040 Time for a Bump - I Reminisce I Reminisce

This is Dr. Torrey.

Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. Today happens to be my birthday, and I have a gift for you. If you accept it and you implement it, it will deepen the rapport you have with the people that are most important to you, and it will elevate your relationships with them. Now, first, before I get into it, let me first describe what sparked this. Why am I doing this now? What does it have to do with my birthday? I actually have some gratitude exercises that I do now. The first is a daily one, which I every morning, I write down five things that I'm grateful for, and I do that before I start the day. At the end of the day, I write down three wins from that day. That's what I do on a daily basis. But on a weekly basis, I have a different exercise. I created a sheet of paper that has over 4,000 small boxes on it. They're all arranged in rows of 52. Each box represents a week, and each row represents a year. And then I have 80 plus rows of these boxes. And what I do is I color in a box. And as I color in a box, when the week starts, I look back at that week prior and I ask myself, who am I grateful for? What am I grateful for? Who should I, you know, reach out to? Who should I thank? Who should I pray for or just think about in a good way? So I look back and ask myself those things. Then I look forward and say, in the week ahead, who can I serve? Who can I help? Who is somebody that I appreciate that I want to make sure that they know that I appreciate? I do this every week. So what does this have to do with my birthday? Well, today I colored in the last box of the entire year, coloring in the last box of the year. I looked back not just at the year, but I actually looked back at all the boxes that have been colored in for all of those rows. And I started looking and reflecting on those moments from the deep past of me growing up and all the milestones and all those things and all the people along the way. I got into this mood of, like, deep reflection. And so that's how I'm going to serve you today, because I'm going to talk to you about a concept in psychology called the reminiscence Bump. Now, the Reminiscence bump was introduced into the psychology world probably like 1970s, 1980s ish, but it was well known to the world of advertising and direct response copywriting long before the 1980s. But nonetheless, when they looked back at autobiographies and biographies, they realized that there was a similar pattern in all of them. And that is that in the ages of what we would call adolescence and early adulthood and ages like 10 to 30, those were the times of the most vivid and emotionally significant memories that people would describe in their biographies and their autobiographies. Essentially, they had disproportionate recall for this era, this ages 10 to 30. They call that the reminiscence bump, Meaning if you look at all of the most vivid memories on a scale of one's life, there's a huge bump in the years between ages 10 and 30. There's all kinds of theories on why this exists. Why does the reminiscence bump exist? Ages 10 to 30, that's a time of identity formation. It's a time of a bunch of novelty, a bunch of firsts, right? It's your first day of school. It's your first summer break away from your parents. You get married, you get you your first time in college, your first paying a bill, your first drive of driving a car. All of these firsts occur during this time. That is a period of newness. That is another reason that they theorize that this reminiscence bump occurs. There's other things, too. Brain function. Cognitively, we're at a peak moment in our lives as well for our brain function. After that, it starts to decline. So there's another thing called the cultural life script hypothesis, which basically says that during that era, anyway, we emphasize milestones. And so our culture is scripting the path of our life, in a way. And because those milestones are concentrated in that time, that's partial part of the reason for the reminiscence bump. But whatever the thing is, doesn't matter. Whatever the reason for the reminiscence bump, doesn't matter. What matters here is that it can serve you, it can transform relationships, and I mean really transform him. And that's my promise that I'm going to deliver to you is in this episode. First, let's talk about how others use it. Where does it appear? So it appears certainly in therapies, right? Psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, all kinds of therapies, sometimes coaching as well, where they look back at those formative years, the 10 to 30 time during the reminiscence bump, and they do what we call in conversational hypnosis, by the way, which I think is one of the most ninja influence domains out there. Conversation in that sort of model of conversation. They say, look for problem states and look for resource states and bring them together. And many times you can find resource states for somebody in their formative years. In other words, you were resilient then. What will it take to be to channel that person back to this time? So sometimes it's used in therapies, direct or indirect, where they reference times when they were successful or times when they were resilient or times when they were loving or had a fulfilling relationship or whatever the issue is that they're seeking therapy for. Nonetheless, the therapists use the reminiscence bump in their therapy oftentimes. Now, another time that's really useful is with dementia care for both the patient and their family, because the reminiscence bump is a time where we have the most vivid memories. We have the recall of the most emotionally significant moments in our lives. They actually are very sticky. They last. So when you're caring for somebody who has dementia, if there's a memory that's gonna come back to them, it may not be the memory. It may just be the feeling that occurred at the time of the memory. But nonetheless, it's helpful. It's in caring for them because it's a way of bringing them back to love and care and trust. And nostalgia is a good way of doing that. Now, it also works for the family in that setting as well, because sometimes in dementia care, it can be taxing because they're not remembering things during the. Their. Their everyday functioning. But you can actually have a parent child moment where. Or a sibling. Sibling moment when you reflect on something that is nostalgic or something from that era. The reminiscence bump. So it can help in dementia care. It's certainly used by writers and filmmakers, cinematographers, et cetera. They look for things that would trigger memories for people from the nostalgia bump. So they might reference something. There might be, like, something in a script that an actor says, something that references the past in a way that it's a reminiscence bump for those who are consuming it. Sometimes it's a way to serve multiple audiences at the same time. Right. If you've ever watched cartoons as an adult, the cartoons that kids are growing up with, there's often references in there that only adults would get because they're referencing something from the reminiscence bump. Even movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, the main Star Lord, whatever, the main. One of the main characters is listening to old music on cassettes, right? Like a mixtape. Well, anybody from my ear and remembers the con, the making of a mixtape. So even though that movie might appeal to younger people, it also appeals to the older generation because of that reference, that. Referencing the reminiscence bump. And in fact, that's how companies like Disney increase consumption, because they. They get us to tap into that reminiscent. They tap into the reminiscence bump. They did. Certainly did it with Star wars, right, The Star wars sort of series. I grew up with Star Wars. Now all of a sudden, Mandalorian comes along and there's a baby Yoda. Well, guess what? That's attractive to kids. That's attractive to young adults. And then their parents are immediately drawn back to that nostalgic time. So. So in a way, it increases the consumption. It actually creates an environment where parents are encouraging their kids to consume certain things because of this bump. Reminiscence bump. Now, advertisers and marketers use it all the time. They reference songs and movies inside of the ads that can appeal to multiple age groups at the same time. So I recently saw phone ad that had the song Bust a Move in. It was. Well, bust a Move was a song from my era, right? So then what happens? It sparked a conversation. I started talking to my kids about it, and I was like, hey, that song came from when I was. When I was in high school or whatever. And then. Then I realized I was like, wait a minute. That just encouraged me to talk about a commercial. So this stuff is used all the time now. Sometimes it can be used for good. For example, in public service announcements. Anybody that's around my age might see ads that say, if you remember this, it's time for your colonoscopy. And then they show, like, a picture of a cassette tape or they show a picture of a Volkswagen Beetle or something like that, right? If you remember this, it's time for your colonoscopy. Now, what can you do with it? What. How can you use this reminiscence bump as a way to improve your relationships? Let's get back to that thing that I do every week. Every week I color in that box. I think about the last week, and I think about the week ahead. Now, because it's my birthday, I'm thinking about the year ahead. I'm thinking about all the years of the past. Now, as I look at the year ahead, where can I create moments? And how can I use the reminiscence bump to create those moments? Let me just go through some potential examples that might serve you. By the way, in the Influence Book Club, one of the first books we go over is the Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. And one of the challenges that we have in the community in there is to say, look at the year ahead. Where are the potential milestones? Where can we create new milestones? Where are the events, the transitions, the potential peak moments, the potential low spots? Can we create better moments in that time? Can we deliberately look ahead at the year and create good moments? So that's what we're doing inside the Influence Book Club. I want to give you some of these tips right now to use the reminiscence bump to improve your relationships. Now some of the ways that you might be able to do this is you can deliberately create nostalgic moments. You can, let's say you're going to a friend's house or you're going to a family member's house. Pull up old pictures, pull up family, like relics or things that, that were from the past. Hey, I found this thing. Remember this? And then you start talking about it. Remember that time, right? So you create these nostalgic moments. If you're at a dinner and it's some sort of celebration, recall an old celebration, bring it up and say, oh, remember that time and that funny thing happened. You get them into a nostalgic moment on purpose because it feels good. It's a peak memory time and it creates a bond and a connection with each other. So another thing you could do, let's say you don't share a generation with each other. You can ask about their reminiscence bump. What was it like when you were a teenager? For both my mother in law and my mother, we have this book where it's like my mom's stories or something like that. It's like a notebook with a bunch of prompts and it asks them to tell stories about, well, what was it like when you first did whatever, like, you know, before you got married. What was it like? What was it like when you introduced the, you know, they would go back and look at these stories from the past and then they write down those stories so you can actually ask people about their bump. It's really amazing. You see people light up. Not just the person that's reminiscing, the person who's thinking about their own bump, they light up. But guess what? So do the younger generations. For some reason, there's this magnetism. It feels good to hear, wow, what was it like when you were a teenager? When my girls ask my mom that kind of question, it's like they're magnetized by it. They want to hear those stories. So create those moments. Another thing you can do is if you have a shared history with somebody, revisit that history. And by the way, that can even be in like a cultural sort of reference kind of way. There was one time I was on a cardiac surgery unit. One of the. One of the secretaries was kind of complaining or whatever. And so that I could get her into a better mood, I used the reminiscence bump. Here's what I did. I turned around to her and as she was done after, she said something like, you know how it is with these insurance companies, and she's complaining about the insurance companies. And I turned around and I looked at her and I made a funny face, like a. Like a knowing glance. And I was like, girl, you know it's true. Now what was I referencing? I was referencing a song from Milli Vanilli, which was a song from a certain era. I think it was the 90s or something. And they had a song called Girl, you know it's true. Now when I said that to her, there were only like three people in the room that got it, but they cracked up laughing, okay? The others didn't know what it was. So then what happened? They're like, why is that so funny? What happened, like. And so then we all talked about it, right? It created a moment. And not only that, it shifted her from complaining to having a nostalgic moment. I'm telling you, this reminiscence bump is powerful. You can do other things. Like when the time comes to give someone a gift, bring a nostalgia based gift. If you're going to someone's house and they're from a different culture, bring something from their culture or something from their history. If you have a shared history with somebody, bring something from that shared history, bring it to them and give that gift. Here's another thing. Remember, the reminiscence bump is full of new firsts, right? That's one of the theories on why it's full of first moments, right? First times. So because of that, you can create new firsts with your spouse, with your loved one, with your kids. Create a new first moment and do that deliberately. How can I create a moment like that? Sure, the reminiscence bump is to ages 10 to 30, but you can create new ones. You can create new ones by looking at what are the qualities of memories during that time. Bring those forward, do it now. Make new firsts. Another thing you could do. You may have seen some trends on social media where people like, recreate an old photo, do that, bring the old photo to a family party or a friend's get together and recreate it. Recreate that photo, that moment. I'm telling you the bond. You'll feel it immediately. These are things you can do to tap in to this reminiscence bump. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to deepen rapport, increase connection, improve your most important relationships by tapping into the Reminiscence bump. These are the steps. Look forward to this coming year and say, where am I going to have interactions with people that are very important to me? Where am I going to have those interactions? Then look back to the past, reminisce, find something in the past and bump it forward. Look into your past, reminisce, and then bring it back to the future. I'll see you in the next episode.

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