Improving Your Memory With Dr. Barry Gordon

Coming up next join Dr. Barry Gordon for his insights into how human memory works. But most importantly I'm going to tell you how you can improve your memory and improved a lot. Noted author and founder of the memory clinic at Johns Hopkins. His research provides keys to unlocking the critical creative thinking you can apply to your everyday experiences. You first need to know that you actually have two kinds of memory. Did you know you had two kinds of memory. With memory exercises. Real life examples and funny basic memory tools you can use. You can improve your memory far more than anybody ever imagined to do with the drug. All of this and more on improving your memory with Dr. Berry Gordy. So. Improving your memory with Dr. Barry Gordon is made possible in part by.

An RTA AARP educator community. Where learning lasts a lifetime. To learn more check our Web site. Have you ever forgot where you put your car keys. Let's see a show of hands. Yes pretty common. Ever forgotten on the way to the refrigerator. What you are going there for. And we see how many of you have had that experience. Ever forgot the punchline to a joke. Yeah. And you're all normal. Ever met someone at a party and seconds later forgot their name. Hi I'm Dr. Barry Gordon founder of the memory clinic Johns Hopkins and I'm here to tell you that most of these slips are normal in most people but most importantly I'm

going to tell you how you can improve your memory and improve it a lot. And there's even more I'm going to show you how by improving your memory by improving the right kind of memory you're going to improve your ability to solve problems. Be more creative. Even tap into the hidden genius that we all have in our minds. It may sound fantastic but it's true. Everyone has a hidden genius buried in their memories. By strengthening your memory you'll be unleashing the extraordinary powers of your mind at the end of this hour. Your memory could be doing things you never imagined possible. Now building a better memory is somewhat like trying to build a cabinet or cook the new dish to do the best possible job you need to have the materials and you need to have the tools. You'll keep your tools already handy in the toolbox to do the best possible job on a new recipe. You need to lay out the ingredients you need to have the measuring cups the knives and everything else you may need on the kitchen counter. Ok to work most efficiently and to work with the fewest mistakes. Now just as with a

building project or with a new recipe there are some very important tools you need to build your memory up and to be prepared for memory jobs in the next hour. I'm going to tell you about the five basic tools you need to have for a better memory. You should keep them handy in what I'll call your memory toolbox. Fortunately the memory toolbox is one you can carry inside your head so it will always be handy for you want to learn the tools you'll see for yourself how you can use the 5 tools in this memory toolbox to strengthen your memory and how by keeping them handy you'll be prepared to work on any memory problems you may face. This is really going to be an exciting information packed hour and by the end I assure you you're going to feel your memory getting stronger and better to learn how to improve your memory. You first need to know that you actually have two kinds of memory. Did you know you had two kinds of memory. Well you do. One is the kind of memory that many of you worry about and there a few of you have to be really concerned about because this

kind of memory is the kind that may be signs of serious brain diseases. I call it ordinary memory. It's I call it ordinary memory because it's the kind of memory that people ordinarily think of as memory it's memory for daily events. Memory for specifics it's what forgets where you put the car keys forgets the things you plan to do and forgets that you wanted the milk from the refrigerator not the eggs. Ordinary memory tends to get worse as we get older or unfortunately. Right. You can however strengthen this memory later in the program. I'm going to show you scientifically proven ways to do so. In addition to ordinary memory we all have another much bigger kind of memory. Ever been stumped by a problem. And then suddenly gotten the answer. Ever been in a conversation. Wanted to have a witty comeback but couldn't think of it. And then as you walk out the door something pops into your mind the perfect one but a little too late. These are all examples of the other kind of memory that's first not working and then working. I call this

other memory intelligent memory because it's the memory that makes us smart when it's working right. Your Intelligent Memory is memory that connects the dots inside your head and adds a dose of critical thinking to find answers or solutions when you're intelligent memory is strong you instantly solve problems. Think of witty remarks and become more creative and more appreciative of creativity. This is the memory that fuels your hidden genius Intelligent Memory mainly makes connections and associations. It's not concerned so much with specific facts. Many people don't realize that they have this other kind of memory because normally it works quickly and unconsciously. And most people don't consider thinking to be memory but it is very much so. You may not know it but you probably already have lots of experience with this other kind of memory. This other kind of thinking you know it in various disguises. You know it as intuition you know it is experience. You know it is a quick wit you

know it as wisdom. The great thing about this other kind of memory this intelligent memory is that you don't usually have to worry about it because it actually doesn't get worse as you get older. In fact it can get better as you get older. Isn't it amazing that there's something finally that actually gets better as you get older. Also intelligent memory is fairly immune to diseases that damage the brain such as strokes and Alzheimer's disease. I'll show you how you can improve your Intelligent Memory as well. Now before we move on to the tools Let's continue with our little test to see how strong or weak perhaps our memories are. Hey. I'll give you the answers right away. I don't want to keep you in suspense so you'll know immediately how you did. Then later towards the end of the show I'll give you a few more tests and I'll bet that your memories improved in just this hour. Are you ready for your memory tests. OK. The next test is going to be your memory for words. I'm going to give you some definitions of words. I want you to see if you can think of the words

they describe. Ready. The first definition is the part of a light bulb that lights up. What is it. Let me give you a clue. It starts with the letter F.. Does that help the rest of you. Yes very much so. The answer the part of the light bulb that lights up is the filament. OK. Let's try another one. OK. The second definition is a charm that protects its Ware and wards off evil spirits. Don't say this one out loud. Think about it. Now those of you who haven't been able to think of it are you ready for a clue. The first letter is a. Think of it now. The answer is amulet a charm that wards off evil spirits is an amulet as you probably figured out already. These were tip of the tongue questions they asked for words you probably know but probably don't use very often. All

right. And so they're not immediately available from your memory stores so you get blocked. You can't find them properly. It happens all the time to people then by giving you the first letter for each word. I pointed you to a particular place in your memory so hopefully you could find the proper word and undo the block. That may have helped you find the right word tip of the tongue. Problem is a very common problem for many people it gets worse as they get older. But over the next hour I'm going to tell you tools that will help reduce those embarrassing tip of the tongue blocks. Now the next exercise is a word association test. I'm going to say a word and I want you to say to yourself the first word that comes to mind. Ready. The first word is cold. Think to yourself what's the first word that comes to mind. And now why you're thinking to yourself let me tell you that the most common association of most people to cold is hot. The number of uniting other common connections or associations to cold sneeze or snow or water.

This is a test of how thoughts are connected in your mind in your intelligent memory. If these were the words that were the first things that came to mind. All right your connections were normal. But if you didn't have those words come to mind if you had other words perhaps your connections were a little unusual and go a little further than most people's. Perhaps your first thoughts were Tastee Freeze or Arctic Circle. Now don't worry if that's happened to you because that's actually what happened to me. That's perfectly normal I can assure you. It can also be a very good thing because it's one of the things that can make us more creative. If you're Robyn Williams That's how you make your living making these kinds of associations and being funny at it at the same time. And by the way you can in your same mind have the common associations and the stranger's associations and juggle between them. You can balance creativity and practicality in your head with no problem at all. Now here's another memory question. Ready. Different. How many animals of each

kind did Moses take on the ark. Can you OK some of you perhaps some of you if you were fooled and tried to answer that it wasn't Moses. OK. It was Noah on the ark. All right. If you got the question wrong. If you start it the answer is because not because you didn't know the right answer. You really knew it but because you weren't paying enough attention to the question you didn't think through it. OK I'll tell you how we can improve that as well. Now the last exercise requires a little explanation. This exercise involves a visual puzzle where the visual code represents a common phrase but it's partly represented in the arrangement of the words it's a word definition but they weren't the arrangement of the words help suggest the words. OK here's an example. What phrase do these words stand for. I'll give you the answer.

He's beside himself. See the code here. The clue. OK. Let me give you another example and then I'll give you the test. All right. Split second timing. These are easy. OK. Now let me give you the test. All right. Ready. Think to yourself. Ah yes. OK. Search high and low. Very good. All right. These are tough ones. That was a tough one. I know it was a test of how far out of the box your Intelligent Memory could go how many different pieces of information it could get and pull together to find the right answer. OK. That's all for the memory exercises or tests for now. At the end of the show I'll give you another set. And I can almost guarantee that you're going to do better and you'll see in the course of the show it doesn't take much to improve your memory with just a little

extra effort. You can double the power of your memory with regular practice OK and steady effort. You can boost your memory 1000 percent. That's right. You can actually make the parts of your memory that you exercise ten times bigger and faster than what you have now. So even though at any one point in time everyone starts out with different amounts of memory. You can make whatever you have better much better at any age. A recent study showed that even in people 65 and older just 12 hours of training could reverse the mental declines of seven to 14 years of aging and that improvement lasted at least two years. Right now I'm going to show you how you can do the same thing make lasting improvements in your memory. As I said there are five basic tools you need if you want to improve your memory. Here they are. What I've done is I've given you little visual metaphors to help you remember them with. OK. The first tool is paying attention.

Think of a flashlight. The second tool is organizing. Think of things laid out in your workbench your kitchen table and your kitchen countertop and the drawers. All right. Or think of a file cabinet. The third tool is making connections. Think of wires connecting memories tying things together. The fourth tool is sharpening your intelligent memory. Think of a knife sharpener and the fifth tool is mapping your memory. Think of blueprints or plans or a recipe or perhaps the whole cookbook. Let's get started and learn more about how to use these tools. Your first tool is simple but critical. It's paying better attention. Think of a flashlight. Your mind is shining on something that you're interested in. The biggest problem people have in everyday life is not paying attention in the first place. Solve that problem and you've solved many of your memory problems.

There are lots of reasons people don't pay proper attention. If you're under a lot of stress it's hard to pay attention or if you're tired or sleepy or even hungry you probably have a hard time concentrating on something. And of course too many glasses of wine too many glasses of punch aren't great for your attention span either. Now those reasons for a poor memory should be obvious and the solution to the problem is that they cause should be obvious to. At the very least. If you're sleepy or distracted or what have you and you don't have a very good memory. You can understand the reasons why. But suppose you're not sleepy not distracted. There are still many reasons why you may not be paying good enough attention and things you can do to make that better. I have a friend who is always losing her glasses at least once a day. She's madly scrambling to find her glasses and most of the time she finds them and most of the time they're right on top of her head. She shoves them there and she's concentrating on something she doesn't need them for. She's not paying

attention. She's thinking of something else so she's always losing them. That is typical of what not paying attention does to your memory. Without it nothing sticks in your memory. Let's take a common situation where you need your memory like a party where you're going to meet bunches of new people and perhaps some old friends. OK we're going to go to this party together. Right. I'd like you all to work with me on this exercise so we can see what's involved in memory and what we can do to improve it. Now you never know who's going to show up at a party. You never know who you're going to meet. So as it happens the first person we meet is Alvin as he introduces himself to remember Alvin's name. You have to pay attention. Attention does two things. First of all it's the gateway into your memory the doorkeeper. If you're not paying attention memory doesn't get in and what doesn't get in can't be remembered. But besides being a gatekeeper attention also fixes things in your memory. It burns them into your memory. Attention is

what helps move information from temporary memory storage to permanent storage. Without the right attention you can remember something for a moment but then it evaporates. The difficulty in paying attention is that there's lots of competition for it as soon as you meet one person like Alvin there's someone else who pops into the party that you got to meet like his friends Martha and Sam. The party is getting livelier. Everybody's beginning to look alike. It's getting harder to pay attention. Your flashlight is briefly shining here and there are lots of different things and so your attention is now trying to compete with distractions interference boredom. Even daydreaming can. And even when you think your flashlight is working great shining on several things at once and then you multitask up a storm. You're not really gay. When you think you're multitasking it can feel like you're paying attention to two or three things at the same time but you're

not. You're still really doing just one thing at a time. You're just juggling them quickly one at a time and the mental juggling that you're doing takes effort away from attention takes effort away from memory. So you're not really going to remember as well when you multitask as if you just did one thing at a time. So how do you strengthen your ability to pay attention. First slow down if you can think about what you're seeing or hearing or who you're meeting. Do you notice anything about this drawing. Many of you saw this one frowny face right there but some of you didn't. Judging from the murmur if you didn't. One reason may be that you were scanning too quickly you weren't paying enough attention. Second repeat as you slow down to pay more attention. Repeat what you want to keep in your memory. Use Alvin's name as you chat with him. Hello Alvin nice will code Alvin pass the Palvin third. Turn off

your autopilot when we're on autopilot. We're letting our unconscious brain do a lot of our work for us. This is often good. A skilled driver autopilots the basic mechanics of steering pushing on the gas pushing on the brake so she can pay attention to where she's going. But when your autopilot is on it's not engaging your memory. And this is why you don't remember the route you drove but you do remember where you're going. OK. If you want to remember you have to turn off your autopilot so you can. Fourth switch on your memory your permanent memory really paying attention turns on the switch inside your head that locks information into your memory. If this switches off that information may flood into your brain. But it isn't going to stick. Let's review our first tool. This is how you pay attention. Better slow down. Repeat. Turn off your autopilot and switch on your permanent memory. When we return

I'm going to talk about the second tool for memory which is organizing that's rearranging and placing what you're trying to remember. So you save it faster and more permanently and can find it quicker when you search your memory. Think of putting things in their proper place on your workbench or laying down the ingredients in your kitchen countertop or filing things properly and your filing cabinets. OK. Organizing is critical for making your memory stronger. Let me show you what I mean. I'd like you to look at these words and try to remember them. Don't write them down. You're not going to write them down. I just want you to read along with me in a sense. Here they are ready. Window light wheel glass radio gas seat tire trunk keys spare. Got it. Good.

Let's go to our trusty studio audience. All right. And see how well you did get you at home can compare yourself to them. How many of you remembered all 11 words. Show me a hand your honest good thing. How many of you remember 10 words. Nine. We have a couple of nine eight seven six. Good. How many of you remembered. None. It's happens. OK how about one. OK good. All right. Now those of you who did well those of you were in the upper reaches of the seven states. How do you do it. Organizing a car. You recognized in many cases it was a car. If you did that you were using organization to remember by. That's tool number two. Organization is critical for memory. So critical that most of the differences in memory ability between people. Are

due to differences in how they organize their memories. That's all OK. Organization can even explain a large part of why men and women remember differently. For example men are notorious for remembering sports facts and women for remembering anniversaries and birthdays. But women who learn how sports facts can be organized. Remember them as well as men do and men who manage to learn how to organize dates and anniversaries and the like can remember them as well as women do art as it is to believe. Most of the differences in people's memory abilities are because of their different mental organizations not because of any real differences in their brains. How do you select your various niches for memory. What they are and where they are is in some how you organize your memory. The first thing organization does is put memories in the right place a place that makes sense where you can find them again later. Think of the filing cabinet again. If you dont file a memory in the right place you'll never find it but if you file things the right way

they'll be easy to find when you need them. Now the right way depends on what you want to remember. Suppose I gave you a bunch of facts about birds to remember. Normally the mere fact you try to learn the longer it takes you the longer it takes. Each new fact to be learned because each new fact interferes with all the old facts already know. That would make learning about the birds really very hard to do. If you tried to do it without organization. But if as you tried to learn the facts about the birds you think about where they live their colors their wings shapes and so forth. Your brain will automatically organize them. Amazing isn't it. And with a good organization the more you learn the more you remember the better you can learn the better you'll be able to file things and find them again later. It's what's been called the paradox of the expert. Knowing a lot of facts would normally clutter up the memory the way knowing and having a lot of papers would clutter up a file cabinet right. But experts can and do know a lot of facts without having their memories

cluttered at all. In fact they can even learn faster and extract more information from any one fact than a non-expert can they do it because they organize better. They slot things coming in better and they can find the better coming out. And this is also how chess masters remember the position of pieces with unbelievable accuracy. They are not actually remembering the positions of where the chess pieces are on the board. Instead they are remembering the story or theme of the chess game that's being played not the exact positions. How do you know that if you mess up your organization if you put that move the pieces around you're not looking and they're no longer a game. They won't remember any better than the rest of us. Now the second thing about organization the second thing that it does is that it makes memories more condensed more valuable and easier to hold inside of our heads. It packs memories together. So instead of many separate memories you have bundles of memory.

This particular kind of memory organization is called Chungking Chungking is a way of sticking memories together so they're easier to handle inside of our heads when you chunk you glume memories together to make them into larger or manageable pieces. Let me show you how Chungking can help you remember even seemingly random pieces of information. Hey take a look at these four sets of letters. See if you can come up with a way of reorganizing them chunking them so they're easier to remember. OK. Now again don't write this down and don't tell me your method. OK I want to show you instead a method that works. Here's how we can do it by reorganizing these letters. We can make them into something more familiar and make it easier to remember that way. For example we can take k f j and scramble it into JFK. We can take Iasi and rearrange it into CEO. We can take Sri IRS

and we can take LTV and convert it into BLT bacon lettuce and tomato. Each of these reengagement is now a chunk in your memory an old familiar friend rather than three random letters. You can also make bigger chunk set of these chunks. For example if you wanted to remember all these letters in order all these sets in order you might remember JFK who was the CEO of the United States visiting the IRS while eating a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich. You'll make one image that you can carry around with you hopefully not forever. OK but one image and you've condensed these 12 individual letters more into one single piece of information a story that you remember better organization dramatically improves your memory. It can take a perfectly ordinary memory and make it into an extraordinary one. As an example let me tell you about a college student I'll call Sam Sam was a completely ordinary college student who was selected to participate in a memory study precisely because his memory was average.

He was an average student with an average memory. If you read him a set of numbers like 6 1 2 4 7 ok he could only remember about 7 or 8 of them at a time which was average which was normal. And that's just how we did it. Start started the experiment but his Sam kept practicing an amazing thing happened. He got much much better. He could remember by the end of the study 80 numbers that people read to him at once eighty 10 times more than he started with ten times more than the average. How did you do it. Well Sam was a runner. He realized that he could group the numbers he was hearing into running times. So they became for him a single meaningful concept a single chunk. For example if he heard the numbers 3 5 9 2 he chunk them right away into three minutes 59 seconds and two tenths. Hey a fast mile and that's how we remembered them. Chong's work best if the chunk means something special to you whether it's the

time of a fast mile or a list of ingredients for lasagna. So when you chunk trying to package your memories into groups that mean something to you and not bizarre images or random collections Chungking is how a lot of seemingly normal people really normal people accomplish astonishing feats with their memory. Have you ever wondered how a restaurant waiter can take a dozen orders not write anything down and still remember exactly who gets what by Chungking instead of remembering that one person ordered the blue cheese dressing. One person ordered oil and vinegar. One person ordered thousand island. A waiter can remember the OT and remember it that way. Now using first letters to make up a new word or acronym is one way you can use for organizing memories for Chungking. There are several other methods you can use. The key is finding something that works for you. Let's say you're trying to learn something about sailing and sailing it's notoriously difficult to remember that Starbird is right and port is left. It's not obvious who made that up

you know but you may notice if you wanted to try to remember that port has four letters just the way left does all right. And if that's the way your mind works then that may be an easy way for you remember that port is left right and Starboard is the other side. The third tool in our memory toolbox is related organization but it's so important that it has its own place in the toolbox. This tool is making the right connections. Think of it as wiring that connects your memories together. Your memory makes many kinds of connections. Some are simple right. Like those you did in the word association test at the beginning of the show. Others are complicated and reach deep into your memories and experiences. The wonderful thing about these connections is that your Intelligent Memory uses them to generate some amazing thinking. Your ability to make new and unusual connections is the engine that makes your mind so powerful. If you're like me and well into what's considered middle age or older you. Can.

Then you're probably using hundreds of thousands if not millions of connections to help you think. Have you ever hoped that despite losing your car keys and your glasses that as you get older you're getting wiser getting a little smarter. Have you hope that when you actually almost certainly are. It's not an illusion. It's because all of the time all of the connections you've been accumulating over a lifetime had been building up. And as you make more connections as you have more to play with to use you can become smarter and wiser. Remember our new friend Alvin. A good way to remember his name or anybody's name is to think of connections while you're being introduced to him and it's best if you make associations that are familiar to you and that hopefully adds something to your knowledge of who you're meeting for Alvin I might have thought of Alvin and the Chipmunks. That association would have helped me remember his name. That maybe made me forget that he was a sheep. OK so maybe I could have used other connections to other familiar things to help me remember.

For example I could have thought of wooll or lambchop or Little Bo-Peep. Maybe if I noticed Alvin had some Smudge's dirt on his coat. I would have said well Woolite I might have thought of that association or if Alvin was an exceptionally quiet chief in the corner I might have thought of Silence Of The Lambs now. Connections are important for ordinary memory because they help you lock down the specifics but connections are really really vital for your intelligent memory because connections determine how powerful your intelligent memory becomes. That's because specifics fade over time as everybody knows but the connections in your mind those millions of links between bits of information can actually in a sense become stronger over time. Let me show you some memory connections some links that I'll bet you didn't know you had. Get ready. I'm going to show you a picture and I want you to do two things. I want you to tell me what you see

but I also want you to make note of how fast you saw it already. Think yourself what did you say. Does it look just like a bunch of blotches. Or do you suddenly see a dog pop out. Let me show you where the dog is. Now. Now if the dog popped into your mind pretty quickly thank your Intelligent Memory. Here's how your memory found the dog as you looked at the picture your mind took all the blotches on the screen and compared them to all the images you've ever had in your mind. All love. Ok now beyond all those images let's just think about dogs and think about Dalmatians. You probably haven't thought about them in a long time but it doesn't matter. Your Intelligent Memory didn't forget the dominations you've seen it didn't forget any of the dogs you saw playing around the fire station. Perhaps when you were a kid it didn't forget Pungo and PERDIDA from 101 Dalmatians. Even

if you've forgotten their names even if you've forgotten you ever saw the movie or game where you took your grandkids to it or something like that. OK it doesn't forget very much of anything at all that you've seen. And it searches through everything you've remembered far faster than your ordinary memory could. There's no computer in the world that could have searched through all the blobs in your memory or its memory and found a match to the donation. That's pretty impressive don't you think. But you know finding the Dalmatian in your memory. Among all the blob's there was actually only child's play for the kind of memory you have. For the intelligent memory that you have. We use our intelligent memory for much much more and for much more important jobs. One of the things are intelligent memory does for us is that it connects the dots to solve problems. It connects the dots to think. Come up with new ideas and to be creative. Do you find that hard to believe. No you trust me but you still find it hard to believe. Yes that we use this special memory this intelligent memory

to solve problems to think. Let me give you an example. Here's the question about how long is the Queen Mary to the ocean line. I'm going to give you what is a multiple choice question and I want you to think of the best possible answer here of the choice 100 feet 1000 feet 5000 feet 10000 feet. The best answer is be a thousand feet by the way. The exact limit is 11 132 feet. Now let me tell you what your Intelligent Memory should have done to solve this problem. The first thing your memory would have done of course was to try to look up the fact directly but most of us wouldn't have had that fact in our memories already. But you would have had other memories lots of other memories that could have helped to find the right answer if you could only find them and relate them properly. For one you know that the Queen Mary 2 is probably a big ship and you know that answer a 100 feet is not very long at all.

Or you can walk it in a few seconds. It's one third the length of a football field so it doesn't seem like a very plausible answer. Another possible was see 5000 feet but you may remember that that's almost a mile which is five thousand two hundred eighty feet and 5000 280 feet a mile seems like it's awfully big for a ship. So you can eliminate sea on that basis too. And of course then you can eliminate because that's almost two miles. That leaves B is the most plausible answer. The process of elimination gave you the best choice and you might also realize that a thousand feet sounds just about right for a big ship. Now a little one not a humongous one but a big ship. This was a simple example of how you were intelligent memory finds in sorts through millions of pieces of information and quickly can give you an answer. And that's just one of the reasons Intelligent Memory is so important. Remembering about the Queen

Mary 2 isn't important by itself but how you could solve such problems. That's what's important. A lot of the problems we face in everyday life are just like the Queen Mary 2 problem except no one tells us the right answer. In these kinds of problems you know that there's a solution out there somewhere. You know you're starting out you just don't know how to quite get there. For example you're driving and you hear a traffic report that there's a major tire on a road you're taking normally going to take. Up ahead. You have to think of a way around it. You have to think of what to do or let's say you want to think of reasons why you want to convince your boss to give you a raise or you have to figure out how to juggle your time so you can make an appointment that you added into your schedule or maybe you want to invest your money. So it's both safest and giving you the best return at the same time intelligent memory helps us solve these kinds of problems by finding the right connections. That gets us from the start to the finish the answer. But there is even more that Intelligent Memory does

for us it powers our creativity and our ability to appreciate creativity. We remember early on that I talked about our hidden genius Intelligent Memory is where it comes from. What is genius anyway. But connecting the dots in a way that no one has connected them before and whether it's solving problems or being creative. Your life will be much richer with a sharp intelligent memory. So the fourth memory tool you need is a sharp intelligent memory your Intelligent Memory is what makes you smart. Being smart is being able to connect the dots. Where do you think the connections come from in the first place. They're your memories. These intelligent memories it's up to you to make sure that your Intelligent Memory is well stocked and that you use it the right way. So just how do you make intelligent memory sharper. Number one slow down your thinking. Does this sound familiar too. Recall that when you had to pay better attention you got to slow down your thinking to do so

well an intelligent memory. You also have to walk before you can run. Intelligence memory works really fast but slow it down when you're trying to train it to work better. Just like when you were learning how to drive or how to play tennis or golf take each step slowly enough to get it right. If you start off slowly and get each step right the first time you won't have to unlearn an error and you'll be able to change the proper steps together to make the whole swing or whatever you do smooth and fast. The number two thing you've got to do to sharpen your Intelligent Memory is to really pick apart the problems you need to solve. You can only do this if you've slowed down which of course was point number one. You don't want to jump to a conclusion or jump to a solution that may be wrong. A situation may have a number of some problems problems within the problem and maybe the little problems that some problems are easier to solve than the big problem. You may discover that your big challenge is really a string of smaller problems and you have to solve

one at a time and you can solve one of the time you can solve the whole thing. It's a little bit like climbing a big mountain. You may have to make it a number of stages when you slow down. You give yourself a chance to really think about a problem you can and should think about all the possibilities even farfetched ones pause to think about whether you know enough to come up with a solution. Maybe you need more information. We need to do a little research. For example when you're driving and you hear about the traffic jam up ahead there's a number of possibilities you have to consider maybe the alternative routes that you might want to take are getting equally jammed. Maybe there's a great alternative route but you could get lost maybe sitting in the jam won't take as much time and aggravation is trying to find the alternative route. All of those possibilities. The third thing you need to do to sharpen your Intelligent Memory is exercise it every chance you get. What I mean by this is make a habit of using your Intelligent Memory to solve problems to appreciate creativity and to be creative. The best way to do this is through

practice. So don't wait for some crisis or emergency before you sharpen your Intelligent Memory use it daily on little teeny problems. Use it out of curiosity. Use it just for fun. You can't make it worse only better. For example I've got a friend who wrestles with the same problem every morning. How do you get her 15 year old daughter out of bed and to school every morning. Mother and daughter have this bedroom battle of getting her up. What makes this a little teeny problem for us to consider is it's not our problem. Him it's her problem. But we can think about it and think of possible solutions and see how they play out in this mother daughter and daughters real life. Should she enforce an earlier bedtime tough to do with a teenager of course. Should she have an alarm that plays music that the daughter can't stand. There is a possibility one McDonald's had a problem with teenagers loitering. Around the McDonald's. So they played classical music. Teenager repellent.

The fourth thing you've got to do to sharpen your Intelligent Memory is to stretch it. Stretching Intelligent Memory can actually be fun because Intelligent Memory isn't just about solving problems. Intelligent Memory is also how we appreciate human wit creativity and art and how we can become humorous witty creative and artistic ourselves. I often hear people say that they don't seem to appreciate jokes well or that they're not very creative. They don't think they're a genius. I've got news for them geniuses think just like everyone else. Their thoughts go through the same steps. Their memories connect dots just like the rest of us do. It's just that they have more dots more connections and they can make bigger leaps in brand new directions. But they do the same thing that the rest of us do. I believe that everyone has a potential genius inside themselves. We just have to bring it out. Creative Genius is just another term for a sharp intelligent memory. As I've been using History is full of examples of creative geniuses who got their brilliant ideas from a

string of unusual connections or associations. Charles Darwin for example looked at the beaks on birds looked at the different kinds of nuts and seeds that they were eating and made the connection that proved to be the theory of evolution. Albert Einstein thought about how you could tell time while you're in a moving trolley car. And when he made that trolley car move at the speed of light he came up with the theory of relativity. Alexander Calder connected circus figures with the notion of toys that come up with his idea for mobiles. You can structure Intelligent Memory by exposing a treaty creative ideas because these will become the memories in you that then spawn other creative ideas in your mind. These creative ideas are all around us. Listen to new music read a book by an author you've never read before go to a museum you've never gone to before talked to a stranger attend a lecture tend to session like this drive a different way to work do something

backwards. Lecture Intelligent Memory spread its wings and explore new places. Let's recap what we need to do to sharpen our intelligent memory and make it the best possible tool. The four ways are one. Slow your thinking to pick apart problems. 3. Exercise your intelligence memory and for structure intelligent memory. Now let's turn to the fifth and final tool which is how to best manage all your memories and all the tools you have for them. The last two you need the fifth tool is a map or blueprint for your memory. You have to decide on the one hand what you want your memory to be doing in any particular situation and on the other hand what memories what tools you have to apply to that particular job. Knowing what you need to do and having the right tools will dramatically improve how your memory works. Let's review our memories and our tools. When we first started talking I talked to about two kinds of memory ordinary memory and intelligence memory ordinary memory

remembers specifics such as where you put your car keys intelligent memory remembers connections and the memory that helps you solve problems. Intelligent Memory is also the memory that tells you how to do things like drive a car inside both of these kinds of memories are different channels for different kinds of memories. The easiest channels to understand are the ones related to our senses such as sight hearing taste smell and touch. Each of these channels has its own brand of memories but some of these brands are worth more than others. The main channel for most people is the visual one. The things they see the images they can form inside their mind. The visual channel is enormously powerful. Here's an example of what your visual channel can do. A Canadian psychologist showed students over twenty five hundred snapshots even though the students had no more than 10 seconds to try to memorize each snapshot. And even though they were tested two days later they were over 90 percent accurate

in telling the snapshots they'd seen before from brand new ones. Although this is amazing on the surface it's certainly understandable given that about 40 percent of our brain is associated with vision. How do you know if you have a good visual memory. Ask yourself what kinds of memory you use best when you're trying to understand somebody's directions or instructions. Do you visualize a map. Or plan inside your head. When you read a book. Do you kind of picture the plot somehow to you. This happened there and that when you read the book or look at something you remember where you were without having to put in a bookmark. Or if you've got a strong visual memory then try to use it whenever possible to help you in remembering but sometimes the visual channel may not be the best for what you're trying to remember. The auditory channel all the sounds you hear all the sounds you can imagine inside your head is a big one too. And in some situations it can be the best one to use. Let me give you a little test. I'm going to sing a few words of a song. See if you can finish it for me. Ready.

This Land Is Your Land. Great. Isn't that amazing. Most of you in fact almost all of you I think remembered the words even though you probably haven't heard this song for years maybe even decades. Especially not the way I sing. OK. You can thank your auditory memory for that. Even though it's not many people's predominant memory style. It can be very powerful when you do use it. And there are some people who remember sounds much better than science. These people like to hear things in order to remember them. You probably know who you are because you remember all the lyrics to songs you remember the sound of people's voices when you want to eat remember instructions or directions you repeat them to yourself you don't visualize them. If this is you your strength is your auditory memory. Now vision and sound are the two main memory channels although everyone has strong memories related to smell and taste. They have more limited use. The reason is is

that smell and taste generally stir emotional memories these senses melon taste are wired to the emotional regions of our brain. So when they're stimulated you immediately think of experiences with emotional connections for the strongest memory possible. You have to decide which sensory channel your memory uses best and which is best for the memory task at hand. At the same time think about your memory strengths and weaknesses and which have to be shored up. Everyone has parts to their memory that are weaker than others. So the first part of mapping your memory is deciding which channel is strongest and where you have gaps or weak spots. Next you've got to plug those gaps one perfectly acceptable way to plug gaps in your memory is to use memory aids. There's no shame in using memory aids. I'm a big believer and user of them. I always carry three by five cards and something is right with so I can jot down what I want to remember what I don't want to forget. You might be surprised how many people use memory aids. Even

geniuses find memory aids very useful. Leonardo da Vinci the Renaissance artist and scientist who painted the Mona Lisa and designed to helicopter was constantly taking notes. Of course he was parchment rather than three by five cards but the principle is the same. One of the best memory aids that's often overlooked is a memory POW a spouse or a good friend or sibling who has a good memory and memory that may compliment yours. This may sound obvious but researchers have studied this problem and found that people who do well on memory tests tend to be married to people who have good memories. I sometimes see patients who think that their memory is going bad but whats really happening is that they've lost their memory partner. This is a common situation with someone who's been married for many years and suddenly loses a spouse. I try to reassure them that their brain hasn't gone bad. They're not getting demented what it is is they've lost their memory pal who kept the lot of their memories for them. Another part of mapping out your memory is to plan and think ahead to situations where your

memory might be needed and where you might need help for it. If you know there's something you have to remember over and over again like where you put your car keys or where you park your car. Try to put your keys in the same place each time. Perhaps a little basin by the door. Try to park around the same spot in the parking lot why strain your brain when you don't have to. Let's recall our tools first. Pay better attention. Second organizing third. Making connections. Fourth sharpening your Intelligent Memory and with mapping your memory. Over the past hour you've been soaking up memory facts and strategies and even though you may not know it they are already becoming part of your thinking. Now let's do another memory exercise a word association exercise the first word I'd like to associate or think about the connections to is vain. GOT IT. Think to yourself some words or thoughts connected Devane the next word.

They're coming faster now. Music. Think of some words or thoughts connected to music. I suspect that both words set off a bunch of sparks of connections in your mind. Of course you may have noticed something I didn't spell vane for you so. Right from the start gave you a lot of different possibilities. You could have thought of vein as vein artery you could have thought a vein is vein conceded or so vein or so vein. OK you could have thought a vein is weathervane and taking it off from there. The other word music may have had a whole set of associations because music is very common. It happens just so you can check your mode. The most common associations to music are song piano symphony in band. But anything that came to your mind is perfectly acceptable. We're just trying to find out the limits the range of your associations moving along. Here's the next exercise I'm going to test some really old memories here. In the biblical story what was Joshua swallowed by. People look at me.

I can't fool you now. All right. You all know it wasn't Joshua it was Jonah was swallowed by the whale. You've learned to pay better attention especially knowing that I might trick you. The last question is another word puzzle. Recall that the puzzle was partly in the way the words were arranged that was part of the clue. OK so for example the one we had before was search high and low. Both the words and the arrangement gave you the clue. You're ready for your test going to time you on this one. All right. Yes. Oh man you are good. OK. Yes. Rail Road crossing. OK very good. Fast. Doing better. I think. That's what you can do in just a single hour. Imagine how much better you can do if you make these tools part of your everyday lives for hours of each day every day for a year. The nerve cells in your brain really want to learn

what we've done here is go through some method you can use to help them learn more effectively and to apply what you're learning to the memory jobs that you may face the memory challenges you may face in the future. There may be drugs that can improve our memories but even then you're still going to want to use these methods because they'll complement whatever drugs might become available. And right now and for the foreseeable future you can improve your memory far more than anybody ever imagined you can do with the drug. You have a natural circuitry inside your brain for getting a great memory. And you already have the natural means to tune up that circuitry. I hope I've been able to show you how you can start pumping up those nerve cells. Thank you. I'm Dr. Barry Gordon and I wish you many happy memories. To learn more about memory in everyday life how it works and ways to improve it.

Log on to w w w dot dot org Gordon. To receive a VHS or DVD copy of improving your memory with Dr. Barry Gordon. That includes a bonus question and answer session with Dr. Gordon. Or the companion memory book. Call 1 800 8 7 3 6 1 5 4 or order online at w w w dot dot org slash D or Gordon. Improving your memory with Dr. Barry Gordon is made possible in part by. An RTA AARP educator community. Where learning lasts a lifetime. To learn more check our Web site. Is Joe