Scott Hagwood - Memory Power: You Can Develop A Great Memory—Americas Grand Master Shows You How

I know, you think you have a lousy memory. You cant find your car keys, you forgot to send that e-mail yesterday, or maybe, worse, you forgot your anniversary!

Relax; your memory is just fine. I can almost guarantee it. For years I was in the same boat you think youre in. I was a mediocre student. I suffered the acute embarrassment of forgetting, in front of an audience, how to play a simple piano piece. I couldnt remember where I put my car keys. And then I found out I had cancer.

What does having cancer have to do with memory? The doctors told me the treatment that I would undergo would have an effect on my brain that would make it difficult for me to concentrate and remember. Theres the ultimate insult: Add to the terror of having a life-threatening disease a treatment that makes my already forgetful memory worse! I had to leave my treatment to the doctorsand they did a wonderful jobbut I decided that I could do something at least to mitigate the effects of the treatment on my brain. If you had told me five years ago that I would hold the title of National Memory Champion, I would have laughed out loud. Not a chance! I was just an average guy doing my best to get through life while enjoying my wife and children. But I won the national championships in four consecutive years. How I succeeded in doing that is what this book is all about.

I discovered that a persons memory is much like his or her body. Exercise it and it gets stronger. The trick lies in knowing how to do the exercises. In Memory Power Ill show you how to do exercises for your memory. And the best part is that youll find the exercises amazingly easy, yet they yield powerful results. Within a week youll find yourself remembering more and using those memories to make your life better.

Cancer is a life-altering experience for anyone who has the disease. Chapter 1 is about how my brush with death taught me that everybody has far more memory potential than they realize. Fortunately, my cancer was curable and I had a wonderful team of doctors to whom Ill always be grateful. As I was undergoing the frightening treatment regimen the doctors laid out, I struggled to keep my thinking and memory intact. I was fearful that I would lose some vital part of what made me the person I was. Then, in something of a revelation, I discovered that I had a great memory! I could remember tiny details of events that happened years ago. While the treatments took a temporary toll on my ability to concentrate and remember things that happened minutes earlier, I reveled in the knowledge of what I did remember. How, I wondered, was it possible to have such vivid recall of long-ago events? And that set me off on the course of discovery and learning that Im sharing with you. You wont believe how amazing your mind and memory are until you experience this. Youll have to take my word for it now, but youll be a believer in just a few days.

Well start your exercise program in chapter 2. Think of it as sort of a warm-up. All it really consists of is keeping a daily journal, jotting down at the end of the day some of the things that happened to youpeople you met, decisions you made, even what you had for lunch. It doesnt take long to do. Then well examine what your journal reveals about how you remember and take a few basic steps to improve on that process. We arent going to engage in any tricks. This is all stuff youre already doing without realizing it.

After warming up, well explore in chapter 3 the ways in which memories are made. There are two ways to look at the process of memory. One is what you would call scientific and involves neurons, dendrites, chemicals, and electricity in a complex process that well leave mostly to the scientists. The other way to view memory is as the result of your senses, emotions, and actions at work. A memory is the result of an experience, and we experience the world around us through our five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. Our emotions play a role, too, since we usually have negative or positive reactions to experiences. Finally, many experiences we have involve action. We act or are acted upon or maybe we just imagine an action. Combine these ingredientsour senses, emotions, and actionsand you have a memory! Youre already doing all of this, of course, but mostly without thinking about it. The point of chapter 3 and the exercises in it is to get you to do more thinking about your experiences in order to form more exacting and fulfilling memories.

You probably wont be surprised to learn that human beings tend to best remember things that interest them. Chapter 4 shows you how to use that common trait to build more complete memories. In essence, youll learn to associate whatever you wish or need to remember with something that interests you. Its the simple principle of connectivityeverything can be connected in some fashion to everything else. Youll find that your brain is capable of some very creative ways to connect things. Much of the process of association involves the creation of mental pictures. Again, you do this all the time without realizing it. Hear the word breakfast and your minds eye conjures up something associated with breakfast, maybe scrambled eggs on a plate or the smell of sausage cooking. These mental images will become another of the tools you use to focus your memory.

In chapter 5 were going to learn about the role of repetition in memory enhancement. I know what youre thinking: Heres the tough part where I have to keep repeating stuff over and over until I have it memorized. Wrong! Its very unfortunate that so many people think that endless repetition is the key to memory. The real key to repetition in memory is that its more like planting seeds. You plant the memory once, then come back every so often to cultivate and nourish it. Time is a powerful eraser trying to rid you of your memories. But by using the tools weve already assembled, youll learn in chapter 4 how to form and store memories most efficiently and to protect them from times decay.

Now that we have a solid framework for forming memories, we come in chapter 6 to an amazing memory technique that was invented thousands of years ago but fell into disuse for centuries. Its called the Roman Room and I find it the single most important tool in memorizing anything. It basically teaches you to use the structure of almost any roomfour walls, four corners, a floor and ceilingto store and recall your memories. Roman Rooms are eternal forget-menot spots that are adaptable to any kind of information and serve to build bridges between your working memory and your long-term memory. The process is the same no matter what you want to remember. As Ive developed my memory, one of the things that has amazed me is that the process of remembering can be so fascinating. People sometimes ask me how I keep from becoming bored when Im preparing for a memory competition by memorizing decks of cards. Of course, over the years Ive remembered countless thousands of cards in practice. Yet, when I get to the end of the very next deck, Im still amazed at my ability to remember. Its an insatiable feeling. The Roman Room acts as a gateway to your permanent storage area, allowing you to easily transfer information that would otherwise be lost to an area that has unlimited storage capacity. Although all memory is subject to the whitewash of time, the Roman Room acts as a buffer between the newly stored information and times obsessive compulsion to cleanse your mental hard drive. I know it sounds strange, but just wait until you try it!