What's your name?
Woman: Lydia.
You forgot your name tag.1 The only way I can remember names is to hallucinate name tags on people. Every time I meet people I keep looking at their left breast; people think I'm a pervert now. I taught for Xerox once and since everybody had Xerox labels on, I kept calling people "Xerox" all day. It's one of those things; your brain learns to do it, and once it realizes it's of no value it continues anyway.
Lydia, if you forget your name tag, I'll think that you are sneaking into this seminar, and I'll install certain suggestions . . . that will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you have a name tag, I don't do that. You only get suggestions that stay with you for a short period of time.
Lydia, I'm going to tell you a number: 357. Now I want you to forget the number I just told you. . . . Have you forgotten it yet? (No.) If you can't forget one number when a number has no meaning, how could you forget your name tag, or important content in a seminar? Have you forgotten it yet? (No.) Now, how is it possible that you can't forget something that has no importance?
Lydia: If we keep talking about it, I'll remember it even more. It doesn't matter if it is important or not. Especially since you are asking me to forget it, I won't forget it.
That makes sense. . . . Did you see how many people nodded when you said that? "Oh yeah, you asked me to forget it, so I have to remember it. After all, it has no importance but we are talking about it. If you ask me to forget something that has been talked about for a long time that isn't important, I have to remember it." It's bizarre, isn't it? ... But she is right.
It sounds weird, but even though it sounds weird, you know she's right. Her saying that is as weird as her doing it. Yet psychologists will ignore that as if it has no significance, and go on to study things like "oedipal complexes" and many other strange things. Psychologists will pass up studying how people remember things in favor of studying what "depth" of trance you have been in — that's the metaphor where trance is a hole that you fall into, and going deeper is of great value. The people who talk about "levels of consciousness" disagree; they think it's better to go higher, not deeper.
If I didn't talk about it very long, and talked about it in just the right way, she could forget a number with only three digits. Lydia can forget her name tag, even though people told her it was important. Many of you try to get people to remember things. How many of you talk to people about things that are important, yet they forget what you said? And you thought it was their fault! Remember that when you want someone else to remember something.
Except for torturing rats, probably more psychologists' time has gone into studying memory than any other subject. However, they've never really gotten at how people do it in terms of subjective experience.
How many of you have trouble remembering telephone numbers? Most of you probably try to do it auditorily, by verbally repeating the numbers to yourself. Many of you were taught the multiplication tables by auditory recitation. Even when that is successful, it's very slow, because you have to recite all those words inside to get to the answer. "Nine, seven, three . . . zero, four, six, eight"; "Nine times six is fifty–four." For a lot of information it's much more efficient to memorize it visually instead of auditorily: 973–0468, 9 x 6 = 54. When you remember visually, the entire picture pops into your mind at once, and you just skip to the information you need, and read it or copy it down. A lot of kids who are considered "slow learners" are simply remembering auditorily instead of visually. When you take an hour or two to teach them how to do it visually, they learn much more rapidly.
On the other hand, some people try to remember music by making pictures or having feelings, instead of hearing the sounds. So it's always a matter of remembering in a way that's appropriate to what you want to remember.
Another good way to have a bad memory is to do something totally irrelevant to memorizing the data. If you repeat to yourself, "I've got to remember the phone number," then what you will remember is that sentence, rather than the phone number! A lot of people do something like that, and then wonder why they have such "bad memories." Actually their memories are excellent; they're just using them to remember idiotic things.
If you study people who have phenomenal memories, you find out that they do some really interesting things. One man with an excellent memory puts subtitles under all his pictures. He actually prints words on his pictures that describe what the pictures are about. That short verbal description codes and categorizes the memory, so that it's easy to go back to it. It's like putting a title on a movie, so you can glance at the title and know what it's about without having to watch the entire movie. In the computer business we call that a "drop tag code" — something that is arbitrary but distinctive, that relates to this and also relates to that, linking them together.
We had a woman in a seminar once who was rapidly introduced to forty–five people by first and last name. That's all it took for her to know everyone's name. I've seen Harry Lorayne do the same thing with about three hundred people on a TV show. When this woman was introduced to someone, she would focus on something very distinctive in what she saw — the shape of the nose, skin coloring, chin, or whatever she spontaneously noticed that was unique about that person. She would continue to focus on this distinctive feature as she heard the person's name, and that would connect the two together. She even checked herself quickly by looking away briefly to visualize that unique feature, and listen for the name, to make sure the connection had been made. I like to have people wear name tags, so I don't have to bother to do that. However, it certainly is a useful talent that could be taught to salespeople. They often have to deal with many people, and it's considered important to remember their names and be personally friendly with them.
If you deal with people mostly over the telephone, this visual method won't work. However, you can easily adapt it to the auditory system: notice something distinctive about the person's voice tone or tempo as you hear the name, and hear the name spoken with that distinctive feature. Very visual people might prefer to imagine the name visually as they hear it. You can always adapt a memory strategy in this way, to make it appropriate to the context or the skills of the person who wants to recall something.
If you really want to remember a name, pair it with something unique in all three major representational systems: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. While you listen to the sound of the name, spoken in his voice tone, you could notice something unique in what you see as you look at him, and also what you feel as you shake hands. Since that gives you a drop tag code in each major system, you will have three different ways to recall the name.
Another way to have a "good memory" is to be as efficient and economical as possible in what you do remember, and to use what you have already remembered as much as possible. For instance, if you always put your keys in the right front pocket of your pants, you only have to remember that once. Someone who puts her keys in many different places may have to remember it four or five times each day, instead of once in a lifetime.
One of our students has a couple of businesses and has to file a lot of papers and records. Whenever something has to be filed, he asks himself, "Where would I look for this when I need it," and starts moving toward the file cabinet. As he does this, an image of a particular file tab appears in his mind, and he files it there. This method uses what he has already remembered to organize his files, so he seldom has to remember anything new. Each time he files this item he strengthens the existing connection between it and the file tab, making the system more dependable each time.