Welcome to the fourth and the final section on memory. You have learned everything there is to know about memory enhancement. You are now equipped to excel at your studies. You are less likely to forget why you came all the way to the kitchen to open the fridge door. You are technically well versed with the art of memory improvement. Yet, there is something missing in all this. Is applying mnemonic devices enough?
There is definitely something more to memory development than mere acronyms and association formations. No sane man has ever disputed the power of imagination. A canon can kill people, but imagination can build people. Imagination has the power to transcend boundaries of any nature and fly like an eagle in the open sky. When you imagine, you are liberated and there are no sort of restrictions put on you. Imagination gives you the power to open your minds to dimensions never explored before.
But why are we talking about imagination in a book revolving around memory improvement? Let us find out. Imagination is an exercise that is wholly personal to you. What you imagine is radically different from what the other person does. Because of how complex human mind is, imagination has no fetters put on it. You cannot draw lines around a mind and ask it to imagine within those boundaries. Imagining is hence a never ending process and a very personal one.
Your imagination of a perfect holiday might fundamentally differ from your partner’s. The destination may be the same, and the timing, but it is the beauty of imagination to differ despite the premise being the same. This is what happens when you imagine. You create images inside your mind that are not just personal but also unique to you. You have a set mental image of what you think and that separates your imagination from those of others. As a result, no single person’s images are the same as that of the others. This leads to your images standing out in a crowd.
A mere recollection leads to the rushing of everything you had imagined related to a particular topic. Hence, it is natural that whatever you imagine remains etched inside your mind forever. Though it is true that you rarely share your imagination with others, you keep sharing it with your own self. That way, you keep thinking of it in a loop thereby cementing its picture inside your memory.Students get to only read what is there in their syllabus. Except for lab work and associated Google images, when students start imagining with the help of the written words, they start creating a series of mental images that stay with them whenever they stop studying.
Imagination hence leads to the strengthening up of a person’s memory with time. For instance, Albus read about the Indian struggle for freedom from a school prescribed book, and so did Fred. Albus created the image of a large rally crying out for freedom from its British rulers but when Fred read it, he imagined a large number of leaders assembling together in front of the parliament and offering a peace treaty for freedom. Words will remain the same; the images will differ. This is how imagination helps create personal experiences of studying, thereby facilitating each student differently. Imagination is a tool that has been long ignored in the era of new technology.
Let me give you another example of how imagination is important for a good memory. In the good old days of Graham bell telephones, people would maintain telephone logs where they would write down the numbers of every contact they had. They would have to manually dial the numbers after having looked them up from this log. After having looked at the numbers for a certain period of time, they would start associating the numbers with how they were written. Maybe a scribble at the top of the page helped them remember a specific contact.
The handwriting with which the number was written might also lead them to imagine the person it belongs to in a specific way. The human mind works in peculiar ways and association by imagination is one of them. However today, we have smartphones that simply save numbers in the form of people’s names. This form of saving numbers has led to most us being unable to recall numbers of even someone close to us, for example our parents or our spouse. The lack of imagination in today’s world is a major reason for people having bad memories.
When you lack the creativity to think of an entity in ways better than it has been presented to you, you tend to see beyond the mundane and the ordinary. Try to make things extraordinary and interesting so that you can easily remember them. Do not look at a tree and go ‘’oh look, a tree’’; try imagining it as a freak monster from one of the fairy tales you read as a kid; you will remember the tree better the next time walk by it. Spread the wings of imagination to the sphere of academics and you will realize that the most boring of mathematical equations are fun when put in a lighter perspective. It is upon you to make sure that things do not remain the way they are. Play with studies. Tweak the texts.
Change the textbooks’ words to fit your imagination without changing the fundamentals. Be a bit creative with whatever you are studying. Do not be monotonous while making notes in the class. Use differently colored pens to illustrate your moods while writing. When you perform such crazy tips, you will notice changes in your attitude towards studies. What used to be a major pain your rear before is now a relief and a major attraction. You no longer have to suffer in academics, and even before you realize it you will have excelled in academics all the while having fun at it.
The more you imagine, the better you memory becomes. It is by imagination by you will be able to associate one entity with another. Imagination authorizes you to create any image you want and associate it with anything you want to recall later. I personally know of public speakers that would have stage frights right a minute before their speeches. However, when they get on the stage they speak as fluently as any other good orator. Their secret, as I later discovered, was their imaginative capacities. Even when you are in front of a huge crowd and you are supposed to speak on a subject, you can always imagine the crowd to be an association of jungle animals who have no idea about what you are rambling.
Such a funny image will not only lighten you up but also give you the self confidence to speak based on the casual assumption you just made about the crowd being a bunch of illiterate buffoons. Remember, how you memorize things that matter to you is entirely in your hands. This book can only suggest and direct you towards generalized and commonly used forms of memory enhancement techniques but in the end it all comes down to how you apply the same. Imagination is a powerful memory tool. You imagine breaking away from the dull set notions prescribed by others.
But you also end up creating an entire world all by yourself. Exactly how a parent never forgets to feed his child, you are not likely to forget this world because it is your personal creation; something you made when you felt like thinking better, brighter and extraordinary
