By Leonidas Auerbach
Think about the crucial role your brain plays in the quality of your life. All the signals about the environment captured by your 5 senses are processed in your brain. What you think goes through your brain, what you learn, what you memorize… heck, your brain even controls how fast your heart is beating and your digestive system.
Simply by optimizing your brain, you can change your life. You can break free of addiction (which also originates in your brain), you can quadruple your productivity and you can keep your independence well into your 90s. But for now, in this article, I will concentrate merely on one aspect of your brain.
In this article, I’ll show you how you can improve your memory and never again forget you place the keys! Let’s get started. Before I go into the actual techniques, let’s first talk about how your brain stores your memory. When you learn of something new, that information is stored as an electric signal in your brain cells. At first, it’s stored as a short term memory.
As the name suggest, this type of memory comes easy but also fades easily. Then if you try to memorize that information, your hippocampus will then convert that memory into long-term memory. The question, of course, is how you can facilitate that process of conversion. It’s simple, really. There are 3 simple steps for you to follow.
1. For your hippocampus, you must first tell it that you want that memory stored for the long term. That higher brain function comes from your prefrontal cortex, where you consciousness resides. Thus paying attention to a stimulus is rule number one of improving memory. Unfortunately, most people simply don’t pay enough conscious attention to anything in there life. Think about this…
Do you have a specific routine you follow every morning? This is just an example of living an automatic life without conscious attention.
2. Once you pay attention to the stimulus, your hippocampus will start to form synapses (links) between the brain cells involved in long term memory. Those synapses, unfortunately, break if not used.
To strengthen those synapses, simply repeat the action. Thus reminding yourself of the information you want to memorize allows for better memory. As the synapses get stronger, it’s impossible for you to forget that information!
3. Continuously learn new skills. Unlike a computer, your brain can adapt and adjust. Thus if you religiously learn new skills and do novel activities, it can learn how to learn… making the process of memorizing far easier!
Unfortunately, of course, people stop learning as soon as they leave college… and the older generation tend to view learning as wasting time because they felt they’ve reached the end of the road. But that sort of thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you stop learning, you lose your ability to learn because synapses for that skill break down.
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