Episodes

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that ain’t so. –  Josh Billings,

what is more dangerous? to sit there and think that you’re no good at something when you really have the potential to be great at it? Or, think you’re fantastic at it, And then you find out later that you weren’t so good at it? That’s what we’re talking about today. How to better know yourself. It’s a hard question because I would tell you that both things are bad. When we lack confidence in ourselves and don’t try something that we’d be great at, we’re robbing ourselves of this possibility of doing something amazing. On the other side, if we try something, and we’re terrible at it if it’s a job promotion that we take, and we’re not sure that we’d be great at it, maybe that gets us fired or embarrasses us in front of the entire company. So it’s tough to live life when you really don’t know who you are, And you really don’t have an honest assessment of what you’re good at or what you could use a little bit of help at.

But today, we’re going to try to talk about what we can do to have a more honest and realistic look at who we are. Today, we’re going to talk about Tasha Eurich’s book, called Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think She talks about two different kinds of awareness. First, she talks about internal self-awareness, and that is how you see yourself. This inward understanding of really who you are. What motivates you. What excites you. What you really aspire to do what your ideals are any sort of reactions you have. And your impact on other people. And people who are high in internal self-awareness tend to make really great choices that will help them in their lives and their careers, and they’ll be happier because they’re right in that spot that they should be.

https://www.insight-book.com/

Then there’s external self-awareness. That’s about understanding how other people see you. It may cause you not to do the things that you really hope to do. Or you have this high opinion of what you think co-workers and others think of you, then it might set you up for fall. So, either way, having good external self-awareness is critical. They say that sometimes when people have low external self-awareness, it’s a chance for you to really get blindsided by other people.

But she said that self-awareness is just not this one individual thing that happens where a giant lightbulb pops up in front of your head. Insights are “aha” moments where suddenly it puts you into overdrive. When you have one of those rare moments of understanding, it fuels you to do even better. She says that self-aware people possess seven different types of insights that unaware people don’t have.

• Values – Principles, passions, and loves
• Aspirations – What they want to experience or achieve
• Personality Traits – The Big Five test of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientious, Openness.
• Fit – The environment they require to be happy
• Patterns – Consistent ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving
• Reactions – Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reveal the person’s strengths or weaknesses
• Impact – The effect that people have on other people.

You know those things about yourself mean you’re pretty self-aware.

Although sometimes, some of the self-aware moments can come during significant events. Times that really try us. Sometimes they also are there when we have these daily moments. Maybe we’re out exercising or going for a walk. For whatever reason, I tend to be that person who gets them at the weirdest times. I’m walking in the woods, and I look at the tree, and I’m like, that’s me. I’m too flexible, like that tree. And eventually, it’s gonna snap. When I succeed at something or fail at something, I go, Oh, yeah, you know, I need to learn that about myself. So she talks about different events that will give us insights. And there are three kinds. The first one is getting a new role or a new rule. Getting a new role would be like getting a new job. But then there are sometimes new rules. Think about it in terms of the pandemic, suddenly, we had a new rule, you can’t do all these things. It tried us in a way that we’ve never been tried before. Then she talks about earthquake events. And those are essential life-changing things that might be getting married or having kids or losing someone. But that’s something that shakes us up, and it shakes up our lives. And then there are everyday insights. And that just is what I was talking about before you’re walking through the woods, you’re cleaning your house, you’re doing something that you do every day, and suddenly you have this considerable insight. Keeping those things in mind will help you change your life and give you a better understanding.

https://www.kornferry.com/insights/articles/565-accurate-self-insight-decreases-derailment-risk

She also said that having self-awareness isn’t always just one truth. It’s complex. We are deep people. We all have intricacies that make us very unique and sometimes even have competing viewpoints. With the inward perspective you have and the external view, you have no relationship. Some people are great at one and terrible at the other. She talks a little bit about it, like it’s the Hindenburg when you have oxygen, which is not flammable by itself, But it causes things to burn quickly. or hydrogen, which is dangerous because it can spontaneously Ignite. And just like the Hindenburg brought together, boom! But when it’s together, hydrogen and oxygen make water, which is life-sustaining and incredibly stable. So sometimes we have elements in ourselves that when it’s together, we’re great. But when two things are opposite, the internal versus the external, one is there, and one is not there, And they’re not mixed together, suddenly, we have a terrible situation on our hands. So we want to make sure that if we can see both sides of things, that will make us better people. You need good internal self-knowledge and external self-knowledge. When we discover the truth about ourselves on both sides of things, we can learn to take it in with a positive mindset and a sense of self-acceptance; we’re braver but wiser.

https://hbr.org/2015/03/research-were-not-very-self-aware-especially-at-work

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/youre-not-all-that-self-promoters-six-times-more-likely-to-derail-according-to-pdi-ninth-house-and-university-of-minnesota-study-147742375.html

Then she talks about some blind spots. There’s knowledge blindness, which is blindness to what we don’t know. Or there’s emotional blindness, you know, something that we feel that we don’t know, then there’s behavior blindness. We want to make sure we overcome those blind spots because it’s important not to have them. To overcome our blind spots, we have to first identify our assumptions, confront our beliefs, and then keep learning. Check ourselves in those areas where we think we know a lot to make sure we really know a lot. She also indicates that having a deep self-focus or thinking about ourselves can distort our ability to see ourselves. Sometimes, if we’re so drilled into who we are and what we are, it doesn’t really give us insight. It may either puff up our vanity more than it was before or make us feel bad because we think we’re terrible at something or that we’re never going to make it. one way or the other That deep dive into ourselves, if not done in the right way can actually hurt us.

She talks about some better ways so that we can monitor our inner dialogue. First, she says that focusing less on ourselves and engaging more with other people will give us insight into ourselves, even though we’re not focused on ourselves. Focus on self-acceptance over self-esteem, and admit there are things we’re not very good at. And for some people, that is really hard to do if we can just acknowledge that we have flaws that we have fears, and then we choose to like ourselves anyway. And then we dedicate ourselves to becoming better than being boastful or having high self-esteem. And then she mentions monitoring your inner monologue. I mentioned it in an earlier podcast. But I think the right way of watching your inner monologue is to pretend that you were saying these words out loud to your best friend. So she mentioned that Adam Grant, a researcher in this area,  found that there was actually no relationship between introspection and insight. Thinking about yourself wasn’t, in fact, associated with knowing yourself. In fact, it was a little bit the opposite. The assumption that introspection begets self-awareness is a myth. And she said that the reason for that is because reflection is something we’re horrible at. When we look at having some introspective and doing this deep dive into our personality, we tend to get it entirely wrong.

https://www.successpodcast.com/blog/2018/6/25/adam-grants-guide-to-success-and-self-awareness

When doing introspection, she mentions that “why” questions are terrible. “What” problems are fantastic because when you are having a bad day, you’re sitting there and saying, why am I so miserable today? Why was I up all last night just thinking about my project? The “why” will make you go down a rabbit hole you can’t get out of. Instead, What you want to do is ask the “what” questions because the “what” questions actually help identify something good. What was it that kept me up last night? What is it on the project that is causing me to be worried? What aspects of my work do I think I’m not doing very well at?  So why is it better than “Why”? Why am I so terrible at my job? No! What aspect of my work do I need to strengthen or get rid of to be better at what I do? Why just leads to victimhood. She says that “Why” forces us to name our emotions, which can be incredibly damaging.

She talks about people who like to ruminate and ruminate is that turning around where you’re trying to take an idea and kind of mash it around in your brain to get some progress on it. And she said that people who lack self-awareness, and if they’re terrible at introspection, rumination will be disastrous. Some people are really good at ruminating. But for the most part, you need to get away from that when you’re trying to fix the problems in your life and better understand yourself. Instead, they said that they should have a learn-well mindset. And that means channeling thinking into learning versus performance. So when you beat up on yourself, it may be why I am so terrible at that? Again, those why questions, when instead you’re focusing on learning, you’re thinking about what could I do better to have more success on these dates? What could I be doing better to be performing better at work? That’s where we get rid of rumination. We take on a learner’s mindset.

She says, to do introspection the correct way, we should do the following things. First, choose the right approach, don’t reflect on the self because not all self-reflection is useful. Instead, you should focus more on the future instead of the past. That’ll help us have the proper attitude. Then be flexible. There’s no absolute truth when it comes to looking at yourself. And then, instead of asking why, ask what. And she said, You can journal if you’d like to, but make sure it’s not one of those everyday things. Sometimes, if you force yourself into journaling, when you’re not mentally prepared for it or really not processing your thoughts and ideas very well, it can actually be more damaging. And then if you’re finding yourself that you’re getting distracted, or you kind of hit a block, and you’re not really making any progress with your introspection, stop for now. Take a little bit of a break. Give yourself a positive reward, and take it up later, when you can be more productive. She said to picture stop signs. So you remind yourself it’s time to stop so that you don’t go down this rumination hole of beating yourself up.

Share those situations with your friends So they may be able to give you some perspective and insight into what you’re thinking about. She said that you can ask yourself the questions, what went well today? What didn’t go so well? What did I learn? And how will I be smarter tomorrow? I tend to do that, again, because I struggle so much with my weight and exercise. So it’s one of those things that I focus on the most. At the end of every day, I try to look back. How did I do on eating? What went well? What didn’t go so well? What about exercise? Did I exercise? Or did I not really do what I was hoping to do? What happened? What can I do tomorrow to make it better than it was today? And she reminds us that self-awareness is not a single truth. We are involved, people.

Then she talks about getting feedback from other people. But that’s the right feedback that we need. The right people with the right questions and use the right process. So a lot of times, the reason that feedback doesn’t go very well. We just walk into somebody’s office or their room and say, how do you think I did today? They might not be the right person to answer that question. That might not have been the right question to ask them. And it may be that it’s not the right format to just give them this open-ended questionnaire about how you did today? Because sometimes they won’t even answer the question you’re hoping that they will. So when she talks about the right people, she says to look for people who are not unloving critics. Those are people who just love to beat us down. They don’t like us. They never liked us. Their opinions don’t help us, because you know, they’re just waiting to beat you down. Then the other side of it is the uncritical lovers. They love us. They love everything we do. They think we’re fantastic in almost everything we do. That is not something that’s going to help us get the right proper kinds of feedback. You want to make sure that they are right there in the middle of those two things. That you have mutual trust. That they had sufficient exposure to you. Maybe there’s someone new in your company, and you walk in, and you say I you think I didn’t get that promotion, I don’t really know you very well, I just started in the company last week. So that’s no good either. So they have to have enough time with you to understand what’s going right or wrong.

And then ask the right question that has specificity. You just don’t want to say, how do you think today went? Sometimes when I’m giving a speech? I know things that went wrong in that speech. So it’s not going to do me much good to go to a co-worker and say, do you think that went too long? And then I talked to you fast? Probably already know the answer to that. Instead, try to get feedback on something that you don’t know. Do you think the content was appropriate? If I had to drop any one of those topics? What would that be? Trying to make sure it’s specific so that it helps you. And then focus, they said when you’re getting feedback on just one or two hypotheses. And that you want to make sure that you have a decision about how deep you want to go. Do you really want someone to tear apart your speech from the beginning? What you might want to do is actually limit what it is you’re trying to do to help you grow. You want to focus on one particular thing. I had problems, and I still have questions about speaking too quickly. Sometimes, I will ask co-workers if they could listen specifically to how fast I’m talking to rate how well I did on that particular thing.

So when you’re reflecting on the feedback, once you get it, you should think about, first of all, is it something confirming something you knew already? Is it something surprising that you didn’t know already? Was it critical? Or was it positive? And remember that anytime you receive any type of feedback, there’s not necessarily one solution to it. Sometimes you can think of multiple ideas to make it better. You want to make sure that you understood the feedback. Occasionally someone will tell you something. I’ve done this myself to0 where you walk away, say, Okay, wait a minute, what they mean by that, I’m not really sure. If that person is a supervisor to you at your office, you may not feel like going back to them and ask. Ensure that you get enough information at that time and the feedback that it’s helpful to you. Then ask yourself, how will this affect my long-term success and well-being? So taking that feedback and wondering what I can do to ensure that it helps me. She then talks in the book about deciding what things we can fix and what things we can’t fix and the acceptance to know the difference.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joefolkman/2015/01/08/top-ranked-leaders-know-this-secret-ask-for-feedback/?sh=1bfa53bb3195

When she talks about the right process. She actually talks about asking a set of questions of someone or giving them a worksheet with a set number of questions on them. Again, not that open-ended. So how do you think I did? She talks about ground rules when giving feedback. And the first is to avoid generalities. You always say this! You never do that! That’s not the right way to go about that. We’re talking about this one particular project at work, event at work, or event at home. Anytime you go into the “you always” or “you never,” it’s going to be taken poorly. Then focus on behaviors rather than the person. you don’t want to say to someone, “you’re angry, you’re an angry person.” Instead, maybe what they said to you was angry, or the feedback you were giving to them is about a time when they sounded furious. Their behavior was angry. They’re not angry. There’s a big difference there.

And then don’t give your interpretation, I could tell you really dislike that person! Because you don’t know what actually goes on in anybody’s head but your own. Instead of interpreting what you saw, you want to make sure that the feedback is about the behavior. And then, the fourth thing is to provide examples.

So that should give three different types of people when she talks about people you provide feedback to. The first is the “lost cause.” They just cling to whatever it is they believe in themselves, good or bad. And they can’t really shake it. They can’t get past it. And they usually never challenged those views of themselves. And then there’s the person she calls the “aware don’t care,” which means they know all the stuff about them, but they don’t really care about it one way or the other. Those people don’t want to be fixed. They don’t want to be helped. The third category is nudgeable. And that’s the person who will have an effect based on the feedback that they get. Maybe they’re a little bit “lost causes,” or perhaps they’re a bit bit “aware, don’t care,” but there’s still enough of them there who want to become better than they can be helped by the feedback that they’re getting. Unfortunately, the big catch 22 of self awareness is that the people who seem to need it the most are the ones who don’t want to have feedback.

And she said that when we confront other people, we should always do so with compassion.

Summary

1. Ensure that you focus on having great internal self-awareness. what’s going on on the inside of you. And you have a grasp of the external self-awareness. And that’s what other people think of you.
2. Look for these alarm clock moments. Those are going to be situations that are either new roles or new rules. Earthquake events that shake us up, or everyday insights. Ensure that when things are going on in life that gives you insights into you and the world around you that you make sure that you listen,
3. make sure that you’re not focusing on yourself when trying to gain self-awareness. Focusing on other people can give us almost as much insight as ruminating, mulling over, or just concentrate on ourselves
4. to make sure we get the right feedback, which means the right people, the right questions, and the right processes. Ensure that they have exposure to your behavior that you’re asking for feedback on and that you trust that person. Make sure you ask them specific questions, maybe even written down. focus on only one or two things

Challenge

• Write down a few sentences on your life areas. You want to have more self-awareness. Is it your friendships, your faith, your work? And try to figure out what’s the one or two areas that you could really succeed with knowing more about yourself and more about what other people think about you in that area.

And today, our fun movie quote of the day comes from the movie Clue

“Miss Scarlet: No, it’s not true.

Mr. Green: Ah ha! So it is true!

Wadsworth: A double negative!

Colonel Mustard: A double negative?

Colonel Mustard: You mean you have photographs?

Wadsworth: That sounds like a confession to me. In fact, the double negative has led to proof positive. I’m afraid you gave yourself away.

Colonel Mustard: Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?

Wadsworth: You don’t need any help from me, sir.

Colonel Mustard: That’s right!”

There really isn’t anyone better than Tim Curry. And sometimes you really don’t need other people’s help to make you look like a fool. You’re really doing a great job of it yourself. Having self-awareness will help you know when you’re being a fool and not being a fool.

Alright, everyone, thank you very much. Remember, visit my website at https://smallstepspod.com/. If you’d please tell a friend about this podcast. I am trying to grow this podcast and have other people learn about it. And Your help is essential because you know the kinds of people who might be interested in a podcast like this.

I hope you have a fantastic week.

Memory is a treasure and the guardian of all things –  Cicero.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about building memory. In the last episode, we talked about how to learn new things. But one of the critical parts about learning something is memory on both ends of it. First, you have to memorize certain aspects to learn something new. But then, once you’ve learned something new, it needs to stay in your memory full time. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about what is memory? And how can we memorize things easier?

The first thing to know about memory is that there are a few different kinds of memory. There’s Declarative Memory. And that means just pulling out facts that happened on this date. It occurred in this location. It’s very straightforward, then there’s recognition. Oh, I’ve seen that thing before. I’ve noticed that person before. I remember them, you might not know a lot of details about them. But you at least acknowledge that you have seen this person or this thing or this concept before. Recall is just dredging up memory so that we’re pulling it out of the vast storage of our brain and trying to get it out so that we can use the memory. Procedural Memory is about remembering processes. This is where I actually come in. I am terrible at Declarative Memory. This happened on this date. And this happened in this location. I can’t remember it. As soon as you put it in part of a procedure or process, I will remember it forever. Putting facts into a story is Procedural Memory because now you’ve made it part of a process. So now, instead of these random, raw facts that I could never remember, in a million years, with a story built around it, I can remember it forever. So I have great procedural memory.

Psychology Today lists their types of memory and a little bit different framework than that list of memory,

• Episodic Memory is someone being can remember something in a series of things. I wonder if that’s similar to Procedural Memory? First, they went here, and then they went there. And then they did that. It says that it’s what a person recalls at a particular event or episode. So that means the emotions that were there, the surrounding that was there, the noises that were there, episodic memory,
• Semantic Memory is a long-term store of knowledge. And that just has to do with definitions. And then it’s like all the different facts of things. One may remember the details of a party, what date it was.
• Procedural Memory is a memory of how to do things, either mentally or physically. That means that you remember how to ride a bike, remember how to sail on a boat, and remember how to tie your shoes. These are all things that we go through step by step. And that’s a procedural memory that you have,
• Short-term Memory and Working Memory. And the Psychology Today article suggests that those are sometimes used interchangeably.
• Working Memory is something that is right there. And so we’re listening to a lecture, and he’ll say, so just remember that a beetle is a bug. , okay, a beetle is a bug. And then he’ll say bugs tend to have these characteristics. It’s not in your deep memory yet. You’re just listening to a lecture. But that working memory is you storing it in a close place so that you can use it right away. Think about when you’re cooking, and you chop up little bowls of onions and mushrooms, and you put them in all tiny bowls in front of you so that you’re readily able to use them as you’re cooking your meal. That’s what working memory is
• Short-term Memory is maybe like a new acquaintance, someone you just met, don’t forget to go get the thing out of your car right away. So even though they’re a little bit similar, they do have some distinct characteristics that are different from each other.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/memory/types-memory

The example of Psychology Today article gave is that short-term memory is remembering someone you just met. Whatever the current temperature is. What happened in a movie you saw a moment ago. But working memory is something that you calculated as part of a math problem. So you’re trying to figure out a tip, and you say, Okay, so the meal came to $100. That’s the working memory. Working memory is whoever was named at the beginning of a sentence. Bob went to the store, wait, who went to the store? Bob did. That’s Working Memory.

Sensory Memory is from stimulus sounds and noises and smells and anything that you use to your senses. You hear people tell stories where they’ll say, oh, it is a beautiful day. I could hear the birds chirping. That’s sensory memory. I think some people are really attuned to certain senses. Some people are great at remembering smells, while other people are great at remembering what music was playing at that time.

Prospective Memory is forward-thinking memory. So that means that you’re trying to recall something from the past in order so that you can do so something in the future. So I’m going to get in my car. And now I have to remember, well, first I turn the keys, then I’ll lock the door, then I’ll put my seatbelt on. So you’re dredging up a prospective memory quickly so that you can put it into action, So you know how to drive the car. Or maybe it’s how to drive home from work. Or perhaps it’s how to walk to the local library. It’s a quick memory that you’re recalling so that you can make use of it.

And so those are the memory types that Psychology Today mentions in their article. So things that we do know about memory is they talk about attention. That we have to know when we’re trying to remember something, what it is we have to pay attention to, at any given moment, we have a ton of things coming at us. Even right now, as I’m recording this podcast, I hear my cat’s out in the hallway, the software is running that’s recording this podcast, I’m looking at my notes. And I’m also trying to think about what the tone of my voice is, all sorts of things going on. The same thing when you’re trying to learn something in a classroom, the windows open over there, the professor’s talking in front of you, the people behind you are talking. Being able to focus your attention and pay attention to the right thing. That’s the first step when it comes to both learning and improving your memory.

And then there’s this concept of elaboration, which means that you create these ties to it. So you’re listening to a lecture, and the person is talking about the history of literature. And they say something like this is Greek mythology, and people read it as classical literature. And so now, when you’re trying to remember this, you’re thinking about Greece, you’re thinking about Athens. You’re trying to tie it back into your memory. So you’re pulling all these things in to try to elaborate whatever is being said or taught to you so that it creates ties in your brain.

Jim Kwik, if you don’t know him is an expert on the mental game of almost everything. He’s great about learning new things, mental tricks on how to memorize things. And he really gives a lot of his time to try to help people to better their brainpower. He’s written a book and has a podcast. So if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I have those listed in my show notes as smallstepspod.com. So first of all, he talks about when you’re trying to remember things, you try to remember his acronym called MOM. The funny thing about Jim Kwik is every time he tells you to remember something for your own good, it always is a mnemonic. He’s always trying to follow his best advice.

So M in MOM stands for M for motivation. And he said that a lot of times, our problems with memory have to do with motivation. And he suggests that if there was a suitcase next to you with $100,000 in it, and all you had to do was remember the name of the next person you met, you’d probably do it because that motivation is there. Often, we won’t remember something, or we say, Oh, I’m really terrible at names. Because you’re not very motivated to learn that name. So motivation is everything. That has nothing to do with capability. It has nothing to do with your age. It has nothing to do with how good your memory is. It has everything to do with how much we care that we learned the thing that we’re trying to learn. So he suggests if you have struggles remembering someone’s name, and then you meet somebody new, ask yourself, “why do I want to remember that person’s name?” And so you remember it because you gave yourself that reason or that million-dollar suitcase? In front of you so that you would learn it?

The “O” in MOM stands for Observation. So how are you going to learn this thing? You know, in the case of an introduction, someone’s going to introduce you to Barb, and you’re going to remember her. In cases of other things. You have to remember, like a speech or something that you’re trying to learn, what method are you going to use to learn it?

And then the last M in MOM is Mechanics. What technique are you going to use to try to remember this thing? But some of them are the memory palace, chain linking, and rewarding yourself for actually pulling off remembering things. If you reward yourself when you actually succeed at something, you will be more likely to succeed in the future.

https://jimkwik.com/kwik-brain-002/

He suggests a challenge that you should have a friend, a spouse, a roommate, someone close to you, every day, you each give each other 10 words to remember or 10 concepts to remember. And then you challenge each other at the end of the day to see if you remember them. Practice makes you better. Practice, as we learned in the last podcast, When you learn something, it actually changes the structure of your brain. You become better at learning something the next time. The same thing with memory, as you remember things and then you recall them. A memory gets better, too. Not just on the thing you memorize, but on everything.

The other question, he says, is that distraction is bad. As we distract ourselves with our phones and our iPads and our computers and the television and the squirrel over there, it makes it impossible for us to learn things. Interestingly, in the book we talked about last time, How We Learn, he said distraction wasn’t bad because it is going to make us learn things that we can dredge up out of our memory in the real world. When we go to the real world, there are going to be TVs and computers and phones. And so as we learn things in the position that we memorize them in if we vary that, and we have all sorts of distractions, it helps us to learn. Jim Kwik thinks that distractions are terrible for our memory and that it is impossible to learn things. So that’s an argument there between distractions are not distractions. I find distractions helpful to me. Perhaps you don’t. So I think this is a case where you have to know yourself.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-trick-your-brain-to-remember-almost-anything/

So the technique that we talked about first was memory palace, and the memory palace is a fascinating thing. And so what he does is a strategy for memorizing things is you put everything into a story. And it is a ridiculous story. So the first thing that you do when you’re trying to do that is, let’s say that I’m trying to memorize a grocery list. So I want to buy lettuce, eggs, fish, flour, sugar, and coffee. Okay, so those are six random things that I want to remember. So what you would do is, first of all, come up with this very vivid image of these things. You know, so it’s not just an egg. It is a six-pound egg, a giant add the size of what you think a dinosaur would lay. And when you’re looking at the fish, the fish is colorful and full of pink and green speckles. You take those individual items, and you blow them up into big imagery.

The second thing that you do is put them in a particular location. So in this article that talks about it, the researcher who looked into it said, the weirder, the better. So he talks about making this memory in a bizarre location. So you could say something like I was walking through a gigantic lettuce patch. And in the middle of the lettuce patch was this enormous pink egg. And when I cracked open the enormous pink egg, I saw pink and green speckled fish, and I took them out of there. And I decided to dry them off with flour, hoping that that would get rid of all the slimy stuff inside the egg. And what happened was suddenly, the fish became sugar, and they turn into little pink and green sugar cubes. And then I ended up putting it into my giant cup of coffee that I brought with me on my hike. I might not be that great at it. But you can kind of see how that went. So now, as you remember the story, to somehow get you to remember the same. And again, he says, the crazier, the better.

Then he says that what you should do is pay attention and keep repeating to yourself this mantra, “I want to memorize this, I want to memorize this.” And then keep doing that. Because if you make up this goofy story, and then you’re not really paying attention to it, it won’t help you remember it. So you have to make sure that as you’re creating the story, you make sure that you pay attention.

He then talks about if it’s an extensive group of items, you have to make sure that you break it up into chunks. In the learning podcast, we talked about chunking, breaking things up into smaller bits, like phone numbers. I gave myself a relatively shortlist that was here. But imagine if this was a 50 item grocery list. So maybe I’d want to chunk it up by the aisles that these things are actually in. So I would have a dairy story. I would have a vegetable story and so on. So being able to break your story up into smaller pieces will help you remember it. And then he said to review it, make sure that you can go through that same story again. If you can then spit that story out and successfully get that list out, you got it.  

The next thing that they talk about is chain linking memories. And chain linking memories means that you will remember a list by putting two pieces of things together. Let’s take a look at my six-item list that I said about grocery shopping. You would say I need to buy lettuce-eggs, eggs-fish, fish-flour, flour-sugar, and sugar-coffee. It makes it easier to remember because now you’ve paired things together. And so if you forget one thing, the other piece of it will help you remember it, and it’s even easier than if you can somehow categorize them together. That’ll make it even better. So I think the sugar -coffee and the flour-sugar make some sense together because they’re always put sugar and coffee, and you always have flour and sugar. So that helps make it even better. Even if you can make it a little bit more interesting how you chain these things together, the easier it will be to Remember those things.

And then the next thing is called peg listing. Peg listing has to do with associating a list of items with something you already know and never forget. The 10 fingers on your hands, the alphabet, A to Z, counting one to 20. Those are all things that you will always remember. You assign an item to each finger or each letter. I have a friend who does that. She has a really interesting technique, but she will give each finger a thing. And so you can see her when she’s trying to remember something going through her fingers. You’ll say, as per Apple is for lettuce, and you’ll go through the alphabet by putting the things you want to remember in the list into something you know. So you would say A is for Apple, B is for bananas, C is for coupons. D is for dog food, E is for eggs. And so you would keep that list by tagging it to something that you already know. I did it so that the letter actually matches the things. You don’t necessarily have to do it that way. But I think if you can do it that way, it makes it easier, although it may make your grocery shopping a little confusing. These are some examples that were in Jim Kwik’s book and on a website that talked about memory strategies that will be listed in my show notes again.

The next step is chunking. You want to break things into smaller groups. We mentioned that as part of one of the techniques that are there. But chunking in memory can help you break things up into smaller pieces. Just putting it into something like the phone number, that’s one step. But there are some other ways that you can chunk memory up so that it makes sense. Try and remember your points for a debate. You can say pros or cons, or maybe it’s a theory, its evidence, its reasons, or if this is a process, step by step. So as I was trying to put my snowblower together, I first went to the handle, then went to the chute, then went to gas, then went to the chain. And so you’re doing it step by step because it makes logical sense.

And then the last method they talk about is the hamburger method. And that means that you sort of put all the facts or all the things in somewhat of a hamburger. You could probably even use it as a grocery store list. So the first thing is the bun, the top bun, those items, then comes the next layer or the supporting details, and that’s going to be the tomato or the vegetable layer. Then the meat layer, then the other vegetable layer, and then the other bun. And so what you’re doing is you’re just basically putting things into a category of something recognizable to you. So those are some quick techniques, helping you to review items.

One thing is that when you remember something, it’s because it has exceptional value to you. A little bit about what Jim Kwik was talking about when it comes to motivation. But it’s even beyond that. He mentioned that if you ever got into a car accident, you probably remember every detail of that. But you may not even remember what it is you had for dinner last night. And that’s because one thing was exceptional and rare. And the other thing was mundane. And so it’s harder to get everyday things stored in your long-term memory. And so that way, as much as you can make something and experience it, you’ll be able to remember it better. And there are things that I remember, just because they were such unique experiences. And I want to remember these things time and time again. Being able to build that as a unique experience. Using your visualization skills, remembering it as it looked, remembering what it smelled like, and it sounded like those will help make those things more unique and vital. That will make it easier for us to remember. So he says on this website that he always has in mind the basic rule: unique experience + strong association = increased memory capacity. That’s where you want to make something unique, with strong associations

Summary

1. Remember, when you need to remember something, you have to have the motivation to remember it. Ask yourself, why am I remembering it?
2. Figure out how you’re going to learn or memorize this thing?
3. What type of technique Are you going to use the memory palace, the chain linking, the pegged listing? Whatever it is. What are you going to do to learn this thing better?
4. Come up with a reward strategy so that if you do start remembering people’s names, maybe you get an extra treat at the conference. Make sure you reward yourself.
5. Come up with a mechanic that you’re going to use to help you remember things. That might be memory palace, chain linking, peg listing, chunking things up, and shorter bits.
6. Always remember that unique experiences with strong associations tied to them will still help you in recalling things when it’s tough

Challenge.

• I think I’m going to jump on the back of Jim Kwik’s challenge and say find one person who you can spend time with, hopefully, every day.  You can each challenge each other to remember 10 different things. So in the morning, you each give yourself 10 objects, and then you recite them back to each other at the end of the day. That’s a great challenge from an expert on memory, So try that out.

And now for our fun quote of the day, and this comes from the TV show on Disney plus called WandaVision. And if you’ve never seen that show, and you like Marvel things, that is an exciting place to go,

Why it’d be nice if we were incapable of forgetfulness and that we could remember everything. I wonder if that would make our lives better? I suspect it will make our lives worse. I remember a time when we had a community online and a message board where the people kept fighting with each other all the time. And what would happen is the software we used was so terrible that the whole message board would eventually break. And we would have to go to a new message board. And you know what, in some ways, all the old fights and all the old arguments went away, as soon as the message board broke. ‘it cleaned out all the rafters, and suddenly people were able to forgive each other. I wonder if sometimes if the internet being such a great memory tool is maybe the thing that’s tearing us apart because we can go back to when you’re three and a half years old and figure out what that awful thing you said to us was when typically would have just forgotten it.

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” – Albert Einstein.

Today we’re going to talk about how you learn new things and how you can take those things and put them into action. A few years ago, I decided I wanted to know how to paddleboard and what I did is I went to YouTube and watched a bunch of videos of people paddleboarding. Went to bed the next morning, got up, rented a paddleboard, and tried it out. You know what it actually worked. I was pretty iffy at first, but I started getting the hang of it. And I remembered all the lessons of how to change positions. How to get up and sit down. I was able to actually get pretty far. You can learn many different things and put them into action so that you could have new experiences in life and try new things.

The first book that we’ll talk about today is called Learn, Improve Master by Nick Velasquez. He talks about how you can learn new items and gives you several techniques to learn things quickly. He says that learning is a bit like hiking trails through grassy fields. You can see the pathways that other people took before you. And as soon as these neural connections are made, the links become faster to make, it becomes faster to learn. And you’re able to pick things up quicker than you were before. Learning actually changes our brains’ physical structures and enables us to remember more to learn more and do more.

The first thing he talks about is making associations with things. That means that when you try to pull out memory if they’re associated with a particular event or associated with a specific skill that you need to do, you want to make those connections to whatever it is that you’re learning to multiple things. For those of you who remember libraries with card catalogs, you had a card catalog that showed you all the authors. You had another series of boxes that were organized by book title. The categories were this book, a psychology book history book, and the more areas that book hit, the more cards were in the card catalog for that particular book. So if it were a travel log that also talked about Greece’s history, you would get a card for Greece, history, travel. That way, it made it easier to find that particular book. That’s a bit of how memories work for us. If we can have many various entry points to find that memory, we remember it better.

They also talk about chunking. And chunking is where you’re putting groups of things together. You’re not trying to remember this big, long string of things. We’ve seen that before, where we’ve been attempting to break things up into smaller groups. For phone numbers, for example, you can see that it’s the area code dash, the region code dash, the last four digits of the number. They chunk them up in such away. So it makes it easier for us to remember. We do learn and memorize things better when they’re grouped up into smaller categories.

The book also talks about learning styles. And that’s become a big trend. People call it VARK. Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic or movement. Classrooms in children’s education, but also adult education, tried to go with these different styles. Some people learn things because they’re better at listening to something. Some people know things because they have to see them. Other people are just better at reading it in books. But it’s not always strictly true. Most people learn in each of those ways. He talks about that it’s not an either/or. You’re just not an auditory learner. You can be many different types of learners that are here. He talks about some myths when it comes to learning. And he brought in the learning styles. But he said that there’s basically very little evidence that we learn better if the material is presented in one way or another.

• Myth 1 – He also says that another myth, the old quote, “old dogs can’t learn new tricks.” It used to be thought that way. And I think it was just a way for someone more senior to get someone who’s younger to go away. No, I don’t want to learn how to fly a kite. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Totally not true. You know throughout your entire life. It might be a little bit easier. It might be a little bit different based on your age. But it’s not something that ever goes away.
• Myth 2 – Learning should be fun. And sure, it’s nice when you can do those types of things. Having fun is better than not having fun. But that doesn’t mean that if you don’t enjoy something, you can’t learn it.
• Myth 3 – The other myth that he talks about is that you can either learn new things or don’t. And I hear people talk about this a lot. Oh, I’m just not good at learning new things. It’s not true. It has more to do with Angela Duckworth and what she calls “grit.” Are you willing to stick to something? Are you ready to do hard things? That’s what actually matters more to learning than even whether You’re skilled at it or you’re talented at it. t
• Myth 4 – Then there’s the myth of the 10,000-hour rule. They talk about how if you practice something for 10,000 hours, you’ll become a master of it. And the author did not intend to create this sort of mastery deadline. He just tried to say that practicing, deliberate practice, and not only any method but aim to practice at the right things at the right time will help you to learn something. That’s all it means. And you always want to make sure that that thing is challenging you.

How do we start to learn? How can we go about doing that? So he talks, first of all, that you have to learn how to do something, that’s where you gather this information, but then there’s doing it. If you know something and actually don’t put it into practice, it becomes dead to you. As a kid, I used to build snow forts based on things that I learned in math class because I thought that was fun. And because of that, math became very easy for me. So doing something is absolutely important to do.

He then talks about Exploration and how important it is for us to explore these new ideas. We want to research to find out exactly how to deconstruct the concept, break it down into smaller steps, and learn what it means to be good at something. And as we explore, and we start to get it, we start asking better questions.

He talks about something that Chip and Dan Heath called “ooching,” that you’re trying to get a taste of something. You’re dipping your toe in it, So you could just kind of see this is something I like. Is it something I’m good at? Is it something that I might enjoy? It will give you a better sense to see what the day-to-day practice looks like. And that might mean that you’re really interested in cooking, and you take an introductory cooking class, or you spend a day with a friend who’s really good at cooking. You might be able to dip your toe into it a little bit and see if you’re actually really like it if you have good skills with it. And if it’s something that you would enjoy. I learned how to surf; I took surfing lessons. When I was in Hawaii, I had a tough two hours. I loved it; it was fantastic. I don’t think I ever really want to do it. Again, it was a great experience for me. But it was just a one-off experience. I dipped my toe in the water. And I learned a lot about surfing and whether or not I wish to pursue it.

So then, he talks about the Input Modes. And the input modes are something about how you can get the information into your brain. First of all, you can observe it and just watch someone do the thing that they’re trying to do. Or maybe you imitate it, which means you’re following along and doing it while someone is doing it. Explanation – That means that you’re reading or listening to someone as they break down the subject. Or experimentation, trying to just figure it out on your own, play with it a little bit, see how it goes. So depending on the situation, learning through these various methods – each of them might be more useful in other ways. You get better at sports by watching someone do a sport. Maybe initially that first day or something like that. But it isn’t until you actually start imitating it or experimenting with it and playing the sport where you even can get good at it.

He says that we learn better than when we know the context of what we’re studying. And then, he talks about schemas and previous knowledge. A schema is a conceptual framework of prior knowledge and experience that helps us process new information. So if you never saw something before, and then someone was to explain it to you, it would be alien to you. You wouldn’t understand what in the world they were talking about. But if you already knew something related to it, then it starts making sense. His example that he gave was trying to explain to someone about a leopard. Well, if you had just heard the explanation of a leopard, it might be confusing to you at first. But if you understand how a cat is built, then the context helps you understand this new concept of what a leopard is and how it’s different from a cat. So these constructs help us to understand and make progress.

And then he said progression. Learning anything is easier if we study it progressively and in the correct order. That means we have to understand the basics before we can do the advanced stuff. And we learn, and we build upon it.

So the first strategy he gives us, he says, breaks down the information into smaller bits. He talks about notetaking, which helps people understand and learn what they’re trying to do. He mentioned self-explanation. And that means that you try this point of explaining to yourself how this works. He talks about the word ruminate, which is kind of chewing it up in your brain and letting it synthesize, and you think about it, and you’re trying to process that information. And then, the next step is concept maps. These are visual ways that you can draw something out. Often, In my work, we draw out Visio charts and other types of Mind Mapping charts so we can see the progress of the beginning to the end. That helps us learn things, making them relevant if something is necessary and appropriate to us. And we’re not asking why I am learning this, then it will help us understand when we know why it is that we’re trying to do it. And what the big picture is. When I go into training classes, As a trainer, I’m always trying to explain to people exactly why we’re doing this, how it’s going to help them, and how this helps their organizations do better. Trying to give them context will make them motivated to learn something and more excited to pay attention.

And then questioning, he calls it Elaborative Questioning. And that’s where you’re trying to deduce the logic behind what it is you’re trying to learn. Why are we doing it this way when we’re trying to do that? Anything that you’re trying to do, if you understand the whys, then it will help you understand the context behind it, And you will learn it in a much deeper way.

Connecting the information that you learned to what you already know. So if you think about learning a new piece of software, you say, Oh, this works a little bit like office works. If you can tie it to something that you already understand, then it’ll make sense.

So the next step that it talks about learning comes from a different book called How We Learn; When, Where and Why It Matters by Benedict Carey. This is a little bit more of a biological view when it comes to learning.  Forgetting is actually a critical part of our brain because it makes other information available to us more readily. Because we used to know something, we don’t need that information anymore. So our brain forgets it so that those new memories can become more upfront and more available to us. Continuing to test yourself will help you make sure that you really learn something compared to just memorizing something and then forgetting it shortly after.

He mentions a few things that talk about how we can help ourselves to learn things better. And the first thing he says is that you want to make sure that you study something in various environments. That will help you learn things. For example, if you’re sometimes studying in a coffee shop, sometimes in a library, sometimes in a recliner, at your own house, sometimes at work at your own desk. That variety of different places that you have will help you to learn it. When I was in college, they suggested that we go to places that emulated the area that we’re going to take our final exam. Maybe even go into that same room and learn it there. Because when you’re in that familiar situation, it will be easier to retrieve what you learned. However, that’s not learning it for real. Because when we actually go out into the real world and start using our education, we’re going to be in noisy malls. We’re going to be in busy coffee shops. We’re going to be talking in loud meetings. And that doesn’t help us if we only have these experiences in a specific location, break up the situations you’re in, and alter the medium. Sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a computer, sometimes you’re watching a video of it. Learning through these various steps will help you understand it better.

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/dunlosky.pdf

He then talks about what he calls spacing out. And that just means learning some information and then taking a break, learning some info, and then taking a different break. And that way, you can increase the amount of data that you actually learn because you’re taking it in more slowly,

He mentions that cramming can work. That’s where you’re just studying hard, and you’re looking at its hour after hour after hour. However, you may not learn it very well in the long term. So he said you want to make sure you take advantage of the spacing effect. And that means that you spend 10 minutes learning something, and then you break up the time. So if you plan on adding, in this example, three hours to studying something, it’s better to learn it for 30 or 60 minutes over a few days than three hours at an entire chunk of time.

Wiseheart and Pashler did this experiment in 2008 to find out how much time you take to learn something. And if it was a week, you basically only remembered things for one to two days. If you studied it for over a month, you’d probably remember it pretty well for a week. If you look it over three months, you’ll learn it pretty well over two weeks and still be able to remember it, but you can kind of see that the longer it takes you and this bigger chunking that you do to learn something, the longer it will actually stay with you and then you’ll remember it.

He mentioned that simply repeating facts right after you’ve studied something or learned it will not add to your memory benefit at all. He says that you should try to wait. And then, in your own words, not just repeating what’s out of the book, or wherever it is, you learned it. Try to restate it a little bit later. And so as the brain works on retrieving the information, it’s going to become easier and easier to learn something.

 He talks a little bit about when you have the struggle to remember something. It’s like exercising and lifting a heavyweight. The harder it is that you kind of tear those muscles, you build them back up stronger. Harder it is for us to recall something, and then we actually succeed in doing it, that will deepen our effects of storing our memories and making it easier to remember them. He says that there’s something called the Gates Ratio. And that means devoting 30 to 40% of time reading and memorizing when it comes to learning something new and then spending the rest of the time trying to recall it and bring it back up again.

And then he says, even if you’re quizzing yourself and guessing the wrong answer, and then finding out the real solution is, it will teach you in the long term how to actually answer the question correctly or do the right thing. Making mistakes is not a detriment to us learning things. It even helps us.

And he talks about the method of interleaving. That means that you mix up different types of materials in the process of your learning. Maybe you are trying to learn a new sport. So you read a book about the sport, then try some things out and test yourself, then watch some videos, then go out with a friend and your friend shows you how to do it. Trying to intermix these different methods will help you really drive that learning into your brain better.

And then the last step, he talks about sleep, and it’s the REM kind of sleep that helps you retain that information. Naps that last at least for one hour also contain slow-wave deep sleep and REM sleep. So naps work too. What will happen is if you study for an exam, and then you sleep on it and then recall it the next morning, you will be more likely to learn it for good. That sleeping behavior with REM sleep actually helps you deepen the understanding, comprehend it better, and then make it easier to recall. So he even talks about if you really need to understand something or learn something, study right up to your bedtime, go to bed at your regular time. And get up early and do a quick review before you need to share that information. Either because it’s a test, or you actually have to do the thing you’re doing but learn sleep, and then quiz yourself. That’ll help you learn things better than anything.

So those are some steps when it comes to really try to learn something deeply and understand it. When asked if there’s any sort of strategy for trying to learn something in a longer-term way, he says to start early as possible. Give yourself permission to walk away, take a break, have these deliberate interruptions, and then go back to it. But the more time that you can give yourself to learn something, the better you’ll learn it.

So one of the things that I found helpful to me is I had to learn a new piece of software in the last couple of weeks. It was a deep dive into something that I had never done in this particular way before. And when I first went through it, they showed us how to do it. And we actually recorded the sessions. The next time I went through it, I worked with a co-worker, and we worked on it together and figured out how to do it. And we got a successful package done out of that process. But then, the third time I did it, I felt like the first two times were such a struggle. What I did is I went into a deep dive of this, and I started recording each of the steps. So I’d learned something, I would record it into my new training document. And then I would do it. And then, I would look at the next step and record it in my new training manual. And then I would do it. And that drilled it into my brain. I feel like I know it deeply. Now I really learned it. And it’s again. Because I soak some of it in, I recalled some of it out. And then I actually tried it. And those three steps helped me learn something time-consuming and difficult. And now I feel like I really have a down.

Summary.

1. Break things up into small learnable chunks of learning.
2. Test yourself after you learn something, give yourself a little bit of break, walk around, do something else for a while, then quiz yourself.
3. Vary the media, the learning style, the environment that you’re learning in so that you can learn in all sorts of various areas or that new learning is available to you in every situation
4. Make sure you give yourself enough time to learn something so that you can learn it for real and get a deep, comprehensive look at whatever it is you’re trying to learn.
5. Get to sleep. Sleep is where our brain takes that information and cleans up the catalogs and stores things in the proper place.

Challenge,

• Try to pick one new thing that you’re going to learn. Start off by giving yourself the correct type of media, figure out how you’re going to learn it. If you’re going to learn it with books and videos. Then, give yourself a way that you can practice it and try it out. Start with something straightforward. You’re gonna try to learn how to knit a scarf.

So our fun movie quote of the day comes from the TV series Westworld?

“How can you learn from your mistakes if you can’t remember them?”

And that’s true, right? When we can learn from our own mistakes, it means we have to remember them first. So understanding and memorizing go hand in hand.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether they’re 20, or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young” – Henry Ford.

Today we’re going to talk about the mental side of keeping young. When I was listening to a podcast A few years ago called Let’s Know Things, this came to me. The author had just hit around 30 years old, and he noted he was mentally getting old. He remembered seeing some new application that had emoji stickers on it, and he thought, What in the world would that be good for? And don’t we have enough of those kinds of things out there anyway? And then he realized this was his first step about getting old. He suddenly was just discounting something without ever trying it or understanding it. And he realized that he didn’t want to become old. And even though he still didn’t think much of emoji stickers, he realized that he needed to think about things and try new things so that it never happens to him. How do we keep that young mentality? How do we keep our brain healthy? And how do we keep going? And again, just like last time, we talked about how you want to stay young, at any age, by being young, mentally, even when you’re still young, you get that chance to keep that healthy brain activity going.

I was kind of a funny kid. I was an adult as a kid. And I was a pretty serious kid. Even though I told jokes a lot, I still was the person who cleaned the house and paid the bills. I haven’t done our income taxes. That’s a lot to hang on top of a kid. As I finally climbed out of that moved out of the house, I got to be a kid again. And honestly, throughout my 30s, when I could have more leisure time and have a little bit more leisure money, suddenly, I found myself with the ability to start being younger, I could start playing a little bit, I suddenly didn’t have to be so serious about everything.

So we’re going to take a lot of good ideas that come from many various articles. And I will have them all listed on my website if you want to refer back to the articles again. So the first thing I can tell you just because of my own experience with being a very serious adult when I was 12. And being somewhat of a kid when I was 30. Don’t act your age, be young all the time. That’s the thing about adulthood, make sure you always act young, in those appropriate times. Often, what will happen is, as people start feeling like they’re mentally getting older, they will. Just as if they start getting into the physical side of things, I don’t want to go hiking today, I’m sore from this week, or I’m too tired. With the same mentality, I don’t like to learn something new. I don’t want to try something new. I’m just tired. Get out of that mentality. Because the more you put yourself into that same rut, the harder it will be for you to get out of it. Ensure that you don’t act your age that you always try to stay young, try to take on new things. And you try to think about the things that make being young so tremendous and try to keep doing those things. Don’t keep saying I’m old. Think about the wording of it, right? I am not old. I am just tired today. Maybe you don’t feel like learning something new today. That’s just a feeling you have. That’s just an emotion. But I think what happens is, is that you see the ideals out there. The stereotypes of what people say you are when you’re young and when you’re old. And you start believing them, you start thinking, Oh, well, I must be tired today. Because I’m getting older. I feel like I don’t want to learn anything new or try something new. That’s because I’m getting older. Think about how you’re wording things as not a rut you’re putting yourself into.  That’s just how you feel today.

And if you are too tired to learn new things or try new things, you got to figure out how to solve that problem. Do you need to eat better? Do you need to rest more? Make sure that you set yourself up for having success while mentally feeling younger. And so the other thing is to make sure you do have goals. Part of the problem, and I think what happens to people when they have free time, or maybe even when they retire? I think it’s the same problem as you had when you were a kid. And you were like, I don’t know what to do today. I’m bored. It’s the same thing. It’s because we haven’t thought about the things that we can do. We haven’t expended the kinds of energy we want to to set ourselves up. Whether you’re 12 years old or 50 years old, it gets easy to just say, I don’t want to go outside and hike today. I have to drive all the way there, and then I have to pack up some water, so I have something to drink. Now I got to figure out what I’m going do… You know what happens to us throughout life. Solve those problems and keep those goals in mind. You always want to have goals and plans going for you whether you’re 12 or 50.

UC Berkeley did a study about how to keep your brain young. And what they found is that being social helps a lot. Valerie Crooks, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente, looked at women over four years. Women who kept their social ties going decrease the likelihood that they might get something like Alzheimer’s or depression. They also suggest even playing video games. Video games are this great combination of hand-eye coordination, and memory, and problem-solving. And it’s one of those things that’s helpful for us.

• https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_keep_your_brain_young_even_as_you_grow_old

When you’re a kid, and you have all these neurons in your body. So you try playing an instrument and some neurons building your brain, or maybe you learn to speak a foreign language. And those neurons build in your brain to help that. What happens over time is those neurons, as they’re not being used, shut down. And so a lot of times, what will happen to us is, if we don’t challenge our brain, “I’m tired, I just got home from work, I don’t feel like doing anything,” then those neurons lose their ability to fire in those areas. To keep a young brain means to use all those things, so they stay active, those neural pathways remain active, and we keep that ability to solve problems, Think outside the box, and all those things. Video games can help us with that. It used to be a long time ago, they thought that the brain is very elastic, and it stretches, and it grows. But at some point, that shuts down, and the brain becomes inelastic, and you can’t learn. Luckily for us, they found out in 2016, that’s not true. The brain retains this plasticity throughout all the ages. The reason that those things shut down is that we don’t challenge them. We don’t push our brains to do these things again. So it’s not the brain failing us we’re failing the brain. We build new brain cells, or neurons throughout our entire life that doesn’t stop. Keep building those neurons through potentially video games because it challenges all the different things you can do to keep your brain pathways going.

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inspire-rewire/201402/pruning-myelination-and-the-remodeling-adolescent-brain

In Thriveworks.com, a blog article said that one of the best ways that we can do to keep our brains young is sticking to the basics. And we talked about some of those basics in the last podcast, get enough sleep, get good nutrition, and exercise. Those things will help our brain stay young. So make sure that you’re at least doing the basics of those things to make sure that we’re at our peak health, which also keeps our brain healthy. Again, if we’re tired, we’re not learning. If we’re sleepy all the time, we’re not growing and expanding our abilities.

• https://www.powerofpositivity.com/ways-to-keep-your-brain-young/
• https://thriveworks.com/blog/keeping-the-brain-young-as-you-age/

In one study, Dr. Bryan Bruno explains, “That while the brain adapts quite well to these changes, there are some important things that we can do to slow or resist these negative changes our physiologies undergo with age, doing brain teasers puzzles, helps stimulate the connection between the neurons to resist the onset or effects of degenerative disorders.” If you don’t like video games, and that’s just not part of your deal, puzzles and other types of brain teasers will help you as well. Again, what we’re trying to do is challenge our brain in a bunch of different ways.

The next thing they suggest is keeping life fulfilling. It is hard, I sometimes think when a person may decide to retire, or they’re just not doing the work that they were doing a while ago, and they feel like they’ve lost their passions or hobbies or interests or other outlets that consume your time and make you get into that flow state. Making sure that you always find something fulfilling to you, whatever stage of life you are in, will help keep your brain young. If you’re younger, that’s finding a job that challenges you. If you’re older, that might be continuing to work in a job that you find fulfilling. But as you retire, that might mean either volunteer work that really challenges you. I don’t know what happens to people, and I’ve seen it happen before. But sometimes, when people retire, you just see they lost their purpose in life. Maybe they only dreamed that they wanted to sit in a recliner chair and never move again. And that was their dream come true. But that doesn’t challenge them. that doesn’t encourage them to keep seeking out new things. Finding that new purpose in life will help keep you young.

Stone Kraushaar, a clinical psychologist, and therapeutic coach, says “”This will look distinct for each individual and will be based on what the person wants to achieve and their comfort level. In other words, one person might be skydiving, and another might be going to a yoga class for the first time. The more we are connected to new activities and groups as old relationships may be changing or ending, the healthier it is for each of us. Also, it is ideal for keeping trying new things so that when we age, we don’t become bored with or less interested and engaged in life.”

• https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/zimney-health-and-medical-news-you-can-use/keeping-your-brain-active-10-tips-for-improving-your-brain/

The next thing they suggest is learning to cope with change. Lucy Harris explains that dealing with change will allow us to maintain and improve our health “You need to learn to cope with and accept change. Doing this allows you to make the most of the amazing times and keep a positive perspective during the hard times. Take a minute to be grateful for the changes that do come around and find the positive in the harder times. Remember, you can’t change everything and there are just some things that you have to accept as they are out of your control.” We talked about the Serenity Prayer in past podcasts. But again, realizing that some things do change, and how I will either work my way around it or try to fix those things. That’s important.

Find groups that share your interest that might be joining a book club, learning to speak another language. And there are tutoring students who could use some help. We also have this ability right now because we live in an online world to connect with people online. It’s not as great as being in a room with a person and getting to know them. But it is pretty darn good. I think what’s different about society now is that you can meet everybody about any topic you’re potentially interested in. want to start a new podcast? There’s a group for that. Want to start learning about butterflies? There are groups about that, too. Anything that you’re interested in, there’s a group out there that can help you do that. Keep in mind their social media, sharing pictures, funny videos, or zoom talks. You know, you gotta be careful about this about who you talk to online. But in safe groups, there are even group chats out there that don’t just make you feel great about the people you keep in contact with.

Harvard health said that there are seven ways to keep your memory sharp at any age. And this is an article specifically about memory and also brain functionality. So the first one is to keep learning. We talked about that. Take classes, read books, learn new languages, try new things, play new video games, whatever it is, but keep learning.

• https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/7-ways-to-keep-your-memory-sharp-at-any-age

The second piece of advice that they suggest is using all your senses, making sure that you look around the world around you. I lived in this neighborhood for a really long time. And so, when I walk around the area, it’s easy for me to ignore it because I know what it looks like. I know that “Oh look, there’s a new flowerbed.” So you may think you know your neighborhood really well, or you know, the things that are out there really well. But you know what, this is your opportunity to look again, smell what it smells like out there, listen to what the sounds are. you know, making sure that you use all your senses because the senses are connected to the brain will help your brain stay young

They said to believe in yourself. There are so many myths out there, they suggest that aging and failing memory/middle-aged and older people can do worse on memory tasks when exposed to negative stereotypes. But when you realize that sometimes these memory problems that people are having, has more to do with the fact that they’re juggling too many balls. I noticed in my own life that if I’m paying attention to work, and I’m paying attention, this podcast, and I’m doing this, and I’m doing that, it feels like the memory is failing. It’s not failing. I am just doing too many things at the same time. When I slow down, and I focus on a particular item. It’s amazing. My memory gets a lot better. In a study, they found that people who believe that they’re not in control of their own memory function are less likely to maintain or improve their memory skills and therefore are more likely to experience cognitive decline. That’s where it becomes important not to stereotype ourselves into decline. I’m old, I’m hurt. My memory is not what it used to be. Stop that. You need to focus on these things, and you will do better.

They talk about economizing your brain use. That means you don’t need the mental energy to remember everything, right? You put your keys back in the same place all the time. You put tasks down in some sort of task management system, whether on paper or digital. Don’t spend all your time exerting energy on something you don’t have to when it comes to your brain. Make sure that you keep your brain focused on the essential things. And then you will not have to worry about all the silly things that your brain doesn’t have to worry about.

Repeat what you want to know. It suggests that if you are having trouble remembering some things, write it down or keep repeating it and space it out. That means that when you have these learning sessions, you’re not ramming them all in one after another after another after another. that you learn something, and you let it soak in for a little bit, you learn something and you let it soak in for a little bit. Make sure you do that so that your brain has time to store everything in. And then it says every few hours, try to bring back that memory again. It shows that spaced rehearsal of memory improves recall. That’s not just for older people or people who are trying to stay young. That’s for everybody.

And then they suggest making mnemonics that have to do with abbreviations that help you remember something like RICE. They mentioned Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. If you get hurt, RICE is what you need to do to get better, right. So those memory tricks help you to do that. They found that it allows people of all ages to learn to remember things by coming up with those types of mnemonics.

In Health.com, they had a study that talks about ways to age-proof your brain. First of all, they found out that seniors who dance, especially those who ballroom dance, had a 75% lower risk of dementia. Why is dancing such a thing? Joe Verghese,  the MD, a study leader of this, said that dancing is a complex activity, it’s so it improves the blood flow to the brain, which enhances the brain connection. It’s one of those things that because it pulls out all these different things that help us. It’s about playing a musical instrument to that. Helps us as well. Being bilingual, playing chess, doing puzzles, again, those things that pull details out of our brain and force us into those problem solving those memory things. And as you can see from these lists of things that they suggest complex things help.  Dancing is complex. Playing a musical instrument is complex. Learning languages is complex. That complexity helps us learn. the ideas to build up that “cognitive reserve.” to make sure that you’re doing everything you can, whether you’re 20 years old, or 60 years old, or 90 years old, to make sure that you build up those cognitive abilities of your brain.

• https://www.health.com/mind-body/17-ways-to-age-proof-your-brain

Summary

1. Ensure you do the basics; sleep well, get great nutrition and exercise to keep the brain healthy.
2. Ensure that when you learn things, you learn them at a good pace and that you can recall the information later. Practice what you learned, again, and again.
3. Stay away from negative stereotypes. If you keep telling yourself “This is because I’m getting old, I can’t do the things I used to do.” you will start to believe that. Stop that right away!
4. Challenge yourself with complex brain activity. Anything from playing video games to puzzles, learning languages, learning, music, dancing, and any of these things that use multiple areas of your brain will help your brain stay young.
5. Ensure that you have a purpose in life and have goals, and complex activities. Meet up with friends, make new friends, and join groups or classes. Anything that you can do to stay connected with people and your purpose will help you a lot.

Challenge

• Find one thing that is a challenging puzzle for you, whether it’s a crossword puzzle, or a game. Challenge your brain with complex activity every day for at least 10 minutes. Once you start getting good at that thing, make sure that you challenge yourself with harder and harder activities.

Here is our fun quote of the week from As Good As It Gets.  “Some of us have great stories. pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But a lot of people. That’s their story. Good times, noodle salad. “

I’m not sure what the piece of advice is here. But all I can tell you is if you have the opportunity to make your life noodle salad, I will go with it. Try to make your life as easy and pleasant, and drama-free as possible.