Memory boost to success
Do you know something, Alex Mullen (born March 3, 1992) is an American memory grandmaster and medical student, and 2015, 16 & 17’s, IAM world memory champion?
He is the first American to win the World Memory Championships and the highest point-scorer in the 24-year history of the competition. He is a holder of seven memory world records, ranking as a top memory athlete in the world.
Wow! A young chap who received so many major awards of success just by using his memory? How?
Hey everyone. This blog is about memory, its function and its proper usage to success. Everyone in life wants to achieve success and has a different definition for it. There are various ways and tools you can use to enhance your path to success, like your talent in kicking (soccer player), punching(boxer), analysing and observing (strategist/stocks broker), or even empirical and practical research (scientist). But in this blog, I am going to share with you steps you can take to achieve success or be better than Alex Mullen through your memory.
Firstly, what is memory?
Memory is the ability to recall or recognise previous experience which is the encoding, consolidating & retrieval of Information gotten from our 5 senses. This information goes to our brain and into the cells of the brain name, “neurons”. The information is kept in our short-term memory which can hold for only 7 to 9 items averagely for about 15 to 30 seconds. Then how are we remembering things for very long or forever (including bad experiences we want to forget and wish did not happen)? We simply repeat the information in our brain in a loop till it goes into our long-term memory, a system for permanently storing, managing, and retrieving information for later use.
So how do we increase or maintain our memory’s capacity to prevent its performance from dropping?
Here is where I will share with you the techniques, strategies, and methods to enhance your memory.
There are a few psychologically proven methods we can use to apply to boost our memory:
Firstly, it is Classical conditioning. A theory founded by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist about ASSOCIATION. Association is the link or connection between things. If you want to remember the name of a person whenever you see his or her face. You simply associate his or her name with an object which represents his or her name. For example, if you want to remember the name “Sanjeevan”(with my face, you just simply remember the word ‘Shān jī
ròu fàn’ which means mountain chicken rice. And whenever you see me, you will get reminded of mountain chicken rice and in return, you will remember my name (& maybe hungry too)😉 simple eh!
Secondly, there is also Operant conditioning. It is a theory founded by the American psychologist B.F Skinner and Edward Thorndike, which is about CONSEQUENCES. There are two prominent types of consequence, the positive and the negative also known as ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’. For example, if a child uses vulgar language on you, you will immediately punish him/her by scolding him or her or taking away his or her privileged item. That behavior will create a reminder and encodes into him that this behaviour, gives him a 
negative consequence. Likewise, if the child does his homework from school on time, you will reward him/her with example his/her favorite toys (example), that behavior will encode into the child as a positive consequence.
Lastly, is the Social modeling theory by an American Psychologist, Albert Bandura. This theory tells us about the execution of our action after OBSERVING a behavior. Example, after you observe your parent or someone of authority doing an act, you will tend to do the same action (maybe out of curiosity). These actions may not be necessarily be done 
immediately, but alternatively, it may be done after a few days or so. So, do observe the behavior of people who have already achieved what you want to become or get, as this way you are able to move pass obstacles more easily through the knowledge of their experience towards SUCCESS.
Aside from these psychological methods, we can also apply other methods to strategies and improve our memory usage, like:
- Acronym – An acronym is a word formed by taking one letter of each word
in a phrase. [K], [E], [Y], Keep Educating Yourself, [L], [O], [L], Laugh Out Loud. Acronyms are used to form and a subset of abbreviations.
2. Rhymes/Songs – Have you noticed, that you will easily remember the lyrics of your favorite songs and will hum them throughout the day? Because it is your favorite, and that creates a huge impact on your memory as it is 
outstanding (out of your normal). Rhymes or songs can be used to upscale your level of memory on a particular topic. So we can apply the same method in our exams, presentation, speeches and etc..
3. Chunking – Chunking is a process of taking individual pieces of information (chunks) and grouping them into larger units. Just imagine, you do not have a paper or pen with you and your handphone’s battery when flat and a girl/boy you like very much has decided to 
give you her number after 9 months. Now, what are you going to do?
CHUNKING! you just take that 8 numerical digits (if Singapore’s number in Singapore) and in to 2 sets of 8 or 4 sets of 8. Example,81-23-45-67 or 8123-4567. I always remember my ex handphone number, because there was 1969 in it, which represents my mum’s birth year. That’s association. This helps you to improve the amount of information you can remember.
4. Visualising – This is one of the best methods to use in multiplying the information you can remember. Visualising is the formation of a mental image of something like material information in the mind. And the best part is you can use this method and visualise information detailed-ly and in ascending/descending order. Example trying to remember, an apple (Fuji brand), dog (German Shepard), and a car (Volkswagon in white).
Visualise this -> “Imagine, you are eating your apple from Fuji which is your daily morning health diet. And you realise there is a worm in it. You immediately threw it out of the window. Then your pet dog, a german shepherd thought it was a ball and you are playing ‘fetch’ with 
him immediately ran to fetch it. As you were rushing to work you ignored that and quickly rushed to your white Volkswagon car which was parked outside. Upon reaching it you see a pool of ‘bird shits’ on it. To make the matter worst, your car’s wheel, was clamped because it was parked on an illegal parking site, which happened the night before in the dark and drunken state. At that moment, your germen sheperd dog came running back to you with the worm filled Fuji apple. YOU ARE PISSED!!!”.
You will surely remember this pictorial story in your head as it involved strong emotions, outstanding features, colors pictures, and the senses.
So, these are ways and strategies you can use to help to enhance your memory to success. Most importantly, prioritize and keep in memory the important and urgent ones first, the rest can wait or deleted.
Our everyday behaviors/habits affect our memory either positively or negatively too.
Sleeping techniques:
Calm Visions
As we know giving a proper rest for our brain and body, helps it to serve us at 
its optimum the next day. This applies to our memory too (which is in our brain). Firstly, we must have calm visions in our minds before we sleep. This helps our mind to ease, move to a calm mode, and relaxes our organs for us to rest/sleep. For example, counting sheeps flying one by one across your bed or imagine, being in beautiful scenery with beautiful sight, smell, tune, taste, and touch. But also we must be careful on what is our vision before we sleep, not scary, sadistic, or the problems of the day. As what we focus on expands; It will move to our subconscious mind which will then indirectly affect our behavior causing unpleasant actions.
Sleeping in the dark
Lights are our savior in the dark when we are doing something important or finding something precious. But it turns out to be the little devil when our body needs sleep. It interrupts our body’s night clock telling it, “it is still daytime, so WAKE UP!!”.
What should I do then? You should not use your phone see television or use the computer while you are on your bed. I know what you are thinking. “I can still sleep when the lights are still on or in the bright daylight”. Yes, you can, but it will not be a peaceful or a night of sound sleep.
Create habits for sleeping
Have you ever experienced going to another place like a camp, a friend’s house f
or an overnight party, or even chalets and finding it hard to sleep even though it is time to sleep? It is simply because the environment is new and everything we see, smell, hear, and feel before we sleep are different too.
When everything is new, our habits have to change too. So, create a healthy habit and stick consistently to it before you sleep. For example, wearing pyjamas /nothing(nude), positive self-reflection, reading books, and even meditating before you sleep.
Nutritional techniques:
Drink lots of water
H2O(water), is one of the basic elements a human needs. It is to 
basically hydrate yourself and keep you healthy, and for the organs to survive. That includes the brain. The brain needs sufficient water intake in order for all its parts to function efficiently. That includes memory.
Healthy diet
Some eat to survive, some eat as their hobby, and some even eat to relieve stress. But eating right and eating proper (selective foods) gives you the right amount of vitamins and minerals needed for your body and the brain to be 
at its optimum level. For example, vitamin E and C which helps you to stay sharp, omega 3 fatty acids which helps maintain your brain’s 
function, vitamin B which is for memory improvement, proteins which are for energy, olive oil which gives you oxygen and nutrients, magnesium takes away your stress and enhance your learning. All these vitamins and minerals can be gotten from your vegetables, fruits, and meat/soya products.
Physical & Brain exercises
We have heard of the saying which goes, “What you sow is what you reap!”. What you do, is what you get. If you want a muscular body, you need to do the right physical exercise. Likewise, if you want a smart brain that remembers any useful information instantly, do the right brain exercise. Our blood contains hemoglobin which helps transport oxygen to various 
parts of the body, especially the brain.
And brain exercises help strengthen the various functions of the brain, like problem-solving skills, attention, flexibility of thoughts and memory skills. For physical exercises, you can start with one of the basic things like walking, then running, various sports, and even yoga. Whereas for brain exercises, there are various types of games that challenge your brain positively like monopoly, scrabble, and Uno. There is also a brain game I am playing named ‘Lumosity’, which challenges and helps grow the various parts of the brain’s function. (You just type Lumosity in google and sign up for it, where there is absolutely no cost for the trial but only when purchasing the full version.)
Hope these strategies, methods, and techniques help you to enhance your memory to reach and achieve the success you need and want. Do contact me through the contact page or email me if you have any queries. Together, let’s achieve success.
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