Wonderful.

Anthony: I’m so delighted that you gave me the opportunity to do it with an interview between the two of us, a discussion, and that you have already proposed the next one. So let’s definitely get together to talk about that and what more we can do together.

Tony: Let’s do that after the Mind Map Day.

Anthony: Great.

Tony: By then we can talk about the results and the Mind Map Day, the World Mind Map Day will extend into the Mind Map Week, the Mind Map Month and the Mind Map Year.

Anthony: Excellent.

Tony: It’s going to go on until the end of December.

Anthony: Just to let you know, and the listeners know, since I was there, you guys were teaching memory. I was watching you use mind maps and you talked about mind map as well as a bonus. Since then I’ve created at least nineteen and designed more outlines for books than I have time to write over the next ten years, but just the exercise of being able to use that to plan out ideas and books and so forth is just so empowering and I really want as many people as possible to have this skill.

Tony: Welcome to my world Anthony.

Anthony: It’s a wonderful place to be, and you asked if I could hear birds at the beginning and that moment I couldn’t but throughout the interview, birds have been audible and they are going to be in the interview. I hope everybody enjoys that as well. We talked about nightmares and I said it’s not always paradise but quite frankly, it sounds like it is always paradise where you are.

Tony: We do live in paradise.

The post Tony Buzan On The Paradise Of Multiple Intelligences appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Do you struggle with concentration and memory?

Maybe even because you’ve been labeled with manic depression or A.D.D.?

I hope you don’t have those conditions, but either way, there’s hope for clearing up any and all brain fog from messing up your memory. And it’s great honor that Rob Lawrence, host of Inspirational Creatives Podcast has allowed me to share his interview with me.

In it, we talk about creativity, concentration, musicianship and how all of it ties into living a life of superior memory.

Note: Quite a few things have changed since recording this interview. Olly Richards helped me fix a Spanish pronunciation problem created by the power of mnemonics and there have been a number of Magnetic Memory Method podcast episodes on Music Mnemonics For Guitar And Piano that have shown development and huge promise since recording this talk with Rob.

With all that said, here’s the transcript for this interview to go with the audio. Enjoy and be sure to read more about Rob Lawrence and get subscribed to the Inspirational Creatives Podcast on iTunes!

 

Psychic Brain Surgery

 

Rob: So do I call you Dr. Metivier or Anthony?

Anthony:  Well that’s always a very interesting issue. I really don’t know. I mean get a kick out of being called doctor, and it certainly circulates around but it’s not necessary. My dad gets a kick out of it too. Actually, it’s funny that you mention brain surgery. Because for years and years he didn’t really quite understand what I did in my Ph.D., so he used to call me a brain surgeon, which there are some elements of that involved in what I do. It’s just psychic brain surgery.

Rob: Yeah, there’s some technical accuracy in that. Have you always been interested in memory and imagination?

Anthony: In a roundabout way. I basically wrote my first story that I remember, when I was in grade four. By story, I mean something that had a solid beginning, middle and an end. I had an ability to remember stories, as we all do, and loved to retell stories, tell jokes and retained stories in my mind. I’d often watch a movie and then try to rewrite it from memory. Yeah, I’ve always had this interest from a very young age.

Rob: Stories are a fascinating concept, something that we tell our children and seem to be something that we’ve done since the beginning of time. Do you think we’ve lost our ability to remember in the way that we used to?

 

Why You Have Not “Lost” Your Ability To Remember

 

Anthony: I don’t believe at all that we’ve lost it. But the extent to which we use it has certainly changed.

There is a kind of running myth that back in the day in Ancient Greece and in Matteo Ricci‘s era everybody used these memory techniques that I teach. They all memorized thousands of books and this kind of thing, which isn’t true. I would say that the ratio of people who use memory techniques then and in comparison with now is relatively the same per capita let’s say. It’s really just a growing thing.

We’re in a renaissance of memory techniques right now. It seems to be happening at the precise moment that technology appears to be taking over or our memory needs, which I find deeply fascinating that this renaissance is taking place now at that technological moment. There are reasons to believe that actually technology is expanding our memory abilities rather than diminishing it. That’s a topic to be explored. It’s very conceptual, and I don’t have any hard data behind it but it’s something that I feel is being enabled by technology rather than the common statement that our memories are being eroded by technology.

Rob: That’s fascinating, an absolutely fascinating thought there. So what are the key factors necessary to be able to succeed in improving your memory and using these Magnetic Memory Techniques that you teach?

Anthony: Well there are a number of factors, but it all begins with the desire actually to improve your memory because without that there is nothing to ground it upon.

Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, always said that the fantasy is better than the reality. That’s not exactly true in this case because you use fantasy in order to create reality, but nonetheless, there is an effort involved. A lot of people don’t have the necessary drive in order to get into it.

One of my jobs is to give them that drive. So that’s a key factor there. In many ways, that is what my job is. It is simply to open the door for people, give points of access and points of entry.

Beyond that, there’s the willingness to experiment, which is a key factor, the pleasure in imagination is a key factor and also a kind of wish or desire to have this information and to use it. Because if you’re not going to use it, you can have memorize all the things in the world and it won’t do anything for you.

Memory champions, for example, can memorize thousands of digits that they forget half an hour later, but they have that particular use value in the competition in of itself. It’s always got to have some sort of use and some sort of pay off. The more you can identify with that use and that payoff is, then the more you have that necessary key factor to succeed.

 

Don’t Miss The Motivation Train!

 

Rob: You’re talking about motivation there, and you’re also talking about trying to find ways to get started exploring these techniques.

Anthony: It’s not particular to the field of memory training. All areas need points of access and entry points. With music for example, people who would be perfectly capable of becoming very good musicians don’t get the point access that enables them to enter the kingdom. It could be that they didn’t get the right teacher or they didn’t get enough sleep or enough Cheerios or whatever the case may be.

They just missed that train which is very sad because we all have musical capacities. That really is, I think, one of the key factors of all education is helping people find that entry point, as many as possible, because it’s really sad. We all have the ability to do anything really. We just need the prophets and the leaders who are able to show the way.

Rob: I’d love to come back to that point about music because I’ve heard you’re a musician. Before I do, with your work, what are some of the key access points that you help people with in terms of being out to get a footing on these Magnetic Memory Techniques?

Anthony: Well for me the big thing is the Memory Palace. The reason why I focus on it so specifically and teach so much about it is because it’s not only the fundamental memory technique, but it is the memory technique that you can use all of their memory techniques inside of. If you can get going with that, then you have enabled yourself really to have a success with every other memory technique.

One of the other reasons that I focus on Memory Palace is because everybody knows where their toilet is. Everybody knows where their bed is. Everybody knows where their kitchen is. Because of that innate ability to recall locations with great detail, just conceptually knowing the distance between different areas and where they’re located in space in your home or in your workplace, you can then leverage that power and place information by the sofa or on the desk and recall it at ease by simply mentally going to that location.

That is a major point of entry if you can learn how to use that technique correctly, instantly use it for something that is interesting to you and makes a significant difference to your life. Because so many people encounter memory techniques and they say well memorize your grocery list. Nothing in the world could be more boring than memorizing a grocery list, which is another reason why people don’t find a point of entry.

But when you say memorize the lyrics of your favorite song that somehow evade you are using a path from your sofa to your office desk to your dinner table, well then that’s interesting because you get a great deal of pleasure out of it. Now you can sing along with that song. Now you can annoy your spouse or your friends by singing it over and over again or whatever the case may be. That makes a difference in your life. Those are two points of access, the very specific technique and then how you’re going to use that technique to get a victory, that make you feel good. You see the possibilities for what else you could memorize.

 

Two Kinds Of Memory Palaces … Take Your Pick! 

 

Rob: That’s fascinating. So there is this concept here of Memory Palaces and are they real places or these places that we make up in our minds?

Anthony: You can make them up in your minds or people use video games. There are all kinds of possibilities in what I call virtual Memory Palaces.

I typically do not recommend that people use them at least not at the beginning stage. Yes, you want to ground your Memory Palaces on real locations, places that you’re familiar with and generally places that you have a positive association with. I have worked with people over the years who suffered abuse in a home, and they just keep coming up against those memories when they’re trying to use it as a Memory Palace.

You could use a Memory Palace technique to help cleanse those bad memories, but until that that has taken place it’s really best just to use places with positive associations or at least neutral associations, which is another technique that you can use to have a clinical approach to things so that positive and negative memories don’t really play. For example, high schools have both positive and negative memories. If you can get a neutral approach or a clinical approach, then they’re pretty safe to use and very detailed so that you can get a lot of action out of them.

 

Familiarity Is The Key

 

Rob: Is there an advantage to using places that you already know you know?

Anthony: What you are going to do is actually create a journey through a home, or a school, or a church, or a movie theater or whatever the case may be. You’re going to follow that journey the same way every time.

It’s not exactly like following a movie through your mind, but it’s more like following a play through your mind because you restage it every time. It’s going to be slightly different. But nonetheless, a movie or play, you’re going to move on that journey in the same way.

I mean there’s later techniques were you leap frog around in order to overcome what’s called the forgetting curve but in general you follow that same path just as you would basically follow of the same path from your door to your driveway. I mean you could walk around in circles around your car, but normally you just go from the door to the driveway to the door of your car. Because that is so ubiquitous, so every day and so commonplace, there’s nothing to remember or forget about it.

You just know that intuitively and intentionally because it’s what you would do in real life anyway. Instead of just walking passively alongside the rosebush, now you have a giant clown who is eating your slippers to remind you that they need to go buy new shoes, or to help stimulate a line of poetry, or a foreign language word, or whatever the case may be, you’re actively using that location instead of passively. It’s just something that you pass by every day anyway.

Rob: It sounds to me like something we intuitively do as children when we’re younger and we recount stories. That thought is inspired by something you just said there which is the clown eating the slippers. It’s part of the technique to exaggerate and create these kind of images in our minds.

 

How To Experience Cartoons In Your Mind

 

Anthony: That’s a fundamental part of it. So on top of the journey through a Memory Palace, every place that you want to memorize a target piece of information you create an image in order to encode it. Then when you go along that journey again in your mind you, decode it.

The way that you remember the coding is by making it big, large, bright, vibrant and colorful, and on top of that, including some kind of zany crazy bizarre action. The more that you can focus on doing that, which in the beginning can be a bit of a challenge for some people, but gets very easy very quickly with some exercises and just practice, you can shock yourself into remembering anything.

The more that you have cartoon-like silly engaging actions between characters, like an action with a reaction the way you would have in Wile E. Coyote cartoons with the Road Runner, or Pinky and The Brain or whatever these cartoon characters are. They are actually quite rigorous with one another. One would even say violent, but in a cartoon way, then they’re going to capture the interest of your mind’s eye in the way that a car wreck on the highway causes the rubberneck effect and you have to see it. Then you decode it and you get your target information back. If you do it a sufficient number of times, then you don’t need the image anymore. You have affectively learned and memorized the information and it’s yours.

 

How To Harness The Memory Power Of Emotions

 

Rob: Wow! That’s pretty fascinating. So it sounds to me like these techniques are more objective than they are subjective. What I mean by that is you were talking earlier about positive and negative emotions. I guess one of the assumptions I made automatically before I spoke with you today is that you use some kind of emotional power to help you remember certain things. Would that be an accurate reflection or is it a bit more complicated than that?

Anthony: Technically you’re using an objective process to create subjective experience that relates to an object memory or some piece of information that is a kind of object. It’s a living breathing object. Yes, emotions are involved. I mean if you see your spouse smashing something with a hammer, there’s going to be an emotion involved.

That emotion can be anger. Some of the images involve kissing which can involve romantic elements. You do want an emotional element to it, but you want it objective in the sense that there is a strategy involved. So in the same way that Hugh Grant might not be in love with Drew Barrymore and yet they’re kissing and projecting that emotion, you’re going objectively to create an emotion through deliberately rigging images in your mind.

 

The Real Reasons Why Anyone Can Improve Their Memory

 

Rob: Got it. So is this something that anybody can develop in your experience?

Anthony: Everybody can experience memory improvement. They’re already doing it at some level anyway. So it’s just a matter of understanding how that your imagination works, which is pretty simple and easy to do, then leveraging it and then developing it in certain directions. But even if you don’t develop it, you still have the ability to do this at an intermediate level.

There’s no elementary level to it whatsoever. You can go from intermediate to an advanced level. Anybody can do it. I mean I have podcast interviews on my podcasts with 10‑year-olds, 8‑year-olds who are using these techniques. I have personally trained 88‑year-old individuals and people in their 80s, 70s, 60s and 50s. There’s even very interesting research going on right now by someone in Kasper Bormans who is using the Memory Palace technique to help people with Alzheimer’s remember the names of their family members and getting results with this which is absolutely incredible.

So there are curative properties for people who have brain damage. They’re also using Memory Palace techniques for what’s called chemobrain when cancer patients have to take a lot of chemotherapy and they lose their memory, and they lose general cognitive abilities. So they are getting results with this kind of memory exercise as well. So anybody can do it.

Rob: Wow! That’s pretty incredible and something I was going to ask you about. But it is pretty inspiring to hear that these techniques can be used, or similar techniques to this, can be used to help improve the memory of people that have health conditions, which are affecting their memory. That’s pretty inspirational. What are the common applications that your students tend to use? You’re talking about very young people there and very old people. In your experience, what do people tend to use these Magnetic Memory Methods for?

 

The Most Common Applications Of Memory Techniques

 

Anthony: The biggest application in my personal experience as someone offering these is with foreign language vocabulary and to a certain extent grammar principles. This has been tremendously successful because it’s one of the hugest pain points in the world. People want to learn new languages. They want to improve their own language, but words just don’t stick without either massive amounts of repetition or some kind of technique. There are all kinds of techniques in the world for using your memory to help you better recall words. But there is no specific strategy that was developed just for word retention and recall. So I developed it. I developed it out of my own personal need, shared it and it just became wildly successful because so many other people have that pain point. That’s really the largest part of my training is specifically for the purpose of learning languages.

Rob: So I’m guessing you speak different languages?

Anthony: I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise because I just don’t have any kind of natural ability the way some people do. But of course, some people don’t have a natural ability. They are just using certain techniques in their minds that relate to what I teach, but without a kind of actual apparatus. I never it was very successful despite a deep interest in languages throughout my life.

But being able to build a number of Memory Palaces and put large amounts of vocabulary with a basic understanding of grammar, vocabulary being like a kind of petrol or gas that you put into an engine, and grammar being a kind of engine, then you can get very far very quickly. You just need to add speaking, reading, writing and listening to the mix. Things happen very quickly.

Rob: So can you give me an example of perhaps one of the languages that you’ve begun teach yourself, and can you talk me through how you’ve perhaps memorized the phrase or something like that with these Memory Palaces in mind?

Anthony: One thing that I’ve been developing for some time now but that I really love is Spanish. So imagine you came across the word abuela. Abuela means grandmother, and you wanted to memorize that. There are really not any cognates with English. There’s no relationship grandmother and abuela. So you’ve got to find a point of access.

One thing that you can do is split the words in different pieces. So there’s ab-u-ela. One thing that I like to do is use famous people. So ab reminds me of Abraham Lincoln and ela reminds me of Ella Fitzgerald. I imagine that Abraham Lincoln encounters Ella Fitzgerald dressed as his grandmother and she is saying boo like a ghost.

So now, you have ab-u-ela. You can add abuelo for grandfather just by having some Jell-O or whatever the case may be. Now you’ve got that word and that is on the bed in a Memory Palace that I have. Then just move to the next one, the next one and the next one so that you’re collecting words.

Just imagine that there are a number of words in Spanish that start with “ab.” Abraham Lincoln moves from place to place to place interacting with different other people. You can pick up a lot of words really quickly. Then again, using them in speaking, reading, writing and listening, you’ll encounter them, you’ll hear them, and you’ll use them. Everything is just absolutely fantastic. You might even call it Magnetic.

 

How To Memorize Grammar Concepts Fast

 

Rob: How does it work with grammar without getting into too much detail because I imagine that’s a slightly different ballgame.

Anthony: It is and it isn’t. A lot of grammar has to do with conjugations.

I mean grammar is a big world. One of the things is verb conjugations, which are very difficult for people. So imagine that you create a Memory Palace for say the “to be” verbs. Spanish has two, so let’s just deal with one. You would have ser. For me, I used Hamlet serving desert because ser is in desert.

It’s not a one-to-one correspondence but it works for me. You’re rarely going to find one-to-one correspondences. There are a number of conjugations of “to be” like you are, I am, they are. You have a sufficient number of stops or stations in a Memory Palace and you just see Hamlet helping you remember all of those different conjugations. So ser is to be. Yo soy is I am. Tu eres is you are and so forth.

So yo soy, Hamlet is injecting the cake into a bathtub of soy. Tu eres is this giant statute of Aries and he is throwing the cake at that statue’s face and so on. So that’s one way for verb conjugations. You pick any verb that you and you conjugate them. But you also generally pick up the way that the regular and irregular verb contributions work. So after a while you really don’t need to do that for every verb. You just need the verb.

 

How To Develop Unconscious Competence

 

Rob: I’m guessing that over time through practice that you become unconscious competent at this. I guess the language just starts to come naturally does it?

Anthony: Yeah, especially if you do a kind of alphabetization that I was suggesting because, not in all languages but in many languages, you get a feel for how the structure works. So in German, for example, there are a lot of words that start with ent.

That generally, but almost always, suggests something about the next part of the word. Also with words that start with ber. Whatever follows that generally has something to do with what that ber characterizes about the language. That works in English as well with endings and with some beginnings.

You get a feel for it. You get to a point where you can guess with some accuracy what a word means. Of course all language learning is experimentation, testing. Do you get a result from the use of a word or is it making sense when you read. Of course, words have multiple senses. But language learning, like memory itself, is not a fixed piece of glass. It’s something that is wet and movable. You just go with the flow, and you use memory as a kind of surfboard to navigate through torrid waters.

Mnemonics for Music Memory Hacks In Development

 

Rob: Got it. I’d like to turn our conversation towards creativity, and come back to this point about music and appreciate that you’re a musician. How long have you been a musician? Have you been a musician your whole life?

Anthony: I played guitar in my dad’s lap. It is one of those classic images where the father is helping you press down your fingers on the guitar.

After that, it’s kind of a long story, but when I got to band class in grade six they didn’t want to let me into band class because I didn’t pass the proper tests. I persisted anyway even though I was tone deaf or whatever those tests were that they had. I persisted. I wanted to play bass guitar and they said you can’t. We’re not going to buy an amplifier for the class just so you can play bass guitar.

I said well what’s the next closest thing and they said trombone. I went with it. Then I played trombone until I got grade nine, and I was able to finally able to get a bass. Then I just started in bands and went from there. I ultimately wound up playing in a band in Germany and going on tour and having lots and lots of fun as a result. Bass has always been my thing, but I’ve also played sitar, flute, banjo, a bit of piano and a little flute that I got in Prague once upon a time.

Rob: I read, I think it was on Amazon actually, that you were memorizing Bach’s compositions on cello. Can you describe to me a bit about how your methods apply to creative endeavors, for example, playing or more writing music?

Anthony: I’m learning the Bach cello pieces on bass guitar for performance on bass guitar. One of the things that really help is if you are able to create an image for each string.

So E is for Ernie. A is for out Al Pacino and so forth.

Then you can have each fret have a sound attached to it or an image. There’s something called the Major Method where each number is a sound. So 0 is “sa,” 1 is “ta” or “da,” 2 is “na,” and so forth up until 9. Then you can create combinations. So if something where at the twelfth fret, for instance, that would be tan because 1 is “T” or “D”, and 2 is “N”. You don’t even have to be as specific as the string if you don’t want to.

But if you know something’s on the twelve fret, and it’s on the E string, then that is Ernie getting a tan. Or it’s Al Pacino getting a tan. It’s just a quick thing where you can look at a piece of sheet music and you can navigate quite quickly and establish not needing to look at the sheet music and not really needing as much dedicated practice looking back and forth, closing your eyes, playing, and looking back and forth.

It really helps. But you need the basis first. If you are trying to do this while you’re learning the memory techniques, then it probably would be more of a barrier than anything, or if you were trying to use it while you’re learning music it would probably be more of the barrier than anything. But if you have both of those things in combination, then it’s a beautiful thing.

 

The Real Secret Of A Solid Memory Is Sleep

 

Rob:  So get some music theory first, learn the memory techniques, then try and put the two together.

Anthony: Basically, but I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from trying to do both at the same time. My feeling is that having learned music myself and having learned to do dedicated practice playing with that rote learning style, I can see that they would jar with each other.

Rob:  Yeah and how reliable have you found these techniques in terms of your music and being able to memorize such compositions?

Anthony: Well I’d say that it’s basically an 88 to 98 percent success rate. A lot has to do with how tired one is, how well fed one is, how much the bodily needs are taken care of so they can use your attention, which is going to be true one way or the other. Also, it has to do with motivation and intensity. When I was playing, I just came back to Germany from Canada and I needed to be prepared to go on the road with The Outside.

Rob: The band.

Anthony: There wasn’t a whole lot of time for me to think F, G sharp and all that stuff, and try and get it. I just needed to know that those were the notes and as quickly as possible. So it really helped in that in that case rather than feeling around. Plus we were tuned in C#, and that doesn’t really go with my ears that well. I really needed to know what the notes were, I couldn’t hear them as well, and as I mentioned, I sort of have had historically a difficult time with learning by ear. It’s really helped me out to pick up things fast that way. It also helps build concentration.

 

The Bare Minimum Time Investment In
Memory Techniques You Need To Make

 

Rob: So for somebody very new to these techniques, how long would it take you to start learning and to start implementing them and getting results?

Anthony: Well you really could be pretty well master level by the end of the day if you want to.

Rob:Wow!

Anthony: This is this is well known. There have been all kinds of people. In the UK there is Mark Channon who used to have a TV show. He would have regular people learn these techniques, perhaps not in a day, but over a week, and then they would go on his show.

They would compete against taxi drivers with the knowledge. They would do better than taxi drivers who have been on the streets for twenty years reciting routes from their minds after a week’s training or so. It’s really not rocket science.

It’s just actually wanting to learn the memory techniques, wanting to use them and having a good instructional basis upon which you can learn them. That’s really ultimately the problem. Because people just don’t find the right teacher, and there’s all kinds of people who are the right teacher. You just kind of need to read multiple books sometimes, or take multiple trainings in order to get it, but you can get it. Once you’ve gotten it, it happens real fast. Most of my people are ready to go within two to five hours and get great results.

 

How To Overcome Memory Challenges

 

Rob: Amazing! What are the common challenges that people new to these memory techniques face in your experience?

Anthony: One of the challenges with respect to how I teach them is with getting enough Memory Palaces. People feel that they don’t have enough because one just won’t do it.

You really need at least two dozen Memory Palaces for the kind of language acquisition method that I teach. But unfortunately, people feel a kind of Memory Palace scarcity. I try my best to remind them that everybody has been to more than one school, or at least most of us have been. There are shopping malls all over the place. There are stores all over the place, restaurants, cafes, etc. You just need to go out in the world and you’ll find more than enough Memory Palaces.

To this day there are Memory Palaces on my street that I haven’t had a need of, but if I ever am I’m running on street screaming because aliens are attacking, and I need some special formula to create a death ray gun for them, there’s a bakery that I’ve never been in, and I’m going to go use it.

To me it’s a non-issue but people do struggle with that. Then the other thing has everything to do with are they relaxed. That’s one of the hugest barriers to creativity. I always include a module on using relaxation techniques. Because the mind wants to create barriers, it wants to say this doesn’t work. It wants to say I’m not creative. It wants to say that I don’t have an imagination. It’s wants to say I’m not visual. The ego comes up again and again and again. Relaxation is a very key tool for just overcoming the voice that says this is impossible. That has helped a lot of people.

 

Why Relaxation Solves All Struggles With Mnemonics

 

Rob: That’s really interesting you say that because about the relaxation techniques there, and the mind creating barriers. I think there is a whole conversation in itself that we could have there. You mentioned earlier health and well-being. How do these methods help to improve concentration and creativity?

Anthony: Well they are fantastic. I mean they saved my life because I was in grad school and I couldn’t concentrate.

I still have concentration issues because of a medical condition, which is bipolar disorder. I had to take a lot of lithium at that time. It was just unbelievable the cement that was in my head. I was responsible for very technical French philosophy and literary theory. It just wasn’t getting in.

That’s when I really discovered these systematic memory techniques and started to use them. What I found is that it was irrelevant how good or bad a day I was having, because they were grounded on that relationship between where my coach was and where my cupboard with cookies was.

It just didn’t matter what my mood was. It didn’t matter how sick I was. It didn’t matter how healthy I was. I could just recall the information because I could lean upon the simple architecture of my house.

This new level of focus and concentration happens for all kinds of people. They find that this is reliable regardless of how they feel. Because you learn to concentrate differently, and like I said, you lean upon leverage what you what you already know.

That’s the basis of all memory techniques because you’re using where you are already know. It helps improve concentration simply by using what you are already concentrating on, and then just amping that up a little bit.

Rob: How did you discover these Magnetic Memory Methods?

Anthony: I’m not aware that I was aware of them before that I needed them. I don’t have any distinct memory of knowing about memory championships or memory techniques.

What had happened, as I mentioned, I was in this really deep clinical depression, having to take these medicines I was unfamiliar with, and completely thrown into a storm because of it, not only from the condition that required the pills, but the pills that address the condition.

I was avoiding life basically. I was going back to an older love of mine, which are card tricks. I found that, as many people do, I could concentrate just fine on something that pleased me. You don’t get far in advanced card tricks before you encounter the holy grail of memorizing a deck of cards.

There are two types in magic. There is the kind where you make it appear like you have memorized a deck of cards. Then there is the kind where you actually have memorized the deck of cards. There’s a third kind where you have memorized a stack, which is a preordered arrangement. It also makes it appear that you have memorized the whole deck but you have actually memorized just a portion of it.

Now I got fascinated with the idea of memorizing the whole deck because I really like to do advanced magic tricks. As it turned out, what I thought was impossible was incredibly easy.

I learned card memorization and from there I never really looked back at it again as a form of study. I just started using it. I saw instantly how I could apply that to my graduate studies. Then years later, I saw instantly how that I could apply it to learning a language.

I also used it to learn Biblical Hebrew, which was part of my graduate studies and needing to show proficiency in another language.

But it wasn’t really something you could become fluent in, Biblical Hebrew. So it was some time later when I was in Germany. I thought wow if only I could find a way to use these techniques to get a lot of speed going for myself with German because I love this language and I want to be able to speak it.

One day it came to me, I was sitting on the porch (a favorite place for concentration), and I thought what if I had a Memory Palace for every single letter of the alphabet. That’s where it all began. That was where my first book began. Sometime after that, when I was teaching some students how to do this, and they said oh you have to write this down for us. So I did and then that became the first book. That’s basically the journey. It’s just been incredible. But it all came from deep, deep need. It really did save my life. It turned things around in a big way.

 

Why Memory Techniques Improve Everything In Life

 

Rob: Yeah and how’s it improved your life in terms of you were talking earlier about your bipolar. How has this improved your life in that aspect?

Anthony: Well it’s a confidence thing in many ways. It’s reported often the frustration with feeling better, and probably better said feeling like a normal person, because you can feel pretty good when you bipolar disorder.

But feeling better in terms of being able to contribute to society and maintain a normal life from lithium, but the cost is a certain zombie effect and certain straight-line nothingness.

Also, this poor concentration and sludge in the mind, and also some of the antidepressants that go along with that, or the antipsychotic medications that go along with that also do devastating things to your personality. I managed to get onto a different medication altogether called Lamictal or lamotrigine that is for people with epilepsy but it also helps maintain mood.

That has limited those side effects, but they’re still there from the condition itself. These techniques are amazing in terms of the confidence. Because I know no matter what mood I’m in, I can walk into a place and if I need to, I can not only recite some poetry, but I can tell you what page it’s on.

That’s an incredibly empowering thing. It’s not necessarily as fast as I would like it sometimes because I still have to access these images and so forth, but it is there. As long as I’m relaxed, I am 100 percent confident that I can do it. Spring is a really bad time, but I’m going to be presenting at the polyglot conference in May in Berlin, and I’m going to do it basically from memory. They require that I have a PowerPoint presentation, which is a bit sad.

Nonetheless, I know that no matter how turbulent the spring is for me, I’m going to be able to go there and do that speech. That’s incredibly empowering. There are other things. I mean just being able to memorize a Buddhist meditation ritual, which incidentally ancient Buddhist rituals seem to have used something like a Memory Palace technique in and of themselves.

That’s great. It was a path for me into meditation. I’m not really spiritual in the sense of beliefs or anything like that, but spiritual in the sense of taking care of myself and connecting with nature and meditating and all of these things. That came from memory and developing approaches where there is a clear enough state of mind to use them at their highest possible abilities. I’m really grateful for memory and to memory for introducing me to all those different areas.

Rob: How different is your life now compared to before you knew about these men techniques and developing these memory techniques?

Anthony: I’m a lot less stressed out, and I’m much more creative. I was always creative, but the creative capacities have increased incredibly. Some of that is due to the fact that I write. I’ve written several novels. You just simply can’t get help but get more creative when you continuously write.

Often when you have these burned out periods where you feel like you’re not being creative at all and everything is off, and when you look back, they are the most creative periods of all.

But memory has really helped with that because one cool thing that happens is that I can remember what I’ve written a lot better, which I never used to be able to do. I used to have to go and look back. What was that character’s name? What were they wearing? What town were they in and so forth?

But with improved concentration, I’m able to manage my own stories a lot better, which is really great, the metaphors and turns of phrase that characters use. It doesn’t have to be fiction writing either. You can memorize copywriting headlines, for example. You can have a cheat sheet, a crib file, or a swipe file in your head, and that really helps with writing headlines or writing sales letters. It’s just fantastic. That’s one very practical application.

 

The Future Of Memory Techniques For
Concentration And Creativity 

 

Rob: Fantastic. I’m losing track of time actually talking with you here. What’s the most exciting aspect of your work for you right now?

Anthony:Well, really, it is when people who have joined the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass or read one of my books email me and they say I was really skeptical about this. I didn’t think it was going to work. Now I’ve got two hundred words in my head.

People have reported much more than that. They use very specific figures like 70 percent more fluency. Some guy wrote me a couple weeks ago and it said thanks for the donuts in the subject line. He had added another notch to his belt because he bet his coworkers that he could memorize some extraordinarily dry codes that have to do with hookup parts for RVs or something like this in the United States, and he bet them donuts that he could.

I don’t think that’s good for his health, but nonetheless, it’s an absolute demonstration of what’s possible. I love, not just the actual accomplishments, what it has done for the people and their confidence. What it has done in their ability to take that now and apply it to any goal that they want to achieve.

You just hear it when I speak to them over Skype. You can see it in their emails with the exclamation marks and the all caps and just the phrasing and the excitement in how that they write about it. You know that they have been transformed and that is the most exciting thing is transformation. Also, knowing that it’s not short term is that if they want to continue using these techniques it just gets better and better and better from here and there really no ceiling to it. That’s really the best thing of all.

Rob: Yeah, that’s pretty inspirational actually. Just hearing how it transforms people’s lives in that way and how it can help them with their work. I can think of multiple ways it could just make your life more efficient and more enjoyable in the sense. What has inspired you most recently?

Anthony: One of the things that has really inspired me, even though I have left the band that I was playing in, is just watching the development of how that they are constantly getting gigs, constantly out on the road and promoting the new album and making videos. Also, bass players and guitarists have a special connection.

Sergio Klein is the guitarist at The Outside, and just watching him develop as a teacher and what he does with respect to creative problem solving.

He’s moving into the online field where he’s making videos and putting a course together about arpeggios. Just watching him also learn marketing and some of the packaging that you need to together in order to offer trainings to the world is just really inspiring because he’s taken to it in an extraordinary way. I know that he is such an amazing teacher. He’s such an amazing guitarist as well.

He recently joined Criminal, which is a great South American medal band. He’s just accomplishing his dream. He told me something so extraordinary. He went played with them in a festival in Spain. He said that for the first time in a long time he came home with money, which you know is just awesome. He was in London also recording with them. He doesn’t have to pay to go there. It’s just a real testament and an acknowledgment of his skills as a guitarist. I really see a great future for him.

 

Where Preparation Meets Opportunity, There Is No Ceiling

 

Rob: They say success is preparation plus opportunity. You mentioned developing marketing online products, which is something I know you do. How has that aspect of the journey been for you?

Anthony: It’s been great. I mean that’s what I do. I don’t have a job or anything like that. I had to learn it and have to experiment. Every day is an experimentation and in one way or the other. Being able to have multiple levels of trainings available for people has been great because there are so many different learning styles. I have audio books, Kindle books, paper books and video courses. The video courses contain audio. Basically, being able to serve a wide spectrum of learning styles is really incredible and helps spread that reach much farther than it would go if it were just a book. That’s really great.

Rob: What’s next for you? What are you working on right now?

Anthony: Well I’m putting together some new video courses. One of the things that I’ve experimented with that I didn’t think was going to be as successful as it was, is to go and make video courses about older books on memory that are in the public domain.

I started with Aristotle. I thought, oh this is just for me it’s not going to be something that is anything for anybody else but I want to do it anyway because I love Aristotle’s essay on memory. So I’ll make a video course about it and see what happens. It was a wild success. I had never launched a course that did more business than any of my others on the first week. It was just unbelievable.

I’m going to continue making these little mini courses about some of the ancient writings on memory and keep doing that because that’s obviously of interest to people. Of course, I’m able when working with Aristotle’s essay on memory I’m able also to talk about Plato on memory and different aspects of the philosophy that go along with that.

So in other words, I have never been able to use my Ph.D. much. As a professor, I did have a couple gigs here and there and a teaching research grant. But I sort of got off that track. Now through video teaching I can use a memory as the basis for teaching philosophy in the things that I trained for.

That’s what’s coming up next, more of that and more memory training. I have endless amounts of work that I can do. I have a mastermind group where I’m starting to do monthly webinars just for the people who belong to that and go really deep into many of these areas that aren’t in any memory training books and extend out into other areas where memory touches our lives which just about everything. So I got my life’s work now. It’s just a matter of what am I going to do next.

Rob: Fascinating. That’s fantastic. You mentioned Aristotle. Have you read Brian Clark’s post about Aristotle and writing?

Anthony: No, but I’ve got to look it up!

Rob: I read it last night and I thought it was quite good.

Anthony: Yeah, I’m looking it up. Aristotle’s Top Three Tips For Blogging?

Rob: That’s it. Yeah, Top Three Tips For Blogging. That’s was the one. For anyone that’s interested, where’s the best place for them to be able to find out more about you and your work?

Anthony:  Well the best thing is go to the special video course I have for you.

Rob:  Great. Well thank you so much for your time today Anthony. It’s been absolutely fascinating to speak with you.

Anthony: Thank you very much for having me. Let me know if you ever need help with your memory.

The post Improve Your Memory And Concentration With Creativity appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

You’ve heard people throw the word serotonin around, right?

But do you know what serotonin is and how it connects with the quality of your memory?

Well, if you want to experience a better life, it’s time to pay attention.

Serotonin is not only essential to having healthy memory abilities. It also helps you feel good, sleep better and works magic on your mood when you’re feeling down.

In fact, as a neurotransmitter derived from tryptophan …

 

Serotonin May Be The Most Important
Anti-Depressant In The World!

 

Actually, there’s a lot of controversy about whether or not serotonin levels create depression. It’s only known that many people with depression show low levels of this chemical.

But here’s the real question:

How can you actually use the information you’re about to read?

Easy: If you can get your serotonin in order, you’ll not only feel better, but you might not need SSRIs and whatever other pills you’ve been taking to regulate your mood. I’ve taken a lot of those pills myself, and although none of what you’ll read in this post should be taken as medical advice …

I can’t emphasize this enough:

 

Healthy Serotonin Levels = Better Learning And Memory

 

Why?

Because there are seven distinct receptors with different densities. When things get messed up with your serotonin, you’re much more likely to experience the aging of your memory and fall into risk for Alzheimer’s and other issues.

In order to understand exactly how serotonin is connected with memory, we need to look at how it interacts with other neurotransmitters. These include:

• Acetylcholine
• Dopamine
• Glutamate
• y-aminobutyric acid (GABA)

Basically, all of these elements hang together and require precious balancing in order for you to be able to learn and remember.

When it comes to serotonin, scientists have found that by using serotonin reuptake inhibitors like alaproclate and oxotremorine, they can improve memory retrieval. Moreover, its believed that with more research, they’ll be able to use related chemicals to suppress the retrieval of addiction-primed memories.

 

Sounds Like A Mouthful, Right? 

 

It’s actually easy to understand:

When it becomes possible to treat addiction-associated memories, that drug addicts might experience decreased cravings. That means fewer destructive behaviors to themselves and others in society.

The reason serotonin plays such a huge role in this area of memory is that its connection to different receptors involve reward-based learning, something that can be helpful, so long as negative drugs like tobacco aren’t involved. (By the way, stop smoking.)

But it’s not just all about addiction memory. Serotonin is also involved in:

 

Boosting Spatial Memory 

 

If you’re serotonin levels are in check, you have much better chances of remembering locations and the relative distance between objects. This means that you can use a new place you visit as a Memory Palace with greater ease.

 

Mastering Emotional Memory

 

It’s well known that we tend to remember things with greater accuracy and vividness when emotions are involved. But if you’re low on serotonin, you might not be experiencing emotions properly.

Lower emotional capacity also means that you may not be paying attention properly. You cannot encode information into memory that you haven’t registered either in part or whole.

This explains why depression and other mental illnesses are so devastating for memory, especially since emotions are often so short-lived.

Luckily, however, we can generate emotions at will. By using mnemonics, we can supercharge every piece of information we meet so that it is more memorable. But it sure helps if we have healthy serotonin levels.

 

You Can Forget About Fearful Memory

 

Fear can either create new memories or inhibit their formation. Either way, if your serotonin is out of whack, your brain can’t properly manage fear to any advantage. Having your serotonin out of balance leads to memory errors and contributes to the fearful part of depression. With certain mental illness, for example, you can learn to be afraid when there’s nothing fearful in the environment. Proper serotonin levels can correct this problem, however.

 

But … What Exactly Does Serotonin Do?

 

Research shows that serotonin influences memory by increasing the ability of different neurons to get excited by various kinds of stimulation. Too little response to stumili and you’re depressed. Too much and you might go manic.

Either way, without the maintenance of serotonin, it’s difficult to pay attention, form new memories and learn. Poor serotonin levels messes with memory consolidation. Not being able to consolidate memories can lead to forgetting names, new information you’ve struggled to learn and even entire years of your life.

 

What Interferes With Your Serotonin Levels?

 

Unfortunately, scientists and doctors don’t always know. It can be that brain lesions create issues, along with some of the mysteries that create Alzheimer’s Disease.

What is known with relative certainty is that serotonin levels are linked to the quality of your sleep, diet and fitness.

The problem with the hypothesis that serotonin levels are connected to diet is that serotonin isn’t found in foods.

It is, however, synthesized from tryptophan. This is an amino acid found in many foods, some of which help create a healthy brain and memory.

Salmon is a big one, and it’s hard to go wrong with eating this fish.

Other ways to get more serotonin include exercise, sunlight and creating positivity in your life. Memory friendly activities such as meditation have been shown to help.

Although there is no clear cut route to boosting serotonin, the important thing is to try without the use of pharmaceuticals.

One reason is that taking drugs to feel better might have this positive effect, but it can also make you fee worse. After all, you now need a crutch to function, something that can crush your self-esteem. It shouldn’t, but the stigmatism has harmed me in the past. Plus, now that I’m living free from lamotrigine, I feel better and going solo has prompted me to live a healthier lifestyle overall.

When it comes to light exposure, it’s no secret that I’ve been using the Human Charger. Steeped in controversy though it may be, I’ve noticed a positive effect. I’ve also been switching on the lights I use to make my videos in order to get more light exposure.

You can also get more light when you …

 

Spend More Time Outdoors

 

People used to spend 30-40 hours outside a week. Nowadays, that’s the number of hours people spend inside at work.

Quite frankly, that’s insane and the health of our culture shows it.

Frankly, I believe that becoming an entrepreneur with a strong brand is one of the ways to escape the fate of sitting in an office and helping make someone else rich. As I talk about it in the Self-Improvement Supercharger, I like to walk from cafe to cafe to do my writing, which gives me not only more light, but more air, more exposure to people and much more fitness than I would get sitting at my desk.

I believe it’s the combination that matters: For example, just walking around and getting more light and fitness is helpful. But I don’t think it would be nearly as good without going up to people and asking them for help with German phrases I’m learning. I also go to my friend Max Breckbill’s co-working groups as often as I can to get more exposure to other people for the brain chemical benefits it creates.

And heck, some of them even wind up using memory techniques too after I talk about them.

In sum, people have put a lot of time, money and energy into researching serotonin. Although the link serotonin shares with tryptophan can make it difficult to study, countless experiments have shown that mice and humans alike cope better in life with regulated serotonin levels. They experience less stress, recover from depression with greater speed and remember more with greater accuracy.

Of course, further research is necessary, but my belief is that you are the ultimate scientist. If you’d like to experience better memory, organic brain games might be just what you need.

And when you use Mnemonics And The 7 Eternal Laws Of Memory Improvement, you have the basis for tracking your results.

You don’t have to have your DNA extracted in scientific experiments or undergo the horrors of serotonin depletion in order to experience better memory.

Get more exercise, eat properly, sleep well and use memory techniques. Track your results using some of the tools linked to in this post and you’ll notice an impact. And if you’re sitting on the fence about training your memory, here are 9 Signs You Need Memory Training, Memory Techniques And Mnemonics that will convince you of the truth.

Bottom line:

Your serotonin levels are important and almost guaranteed to go up if you’ll just take care of these few areas. That means more memory and a better life.

Sounds good to me. How about you?

The post Serotonin: The Truth You Need For Memory Improvement appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.