Using NLP to Develop a Perfect Memory

Have you ever forgotten someone’s name?

Of course, you have… it’s one of the most common (and embarrassing) situations.

What about a phone number?  Or a to-do item on your task list?

If you’re like most people, you think you have a less-than-perfect memory.

In fact, you’re wrong... Research has shown for decades that the subconscious mind absorbs and records at an astonishing rate (over 2,000,000 bits of information per second) that your conscious mind (which processes only 126 bits per second) isn’t even aware of.

The subconscious mind faithfully records all this detail and it sits dormant unless triggered.

When most people say they have a bad memory, what they really mean is that they have a hard time with recall. The good news is, your recall can be developed very quickly.

Here are a few simple NLP principles you can use to improve your recall:

1. Memory is Subconscious

Most people don’t think about this, but when you start to learn NLP, you begin to understand so much more about the subconscious mind…

Your subconscious mind stores everything you have ever seen, read, heard, said, felt and experienced. All those things you’ve ever learned are kept subconsciously, as well.

It isn’t your conscious mind’s job to remember things because your conscious mind only lives in the realm of the “now.” It’s your subconscious mind’s job to retrieve the memory. Your conscious mind’s job is to be quiet and receive the memory.

Most of the time, people allow their conscious mind to get too “noisy” to receive the memory with unproductive chatter, with internal dialog such as, “What was that actor’s name??” “I know the answer to this! Why can’t I remember?!” “This is going to drive me nuts!”

This is why, often, minutes or hours later when the conversation is over the answer seemingly “pops” into your mind.

So the first rule of having a better memory is just to learn to clear the conscious mind and allow a moment for it to come to you.

2. Memory is Anchored

Ivan Pavlov first researched this principle in-depth. He discovered that the mind is, “associative,” meaning that it links things happening in unison together.

He proved this in his research by showing that he could get dogs to salivate simply by ringing the same tuning fork that he normally rang during the dogs’ feeding time. The mind had created a connection between the ring of the tuning fork and eating.

This is the NLP principle of anchoring.

Your memories are also anchored to certain things that were happening at the time of the memory.

Want to remember a line in one of your favorite movies? Think of a song from the soundtrack. The song will likely trigger memories from the movie.

Need to remember an important detail about a business project? Go to the same room you first learned about the project.

The more associated things you can experience, the easier it is to trigger the memory.

3. Memory is Multi-Sensory

NLP teaches us that your subconscious mind thinks in pictures/movies, sounds and feelings. We can use this to our advantage when memorizing things.

The more senses you involve in memory, the easier it is to recall. My son learned this in German class when his teacher would have them say, hear, see and act out all of their vocabulary words. He was able to become conversational in German in very short order by combining the senses, rather than the old-school way of just reading vocabulary in a book.

When you want to remember important details, incorporate as many different senses as you can. It’s best to write it, read it, say it out loud (simultaneously hearing it) and even acting out that thing with you hands or your body.

This is how I passed my NLP Trainer’s Training test to become an NLP trainer. We had to write out every NLP technique, step-by-step, word-for-word from memory.

I was able to ace my test in very little time and with very little effort by combining the answers in every sense at the subconscious level.

4. Memory is State-Dependent

There’s a huge amount of research that shows that whatever state (mental and physical) you were in when you memorized something is directly tied to the recall.

This is why you can memorize something in the dorm room at college and remember it word-for-word when your roommate quizzes you, but the moment you sit down with the test in class, all the answers seem to disappear.  Tests are stressful, and stress is a different state than you were in when sitting in your room.

To better recall facts, try to put yourself in the same state you were in when you heard, read, or memorized the fact.

The best possible way to leverage this is to develop a “learning state,” which you can trigger easily anytime you need to learn and anytime you need to recall.

This is something I teach in my Memory Mastery Method course.

Posted by Michael Stevenson in NLP, Subconscious Mind on Using NLP to Develop a Perfect Memory

Tags: Memory