Over the course of twenty five years in clinical practice, I estimate 60% of the patients I have evaluated have said they have problems with their memory.
That’s not surprising given that when people are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression or other emotional challenges, there are going to be some cognitive issues whether it be in the form of decreased concentration, memory, or executive functioning. The hope, of course, is that when the psychiatric problem improves over time so will the cognition as well. However, that doesn’t always happen even after the psychiatric problem resolves and many people are left with the belief they have a bad memory and there’s not much they can do about it. Of course, we live in a world where you can just click on your computer or phone and get the information you need pretty quickly. That raises the valid question why do you even need to memorize information in today’s day and age? The obvious answer is you don’t but there are several benefits in having an improved memory: can be useful in social situations (such as remembering people’s names), improving school performance, increased confidence and being more receptive to learning new things, and the reward of mental fitness. In this article, I will highlight a few techniques that have been around for thousands of years since at least the ancient Greeks and if you have the motivation to practice them you can develop a stronger memory.
Even though I won’t be covering other brain essentials in detail in this article for improving your memory, I would refer you to my previous article from March 2019, Should We All Be on an Anti-Inflammatory Diet? where I discuss exercise, diet, and sleep. In short, I highly recommend regular consistent exercise of your body (20-30 minutes per day) which has been shown to increase the size of your hippocampus (the part of your brain associated with memory). Eating well would include a Mediterranean diet (or what I call an anti-inflammatory diet) that includes brain foods such as avocado, blueberries, broccoli, coconut oil, eggs, green and leafy vegetables, salmon, turmeric, walnuts, and dark chocolate while minimizing processed sugar, grains, and high-glycemic fruits (such as pineapple, raisins). Other brain essentials for memory: socialization, getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night, brain exercises (brain fitness games, new dance, new language), and treating zinc, vitamin B1, and vitamin D deficiencies.
Long before I became a psychiatrist, I had a personal interest in this topic. I believe I have always had an average memory and I remember watching Harry Lorayne on a television show growing up repeating the names of all the audience members after hearing it one time. I decided to read one of his memory books right before going off to college. Thirty five years later, I still can recall the phonetic alphabet he gave as a way to remember numbers and that’s because I’ve been using it in different situations since then automatically. It goes like this:
1 - T
2 - N
3 - M
4 - R
5 - L
6 - Sh
7 - K
8 - G
9 - P
0 - S
I’ve seen variations on this in more recent books but the idea is if you are trying to memorize a number, you first convert it to a sound and then you can link the sounds of the different numbers in sequential order to come up with a meaningful word or image. For example, 53 would be L M and would form the word lamb (it’s all about the sounds not the actual spelling) or 94 would be P R or pear. The idea is that it’s much easier to memorize things that are meaningful. Modern information such as numbers, names, languages are abstract and our brains don’t memorize well when the information has no meaning. We need to give the information meaning and the brain naturally absorbs spatial information and thinking in pictures.
Step 1: Visualization
Visualization is the first step in improving one’s memory as the brain works in pictures and we can use that to our advantage if you are able to tap into the emotional senses as well: hearing, smelling, tactile but can also be funny, sad, grotesque, erotic, or motion/action. The more bizarre the images, the easier it is to remember. Let’s take a list of 14 words:
elephant
foot
galaxy
apple
rope
piano
school
television
cup
rose
steak
button
box
pan
If you were given 60 seconds to memorize the list above, the average person could remember 5-9 items and could probably do better than that if visualizing them into some sort of story. However, what if you needed to remember them in order?
Step 2: Image Storage
That brings up the second step of image storage. The idea is to stick your pictures on different anchor points along the way. The anchor points are places you are automatically familiar with and know well: parts of your body, the layout of your home such as going from the front door to the bedroom, or your hometown. For example, since there are 14 words, let’s use an example of using 7 parts of your body (2 words per location): top of your head, ear, eye, nose, mouth, chin, chest. Starting with the top of your head: you could imagine an elephant with a human foot that smells really badly on top of your head. Next to your ear, you can imagine there is a little galaxy of spinning apples. Out of your eye, you can imagine a rope coming out of it attached to a piano. In one nostril, there’s a school building being shoved into it and a television going into the other nostril. You can imagine your mouth is holding on to a paper cup with a beautiful fragrant rose in the cup with thorns. On your chin, there’s a cooked steak with an adjacent button and every time you push the button it tosses the steak into the air. Finally, you can imagine a wrapped gift box on your chest and when you open it, Peter Pan comes out. Keep in mind it may take a few minutes to come up with a memorable image but the more bizarre the better it is for remembering it. The advantage of this method is you could even retrieve the items in reverse order without too much difficulty.
Step 3: Repetition
The third and final step is repetition. You would need to practice what you just memorized or it will be lost over time. Repetition is the mother of all learning and it helps move the images into long term memory. Keep in mind the “forgetting curve” which suggests that when you learn something new, it is best to review the material 1 day later, then at 5 days, 15 days, and 1 month to retain it over time.
How could we apply these ideas to remembering someone’s name? The most important step is to PAY ATTENTION when you are about to meet someone new and that you are already internally asking yourself what is this person’s name? Choose a feature on this person that really stands out: smile, hairstyle, nose, cheeks or something else and at the same time picture the person’s name in some memorable way: someone you know with the same name, carrots for Karen, Mona Lisa painting for Lisa, brain for Brian, stove for Steve. You then entwine the two: if the thing that stands out about Steve is a long beard you can imagine there’s a stove on his beard. You would have to review this over time (later that evening, the next day) to remember it.
Obviously, I can’t cover a topic in one article that people have written books about but I hope you get the idea that it’s possible with a few memory techniques and a little motivation you can change your perception of your memory once you have trained it. With a little practice, you may find that you enjoy exercising your creative and visual mind and it will make learning experiences more fun. The more you use and challenge your brain now, the sharper your brain will be for years to come. Here are a few book recommendations if you would like to learn more about this topic:
Remember It by Nelson Dellis
The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne
How to Improve Your Memory in Just 30 days by Ron White