Seven Ways to Improve Your Memory

Do you find that you are forgetting a lot of things? Where did I put my keys? What did I do yesterday? Last week? When do I turn in my assignment? What was her name again? What did he say? Do you want to improve your memory? The following are seven ways to improve you memory.

1. Positive expectation: Your mind tends to follow your feelings or expectations of yourself. Believe that you do in fact have a good memory in order to continually condition your mind to prove yourself right.
2. Interest and importance: How important is the item, event, or detail is to you? If you must remember it, but it is not important or interesting to you, link it to something that is of importance to you. Make associations of the unimportant to the important in order to remember. Naturally, if it were of interest to you, you would put more value to the item, event or detail.  The information would be easily recalled in such situation.
3. Pay attention: Attend, if you want to remember. Or, simply practice to attend. Be aware of the here and now, using your five senses of seeing, tasting, touching, feeling and hearing. Focus onto your senses during your observations.
4. Memory is an active process: Closely related to #3, be conscious of your senses as you apply reasoning. Put thought into your observations. Ask yourself questions, who, what, where, when, and why. Then, search for the answers while into your observations. Apply your thinking skills.
5. Relax your mind. Working yourself up trying to remember something serves as a distraction. Be in a relaxed state of mind, retrace your step, whether it is in time, space, or physically.
6. Reduce anxiety: A little anxiety in a positive light, i.e. excitement, the love of, desire for, etc, serves as good aids for recollection. High anxiety however, agitation, frustration, eagerness, greediness, are all negative energies that would impair attention and concentration.
7. Use your favorite sensory channel: How do you better retain information? Visual memory or auditory memory? Draw pictures, use graphs, illustrations, charts or other visual cues to help memorize information. Use, audio, tapes, recordings, etc. for those who remember better from hearing.