Kwik Brain: Remember Everyones Name (Episode 6)

Welcome to Kwik Brain, bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik. Free your mind. Let's imagine if we could access 100% of our brain's capacity. I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it. I know kung fu. Show me. Welcome back. How do you remember people's names? This is a big one, right? Have you ever met somebody, they give you their name, and then seconds after the handshake breaks, the name just disappears out of your mind? Where did it go? Or maybe you're talking to somebody whose name you really should know because you recognize their face. You don't know where you remember them from, and what makes it worse is when that person has the nerve to remember your name. Or maybe you're talking to the same person and somebody comes up who you know, and you're in a position where you have to introduce these 2 people. Or maybe you're at the gym and you're on the treadmill and somebody walks by and you recognize this person. They say hi and you, for the life of you, you don't remember their name. And that's what this episode is all about. This coaching session is all about answering the common question that we get in our private Facebook group, Kwik Brain. And it's how do you remember people's names? And if you haven't joined Kwik Brain yet, you could go to kwikbrain.com. It's free. It's our free community where you can get show notes and you could post questions for me to answer in future episodes. And also, speaking of names, I was going through the reviews on iTunes and I just want to thank all these amazing individuals by name. Oh my goodness, Amanda and Chris and Maria and Michael and Nathan and Alex and Mindy. Thank you everybody who took the time to be able to go to iTunes and leave a 5-star review and their favorite comments about what they're learning in these episodes, because what that allows us to do is to help more people. As you know, I'm on a mission because I grew up with a brain injury and I grew up with learning challenges. My goal is to be able to help as many people around the world have better, brighter, quicker brains. And because I know what it's like to struggle, and specifically with these reviews, it allows us to help more people. And especially in this area I struggled with is around remembering names. I was so horrible at remembering names. What's the message that we send to somebody when we forget their name? What's the message we send to somebody? It's that they're not important. Or that we don't care. Now, is that true? Of course not, right? I think the most important business etiquette networking skill, maybe even just a human being skill, is the ability to confidently remember someone's name. And that's the challenge. And so people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And a person's name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode. So I'm going to give you my 7 brain hacks on how to quickly remember names. Now, if you haven't already, make sure you listen to episode number 2, which is all about improving your memory now. Because in there I shared the 3 tips, brain hacks if you will, on how to overcome and fix forgetfulness. So you want to refer back to that if you haven't listened to prior episodes. Now, what are the 7 different ways on how to be able to remember people's names? I'm going to give you 7 ideas really quickly, and we'll maybe go into deeper episodes later on. We'll go deeper into other episodes in the future. And so what I want you to remember next time you're going to an event, a conference, a wedding where you're going to be surrounded by individuals and you want to put your memory cap on, you want to activate your quick brain, I want you to look in the mirror and as you're fixing your makeup, you're fixing your clothes, I want you to say to yourself, I am going to be suave. I'm going to be Be suave. The B stands for believe. The B stands for believe because Henry Ford said, if you believe you can or believe you can't, either way, what? You're right. If you believe you can or believe you can't, either way you're right. And here's the thing, a lot of people come to me and they say, oh Jim, I'm just so horrible at remembering names. I'm getting older, or I have this, I'm just, I can't remember this. And what they're doing is they're fighting for their limitations. And here's the thing, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. And so you need positive, powerful beliefs to be able to do positive and powerful things in the world. Because here's the thing, all behavior is belief-driven. All behavior is belief-driven. What does that mean? In order to get a result in your life, in any area of your life, your health, your relationships, your finance, your career, you need to do a behavior, right? And in order to do that behavior though, you You need an empowering belief that allows you to do that behavior. And so if you believe that you're not good at remembering names, you're not going to be able to do the behavior that allows you to get that kind of results. And so be conscious of your limiting beliefs. And what I would do for this, because Dr. Daniel Amen, the famous brain doctor, calls them ants, killing ants, automatic negative thoughts. Because here's the thing. I remember I was preparing for a marathon. I read this chapter and it said this verbatim, and I've said this before, but just to reinforce it, because review is a powerful memory tool. It said this: your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is a program it will run. So if you tell yourself you are not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. So something very simple to eliminate negative self-talk is just to add Simple word, 3-letter word, yet at the end. I'm not good at remembering names yet. I don't have a great memory yet. So be conscious of your beliefs. The E in Be SUAVE stands for exercise. Exercise. And I don't mean physical exercise, although people who are more physically active on a daily basis will score better on mental acuity tests, focus, memory. So whatever is good for your heart is going to be good for your head. So physical movement is very, very important. We're going to do a whole episode on the best physical movements to be able to activate your brain power. So make sure you subscribe. Now, what I mean by exercise is practice, because say it out loud, practice makes what? This is the active part, right? Practice makes progress. And what I mean by that is the bad news is to remember names is a skill and it takes effort. That's the bad news. The good news, it doesn't take as much as you think. I remember when I learned these techniques, I got, it took about 30 days and all of a sudden I just started remembering names. It takes about approximately 30, 60 days to be able to ingrain a new habit depending on what research you buy into. For example, in order to be able to tie your shoes, it took about 4 weeks or so, 30 days to be able to do it unconsciously, to be able to drive a car, to be able to learn how to type. Same thing with names. So practice, because what you practice in private, you're rewarded for where? In public, right? You've heard it over and over again. So that's the E, it's exercise. Now the S in SUAVE stands Say it. Say— you want to say the name. You meet someone for the first time and you say the name. You meet someone named Ted, you say, hello, Ted. Now, the reason why you say it is it means you get to hear it twice, right? Once from the person and then once from yourself. The other reason why you want to say it is sometimes you want to make sure you heard it correctly because you don't want to have a 20-minute conversation with Ted and say goodbye, Ed, right? So it's better to get corrected up front. So you want to be able to say the person's name. Very, very simple. The U in SUAVE stands for use the name. You want to use it in the conversation. Now notice I say use it, don't abuse it, right? It would be, Mary, it's nice to meet you. Mary, do you want to grab lunch? Mary, what do you want to talk about? Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary. That would be an abuse. I'm saying use it 3 or 4 times in the context of the conversation. And you'll get amazing results. Now, the A in SUAVE stands for ask. What's everyone's favorite subject? You know, it's not travel and it's not television. It's themselves, right? Everyone's always tuned in to everyone's favorite radio station, which is WIIFM, what's in it for me, right? And so everybody loves talking about themselves in some way. And what I would say is because a name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears, You could ask about a person's name. Now, this is very effective for names that are not familiar to you. Maybe 80% of the time you meet somebody and they have a name that's pretty common, but for the 10 or 20% of the time you meet someone and you're hearing a name that you haven't heard before, what could you ask about a person's name? You could ask what? Say it out loud. How do you spell it? Who were you named after? Where is it from? What does it mean? All these questions you could ask about a person's name. I remember I was doing this training for the country's largest life insurance company, and I was doing this training, and the training director in the room, her name was Nankita. Nankita. And I remember talking, I was like, wow, that's beautiful. And I asked her in front of her coworkers, um, where's, where's it from? How do you spell it? And I asked her, what does it mean? And I remember she said, she paused, she looked at her coworkers, about 100 or so people, and she said— I was like, what does it mean? And she said, It means graceful falling waters. I was like, wow, that's beautiful. And based on her coworker's reaction, I was like, how long have you worked here, Nikita? She was like, over 4 years. You're like with a lot of these people? Yeah, a lot of them are my good friends and were at my wedding. And I said to the group, I said, raise your hand if you knew that's what her name meant. How many people raised their hand? Not one person. And so that created a connection that's there because remember, a name is the sweetest sound to a person's ear. So you could ask about it. The V in Suave stands for visualize. How many of you are much better with faces than you are with names? Is that you? You go to somebody and say, hey, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone and say, hey, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. There's a Chinese proverb that goes, what I hear I forget, what I see I remember, what I do I understand. So what does this mean? If you tend to remember what you see, then try seeing what you want to remember. So for example, if a person's name is Mark, imagine you're putting a check mark right on their forehead. Now you're thinking, Jim, why would I do that? That's so childish. Who are the fastest learners on the planet? Children, right? They have imagination. They are very active like that. They're creative. So I want you to just play with this a little bit. So if a person's name is Mike, imagine them jumping on the table and singing karaoke on a what? On a mic, right? A microphone. If a person's name is Mary, imagine you meet Mary and for a split second you imagine she's carrying 2 lambs underneath her arm, right? Right? Underneath her arms, Mary Had a Little Lamb, right? Or remind you, because that's how the brain works, off of reminders. If a person's name is Carol, you can imagine what? Maybe they're Christmas caroling. So that's the V is visualize. And finally, the E in SUAVE stands for end. You leave saying goodbye, ending with their name. Because if you could walk into a room and meet those same 10 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one by name, Who are they all going to remember? They're all going to remember you. Want to double your brain speed and memory power? If you'd like to learn rapidly and get ahead faster, I'd like to give you my brand new Kwik Brain Accelerator program. You will discover exactly what I teach my clients to learn, read, and remember anything in half the time. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. That's kwikbrain.com. Or simply text the word podcast to 916-822-7246 and we'll send you a direct link. That's 916-82-BRAIN. Growing up struggling with learning challenges from a childhood brain injury, it's been my life's mission to help you have your very best brain so you can win more every single day. Now, want more Kwik Brain? Here are 4 ways to fast-track your results and lock in what you just learned into your long-term memory. Remember fast. F-A-S-T. The F stands for Facebook. You're not alone on this journey. I invite you to join our free private online group. There you can connect with me, your fellow brain lovers, links to resources, and even submit your questions for me to answer in future episodes. Go to kwikbrain.com. That's K-W-I-K brain dot com. The A stands for apply. Act on what you learned today. Remember, knowledge is not power; it's. Potential power. It only becomes power when you use it. So use what you just learned. The S stands for subscribe. Don't miss the next episode and other free brain training. And finally, the T stands for teach. You want to learn faster now? The key is to lock it in right away by teaching it to someone else. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Here's a simple way to do that. Leave a review on iTunes. Leave a review with your biggest takeaway from this episode. You could also post and share this podcast on your social media. It helps us spread our mission of building better, brighter brains. And of course, tag us so our team can properly thank you. #KwikBrain, K-W-I-K Brain. Mine is @JimKwik, K-W-I-K, on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So what does FAST stand for? Facebook, apply, subscribe, teach. I'll see you in our next episode of Quick Brain. Until then, remember, you are faster and smarter than you think.