Secrets of a Good Memory

🔹“The average man,” said the noted psychologist, Professor Carl Seashore, “does not use above ten percent of his actual inherited capacity for memory. He wastes the ninety per cent by violating the natural laws of remembering.”

🔹These “natural laws of remembering” are three: impression, repetition, association

🔹Get a deep, vivid impression of the thing you wish to remember. To do that you must-

a. Concentrate. That was the secret of Theodore Roosevelt’s memory.

b. Observe closely. Get an accurate impression. A camera won’t take pictures in a fog; neither will your mind retain foggy impressions.

c. Get your impressions through as many of the senses as possible. Lincoln read aloud whatever he wished to remember so that he would get both a visual and an auditory impresion.

d. Above all else, be sure to get eye impressions. They stick. The nerves leading from the eye to the brain are twenty-five times ac; large as those leading from the ear to the brain. Mark Twain could not remember the outline of his speech when he used notes; but when he threw away his notes and used pictures to recall his various headings, all his troubles vanished.

🔹The second law of memory is repetition. Thousands of Mohammedan students memorize the Koran-a bookahout as long: as the New Testament-and they do it very largely through the power of repetition.

🔹The third law of memory is association.

🔹When you wish to associate one fact with others already in the mind, think over the new fact from all angles. Ask about it such questions as these: “Why is this so? How is this so? When is it so? Where is it so? Who said it is so?"

🔹To remember a stranger’s name, ask questions about it-how is it spelled, and so on? Observe his looks sharply. Try to connect the name with his face. Find out his business and try to invent some nonsense phrase that will connect his name with his business, such as was done in the Penn Athletic Club group.

🔹To remember dates, associate them with prominent dates already in the mind. For example, the three hun-dredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth occurred during the Civil War.

🔹To remember the points of your address, arrange them in such logical order that one leads naturally to the next. In addition, one can make a nonsense sentence out of the main points-for example, “The cow smoked a cigar and hooked Napoleon, and the house burned down with religion.”

🔹If, in spite of all precautions, you suddenly forget what you intended to say, you may be able to save yourself from complete defeat by using the last words of your last sentence as the first words in a new one. This can becontinued until you are able to think of your next point.