Why Air-Writing Doubles Your Long-Term Memory
You have seen kids play the AIR (make-believe) guitar, while listening
to music. Strangely, each time they ACT like performers playing a genuine
guitar – they IMPRINT the music and fingering on their long-term memory.
How come? They are using V-A-K, the three most powerful human senses,
Vision-Auditory-Kinesthetic (touch). The brain principle is: the greater
number of senses you use to learn and remember, the easier your future recall
and access of specific knowledge and information from memory.
So What
What can you do with the Air-Writing principle to advance your career
at school and the workplace?
How to remember NAMES of new folks you meet. When you hear a name for
the first time, be sure you repeat it aloud at least three-times during the initial conversation. That fixes the name in your long-term memory using your primary auditory cortex (brain). You don’t sound weird repeating their name, they love it.
Remember, each time your REPEAT the new name, you are using your brain’s auditory cortex to HEAR it. Now the goodies – use your mental imagery (imagination) to see the new name spelled out on the FOREHEAD of its owner.
Now you have used V-A (Vision and Auditory) for long-term memory.
One last zinger – use your dominant hand – the index-finger – to AIR-PRINT
their name on a make-believe SCREEN in front of you. We teach this strategy to executives of major companies, and they are never embarrassed to do the Air-Printing in front of their new client.
Why?
Humans love the sound of our own name, and can never get enough of it. When we
see someone working to remember our name – it is a great compliment. So just do it.
Let me be redundant: always air-print the name of a new acquaintance or client because you are adding your SENSE of TOUCH (kinesthetic sense) to vision and
auditory sense.
Remembering clients names makes you a hero to them, you will produce a better relationship, including influencing, persuading and convincing them – you are the man or woman they want to deal with – not your competitor.
Count them: you used three of your five senses involved in creating new memories.
How to Lose Weight
Use your imagination (mental imagery) to gobble up your favorite candy bars, chocolate cake and ice cream. See yourself chewing up every piece of the desserts because it actually SATISFIES you real desire for sweets and sugar.
The act of imagining and devouring these prohibited fat foods reduces your actual cravings and yearnings for them. It has to do with your Mirror Neurons and works
because your mind cannot tell the difference – between reality and when creative imagery (imagination) depicts mental movies of glomming the junk stuff.
Seeing your goals in your Mind’s Eye is what professional athletes use to hone their
skills in golf, tennis, baseball and football. Spending ten-minutes in mental visualizations is the equivalent to ten-minutes of reality (in the field) practice.
It works and has a thirty-year track record of productivity in pro sports.
Science
The latest scientific research sounds totally weird (contrary) to what we have always
believed. The research appears in SCIENCE journal, December 2010 by scientists from Carnegie Mellon University – lead author professor Carey Morewedge.
The old theory was thinking about prohibited foods and desserts INCREASED your cravings and led you to consumption of them. Not so.
New principle: perception (attitude/judgment) affects mental imagery, links your neural machinery, and affects your Emotions, responses, and motor activities. This
makes Virtual Reality into plain old – Reality.
The research stands for the scientific proof – imagining your consumption of food
and desserts DECREASES your appetite and desire for it.
Goal
When you repeatedly imagine yourself devouring the prohibited foods and desserts,
(M&Ms, Hershey Bars), your crave and actually eat less of it. Wait – this principle
applies to imagining about drugs-cigarettes-alcohol. When you permit your mental
imagery to indulge the prohibited things – it satisfies your desire and reduces the
need to do drugs-cigarettes-alcohol in reality.
Habituation
Mental movies cause a gradual reduction in motivation for chewing up the real thing. It feels satisfying to the mind, and you lose your yearnings and cravings.
Habit determines how much we consume of a food or product. Habit also
decides how much we chew up of a particular food or dessert, when we stop
craving it, and when we switch to something else.
Habit is governed by our five-senses, but also by how the eating is mentally
represented. The mental movie of eating the prohibited stuff is an acceptable
substitute for the actual reality. So see yourself consistently enjoying the candy, cake and ice-cream because the greater your enjoyment, the less you crave it in reality.
Career
What if you are deadly afraid of giving a presentation? Mentally visualize yourself
standing up and giving that talk to the board of directors – repeatedly. The more
you see the mental movies, the less you remain afraid. Why?
Each time your imagine that which you fear – you reduce its impact on your emotions. Remember this phrase – What you resist – persists - . What you fear
remains and festers. What you experience in reality or virtual reality (mentally),
loses its sting.
See ya,
copyright © 2010 H. Bernard Wechsler
P.S. Would you own a huge competitive advantage if you could read and remember
triple (3x) of specialty books, articles and reports, when your peers can hardly finish
one? Contact us and request a free, no-strings-attached Speed Reading report, that
will change your life for the better.
www.speedlearning.org
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Author of Speed Reading For Professionals, published by Barron's.
Business partner of Evelyn Wood (1909-1995)creator of speed reading.
Graduating 2-million, including the White House staffs of four U.S.
Presidents: Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Carter.
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