Memories of persons, places, events

Memory experts have some ideas about this and can perform amazing feats of memory using various mental tricks. A well known memory expert, Harry Loraine taught his audiences a number of his insights. He said what makes something memorable is if it is ridiculous because it stands out. Think of camouflage. When you wear camouflage you can disappear in a background that looks similar. Our brains process so many thoughts and ideas constantly that much of our thinking creates a background. Unless a thought is somehow made to stand out from that background, it is as if it were wearing camouflage and we will forget it.

One of the first steps to remembering something is to pay attention to it in the first place . Just by telling yourself consciously “I am going to Remember this , “ is often sufficient. At minimum , it gets you to pay attention. Loraine's trick for making an idea stand out from the background noise of his thoughts was to intentionally exaggerate some aspect of the idea . He might imagine the idea in incredible motion or larger than life. The other piece of this trick was to really see the image in your mind's eye.

For example , if he wanted to remember a shopping list that included eggs, lunch meat, milk and broccoli he might do something like this. He might start visualizing the grocery store from the outside. Then, some giant eggs fall on the store from the sky. Next, he might visualize the lunch meat counter with no lunch meat but instead the cases might be overflowing with eggs. Next he might envision picking lunch meat out of his garden to link the idea of lunch meat to broccoli.

Other research has suggested that when we take in new ideas, we automatically try to fit them into our network of existing knowledge. So, for remembering new and more complicated ideas, it will likely help to gain as complete an understanding of the idea so that your mind can properly fit it into your knowledge network. Another thing that seems to help thoughts stick is that the greater the number of aspects surrounding the thought the more mental pegs it creates for hanging the thought in the closet of your memory. Some of the most powerful aspects that may surround an idea which can make it memorable is the number of your senses that are involved simultaneously in experiencing the thought . Sensory stimulus provides tangible pegs to hang thoughts on and tangible thoughts tend to be easier to recall .

That brings us to “trauma.” Another aspect that can surround a thought that makes it more memorable is the emotion you were experiencing at the time . Strong emotions are another tangible peg to hang thoughts on. They are tangible because we can “feel” them, albeit inside ourselves, rather than from outside stimulus. Traumatic events frequently couple strong emotional experience with strong tangible external stimulus, and lots of it. Powerful traumatic memories are very hard to forget and can surface in unexpected ways, such as PTSD.

Another way very ancient societies developed for remembering important historical information was through the use of story telling. It turns out that our minds are very good at remembering stories. Intentionally taking thoughts you want to remember and weaving them into a story is another trick you can use. Ancient orators reportedly visualized and associated the main points of their speeches to the rooms in their houses so, by taking a mental walk through of their homes, which they knew well, it would jog their memory regarding their speeches.

One, unfortunately, is the presence of adrenaline, which tends to sharpen memories. Why is that unfortunate? Because it means that many of our most unpleasant, traumatic memories are also the clearest. When you say “stick” you probably mean that these memories are easier to recall. The more associations with a particular memory, the more threads that lead to it, means a better chance of finding it and recalling it. An isolated fact is going to be harder to recall than one with a larger context around it.

Similar to the first two, anything with an emotional charge or with other sensory information will be easier to recall, as will information that is significant to you. You probably won’t remember that. Again, more connections and more associations mean more easily found. It’s important to realize that memory is reconstructive. We are constantly rebuilding and reinterpreting our memories based on what we learn later. We tend to think that memory is like a camera or video recorder, objectively saving the truth. Far from it. We attend to what matters, save what matters, recall what supports our perceptions.

In some cases, because they involve a strong sense impression. When we went to get a puppy when my brother and I were four, I slammed the car door on my thumb. I remember a lot about that whole day, and it all starts with that memory of pain. I also have a strong memory of a date when I was in my 20’s, when we cut across his neighbor’s yard where the grass had just been mowed. It was pitch black but the smell of cut grass was strong. Then there was another date, years later, different guy, where I found out for sure that coffee really doesn’t agree with me, no matter how fancy it is.

Other memories may stay strong because they’re emotionally laden. It seems like a lot of my memories involve embarrassing myself (so I’m not going to describe them, if it’s all the same to you). It’s almost as if, with incidents like these, Memory Brain took its neurochemical thumb and pressed down extra hard on the “To Be Remembered” paper. I was asking myself this question the other day. And I think we have kind of a priority tagging system in our brain, it’s mostly automatic but you can force it. When it’s done your brain will keep that memory as important. But what really makes it stick is you keep going over it in your head, due to it’s important tag. So why does this happen? Well imagine as you grow older you have so many memories, you can’t keep them all in front of you all the time.

Your brain needs to know which ones are needed for your survival. As memory is a function of the human brain and the quality of working of the human brain is defined by a few factors you automatically get difference between persons. The first factor is genetics. Did you get genes that facilitate fast building of robust memory tracks. Yes, your memory will work better then most people. No, you are in for some hard work to make memories stick. A secondary element of this genetics factor is the quality of food you eat. Having an unhealthy diet will even hinder people with the best memory systems genetics can give.

The second factor is your personal behavior towards making memories. Do you like working at remembering things, then you will be able to make memories that stick. You do not like working at remembering things, well you better start using technology to store memories. The third factor is your family culture. If you have a family that likes making memories and puts emphasis on making memories, you will learn and be able to make memories stick. If you have a family that just likes hanging around, you better start using technology to store memories you want to know about later on in live.

The fourth factor is culture. If you live in a culture in which remembering things is important, then you will learn to make memories stick. Else you probably will find a lot of technology to help you store memories. However all of this is useless if you at sometime in your live get an illness that destroys memory pathways. Nothing will help you remember something that was destroyed due to an illness. This can be a mental illness, but also a bacterial, viral or fungal infection.

You may be able to learn new memories, but the destroyed ones are gone. However the younger you were when you developed the memories the more like it is that you can get them back. As you see with elderly people who learned a second language later in life and start to loose the ability to speak that second language and revert to the language they learned from their parents.

So that is why memory power varies between persons. But it even varies within persons. As women for example are often very good at remembering social aspects in their lives, but can get lost in the supermarket if the position of products change. Where men can get almost blindfolded from A to B but can not remember when their birthday and the birthday of their children was, but do remember when the birthday of their favorite baseball player is. Yet other men remember exactly how to cook great meals and when their friends met and what their birthdays are, but can not remember the pin code of their ATM card.

All these differences have to do with nature and nurture, how much nature and how much nurture defines how well your memory works. But you are not completely victim of nature and nurture, working hard at remembering things will improve the power of your memory.So you remember the things that: Have your identity, keep you alive. The cool thing is that once you realise that, you can look for the memories that form your identity and change them to suit a better you.

Everyone has the same amount of grey matter and storage capacity. So ideally we all have the same abilities. The difference comes in psychology,the way a person thinks. Our psychology is something that is made up of years of observation and experience, most of which happens during adolescence and childhood. A child observes the world around it and draws different conclusions. A good example for this can be seen in an infant, who is crying. Now if the mother responds quickly and feeds the baby, that baby will think that his mother will come every time he cries and that people will listen to him. These kind of experiences will help the child to develop a positive attitude.

Now if we take another scenario where the child is crying but the mother is ignoring him or is not quick enough. This child will then think that his mother will listen only when he cries a lot and that you have to work very hard to get anything done. This gives the child a negative attitude. What I am trying to say is we all have different ways of thinking thanks to the different events in our past and because of this our perception, interpretation and response to a particular scenario is different.

And this difference is reason behind many other differences among us, like memory, intelligence, performance, durability, etc. So the differences in our memories is only because of the way we try to remember anything. Everybody has a fixed pattern in which we remember a data and we also have different expertise, like some people are good at remembering things as pictures, while there are others who remember things with respect to time. And because of this some are very good at forming new memories while others are good at remembering things for very long period of time.

So its our way of thinking that makes our memory good or bad and if you can change it for the better, then your memory will improve as well. So just start to think positively, decrease stress, eat healthy, sleep good and the most important of all believe in yourself. And always remember change is not a part of life, its the meaning of life. Cheers!