Improve Memory...

All memory, whether trained or untrained, is based on association. But that's stating it too simply. You will be taught many systems of association by doing your research on memory training, but it goes much deeper than that. You see, when people say, "I forgot," they didn't, usually - what really happened was that they didn't remember in the first place. How can you forget something that you didn't remember, originally? Turn that around, and you have the solution to remembering - if you do remember something originally, how can you forget it?

One of the fundamentals of a trained memory is what we call Original Awareness. Anything of which you are Originally Aware cannot be forgotten. And, applying a system of association forced Original Awareness - Observation is essential to Original Awareness - anything you wish to remember must first be observed. Using association will take care of that, too.

But how in the world do you associate something that's intangible or abstract? That question leads to another fundamental of trained memory. It is always easier to remember things that have meaning than it is to remember things that do not. You'll see that nothing is abstract or intangible so far as the systems are concerned. You will learn how to make any intangible thing, any abstract piece of information, tangible and meaningful in your mind. Once you've mastered that simple technique, all remembering and therefore all learning will be easier for you for the rest of your life.

Let's begin with association. First of all, you should realize that you've used association all of your life. The problem is that you have associated subconsciously, without recognizing the association for what it was. Anything you clearly associated, even if subconsciously, is sure to have been easily remembered. But since you have no control over your subconscious, association has been a hit-or-miss kind of thing all your life.

Here's a basic memory rule: You Can Remember Any New Piece of Information if It Is Associated to Something You Already Know or Remember.

When you took music class in school do you remember the lines on the music staff, the treble clef, E, G, B, D, and F? If your teacher ever told you to think of the sentence “Every Good Boy Does Fine”, then you do remember them. Your teacher was following that basic memory rule, probably without realizing it. He or she was helping you to remember new (and abstract) information, the letters E, G, B, D, and F, by associating them to something you already knew, or at least understood - the simple sentence “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” Obviously, it worked.

Teachers in the early grades have been telling their students for years that it's easy to remember how to spell piece if you think of the phrase "a piece of pie." Since most young students already know how to spell pie, associating that old knowledge to the new—the spelling of "piece"—solves the problem. Again in this example of association, the basic rule has been followed.