HOW TO GET SMARTER AND IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

Staying focused can be a challenge for lots of us. My blog last week was all about concentrating and focusing on your goals. If you missed it, catch up HERE.

I can't really remember what I did this weekend, but I can remember exactly what my husband was wearing when we met 20 years ago. I still know the phone numbers of 20 of my high school friends, but sometimes, I can't remember why I opened the fridge door. This is so bizarre, right? We are smart, but it seems that our brain plays tricks on us...

Sometimes, I'm in front of my computer, I'm trying to concentrate and focus on the task that's in front of me, and I have this song in my head. I'm trying to do what I have to do, but head just goes: "I do my hair toss, check my nails..." I'm singing this Lizzo song and I can't take it out of my head and I can't concentrate because all I'm doing is singing! "I do my hair toss, check my nails..." Then I'm like: "Ugh, can this song go away?!" Right? You can't seem to be able to dislodge that song from your head. It's crazy, right?

What about when you are trying to find something you can't find, like this woman's name... What was it again? It starts with a B. It's, uh... Brenda. Uh... Betty. Uh... Bonnie. It's right there, on the tip of your tongue, but it just WON'T. COME. OUT.

WE ARE SMART

The brain is fascinating. They actually have studied people with amazing memory. I'm talking about mental athletes. Yes, there are such things as mental games, just like the Olympics. The people that compete in them are super smart, or at least, we think so. They are showed images of people, given a name for each of these people, and they have something like two minutes to remember all the names. Or they have to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in 50 seconds, for example.

a concept of mental disorders and nervous stress render 3d

They have studied the brains of the people that participate in those tournaments, the ones that actually win them. And it turns out... they are average Joes. Their brain is not any different than your brain, or than mine! This is great news, because it means that the brain that we have is perfectly capable of doing everything that these guys are doing. This is amazing. All we need to do is exercise our brain a little bit to be able to tap into the power of what it has to offer us.

When we use certain parts of our brain more often, its neural plasticity has the capability to reorganize itself in order to connect areas more and find space for the areas that we use the most. When we are born, we have over a quadrillion potential connections in our brain. As we age, we go down to 7,000 billion connections. We need to continue to make these connections, especially as children.

IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

As we continue to make connections, as we use our brain, it reorganizes itself to create space for all these connections to happen. It is fascinating, everything that the brain can do. It's just a matter of exercising it, of realizing the amazing potential that your brain has and to know how to tap into it. Trust that you too can remember stuff.

It all starts with the way you act when you are presented with a notion, or with a number, or with a name. How many of you have this pre-written sentence in your head; Whenever someone introduces themselves to you with their name, you answer with: "Oh, nice meeting you, Mary, but I'm very bad with names." ? We write that down on our forehead. "I'm very bad with names." It's like telling your brain: "Please forget that." Instead, what if we started saying: "Well, nice meeting you, Mary. I will remember it. You know why? Because I have a brain and brains are amazing. There's tons of room in there. And I will remember your name."

There are lots of different tricks that you can use in order to remember things better. By association, for example. Let's say I show you a picture of someone and I say: "This person is a baker." So you have this piece of information. Then, I show you someone else's picture and say: "Here's this person. And their name is Wilfred Baker." The word that you have to remember is the same, right? Baker.

Well, studies have proven that when they showed the pictures again, more people could remember the picture of the baker, because when we think of a baker, we imagine them with an apron and a rolling pin, and a chef's hat, maybe. That way, when we see this picture again, you can easily remember that they are a baker, since you've imagined them with a context.

Try to find associations when presented some information in order to help you remember. It will also help you track things and create neurological pathways in your brain, and create these connections, these synapses that will get stronger as you try to recall information.

Remember: We're all average Joes, and it's plenty enough, because the brain is a wonderful thing. If you want to get smarter, trust your brain and tap into its full power.