Asking this question is quite embarrassing at times and reminds me that forgetting someone’s name is an everyday occurrence. Memory, like other areas of life, is cloaked in myths that limit its capacity. Professor Mark Rosensweig, however, shatters any idea that memory has to decrease with age because his research shows that no matter how old you are, if your brain is stimulated, your nerve cells actually grow to make more connections with other cells throughout the brain. This means you can continue to develop your memory even as you grow old. We all know of individuals who have had active minds well into their 70’s, 80’s, or beyond — Pablo Picasso, Thomas Edison, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Rubenstein, and others. Also as you grow older and increase your wealth of knowledge, you have an advantage of better storage of new materials because you can file it away within the broad-based perspective of what you already know. Even if you were to lose brain cells at the rate of 10,000 a day at birth, you would have lost only 3% of your brain by the age of 80.
Other phenomena also suggest a greater retention capacity for memory than you usually think of. Near death experiences flash before you all manner of forgotten life experiences. Dreams and hypnotic material uncover lost memories from your subconscious mind. Memories are triggered by certain stimuli; for example, I heard the piece “Satin Doll” and thought of a long lost friend who frequently requested that number. Experiments with electrical brain stimulation have shown memories can be triggered beyond our conscious control.
Like anything else, Natural Success comes when you educate yourself about something and apply steps towards improvements. You can begin to improve your memory by first having faith in your ability. Please “forget” the old dictum “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” You must think that you are capable of better memory. Then decide to be committed to improve your recall and take the steps to do so. Being relaxed improves your memory. It is amazing that school does not usually teach memory skills, but then that would have made school easier!
In any learning session, what is remembered most is what is learned in the initial and closing periods of the session. As an example, if you were going to learn a list of 50 words and studied these words for an hour, you probably remember a greater percentage of words at the beginning and the end of the list. It then helps to break up your learning into a bunch of sessions to increase the number of initial and closing periods. The optimal study time lasts between 10 to 45 minutes. You would also remember more easily words that were either: 1) “linked” in some way, such as all nouns relating to office equipment, or 2) because of some “outstanding” quality, such as a word like “floppyskew” (my invention).
Memory is helped by review, yet people somehow believe that their memory should happen automatically without any effort. It only follows that you would more definitely remember something if you make an effort to remember it. Reviews are best structured to be made soon after the learning period and then repeated at increasingly longer intervals. For example, your first review may occur after 10 minutes, the second review after one day, the third at a week, the fourth at a month, and the fifth at a year. The reviews might last 10 minutes initially but may last only 2 minutes in future reviews. At the fourth or fifth review, long-term memory usually kicks in.
Memory has much to do with how you let things in. Take again the example of remembering someone’s name. What you could do with new acquaintances is to link their name and face. A blonde female named Mary could be linked by an image of Marilyn Monroe. Be prepared to hear the name of your new acquaintance before you are introduced. Focus strongly on the new person with eye contact that takes him in visually as much as possible. Notice your feelings about the person and exaggerate them within yourself. Use their name in any ensuing conversation for practice. Get a visual impression of the person and consider if this matches the name. Think of some outstanding or peculiar feature about the person to help you remember him.
Every successful business person should know the importance of remembering someone’s name. By improving this skill, you bring yourself happiness by being closer to those who support you.