Secrets of Improving Your Memory
by Nishant Kasibhatla

Of all the mental faculties of humans, the faculty of memory has always been the most mysterious.

Many people think that if a person is born with a good memory, he is lucky. Many also believe that a person with a poor memory is cursed for life. Are you one of those people who thinks that no matter what you do, there is no way of improving your memory capacity?

Only a few people have a fairly good knowledge of how memory works, why most often our memory fails us, and how we can sometimes remember certain things so well. Hopefully by learning more about the memory, you will be able to improve your brainpower too.

Here are 3 secrets to improve your memory. I call them VAP:

V: Visualisation: It's common knowledge that the brain remembers pictures better that anything else. The easiest way to remember something is to convert the information into a picture (visual).

A: Association: Memory works by association. It's important to associate new information with something you already know.

P: Pleasure: Many people feel that learning is a tedious task. They feel this way because they don't have a clue as to how they can make learning fun. Remember this: When learning is fun, learning is easy!

Let's discuss how you can apply the VAP technique to remember various things.

1. Remembering Lists

• Send a fax
• Deposit money in bank
• Call Thomas
• Book air ticket
• Buy eggs on way back home

The first thing you need to do is to convert each of those tasks into images (visualisation). Choose an image that will help you to remind of the task. The images could be: fax machine, ATM, Thomas, aeroplane, eggs.

Next, it's time to associate. Make sure you do the associations in a fun way. The objective here is to have fun (pleasure) while remembering. Here's one possible way to associate these five words:

You switch on the FAX MACHINE. You receive a fax with a picture of an ATM on it. You see THOMAS withdrawing some money from the ATM. Thomas then boards an AEROPLANE. Inside the aeroplane, he is surprised to see a lot of EGGs instead of the passengers.

That's it! Now try to recall the words. You will be able to remember the words (and the tasks) easily. Now, try it for yourself.

The same technique can be used to remember shopping lists, the main points of a speech or a presentation, items on a checklist etc.

2. Vocabulary

The popular way of remembering words and their meanings is the 'repetition technique'. Though this technique works, it takes a lot of effort, and people don't have fun repeating the same words 100 times. So how about using VAP?

Here are some examples:

Hegemony – Domination of one country over another
Can you think of a word (or a group of words) that sounds similar to Hegemony? How about "huge" + "money"? Now you need to use a little imagination to associate these two words with the meaning, eg If a country has HUGE MONEY, it can easily DOMINATE other countries!

Ni Hao – Hello
This is the first word I learnt in Singapore. My association was this: In Singapore, when you meet people, you don't greet people with "how are you?", you ask them "how is your knee" (KNEE HOW)!

As you can see, this technique can be used to remember both English and foreign language vocabulary. Try using these techniques to improve your vocabulary. You will have a lot of fun!

3. Names of people

Most people can't remember names because most names can't be visualised. However, the technique used for remembering vocabulary can be used for names too.

Nishant (my name) sounds very similar to Nissan (car). To remember my name, then, why not visualise me driving a Nissan car!

Here are some more ideas for names:

Seh Leng (SAILING on a boat)
Tim (always looking at the TIME on your watch)
Wei Guang (ask him WHERE are your GOING)
Deepti (likes DIP TEA bags)

The author – Nishant Kasibhatla – is the director of Memory Vision, a training company based in Singapore. Nishant is a world record holder in memory and the only Grand Master of Memory in Singapore. He is the author of Maximise your Memory Power in the ST Training Solutions Success Skills Series.
Visit www.nishantkasibhatla.com.