good morning believe nation today’s
believe life is about Evan evidence
about it’s about the why and how of
improving your memory I think if there’s
one thing that I want to leave you with
its what ep the amnesiac who couldn’t
even remember that he had a memory
problem left me with which is the notion
that our lives are the sum of our
memories how much are we willing to lose
from our already short lives by losing
ourselves in our BlackBerry’s our
iPhones by not paying attention to the
human being across from us who is
talking with us by being so lazy that
we’re not willing to process deeply I
learned firsthand that there are
incredible memory capacities latent in
all of us but if you want to live a
memorable life you have to be the kind
of person who remembers to remember
this is my friend Ben prid more three
time world memory champion on his desk
in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of
playing cards that he is about to try to
memorize in one hour using a technique
that he invented and he alone has
mastered he used a similar technique to
memorize the precise order of 4140
random binary digits in half an hour
yeah and while there are a whole host of
ways of remembering stuff in these
competitions everything all of the
techniques that are being used
ultimately come down to a concept that
psychologists refer to as elaborative
encoding and it’s well illustrated by a
nifty paradox known as the Baker Baker
paradox which goes like this
if I tell two people to remember the
same word if I say to you remember that
there is a guy named Baker that’s his
name and I say to you remember that
there is a guy who is a baker okay and I
come back to you at some point later on
and I say do you remember that word that
I told you a while back to you remember
what it was the person who was told his
name is a baker is less likely to
remember the same word and the person
who was told his job is that he is a
baker same word different amount of
remembering that’s weird
what’s going on here well the name Baker
doesn’t actually mean anything to you it
is entirely untethered from all of the
other memories floating around in your
skull but the common noun Baker we know
Baker’s Baker’s were funny white hats
Baker’s have flour on their hands
Baker’s smell good when they come home
from work they do even know a baker and
when we first hear that word we start
putting these associational hooks into
it that make it easier to fish it back
out at some later date the entire art of
what is going on in these memory
contests and the entire art of
remembering stuff better in everyday
life is figuring out ways to
transform capital B bakers into
lowercase D Baker’s to take information
that is lacking in context in
significance in meaning and transform it
in some way so that it becomes
meaningful in the light of all of the
other things that you have in your mind
let’s talk about what we know in terms
of food and brain power and memory and
here we start with good news for people
who like certain kinds of fish that’s
right
fish is a super store and we’re
specifically talking about fish that are
low in contaminants and high in omega-3
fat things like wild salmon Atlantic
mackerel Pacific oysters lake trout
these things are brimming with omega-3
fats and not just any old omega-3 fats
the most potent form BPA and DHA which
our body stops up and your life but do
we have to eat like 20 servings of fish
a week to make a significant significant
difference no you know something studies
have shown that just by eating one
serving of fish each week it’s better
than nothing but I’m gonna say at least
3 servings of fish each week in a
serving size should look like at least
the size of the palm of your hand and
raw or cooked is it is it better if it’s
raw like sushi and raw oysters you know
the omega-3s are in the raw and the
cooked but just for the safety issue you
go for the cooked and again three times
a week at least the size of the palm of
your hand and real quickly I know you’re
always a fan of the real thing over the
supplements but if you’re not getting if
you don’t like fish supplements okay
fish oil supplements are a great
alternative you want to stick with a
reputable brand and Matt people always
have to speak with their physician first
because they’re not for everyone all
right let’s talk about fruit now and in
particular when it comes to brain power
and memory what’s the connection between
berries and memories berries all berries
raspberries blueberries cranberries
blackberries are loaded with two natural
compounds anthocyanins and flavonols
which protect you against brain cell
degeneration and what’s particularly
interesting nowadays are blueberries we
have encouraging research that are
showing that blueberries just by eating
about a cup a day can really increase
your memory
well actually what I was reading is that
there are studies that say can actually
reverse memory loss that’s that’s a
whole different ball game that’s exactly
right so we’ve always known that
blueberries are good for you now in fact
they can be medicinal alright let’s talk
about leafy greens you’ve got to display
over here what’s the connection between
leafy greens and memory leafy greens are
loaded with folate which is also known
as folic acid and we’re not quite clear
what the connection is but we do see
this cause effect relationship people
who eat a lot of leafy greens have
slower declines in their memory and it
may be because folic acid protects blood
vessels or it helps the neurons those
brain cells communicate more efficiently
so at least one cup each day and raw or
cooked there as well doesn’t matter it
stays in it stays in even after you
steam it or boil it or cook it and
absolutely you just don’t want to boil
it in a whole out of water for prolonged
periods of time alright now we had a
segment on earlier this morning about
caffeine the health benefits and the
health risks when it comes to memory
though there is some scientific evidence
that can help your memory it’s exactly
right about two years ago Austrian
researchers took a group of people and
they hooked them up to an MRI machine
they fed them the equivalent of about
two cups of coffee and what it showed is
that the areas in the brain that are
responsible for memory increased and
earlier this year we looked at a large
scale study and it reported that women
in particularly I’m sorry this didn’t
translate for men were able to slow the
memory decline just by drinking two to
three cups of coffee each and every day
fish leafy vegetables berries and coffee
good seems to know good things to
remember no pun in today so the first
study we did we recruited a bunch of
people from the Boston area and these
were not monks or meditation teachers
these just average joe’s who on average
practice meditation about 30 or 40
minutes a day we put them in the scanner
and we compared them to a group of
people who are demographically matched
but who don’t meditate and what we found
is this that there were indeed several
regions of the brain that had more gray
matter in the meditators compared to the
controls when the regions I’m going to
point out to you is here in the front of
the brain is a area that’s important for
working memory and executive
decision-making and what was interesting
about it was
when we actually plotted the data versus
their ages so here in the red squares
that’s the controls and this is
something you see actually it’s been
well-documented that as we get older not
just there but across most of our cortex
it actually shrinks as we get older and
this is part of the reason why as we get
older it’s harder to figure things out
and to you know to remember things and
what was interesting was that in this
one region the 50 year old meditators
had the same amount of cortex as a 25
year olds suggesting that meditation
practice may actually slow down or
prevent the natural age-related decline
in cortical structure big idea thinking
big idea thinking is the supreme
unleaded fuel for your brain and big
idea thinking is not a supercharged
computer that can do big data storage
and then retrieve it when you want it
no big idea of thinking is when you take
in ideas from disparate areas you
combine it with your rich knowledge that
you already have and you form some
generalized higher-level
way of thinking so some of the ways that
we do big I do thinking is if you
synthesize how do you extract the
essence of talks that you hear or new
stories that you hear synthesize or
interpret how many times do we have
books and books and books and we can’t
remember if we read them or not because
we didn’t interpret the message
interpret what does it mean what’s the
bottom line meaning and three powerhouse
transformative communication think about
emails that you write what is your
subject lines say is it boring is it
rote is that anyone can write meet me at
2:00 what if you came up with a
transformative subject line that was so
powerful everyone wanted to read it and
then what about the message how can do
you just do a deluge of information
without really saying
that shows your deeper level thinking
Big Idea thinking is what makes your
memory and thinking and learning the
most robust I’ve shown in randomised
trials when you engage in Big Idea
thinking you increase your brain at all
levels of health think about increasing
your brain blood flow by eight to twelve
percent that’s really happy for a neuron
to get more brain blood flow we also
show 30 percent increase in the speed of
neural connection across the central
executive network which is what’s
important for planning and reasoning and
problem-solving Big Idea thinking is for
the brain what push-ups and pull-ups are
to the body so what is a mind Palace
well first of all a few things number
one it’s not just the work of fiction
it’s an actual real thing and it was not
invented by Sherlock Holmes number two
it actually dates back about 2,500 years
to 477 BC was it invented by a man named
Simon et’s in Greece a mind Palace is
essentially a room or a building that
you have memorized and you use the
locations in that room to store data let
me give you an example you go to your
friend’s house you take off your jacket
when you walk in the door and then you
set your jacket down in a chair you go
throughout the party you spend time at
your friend’s house that day and then
three or four hours when it comes time
to leave you know exactly you need to go
back to that chair to get your coat why
because the chair held that coat in your
brain and that is exactly what a mind
palace is if your friend had two or
three or four or five pieces of
furniture one you could put a hat and
one you could put your keys in you could
in theory go back to each one of those
locations and pick up the items that you
left the Maya palace works the same way
you memorize locations in a room and
then you later go back to those
locations to retrieve the data that you
want to remember the easiest way to
build your very own mind Palace is to
stand in the doorway of every room of
your house stand in the doorway start at
the left go around the room clockwise
and pick five pieces of furniture number
them
one two three four five then go to the
next room stand in the doorway of that
room and label them six seven eight nine
and ten go to the next room eleven
twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen in
every single room in your house pick
five pieces of furniture and number them
going around the room clockwise a few
rules of thumb here pick big items don’t
pick small items and number two spread
them out around the room good items to
pick will be things like deaths or beds
or TVs or refrigerators or stoves or
microwaves or sinks or bookshelves or
computers pick lots of different items
but if you use a chair in one room don’t
use a chair in the next these locations
are going to be places where you’re
going to mentally store data in your
mind Palace now once you have these
locations in your room numbered then I
want you to close your eyes and I want
you to say all your files 1 all the way
up to 20 or 30 however many you have and
then backwards 30 to 1
say I’m forwards and backwards over and
over again until you know them cold or
until somebody could say what was number
10 and you could say what it was just
like that
next a common objection of this is that
sometimes people will say wow Ron this
is too much work you really want me to
number all these pieces of furniture in
my house and memorize all these pieces
of furniture just to memorize a list of
words or something else it’s not really
true you already have these locations
memorized I’m not asking you to memorize
your house you already have it memorized
I’m just asking you to number it and
once you have it numbered it’s gonna be
a crazy cool skill that you’re gonna be
able to use to memorize anything you
want now let me give you an example of
how you would use this to memorize
something let’s say that you wanted to
memorize a list of words and on that
list words number 8 was a dog well
you’ve already determined what you’re 8
file is maybe it was your bed or your
dresser or a desk or a computer let’s
say it was a computer if number eight is
your computer and I give you the word
dog to memorize you visualize a dog on
your computer the dogs biting the
computer the dogs barking at the
computer the dogs run or
the computer the more action emotion you
see the better then I fade number nine
its water and let’s say that you’re
number nine piece of furniture is a
chair well you see that chair in your
brain and you imagine water pouring out
of the sky and the water goes all over
that chair then later when you want to
recall the data you go back around your
mind palettes and on the number eight
spot the computer you see a dog so you
know the word was a dog on the number
nine spot
a chair you see water so you know that
number nine was water you always use
every file in chronological order and
what I mean by that is this if I say
number eight is a dog and you think oh
well my number thirteen piece of
furniture is the mat where my dog sleeps
so I’m just gonna imagine my dog there
on number thirteen you don’t do that you
put the dog in the Mayan Palace in the
order that it falls if it’s the first
word you put it on the first piece of
furniture if there’s a third word you
put it on the third piece of furniture
if it’s the eighth word you put it on
the eighth piece of furniture you put it
in the order that it falls not where it
makes sense in your house and that’s an
important tip for the mind powers thank
you guys so much for watching Evan made
this video because Rita algebra has
asked him to on youtube if you have a
topic that you’d like Evan to cover in
his belief life series leave a comment
below and I’m sure he’ll do that for you
I’d also love to know which of the five
points meant the most to you and if you
have issues with memory or not I’m
really curious to find out so leave it
in the comments below and we’re gonna
join in the discussion thank you guys so
much for watching have an amazing day
continue to believe and we’ll see you
soon good morning believe nation
today’s believes right sorry there’s a
fly on my arm and an ant in my water
good morning belief nation today’s
believe life is about
Evan it’s about it’s about the why in
the how of memory loss memory loss
because reader yeah oh you just shoot
earlier are you rolling that did you see
this up come out of his nose onto the
ice bag
believe life is about Evan evidence
about it’s about the why and how of
improving your memory I think if there’s
one thing that I want to leave you with
its what ep the amnesiac who couldn’t
even remember that he had a memory
problem left me with which is the notion
that our lives are the sum of our
memories how much are we willing to lose
from our already short lives by losing
ourselves in our BlackBerry’s our
iPhones by not paying attention to the
human being across from us who is
talking with us by being so lazy that
we’re not willing to process deeply I
learned firsthand that there are
incredible memory capacities latent in
all of us but if you want to live a
memorable life you have to be the kind
of person who remembers to remember
this is my friend Ben prid more three
time world memory champion on his desk
in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of
playing cards that he is about to try to
memorize in one hour using a technique
that he invented and he alone has
mastered he used a similar technique to
memorize the precise order of 4140
random binary digits in half an hour
yeah and while there are a whole host of
ways of remembering stuff in these
competitions everything all of the
techniques that are being used
ultimately come down to a concept that
psychologists refer to as elaborative
encoding and it’s well illustrated by a
nifty paradox known as the Baker Baker
paradox which goes like this
if I tell two people to remember the
same word if I say to you remember that
there is a guy named Baker that’s his
name and I say to you remember that
there is a guy who is a baker okay and I
come back to you at some point later on
and I say do you remember that word that
I told you a while back to you remember
what it was the person who was told his
name is a baker is less likely to
remember the same word and the person
who was told his job is that he is a
baker same word different amount of
remembering that’s weird
what’s going on here well the name Baker
doesn’t actually mean anything to you it
is entirely untethered from all of the
other memories floating around in your
skull but the common noun Baker we know
Baker’s Baker’s were funny white hats
Baker’s have flour on their hands
Baker’s smell good when they come home
from work they do even know a baker and
when we first hear that word we start
putting these associational hooks into
it that make it easier to fish it back
out at some later date the entire art of
what is going on in these memory
contests and the entire art of
remembering stuff better in everyday
life is figuring out ways to
transform capital B bakers into
lowercase D Baker’s to take information
that is lacking in context in
significance in meaning and transform it
in some way so that it becomes
meaningful in the light of all of the
other things that you have in your mind
let’s talk about what we know in terms
of food and brain power and memory and
here we start with good news for people
who like certain kinds of fish that’s
right
fish is a super store and we’re
specifically talking about fish that are
low in contaminants and high in omega-3
fat things like wild salmon Atlantic
mackerel Pacific oysters lake trout
these things are brimming with omega-3
fats and not just any old omega-3 fats
the most potent form BPA and DHA which
our body stops up and your life but do
we have to eat like 20 servings of fish
a week to make a significant significant
difference no you know something studies
have shown that just by eating one
serving of fish each week it’s better
than nothing but I’m gonna say at least
3 servings of fish each week in a
serving size should look like at least
the size of the palm of your hand and
raw or cooked is it is it better if it’s
raw like sushi and raw oysters you know
the omega-3s are in the raw and the
cooked but just for the safety issue you
go for the cooked and again three times
a week at least the size of the palm of
your hand and real quickly I know you’re
always a fan of the real thing over the
supplements but if you’re not getting if
you don’t like fish supplements okay
fish oil supplements are a great
alternative you want to stick with a
reputable brand and Matt people always
have to speak with their physician first
because they’re not for everyone all
right let’s talk about fruit now and in
particular when it comes to brain power
and memory what’s the connection between
berries and memories berries all berries
raspberries blueberries cranberries
blackberries are loaded with two natural
compounds anthocyanins and flavonols
which protect you against brain cell
degeneration and what’s particularly
interesting nowadays are blueberries we
have encouraging research that are
showing that blueberries just by eating
about a cup a day can really increase
your memory
well actually what I was reading is that
there are studies that say can actually
reverse memory loss that’s that’s a
whole different ball game that’s exactly
right so we’ve always known that
blueberries are good for you now in fact
they can be medicinal alright let’s talk
about leafy greens you’ve got to display
over here what’s the connection between
leafy greens and memory leafy greens are
loaded with folate which is also known
as folic acid and we’re not quite clear
what the connection is but we do see
this cause effect relationship people
who eat a lot of leafy greens have
slower declines in their memory and it
may be because folic acid protects blood
vessels or it helps the neurons those
brain cells communicate more efficiently
so at least one cup each day and raw or
cooked there as well doesn’t matter it
stays in it stays in even after you
steam it or boil it or cook it and
absolutely you just don’t want to boil
it in a whole out of water for prolonged
periods of time alright now we had a
segment on earlier this morning about
caffeine the health benefits and the
health risks when it comes to memory
though there is some scientific evidence
that can help your memory it’s exactly
right about two years ago Austrian
researchers took a group of people and
they hooked them up to an MRI machine
they fed them the equivalent of about
two cups of coffee and what it showed is
that the areas in the brain that are
responsible for memory increased and
earlier this year we looked at a large
scale study and it reported that women
in particularly I’m sorry this didn’t
translate for men were able to slow the
memory decline just by drinking two to
three cups of coffee each and every day
fish leafy vegetables berries and coffee
good seems to know good things to
remember no pun in today so the first
study we did we recruited a bunch of
people from the Boston area and these
were not monks or meditation teachers
these just average joe’s who on average
practice meditation about 30 or 40
minutes a day we put them in the scanner
and we compared them to a group of
people who are demographically matched
but who don’t meditate and what we found
is this that there were indeed several
regions of the brain that had more gray
matter in the meditators compared to the
controls when the regions I’m going to
point out to you is here in the front of
the brain is a area that’s important for
working memory and executive
decision-making and what was interesting
about it was
when we actually plotted the data versus
their ages so here in the red squares
that’s the controls and this is
something you see actually it’s been
well-documented that as we get older not
just there but across most of our cortex
it actually shrinks as we get older and
this is part of the reason why as we get
older it’s harder to figure things out
and to you know to remember things and
what was interesting was that in this
one region the 50 year old meditators
had the same amount of cortex as a 25
year olds suggesting that meditation
practice may actually slow down or
prevent the natural age-related decline
in cortical structure big idea thinking
big idea thinking is the supreme
unleaded fuel for your brain and big
idea thinking is not a supercharged
computer that can do big data storage
and then retrieve it when you want it
no big idea of thinking is when you take
in ideas from disparate areas you
combine it with your rich knowledge that
you already have and you form some
generalized higher-level
way of thinking so some of the ways that
we do big I do thinking is if you
synthesize how do you extract the
essence of talks that you hear or new
stories that you hear synthesize or
interpret how many times do we have
books and books and books and we can’t
remember if we read them or not because
we didn’t interpret the message
interpret what does it mean what’s the
bottom line meaning and three powerhouse
transformative communication think about
emails that you write what is your
subject lines say is it boring is it
rote is that anyone can write meet me at
2:00 what if you came up with a
transformative subject line that was so
powerful everyone wanted to read it and
then what about the message how can do
you just do a deluge of information
without really saying
that shows your deeper level thinking
Big Idea thinking is what makes your
memory and thinking and learning the
most robust I’ve shown in randomised
trials when you engage in Big Idea
thinking you increase your brain at all
levels of health think about increasing
your brain blood flow by eight to twelve
percent that’s really happy for a neuron
to get more brain blood flow we also
show 30 percent increase in the speed of
neural connection across the central
executive network which is what’s
important for planning and reasoning and
problem-solving Big Idea thinking is for
the brain what push-ups and pull-ups are
to the body so what is a mind Palace
well first of all a few things number
one it’s not just the work of fiction
it’s an actual real thing and it was not
invented by Sherlock Holmes number two
it actually dates back about 2,500 years
to 477 BC was it invented by a man named
Simon et’s in Greece a mind Palace is
essentially a room or a building that
you have memorized and you use the
locations in that room to store data let
me give you an example you go to your
friend’s house you take off your jacket
when you walk in the door and then you
set your jacket down in a chair you go
throughout the party you spend time at
your friend’s house that day and then
three or four hours when it comes time
to leave you know exactly you need to go
back to that chair to get your coat why
because the chair held that coat in your
brain and that is exactly what a mind
palace is if your friend had two or
three or four or five pieces of
furniture one you could put a hat and
one you could put your keys in you could
in theory go back to each one of those
locations and pick up the items that you
left the Maya palace works the same way
you memorize locations in a room and
then you later go back to those
locations to retrieve the data that you
want to remember the easiest way to
build your very own mind Palace is to
stand in the doorway of every room of
your house stand in the doorway start at
the left go around the room clockwise
and pick five pieces of furniture number
them
one two three four five then go to the
next room stand in the doorway of that
room and label them six seven eight nine
and ten go to the next room eleven
twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen in
every single room in your house pick
five pieces of furniture and number them
going around the room clockwise a few
rules of thumb here pick big items don’t
pick small items and number two spread
them out around the room good items to
pick will be things like deaths or beds
or TVs or refrigerators or stoves or
microwaves or sinks or bookshelves or
computers pick lots of different items
but if you use a chair in one room don’t
use a chair in the next these locations
are going to be places where you’re
going to mentally store data in your
mind Palace now once you have these
locations in your room numbered then I
want you to close your eyes and I want
you to say all your files 1 all the way
up to 20 or 30 however many you have and
then backwards 30 to 1
say I’m forwards and backwards over and
over again until you know them cold or
until somebody could say what was number
10 and you could say what it was just
like that
next a common objection of this is that
sometimes people will say wow Ron this
is too much work you really want me to
number all these pieces of furniture in
my house and memorize all these pieces
of furniture just to memorize a list of
words or something else it’s not really
true you already have these locations
memorized I’m not asking you to memorize
your house you already have it memorized
I’m just asking you to number it and
once you have it numbered it’s gonna be
a crazy cool skill that you’re gonna be
able to use to memorize anything you
want now let me give you an example of
how you would use this to memorize
something let’s say that you wanted to
memorize a list of words and on that
list words number 8 was a dog well
you’ve already determined what you’re 8
file is maybe it was your bed or your
dresser or a desk or a computer let’s
say it was a computer if number eight is
your computer and I give you the word
dog to memorize you visualize a dog on
your computer the dogs biting the
computer the dogs barking at the
computer the dogs run or
the computer the more action emotion you
see the better then I fade number nine
its water and let’s say that you’re
number nine piece of furniture is a
chair well you see that chair in your
brain and you imagine water pouring out
of the sky and the water goes all over
that chair then later when you want to
recall the data you go back around your
mind palettes and on the number eight
spot the computer you see a dog so you
know the word was a dog on the number
nine spot
a chair you see water so you know that
number nine was water you always use
every file in chronological order and
what I mean by that is this if I say
number eight is a dog and you think oh
well my number thirteen piece of
furniture is the mat where my dog sleeps
so I’m just gonna imagine my dog there
on number thirteen you don’t do that you
put the dog in the Mayan Palace in the
order that it falls if it’s the first
word you put it on the first piece of
furniture if there’s a third word you
put it on the third piece of furniture
if it’s the eighth word you put it on
the eighth piece of furniture you put it
in the order that it falls not where it
makes sense in your house and that’s an
important tip for the mind powers thank
you guys so much for watching Evan made
this video because Rita algebra has
asked him to on youtube if you have a
topic that you’d like Evan to cover in
his belief life series leave a comment
below and I’m sure he’ll do that for you
I’d also love to know which of the five
points meant the most to you and if you
have issues with memory or not I’m
really curious to find out so leave it
in the comments below and we’re gonna
join in the discussion thank you guys so
much for watching have an amazing day
continue to believe and we’ll see you
soon good morning believe nation
today’s believes right sorry there’s a
fly on my arm and an ant in my water
good morning belief nation today’s
believe life is about
Evan it’s about it’s about the why in
the how of memory loss memory loss
because reader yeah oh you just shoot
earlier are you rolling that did you see
this up come out of his nose onto the
ice bag
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