Techniques for Memory Sharpening
Memory affects our daily lives in our ability to prepare for school exams, business presentations or remember where we put the car keys. For the young or old, good memory health is important to success, and even safety, in life. Meditation and regular exercise combined with smaller, more regular nutritious meals and lots of water will help improve memory. The Dana Foundation recommends we relax, concentrate, focus, slow down, organize, write it down, repeat it and visualize it to help improve memory and learning.
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Meditation
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Practice meditation daily to give your brain time to recover from daily activities and improve mental health. Meditation helps your mind and body relax from the stress of life, enabling you to focus more fully on the things that are important.
Concentrate and Focus
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Concentrate on what you want to remember to fully absorb the information into your brain. A distracted brain doesn't function well, and you will find it difficult to remember later if you are distracted now. Minimize distractions as much as possible to help you focus on what you want to remember.
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Organize
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Put information in an order that you find sensible and make it easier to remember. Keep things organized. It's easier to remember where things are if you always put them in the same place.
Write It Down
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Write things down to help you remember shopping lists and appointments. It's possible to organize these things in ways to remember them but a pencil is sharper than the best memory.
Repetition
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Repeat what you want to remember to make it stick in your brain. Repetition triggers recall and helps you to remember and learn.
Visualize
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Use visualization to help you recall or learn something new. Associating new information with a mental picture of a familiar object will help you connect something familiar to the unknown. Rooms and items in your house are familiar and easy to associate things with to help improve your memory. By associating things from one room to the next as you mentally walk through the house, you can begin to remember groups of items such as the grocery list you wrote down or the names of a group of new coworkers.
Motivation
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Realize the benefits of a good memory to help motivate you to remember and learn new things. Think how impressed your new coworkers or classmates will be when you remember their names and how you might be able to improve your job skills or graduate at the top of your class.
Reminders
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Employ reminders such as sticky notes or use a dry erase board to help you remember. Keep paper and pen handy wherever you are to keep notes that you can refer to later. Cell phones and digital recorders are small enough to keep on your person and let you take notes and may even provide an alert to remind you of doctor's appointments, birthdays and lists.
Spell It
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Spelling something, like a name, brings your focus to it. The effort to spell it makes you concentrate and allows you to remember it.
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