The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Student pondering a Memory Palace while studying

Ever Felt That Skull Melting Stress When Preparing For An Exam?

If so, this may be the most important information you ever hear and read. Download the episode and keep reading this post all the way to the end so that you never struggle with passing an exam again.

And if your schools days are over and you’re the parent of a student, be their hero and pass this information onto them.

These techniques work for everything you need to learn, even difficult topics like memorizing human anatomy.

How The Regeneration Of Your Cells Can Set The Stage For Making Your Memory Razor Sharp

Wanna know why you forget so much of the information you read?

It’s because we miss so much detail when we only listen or read a book once.

Not only that, but you’re a different person the second time around.

I learned this from my Uncle Walter. Unfortunately, he died in a train wreck, but he told me something I’ve never forgotten:

Read the most important books you’ve encountered at least once every seven years.

Every cell in your body will have been replaced, and you’ll be coming to it as a completely new human being.

Of course, if you’re re-reading memory improvement books, be careful. Even the best memory improvement books are sometimes wrong. No amount of rereading will fix that.

In any case, I’ve taken Walter’s advice to heart, but when it comes to podcasts and audiobooks and learning how to enhance memory, it’s possible to revisit them much sooner.

And I love using Audiobook Builder by Splasm in conjunction with my iPhone so that I can get in all that info super-fast without affecting the sound quality.

And today’s Q&A gives us the opportunity to talk about how to use this software in combination with the regeneration of your cells to learn and memorize everything you need to pass any exam:

Schoolwork Can Be A Ball

———-

Dear Anthony,

When memorizing textbooks, is there a good general guideline as to what key points to place in memory palaces? Only focusing on the most relevant information is a great way to save time when studying, and I am curious if you have a strategy as to what information is placed in a memory palace using your index card method. Are these key ideas derived from what is taught in lectures, or are they based on what is most interesting to you?

I have downloaded your video course Memory Secrets of an A+ student as well as read many books on memory, and your methods make learning and memorizing more fun and effective. I discovered that schoolwork can be a ball no matter what the subject is, all thanks to me stumbling upon you website.

———-

This question is great.

And there are a lot of ways to answer it. For example, How To Memorize A Textbook remains the most popular episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast.

But for now, the first thing I would say is that …

A Good Lecturer Will Make It Clear To You What Key Ideas Are Coming

For example, I used to write down all the “keywords” on the side of the chalkboard in a column. Students could literally “read” what I was saying and match them against the keywords. It seemed really effective because when the final quiz arrived, hardly anyone had trouble getting 98% or higher.

Not all lecturers do things like this, or even present structured talks. Sometimes I don’t follow a plan myself because I like to use tangents and ask questions in the middle of a lecture. In cases like these, it’s a matter of listening for what jumps out at you.

I also recommend taking no notes and recording the lecture. Some nice professors will even allow you to place your recording device on the podium.

If not, you can still get a decent recording if you sit in the first row.

And what are you going to do instead of taking notes?

Harness The Secret Power Of Doodling

Seriously. Give it a try.How To Enhance Memory By Doodling During Lectures

Your mind will “scan” what’s being heard, and when something strikes you as a key point, write down one or two words in the middle of your doodle.

You can mindmap too if you want, but I like doodling.

Or sketching.

I find that I can listen intently and deeply when doing this.

In fact, I’d hazard a guess that I’m paying far more attention than anyone else in the room precisely because I’ve got more than one representation center of my brain operating.

At least, that’s my speculation. And that speculation is a key part of learning how to enhance memory in many respects.

Here’s What To Do Next

Go home and listen to the lecture again with a Memory Palace prepared, and a stack of index cards as described in the How to Memorize a Textbook episode of the podcast.

And remember, there are only 4 Memory Improvement Systems You Need to be successful every time you study.

If you’ve been given additional reading as part of the lecture, you might want to do that reading first before returning to the lecture.

Again, the most important information is going to be the stuff that leaps out at you as the most interesting first.

Why?

Because you’re more likely to remember this information without the assistance of mnemonics and Memory Palaces. You won’t have to go to the Method of Loci for this stuff – though later you can if you want. And it’s just good practice to do so.

But the point is that you go to your Memory Palaces primed with interest.

That will make your memory Magnetic.

And that way, the not so interesting stuff will stick with greater ease because you’ll be using the power of familiar locations and well-constructed Memory Palace principles.

And you’ll be connecting it to what interests you. But of course …

A Lot Depends On What The Instructor Is Looking For

So if you want to be a cutting edge student, here’s what you’ve got to do:

Go to the instructor.

Make an appointment if you have to.

Then ask the instructor to make the evaluation criteria clear to you. He or she may have a specific rubric.

And if you can – record this talk!

Why?

Because when you hand in your work or answer questions on an exam that don’t give you the results you were expecting, you have a record of this conversation.

Of course, you don’t want your teachers to feel like they’re under observation in a totalitarian state, but the fact of the matter is that you (or your parents) are paying their wages.

You deserve to have the requirements made available to you in crisp, clear and sparkling detail.

And That’s How You Know What To Focus On In Your Studies

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

To review:

1) Pay attention to the things that jump out at you. If you’re interested in these details, they’ll be much more Magnetic. You’ll be memorizing them more for detail and ordered recall than anything else. They’ll also be a great “connecting” device for incorporating the information that you don’t find so interesting.

2) Know what the instructor wants and make sure you’ve memorized that information. When learning how to enhance memory for your studies, it only makes sense to focus on the information they want you to know. The rest is icing on the cake.

3) Come prepared with a well-formed Memory Palace. If you don’t know how, scroll up to the top of the page and register for my free Memory Palace Mastery course.

4) Perform proper Recall Rehearsal

5) Listen to this podcast with Scott Gosnell. He talks about a very special way to build a Memory Palace for prepping for exams.

I hope this guidance helps you out. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Further Resources

Note: The program mentioned at the end of this presentation is no longer available. A modified version of Memory Secrets of an A+ Student (now called The Masterplan) can be found in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. If you’re interested in taking that memory training, here’s where to go next:

Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass

The post How To Enhance Memory And Pass Any Test Or Exam appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Direct download: How_To_Enhance_Memory_And_Pass_Any_Test_Or_Exam.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 8:54am EDT

Escape the Prison of MemoryHave you ever found yourself caged in the prison of memory?

I know I sure have …

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, I’m not talking about being trapped in a Memory Palace or anything about memory techniques.

I’m talking about how memory can hold you back and keep you down. Like when it leads to avoiding doing new things because someone you know frowned upon it. Or you hold on to a unwanted behaviour because you can’t shake the memories surrounding how you learned it.

A myriad of consequences result. These include avoiding new experiences. Treating others poorly because your parents burned certain responses in your mind. Repeating destructive behaviors. Yes, memory can be a terrible jailor.

 

The Good News Is That There Are Ways To Break Free

 

In case you’re foggy on what I’m getting at, let me tell you a story about a friend of mine. Sadly, he died a few years ago from cancer.

And I miss him. He had a fierce personality, incredible intelligence and acidic wit that that burned impressions into your mind.

Although the cancer killed him, these aspects of his personality went untouched until almost the end. The disease got into his brain and then the friend I had known for so long was suddenly no more. It is a strange thing to wait for a body to die after the person him or herself is already gone.

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero

But that’s the power of memory.

Because even though my friend was gone, one thing stuck with me. It shaped my behavior, and although “prison” is perhaps too strong a word, these remembered things helped me act as my own jailor.

During my friend’s long and valiant period of chemotherapy, I had finished a research and teaching grant in Film Studies. I had moved back to Canada from Germany and had no idea and struggled with finding a new teaching gig.

I had three promising interviews at universities, and was almost hired at one of them. But when that didn’t pan out, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do.

Even through all his pain and suffering, my friend held fast to his conviction that I was a teacher. We’d gotten our BA degrees together. I had watched him go through law school and start a practice as he watched me soar to the heights of a PhD and major research grant.

And although I couldn’t offer a solution for his cancer, he tried to help me during his darkest days. Together, we came up together with the idea of getting a teaching certificate for high school. I rejected it the second I said it, but he encouraged it.

More than encourage it, it sometimes seemed that he lived through my experiences. We talked so much and had been so close for so many years that it was often as if I was not acting alone. So as I accepted the idea and made preparations for going back to school, it became more about him than me.

If You Have To Lower Your Standards, You’re In The Wrong Place

 

Eating on the remaining funds from my research grant while housesitting to get by, I volunteered in local high schools.

Not because I wanted to volunteer, but because you need to teach under observation on a voluntary basis in a high school to apply for a teaching certificate in Canada. Even though I had taught at universities for years, I still needed to get the proper letters of recommendation from high school level teachers. Otherwise, I could not apply for the education program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. These were strange experiences because I was expected to treat the young students far below their obvious abilities.

Whereas I had been used to challenging university students to stretch beyond their comfort zones, I was now expected to spoon feed Victorian era education to young people living in the age of the Internet. It was a false portrait of how I understand the world, but I still worked at painting myself into it.

In case you’ve never been, it’s at the top of a large hill, surrounded by the beautiful mountains of British Columbia where I’m from. The buses huff and puff to reach the top and every trip feels like a cross-country adventure.

And it was a painful place to visit. I had no office, no classroom to teach in and no classroom to learn in.

 

“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen,
few in pursuit of the goal.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

 

I made the journey many times to submit registration papers and pay registration fees. I often spoke with my friend on the phone during these trips. Each time our discussions reinforced the importance of me being a teacher come hell or highwater. The more voluntary teaching while eating rice and tuna and being stressed out over every dime wore me down, the weaker my conviction grew.

And because money was running out, I started seeking a job. Any job. Because I had worked as a store detective as one of my ways to pay for university the first time around, that’s the route I went. But I couldn’t get anything better than a uniformed security guard position.

There’s nothing wrong with being a security guard. But having stood at the podiums of major universities to lecture in front of hundreds of students, monitoring the behaviors of thousands of shoppers in Metrotown mall …

 

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves.
But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still,
small voice says to us, something is out of tune.”

– Carl Jung

 

Even with Jung’s wisdom in tow, it felt like a step down in the world.

And I must admit that I was ashamed as I stood in front of a mirror wearing the ill-fitting white shirt, black dress pants with the ridiculous stripe down the side and pseudo-military shoes. Which is why I tossed the uniform into a clothing donation bin on the way to my first day at work.

Of course, I realized that tossing the uniform was illegal to let a uniform of authority out of my possession like that and the property wasn’t mine to dispose. But the story of how I got the uniform back out of the donation bin and in the hands of the employer is a story for another day.

As is the story of eventually drumming up some cash doing magic on the streets and convincing Haydee Windey to hire me at ELIT after applying three times. She’s the one who gave me the keys to her school, an office to write in and students to teach memory techniques as part of their literary education and ultimately the Magnetic Memory Method. It was for these students that I wrote everything down in what would become the first book in the Magnetic Memory Method Series.

But again, a story for another time.

 

“Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.”
– Coco Chanel

 

When my application to the education program at Simon Fraser was rejected, I was completely lost. Because I couldn’t get into the program, I couldn’t get a student loan. Without a student loan, I wouldn’t be able to survive much longer and I couldn’t housesit forever. No one would make me go live on the streets, but the pressure from all sides made it feel like I was going in that direction.

And I had my bipolar disorder on top of that to deal with too. The doctor I found refused to give me my medication for longer than 30 days so he could monitor my moods and I had no time to find another one. It had already taken long enough to find this one, Plus, this doctor was … Well, that again is a story for another day.

But my friend did not let me give up. He convinced me to appeal the university’s decision. This meant more painful trips to the campus for meetings and forms and registration fees.

And it was during this time that I started teaching at ELIT. As an after school program that fills in the gaps left by the school system, it was a blessing. I admired the place, its students and the parents who want their kids to have a better chance.

But I was still pushing for a place in the Education program at Simon Fraser University.

And my friend’s belief that I could get into the education program if I fought for it proved true. But after Haydee allowed me to teach at ELIT the way I wanted to teach …

 

“I don’t often veer away from a big melodic song with big
words for big stadiums.”

– Robbie Williams

 

I couldn’t stomach the idea of offering students anything less than the teaching I’m capable of giving. Of course, Haydee was nervous at first when she saw me writing terms like “architectonic tautology” on the whiteboards of her classrooms. But I proved that the students were up to my university-level challenges time after time.

And yet I still went ahead with the Education program. I braced myself for the classes I was about to attend that would teach me how to teach according to grade levels decided upon by the government.

Then, one morning on my way to ELIT and six weeks before the education program would begin, I got the call. My friend had died.

Years later, I still mourn his passing. But I never mourn the fact that I betrayed his final wish for my future.

For six weeks, my stomach churned every day at the future before me. I went up and down that hill to get textbooks and study for my courses in advance. It all felt wrong.

Yet the memory of all those conversations with my friend held fast. And the idea that teaching high school now would prepare the stage for a victorious re-entry to university teaching years later echoed in my ears.

But the logic was false. Why suffer now and take part in an education system I know in my heart is broken so that I could enjoy my earlier career later? It made no sense.

And yet, on the first day of classes, I found myself on the bus winding up the hill, imprisoned by the ghost of all those discussions with my friend.

 

“The only person who is educated is the one who
has learned how to learn and change.”

– Carl Rogers

 

But even though I went up the campus, I didn’t go to that first class. I didn’t even leave the bus bay. With tears burning in my eyes and the feeling that there must be a better way to find my place in the world I got off one bus and stepped onto another and headed back into the city.

Just as I had dumped the security guard uniform in the donation bin, I left the wishes of another person behind on the bus bay at Simon Fraser University. I left the future and unhappy identity it would have created behind. And I’d like to think that I honored my friend by doing my own thing instead of his.

And because I freed myself from the memory of those conversations with my friend and the conviction he had about my teaching high school, I’ve since educated more people in a few short years than I could have during an entire career as a high school teacher. More than 51,000 people have read a book or taken a Magnetic Memory Method course. It

And with nearly a million podcast downloads, half a million YouTube views and hundreds of comments and reviews, I think it’s fair to say that I made the right decision.

 

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a
thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

– Harriet Tubman

 

The other route would have delivered me into Slave’s Luck, defined as making it into a career you wind up hating. In some cases, people hate that career before they even start preparing for it. In others, they start hating it as part of the journey to qualification. In every case, there’s no point in going through such a long journey only to wind up wearing golden handcuffs.

So what ghosts and memories are powering your behaviors against your own wishes and desires? Take a moment to think about what advices, words of wisdom or the wishes of others might be holding you down.

And then write down what you really want from your life. If you had no pressure from family or friends and had all the resources needed to be fully you and play out your wildest and most fulfilling dreams, what would those be?

For me it was always to write books and correspond with my readers. I remember in grade 8 reading Ray Bradbury talking about all the mail he received and how he answered every letter. I thought then as I think now that this exactly what I want to do.

 

“Writing in a journal … offers a place where you can hold a deliberate,
thoughtful conversation with yourself.”

– Robin S. Sharma

 

But before I got there, I had to go through the exercise of writing down what my true dreams are every day.

And so that’s what I want you to do. And do it every day for at least 90 days.

If you can’t do that, then you know what you’ve chosen isn’t really your dream. No amount of knowledge or use of memory techniques is ever going to change that fact.

So as you write every day, refine your dream and your vision of what you want to do. Sooner or later you’ll find what you really want, that thing you can describe again and again for at least 90 days.

And as you do so, your unconscious mind will start finding opportunities to get you what you want. I’m convinced of it, but you need to try for yourself in order to be sure. You don’t have to take my word for it, but I’m confident that it will be one of the most rewarding experiments you’ll ever make.

And it’ll be totally unforgettable too.

So let me know how you fare and until next time, keep Magnetic.

Further Resources

The post How To Escape The Prison Of Memory And Create The Future You Desire appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.


Memory Techniques Are Big In Japan

How To Build Memory Palaces – Even If Your Home Is Microscopic!

It’s true. Housing in Japan is notoriously tiny.

And that can make it challenging to use them for effective Memory Palace construction.

As always, however, I’ve got a solution to suggest. Today’s podcast Q&A will give you plenty of ideas that will boost your success no matter how small your abode may be.

And the best part is that you can read the entire episode right here too!

Your Cramped Home Is Bigger Than You Think

Hello Anthony,

I am just having a few obstacles come up with completing the worksheet and building the foundations of the Memory Palaces. For example, I know that I have been living at various spots throughout my life, but maybe I am not so confident about the layout of say, the school I attended, or the shopping mall I visited, etc.

How vivid and detailed do these locations have to be in order for them to qualify as a Memory Palace?
Obviously, these places are in my memory, but it has been years since I have been physically there, and in other cases as much as 10+ years since I visited them.

Another question would be about distance. What if I cannot remember in detail where things are in my journey of the Memory Palace? For example, walking around campus in my University. Things that I do remember are sometimes far apart from each other. Also, I am just naming spots, like the library, the parking lot, etc. I can probably go online and look at a map and that would most likely jog my memory as I mentally walk through the campus, and it would have the proper names of the buildings and the locations.

How do I not get crossed up in a cramped area like my apartment? I live in Japan, and things are unbelievable tight in these apartments. This could be a real challenge. Are there strategies for not getting crossed up when memorizing the layout of a memory palace. Do we stay on one side of the wall or walkway and exit through the other side?

For example, the school I work at now. How would I navigate this? (I could also pdf you a map of the layout). Imagine a Square with one side missing. And classrooms go down to the end of each side.
How do I not get crossed up walking over the same path here? This has me a bit confused.

Also, are we walking or are we flying / floating through our Memory Palaces since walking through large spaces like a Shopping Mall, or a University Campus, or an Amusement Park would take too much time to navigate?

Thank you so much for your help and support.

How To Wake Up Your Imagination And Make Even A Fishbowl Seem Like A Football Stadium In Your Mind

Thanks for this question!

Ultimately, a lot of these questions will be answered by experience. But based on my own experience, I can tell you this and then expand on some ideas: I personally don’t need my Memory Palaces to be so vivid.

However, when I take the time to go through various exercises I’ve created (or heard about from Magnetic Memory Method readers and course participants), each Memory Palace becomes more vivid. And the effects are more immediate, intense and long-lasting.

The exercises are simple, but depend upon being relaxed. In fact, all of the technical strategies aside, the number one piece of Magnetic Magic underlying the Magnetic Memory Method is relaxation.

The Surprising Techniques That Makes Everything As Easy As Whip Cream

So here’s what to do first: Get yourself in a relaxed state. Use mediation, Pendulum Breathing, progressive-muscle relation and any other principles you know. Everything will come together.

Once you’re in a relaxed state, all you need to do is wander through the Memory Palaces. Figure out if you can take a journey through the Memory Palace in a way that follows the Magnetic Memory principles of not crossing your path and not trapping yourself.

The journey can be simple or relatively complex so long as these principles are in effect, and you can make a natural journey. I also recommend that you don’t try passing through walls like a ghost or jumping out of windows, etc.

Why?

Because these activities use mental energy and take the focus from simply going from one station to the next. You need that so you can quickly decode the imagery you’ve created and placed at the station.

Can you proceed to memorize using a network of Memory Palaces without following each of these? Of course … but you risk spending mental energy on remembering where to go next. And this prevents you from focusing on what comes next during recall practice.

Very Private Matters That Only You Can Tackle

Again, personal experimentation is key.

Dealing with distances is an interesting issue, but it is again solved by personal experimentation.

I use the campus of one of the universities I studied at extensively, but always focusing on individual college or administrative buildings. There were also not any unusual distances between the buildings.

But if I were to face long distance issues, I would consider creating multiple journeys and labeling each accordingly.

In sum, it sounds like your apartment might not make an ideal Memory Palace.

But don’t throw it away! You can save it for when you are at a more advanced level and start working with virtual Memory Palace elements. These would include bookcases and the like.

How To Play Memory Like Music In Your Mind

As for flying/floating, I came up with the term “Magnetic” because as things work for me, I am simply drawn from station to station. Almost as if a Magnet had pulled me there.

You might like to fly or float, but this is something you will learn from practice and experimentation.

I realize that I “pass the buck” onto practice and experimentation a lot, but there’s a reason for that. It’s because learning the Magnetic Memory Method is essentially like learning music. There are many elements that come together in order for a musician to produce sound based on reading marks on a page.

The Magnetic Memory Method is those marks on the page and you are the musician.

Sure, there are a few shortcuts here and there, but if you want to experience the music (i.e. the boost in fluency made possible by memorizing vocabulary en masse) then you’ve essentially got to know

1) How to read the music and

2) How to perform it on your instrument (which in this case is your mind).

But There’s A Paradox!

A lot of people say “but my mind is different!”

To a certain extent that is true. But how music is written and how it is performed relies on the same eyes, ears, fingers that most of us have to work with. And the principles of music are more or less universal.

Yet each person who picks up an instrument has the amazing ability to play it in a way that is unique from every other musician. I don’t know if Heavy Metal is your thing, but there is no one else on earth who can write and play riffs like David Mustaine from Megadeth.

You can actually use musical terminology to describe his note preferences and some of the flavors and tones he uses. But at the end of the day, only he can do it. This is true of all musicians, whether they are great musicians or not.

And this is true of all language speakers.

Whether it’s our mother tongue or a second language, we learn it and then use it through a vast network of personal mental associations. These are our entirely our own and yet are still based on universal principles.

And That’s A Wonderful Thing!

Why? Because you have all the “Rock Star” substance you need to excel. You’ve just got to take this piece of music I’ve given you, fill in the words you want to memorize and then start to perform.

The last thing I would suggest to you (for now) is that you start visiting new places and take care to pay attention to their layout. If you haven’t got enough places in your past, the good news is that the future is a big place. There is no end to the new locations you can collect for:

a) General enjoyment in life and

b) Memory Palace development

Carry a notebook with you, make a list of new places you’ve been and take a few seconds to draw a layout or take some photos if that helps.

Trust me, you won’t regret it.

It’s True: Size Does Not Matter

On the matter of size, I was in Leipzig the other day, but it really doesn’t matter that the hotel room was small. I still made a mental image of it because there are all kinds of occasions where even just a tiny space can quickly provide ten stations for memorizing something.

There is no building too large or small for Memory Palace construction and use.

I hope these thoughts help you move forward! Let me know if I’ve missed anything or if you have any further questions and I hope to be in touch again soon.

Further Resources

How to Renovate A Memory Palace

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Direct download: Memory_Techniques_Are_Big_In_Japan.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 1:20pm EDT

Learn Spanish

You’re standing in the Kitchen with the refrigerator door open. You know you’re not hungry, but for some reason you’re staring inside. You think to yourself, “What was the reason again I’m here?”

But nothing comes. You’re mind is blank. You can’t remember why you went into the kitchen at. “Curse this short term memory of mine!” you say. “If only I had a better memory…”

Do You Make This Epic Mistake About Your Memory?

Many people give up on trying to learn a foreign language because they have this notion that they don’t have the memory for all of the vocabulary words involved. We’re here to dispel that myth.

Many believe a strong memory is something you are either born with, or are lacking and are doomed for all of eternity. People watch the World Memory Championships and think “Man … I could never be like that”. The truth is, improving your memory is a coachable skill that like any coachable skill, can be improved upon by proper training. We’re not talking about training through rote memory, which is simply the process of memorizing through repetition. We’re talking about the use of Mnemonics.

How To Understand Understand
Why You Remember And Why You Forget

Before we explain what Mnemonics are, let’s try and understand why we remember certain things, and forget others. The mind takes in information through any of our five senses during the day. It has the chance to accept or reject thousands of stimuli at any given point. Right now, while you are sitting and reading this article, pay attention to all of the external stimuli to which your mind can pay attention.

Where are you? What are you staring at? How do you feel? Are your shoes too tight? Do you smell anything? Are your taste buds still active from the last meal you had?

In order retain that which is important, the mind needs to filter out that which is not.

This brings us back to our earlier question:

Why do we pay attention to some items while discarding others? The answer lies in the significance that we place on the external stimuli.

The Blazingly Obvious Truth About
Organizing Information In Your Mind

What did the 13th person you saw today look like?

Can’t remember?

What if you saw a clown walk by you today holding 6 puppies while crossing the street. Would you remember that?

I bet you’d remember that not only today, but for many years to come. The reason for that is because it was a unique experience in which you attached significance to.

Training your mind to remember anything at any given time is a simple task once you are prepared to attached significance to the item you are trying to remember.

Here’s a quick question:

What is easier to navigate?

A large filing cabinet with forty index cards containing one word on each of them, randomly dispersed in the cabinet; or a small filing cabinet with 1,000 index cards containing one word on each of them, each set up alphabetically?

The key to training your mind to memorize any content is to attach significance to each item and organize the information in your brain effectively. While there are many ways to train your mind to do so, we are going to focus on association.

Big yellow balloon. What are the first thoughts that come to your head? Birthday party? Children? Celebration? The mind is constantly associating new information with information we are already familiar with. The key to organizing information in your brain effectively is to use association to link items together.

Rubber band, keychain, eraser, river, drum, jelly, magic wand, mud, dart, ice cube.

How To Take Charge Of Information Using Linking And Stories

How can we apply what we just learned to remember the items listed above?

Let’s start with associating and linking the first two items to each other.

Now, we could just imagine a rubber band on a keychain, but remember, in order to remember something we need to make it unique.

Add some significance to it. A rubber band on a keychain is too ordinary for us to find any uniqueness  and attach significance to it.

What if we imagine shooting a rubber band and it landing in someone’s pocket, attaching to their keychain. That would be a unique event that you would probably remember, would you not?

Now what if we took that keychain, and imagined getting rid of it entirely by erasing it with an eraser? and what if the friction from rubbing the eraser was so strong that your hand caught fire, and you had to put it out in a river?

But while you were in the river, someone threw you what was supposed to be a lifeboat but was instead a drum? So you took some jelly, but rather than sliding the drum off of you with it( that would be too plain), you broke off a piece of the drum and made a drum and jelly sandwich?

And as you did that, you got some jelly stuck in your teeth and had to use a magic wand to pick the jelly out.

Now, instead of picking the jelly out, you just turned it from jelly to mud. So you asked a friend to throw a dart at the speck of mud in between your teeth. When your friend threw the dart, he hit a bullseye right on your teeth, and out popped an ice cube.

See if you could recall the story, starting from the rubber band.

Alert, Alert: How To Take Charge Of Unruly Vocabulary

Now, what if the word is difficult to picture in your mind, like the word “magnificent?” What if we broke down the word magnificent to words that sounded similar, like “magnify” and “cent?” Now when we hear the word magnificent we could think of a cent under a magnifying glass, maybe catching fire from the sun.

The same holds true for words in another language!

Let’s now try memorizing 5 key phases in Spanish:

Key Spanish Phrases

In order to remember buenos dias, we can imagine booing Carmen Diaz after she walks out of her house with a poor nose job, and says good morning. To remember mucho gusto, we can imagine meeting a goose and smooching it’s toe as a nice gesture.

To remember cómo estás, we can imagine combing a stack of pennies (or anything for that matter), and responding that we have been very busy combing when someone asks us “How are you?”.

To remember me llamo, we can imagine telling someone our name, and then holding a yam in your hand and introducing it as well.

Finally, to remember muy bien, gracias, we can imagine a cow saying “Moo” as you try to stop it from bending over, and the look of grace in its eyes as you save him.

These don’t have to be the examples you use to remember things – the important thing is that you attach significance to these words with your own kookie imagination to help you remember them 1-2-3.

Get Rid Of Language Learning Forgetfulness Once And For All!

Let’s do a recap of what we learned.

In order to remember something, the mind needs to attach a sense of significance to it. A good way of attaching significance is if something is unique. Once we attach significance to an item that is unique, we need to organize and store it effectively in our mind. A good way to organize data is through association.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to put theory to practice. Think you’re ready for some more Spanish words? Let’s meet over video chat on Skill Silo for a free Spanish lesson to get you up to speed in no time!

Author: Josh Aharonoff – Director of Sales and Marketing, Spanish Virtually

Further Resources

Olly Richards’ Fluent Spanish Academy

How to Memorize 50 Spanish Provinces On Your First Go

A Magnetic Little Tip On Memorize Foreign Language Vocabulary

Fluent Spanish Academy

The post How To Memorize Key Spanish Phrases In Seconds appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Direct download: How_To_Memorize_Key_Spanish_Phrases_In_Seconds.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 9:08pm EDT

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