I was recently listening to a podcast episode by Cliff Ravenscraft, where he shared his experience trying out memory retention exercises he learned through the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Free.

I picked up the book on audible this morning and am a few chapters in, and it's got me absolutely captivated with the ideas and concepts outlined!

The main practical takeaway I got from it is when trying to remember things like lists, or people, you can tie those new instances to existing memories and places. Everyone has an easier time remembering physical locations over numbers or raw things. Joshua gave an instance where he was challenged to remember a list of fifteen to-do items. Initially, he could only remember a few of the first on the list, but he could recite them flawlessly once he was taught to tie those objects to specific memories. 

For example, let's say I have a shopping list with the following items:

Flour, Plastic bins, milk, cheddar cheese, chips, cinnamon, paper plates, olive oil, and chai tea.

I brought up an image of my home; I walked up to the mailbox and opened it to a poof of flour in my face. I then walk past my brother's car, and he has it jacked up on four plastic bins under each wheel; walking past that to the front door, I see a cow, mooing loudly to be milked. I step through the front door and look at the key bowl, only to find it overflowing with yellow cheese. I walk to the stairs and begin to ascend them, but there is a crunching noise under my feet, and I look down to see piles of chips on every single step, and each makes a louder sound than the one before. I reach the top of the landing, and it's a blur of brown; it difficult to breathe, and I'm almost choking on the cinnamon in the air. I walk to the bathroom to my right and find the toilet seat covered in paper plates, stacked all the way to the ceiling. I walk past the bathroom and look into my brother's room to see his brand new water-cooled computer flowing with a transparent green liquid. It's getting pumped from a 50-gallon bucket of olive oil in the corner of the room; it's some new thing he heard online that makes your computer run much faster. I run to my bedroom only to find a giant Starbucks venti chai tea latte drink sitting in the middle of the room. 

You're really building a story, a walkthrough in the first person of your known locations. The more outlandish the object you're trying to remember in the story, the better. If it was commonplace, like the cheese in the refrigerator, it would blend into the background and wouldn't be memorable. 

I haven't yet gotten to how you can use this for remembering things like a deck of cards, as using places would take a long time to build, and you would eventually run out of things in your mental rooms. But for remembering list items, it works wonders! I still can remember almost every single item from the example Cliff Ravenscraft gave teaching his daughter these ideas. 

Starting a new idea venture, sharing what I am learning in personal development and the following is my first post and first of hopefully many videos, I plan to upload and share my experience!

One thing I find in common from almost every autobiography, business books, and great leaders is some form of the phrase "I wish I knew now at an earlier age". 

Wisdom is something I think everyone wants, but the means to gain wisdom is not always easy. For my own generation, there is a massive disconnect between parents and their children. We will often discount the wisdom from our father or mother and consider it not relevant or "old fashioned" where in reality, they are sharing with us mistakes they made and how to avoid them for ourselves. 

I am very rebellious, rebellious from my own generation. I cannot stand being just like everyone else, I want to be different, and one major way I've found to be different is doing my best to take advantage of the wisdom shared by older, wiser individuals and do my utmost to understand and apply them to my life. 

I want to take the fifth commandment, "honor thy father and thy mother," and take it to a further level than it is commonly seen. There are amazing rewards for showing honor and following their commands, as well as recommendations! 

Not everything I've learned is useful or connects, but it's worth trying out, for the things I have found helpful have been huge life changers!

I rest in the knowledge that I will never be in the know. I will always be a student; the second I think I have "arrived" is the second I slow my capacity for gaining new thoughts and insights.