Trust Your Memory

By Ron White memory expert and USA Memory Champion As I was training for the USA Memory Championship in 2009 I emailed the then World Champion, Ben Pridmore, and I asked him for advice he could give me as I trained. His advice was simple….trust your memory. That was it….trust my memory. What did that mean? Well, when you are memorizing a deck of cards in a tou ament you are timed and the fastest that you can do it the better. Often times, I would find myself focusing on a card for several seconds to make sure that I had it in my brain. Then I started with Ben’s strategy of ‘trusting my memory’ and I would start going fastest tha I thought possible. Guess what? My brain still had the information at the faster speed! It is much like speed reading. Most of use read slow not because that is the fastest that we can go but we really don’t understand how much our brain takes in going at fast speeds. Think about driving down the road at 70mph and all the signs, billboards and movement you are able to take in. The brain is the greatest computer ever created. So my advice is to trust your memory more! This doesn’t necessary always means speed but it just means expect more from your memory. Stop saying to yourself, ‘Oh I am terrible with names’,’I am a poor test taker’ or ‘I just can’t remember like I used to!’ Trust your memory and I think you will be amazed. I went from memorizing a deck of cards in 6 minutes and 30 seconds to just over a minute because of technique but also because I started to trust my memory. Trust your memory, trust yourself and improve your memory results.