Prepare to Learn, Prepare to Remember!

The bell rings and the students pick up their backpacks, say a couple of “See yas!” and dash to class. The students enter, jostle and settle and the learning begins! (Yeah, right!). Some minutes later the bell rings and the students pack up and pick up their backpacks and dash to a different class, different venue, and different teacher. They jostle, and settle and the learning (different subject altogether) begins (yeah, right). And so it is, more or less from grade school through high school. College is similar, only without the bells. nn Notice how we take it for granted that our minds are absolutely ready to go from socializing in the hallway to grasping concepts and details in the classroom, without any preparation.nn You and I prepare for everything we do except for thinking. We prepare to go to bed, to go to work, to eat, to meet, to treat a friend, everything! Dancers and athletes stretch and warm up before pouring on the energy, musicians tune up and the equestrians saddle up. So it makes perfect sense to prepare to think: neurons need activation to function well just as much as muscle cells.nn So help your brain function at its peak by warming it up before asking it to absorb and store new information which you want to recall later.nn Say you’re going to a party or networking event. You know you will meet new people the names of some you will want to remember. On the way to the party think of people you know, their names and their faces. Just do a little inventory of your friends and relatives. You may want to recall their voice or their gestures, the kinds of words they use or their sense of humor. That activity will bring increased blood supply to the parts of your brain that remember names and faces, voices and gestures. When you are at the party, you are prepared to make conscious links between new people’s names and their faces, and remember them!nn In my practice, we play with twelve different ways to prepare to remember well. Here’s the list with a brief explanation of each technique. Try one… try them all.nn1. Review past successes. Recall a time you saw and remembered the name of someone at the coffee shop that you had met at an event a week before. Review in your mind a test you breezed through.nn2. See yourself successful. When your instructor is explaining how to work a math problem, take a second to see yourself at home flying through the homework.nn3. Consciously intend to succeed. nn4. Tell yourself how much you WANT to remember what you are experiencing.nn5. Believe you can do it! Say to yourself, “I can do this; I’ll remember perfectly, I have terrific recall!”nn6. Review a system (associations that work for YOU) for remembering. Many people use the “PEG system” as in “1 run” (the first thing I want to remember is running), “2 shoe’, “3 tree”, “4 door” and so on. One guy made a peg system out of how he got ready for church on Sunday.nn7. Commit to someone that you’ll remember well, ask them to follow up with a question later.nn8. Get other people to give you their techniques, try what they use.nn9. Imagine that anything you do to remember will be enjoyable and interesting.nn10. Think of a bunch of reasons why it will be great to remember what you want. The more reasons you have, the more motivation you will have.nn11. Stay curious! Always say to yourself, “I wonder.” and “Why?” Analyze, synthesize, imagine a use for what you will absorb.nn12. Have a specific goal and see yourself benefiting from its achievement (An example could be learning the name of everybody on your block).