5 Steps to Use the Memory Palace Technique 1.

Choose Your Palace First and foremost, you ll need to pick a place that you re very familiar with. The effectiveness of the technique relies on your ability to mentally see and walk a round in that place with ease. You should be able to be there at will using your m ind s eye only. A good first choice could be your own home, for example. Remember that the more vividly you can visualize that place s details, the more effective your memorizati on will be. Also, try to define a specific route in your palace instead of just visualize a static scene. So, instead of simply picturing your home, imagine a specific walk through in your home. This makes the technique much more powerful, as you ll be ab le to recall items in a specific order, as we ll see in the next step. Here are some additional suggestions that work well as Memory Palaces, along wit h possible routes: Familiar streets in your city. Possible routes could be your drive to work, or a ny other sequence of streets you re familiar with. A current or former school. You can imagine the pathway from the classroom to th e library (or to the bar on the other side of the street, if that s the route impr inted on your mind). Place of work. Imagine the path from your cubicle to the coffee machine or to yo ur boss s office (it shouldn t be hard to choose). Scenery. Imagine walking on your neighborhood or the track you use when jogging in a local park. 2. List Distinctive Features Now you need to pay attention to specific features in the place you chose. If yo u picked a walkthrough in your home, for example, the first noticeable feature w ould probably be the front door. Now go on and mentally walk around your Memory Palace. After you go through the door, what s in the first room? Analyze the room methodically (you may define a standard procedure, such as alwa ys looking from left to right, for example). What is the next feature that catch es your attention? It may be the central table in the dining room, or a picture on the wall. Continue making mental notes of those features as you go. Each one of them will be a memory slot that you ll later use to store a single piece of information. 3. Imprint the Palace on Your Mind For the technique to work, the most important thing is to have the place or rout e 100% imprinted on your mind. Do whatever is necessary to really commit it to m emory. If you re a visual kind of person, you probably won t have trouble with this. Otherwise, here are some tips that help: Physically walk through the route repeating out loud the distinctive features as you see them. Write down the selected features on a piece of paper and mentally walk through t hem, repeating them out loud. Always look at the features from the same point of view. Be aware that visualization is a just a skill. If you re still having trouble doin g this, you may want to develop your visualization skills first. When you believe you re done, go over it one more time. It s really important to ove learn your way in your Memory Palace. Once you re confident that the route is stamped on your mind, you re set. Now you ha ve your Palace, which can be used over and over again to memorize just about any thing you want. 4. Associate! Now that you re the master of your palace, it s time to put it to good use. Like most memory enhancement systems, the Memory Palace technique works with the use of visual associations. The process is simple: you take a known image calle d the memory peg and combine with the element you want to memorize. For us, each memory peg is a distinctive feature of our Memory Palace. The memory pegging technique is the same one described in the article Improve You

r Memory by Speaking Your Mind s Language , so if you haven t read it yet, I highly ad vise you to do so. As described in that article, there s a right way of doing visual associations: Make it crazy, ridiculous, offensive, unusual, extraordinary, animated, nonsensi cal after all, these are the things that get remembered, aren t they? Make the sce ne so unique that it could never happen in real life. The only rule is: if it s bo ring, it s wrong. Although we can use the technique to memorize tons of information, let s start wit h something very simple: using our Home Memory Palace to memorize a groceries list . Let s suppose the first item in that list is bacon : Mentally transport yourself to your Memory Palace. The first feature you see in your mind is your home s front door. Now, in a ludicrous way, visually combine baco n with the sight of your front door. How about giant fried bacon strips flowing o ut from underneath the door reaching for your legs, just like zombies in those B -movies? Feel the touch of the bacon hands on your legs. Feel the smell of darn ev il bacon. Is that remarkable enough? Now open the door and keep walking, following the exact same route you defined b efore. Look at the next distinctive feature, and associate it with the second it em to be memorized. Suppose the next item is eggs and the second feature is picture of mother-in-law . Well, at this point you already know what to do The process is always the same, so just keep mentally associating images until there are no ite ms left to memorize. 5. Visit Your Palace At this point, you are done memorizing the items. If you re new to the technique, though, you ll probably need to do a little rehearsal, repeating the journey at le ast once in your mind. If you start from the same point and follow the same route, the memorized items will come to your mind instantly as you look at the journey s selected features. G o from the beginning to the end of your route, paying attention to those feature s and replaying the scenes in your mind. When you get to the end of your route, turn around and walk in the opposite direction until you get to the starting poi nt. In the end, it s all a matter of developing your visualization skills. The more re laxed you are, the easier it will be and the more effective your memorization wi ll be. Final Thoughts What I like about the Memory Palace (and other pegging methods) is that it s not o nly extremely effective, but also quite fun to learn and use. With just a little bit of experience, the lists you memorize using the Memory Pa lace will stay fresh in your mind for many days, weeks or even more. Also have in mind that you can create as many palaces as you want, and that they can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish to make them. Each of them is a mem ory bank , ready to be used to help you memorize anything, anytime. Associating physical locations with mental concepts is the most powerful memory combination I know. Most other memory techniques (supposedly more sophisticated than the Memory Palace) are, at least in part, based on the concept of physical locations being used as memory pegs. Your Mind Thinks in Pictures Along its evolution, the brain has become amazingly effective in dealing with se nsory data. It is by correctly interpreting the five senses that the mind unders tands the environment and takes decisions. Among the human senses, sight has become the most sophisticated and developed of all. For that reason, our brains have become extremely effective in storing and processing images; especially of concrete, real-world objects. Trying to memori ze abstract symbols, such as words printed on a page, is very unnatural and inef ficient. Words are useful units of communication created by us, but they re not ho w our brains are best used to process information. Imagery is the real language of the mind. Images are your mind s vocabulary, the b

uilding blocks of its language. If I ask you to think about a horse, what comes to your mind? Is it the letters H-O-R-S-E in sequence? Of course not: it is the picture of a horse you can even tell me its color. Don t dreams always come as images? Pictures are how your mind communicates with us, and we should take full advantage of that. Visual Thinking and Memory To fully illustrate the astonishing effect that images have on your memory, let s walk through a basic memorization technique called memory pegging. If you still don t know it, I guarantee it s going to be fun. Just like most memorization techniq ues, it s based on the concept of thinking in pictures, or visual thinking. Before getting to the technique, let me give you a simple challenge: memorize a groceries list of ten items. Allow yourself two minutes examining the list, then don t look at it. 1. bacon 2. eggs 3. wine 4. batteries 5. bubble gum 6. milk 7. envelopes 8. spinach 9. coffee 10. tomato Learning Your Mind s Basic Vocabulary Just like when learning any new language, we ll need to get some basic vocabulary to get started. Let s begin with some very useful words: the numbers from one to t en. By bringing the numbers to our visual language, we ll be able to use them to m emorize our groceries list or any other list we come across. There are many ways to convert a number to a picture. My favorite one is to use images that resemble the numbers shapes. By getting rid of abstract symbols and r eplacing them with images that are vivid, animated and colorful, we ll have much b etter mental pictures for our minds to play with. Here are some suggestions: 1. candle 2. swan 3. heart 4. sail boat 5. hook 6. golf club 7. cliff 8. snowman 9. balloon with string 10. dinner plate and fork Here s a graphical version of the list to help you visualize the similarities: Feel free to use different images that appeal more to you. Once you re done creati ng your list, please take your time to familiarize yourself with it. These image s will be our pegs and, once learned, you ll be able to reuse them over and over a gain, to memorize just about anything you want. Connecting Images Now that we have established an initial vocabulary of images, we can memorize ne w ones by building associations between them. All we need is to combine both ima ges and form a new one. Now is the time to use your imagination, because there s o nly one requirement for your new image: it must be absolutely outrageous! Make it crazy, ridiculous, offensive, unusual, extraordinary, animated, nonsensi cal after all, these are the things that get remembered, aren t they? Make the sce ne so unique that it could never happen in real life. The only rule is: if it s bo ring, it s wrong. Let s go back to our groceries list example. How do we connect the number 1' (candl e) with our first grocery item (bacon)? We could start by picturing a really big and powerful candle being used to fry b acon in a fast-food restaurant. Make an effort to enrich the scene in your mind:

focus on the bacon strips and take a second or two to make them as vivid as pos sible. If you engage the other senses, even better: smell the bacon and hear it being fried. Add some movement and wackiness: couldn t the bacon strips be jumping in the frying pan, crying for help? Did I mention you should make it zany? Let s try this exercise once more, now connecting the number 2' (swan) and egg . A swan laying an egg is too obvious it won t work by itself. Let s imagine the mothe r swan laying the egg just like a woman giving birth: in a surgery room, with ot her swans dressed as doctors around her. Put the father swan in the room, proudl y taping the whole thing. In the end, everybody is astonished it s actually three eggs: triplets!! Ridiculous? No doubt about that. Effective? You bet. At this point, you already get the idea. At first, doing this for each item may seem like a lot of work, but really it s not. This mental play quickly becomes com pletely automatic and fun! When the time to recall the list comes, there s not much more to do: the recalling process is completely automatic. It goes somewhat like this: You ask yourself w hat s the first item: #1? and the image of the candle immediately pops in your mind. One split second later, sure enough, there they are: jumping bacon strips! How Does It Compare to Traditional Memorization? It s time to check how well you did in our memory test. Without looking back at th e original list, try to write down all the items in order. Award yourself one po int for each correct word and one additional point if the word is in its correct position. How well did you do? Most people score an average of 12 out of the possible 20. If you ask them one week later (without telling them you would), the results dro p to a disappointing average of 5. Using the pegging method, the results are mind-blowing: the usual score is a fla wless 20 even when people are asked one week later. And that is after using the technique just for the first time. The pegging memorization technique is just a small demonstration of how powerful visual thinking is. In fact, visual thinking is behind many mind-enhancing tech niques such as mind mapping and is the core component of most other more advance d memorization techniques. least efficient ways of learning available. The Cone of Learning I remember back about 7 years ago when I was taking music lessons at school, the re was a poster on the wall that really grabbed my attention. To be fair, it was n t difficult for a random object to attract your gaze as our Scottish teacher at the time didn t have much in the way of keeping you interested. The poster outline d the different ways that we remember things and how different activities increa se our chances of remembering something over others. Image Credit After doing some research, I found that the contents of that poster were based u pon the work of Edgar Dale back in 1969. Dale looked at the most effective ways of learning by teaching people similar material in different ways and noted the ability to recall the information after the teaching was finished. Today, many of you may know this as the Cone of Learning, but beware: although t he cone is in fact based upon the results of Dale s research, the percentage figur es were never actually cited by Dale, and added by others after the initial inve stigation. Even though the Cone of Learning that became widespread contains erroneous figur es, it does represent a guideline for the most effective learning techniques tha t the human brain is able to acquire and store information from. Based on the research we can see that: The least effective way to learn something is to listen to a lecture on the topi c or read information about it. The most effective way to learn something is to teach others and use it in our o wn lives. The Cone of Learning suggests why you are more likely to remember parts of a mov

ie then you are from a book on the same topic. A film uses audio and visual aspe cts that the brain is more likely to store and hold available for recollection ( memory). Learning Almost Anything After we discard the erroneous percentage figures, we still must take the cone a s just a guideline one which is subject to change depending on the learning styl e of the student or the studied subject. Different aspects such as what you want to remember and how often you put it into use will greatly impact how well you remember something. That being said, other things equals, the cone is a great gu ideline to follow to better imprint something to memory. On that note, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the best ways to use the Cone of Learning concept, and apply it to an everyday example that we can re late to. The example I m going to use in the following tips is looking at the best methods you could use to learn what yoga is and remember the necessary position s that are used. Give a Lecture. Although receiving a lecture is one of the worst ways to remembe r what you are being told, giving a lecture is one of the most effective. You co uld go into any college or university and offer to give a lecture on the topic o f yoga and the many positions that are used. Write an Article. If you have a blog or a website you could spend time putting t ogether an article on what yoga is all about and the movements that are often us ed in this meditative practice. Additionally, you could also create images to be used on the site to help explain the certain actions involved. Make a Video. Even if you don t have your own blog or website, there are plenty of video portals such as Youtube and Metacafe that will allow you to upload your o wn videos for free. This will be effective as you can teach in the lecture forma t but know that you are instructing to a potentially worldwide audience. Discuss with Your Friends. One of the easiest teaching options that you have ava ilable to you are the members of your social circle. Wherever appropriate, bring up a topic you would like to discuss and share your wealth of knowledge on it. The more people you can discuss it with the better your ability will be to remem ber it in the future. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of ways you can discuss it online using the likes of online forums, twitter or even niche socia l networks. Do it Yourself. It s no use trying your best to teach others about Yoga if it s some thing you aren t interested in and don t do yourself. If you teach people the import ance of controlling their breathing, then when you are performing Yoga in your o wn time make sure you are controlling your breathing. Whatever you would teach ot hers, you need to make sure you are implementing yourself. There are certainly more ways that you could look into teaching others and apply ing things into your own life. From holding classes in your house to simply crea ting an audio file of you speaking, see how you can apply teaching about your su bject to learn more about a topic. Exceptions to the Rule As with most things in life, this isn t going to apply to every single person, eve ry single time. For example, from my research into this, it is claimed that auti stic people are much more likely to learn from visual images rather than trying to teach someone else or do it themselves. Also, I know many people who have a s trong preference for auditory learning over visual, for instance. Additionally, as stated, the figures in the cone are to be used as a guideline, some people will have a high success rate at learning through teaching others wh ile for some it may not be as successful. Generally, look at the ones which are deemed to be the most effective and try the ones which work best for you. So, what are you going to do to improve your learning now? and bad skin on the face and body. Movies and television are filmed with camera tricks and glare control to keep movie stars in a perfect light and looking like super-human examples of beauty. But have you ever seen a movie star or model in real life? They are just like us! They have blemishes, marks, moles, dry skin, and even acne! The problem is that we never see this in the popular media so our conception of beauty is affected, while our expectations on ourselves, and our

own appearance, are artificially raised. So that is one side of the coin to realize that part of the problem is in our he ads. One step of how to get rid of acne is eliminating the problem in our minds first so you can proceed with the right treatment plan. We need to realize the s ituation is never what it seems and more likely, our acne is not as bad as we th ink. Don t misunderstand, this is not a brush off of the problem because we will certai nly deal with the best acne treatments, but the main point is when perceiving yo urself and your appearance, give yourself a break. No one ever looks perfect in real life and whatever you think you look like; other people will probably be mo re forgiving than you are. Acne is a part of everyone s life at some point or anot her, so do not think that you are alone. You are not an outcast or a monster, an d there is help available.