by Siew Cheng Hoe

Created on: July 10, 2009   Last Updated: July 11, 2009

The way the brain works is unfathomable. What makes memory so frustrating is that the stupid brain keeps reminding you of things that you do not want to remember, and it does not remind you about things that are so important.

For example, you desperately want to recall the knowledge that you studied the night before. Your memory is very naughty. It refuses to yield the knowledge. You cannot recall any single word in the examination hall. The moment you are out of the examination hall, you can recall every single word in the textbook.

How can you improve your memory? How can you make your memory remember the important things?

One way to improve memory is by making use of emotions. You do not want to remember all the bad things that people say about you. However, you keep recalling the words that your parents used to scold you twenty years ago. You keep remembering the sarcastic words that your boss used ten years ago. You do not want to remember all these, yet the memory refuses to give up. That is because these words evoke strong emotions, and that helps you recall.

The best emotion that can help you improve memory is laughter. You can poke fun of all the historical persons and events. Acting out the historical events in silly costumes often can aid memory. You can ask silly questions in class, so that everyone laughs and can remember the knowledge forever.

Another way to improve memory is by linking. For example, the number 4 in Chinese has almost the same pronunciation as death (die). The intonation is slightly different. The number 7 in Chinese has almost the same pronunciation as anger (angry). Using this trick of linking the number to some other words, you can remember the phone number such as 7411414 easily. You can translate as angry (7), and die (4). One (1) by one (1) dies (4). Another one (1) dies (4). Obviously, your friend will not be happy that you remember his phone number this way.

The third way to improve memory is by using a simplified form of mind-mapping method. You do not need to draw the mind map out. If there are four things you have to remember, you can imagine that you place the first thing on top left corner, the second on bottom left corner, the third thing on top right corner, and the last one on bottom right corner.

The fourth way to improve memory is to simplify information, so that you do not overtax your memory. If you intend to cook a sumptuous dinner for ten people, and you need to buy thirty items, it is very taxing on your memory to recall all the thirty items. You will definitely miss a few items.

A simple method is to visualize how you are going to cook the dinner. For example, you visualize that you boil the water, put in carrot, potato, chicken, and onion. While the soup is boiling, you prepare the ingredients for other dishes. In this way, you will not forget anything. As you visualize, you can pick up the items from the shelf in the supermarket.

You can learn to improve memory, no matter how old you are. You must have confidence in your memory, and courage to try different kinds of memory improvement techniques.

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