The No 1 Secret to Better Memory 🧠

What's maybe one thing we can start doing to start to improve our memory?

Yeah, so let's, let's take a specific example. You know, when people come to me and they say they want a better memory, it's like somebody going to a coach and saying, I want to be better at sports. Like, what sport specifically, right? So let's say it's names and faces. You know, it's important, obviously, because if you have any relationship with a person, it's hard to show someone you're going to care for their future, their business, their health, whatever you have to offer them if you don't care enough just to remember them, Remembering people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Simple acronym like MOM, you know, the MOM. I wrote this chapter in Greece because I found out there was a goddess of memory in ancient Greece, and her kids were the 9 Muses of art, science, and literature. But it's interesting that the mother was, you know, was memory. And so remember MOM, it's another acronym. Let's say you want to remember names and faces, and you're normally not very good at it, but there was a suitcase, a fictional suitcase of $1 million cash for you or your favorite charity. If you just remember the name of the next person you meet, how many people listening are going to remember that person's name?

Yeah.

A whole lot, right? So it had nothing to do with your capabilities. So as a memory coach, I'm going to call people on their BS, their belief systems, right? And had nothing to do with your capability. It has everything to do with the first M in MOM, which is your motivation. So something very simple like asking yourself, let's say you want to remember names, just taking a split second before you're introduced, why do I want to remember this person? Maybe it's to show the person some respect or get a referral, practice these things I learned, you know, on Josh's podcast. Because if you can't come up with a reason, you won't get the reward, as reasons reap results. Things have to go from your head to your heart to your hands, right? If you have a goal in your mind, in your head, but you're not acting with your hands, you're procrastinating. Check the second H, which is your heart, right?

Mm-hmm.

Which is a symbol of emotions. And we are emotional creatures. Like, we're not logical. We're definitely biological. You think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. We are this neurotransmitter. We are this chemical feeling soup, right? But we need to have a why, and we need to start there. So just ask yourself why. The O in MOM stands for observation. A lot of people, they blame their retention when they forget something, and it's not often their retention. It's their attention. The art of memory is the art of attention.

Yeah.

And so even like a lot of times they're not really listening, they're thinking about what they're going to say, right? So they're not even forgetting their name. They're just not really hearing the name. And if you did this little, like, mind experiment, think about the word listen and picture it, you know, in the whiteboard of your mind. And if you scramble the letters around, it spells another word perfectly. The word listen, when you scramble the letters, spells the word silent, right? And just being present, you know, you have this incredible supercomputer, 86 billion brain cells, neurons. It doesn't come with an owner's manual. It's not user-friendly. It could remember one But we're not often because we're not really present. And then the last M in MOM, you have the motivation, the observation, are the methods. And so something simple to do that everyone could do when they're meeting somebody for the first time is take the name and turn it into a simple picture. Because we think in pictures, right? When you get on an airplane, no longer does it say fasten your seatbelt or, you know, or something, you know, like no smoking. There's a picture, right? And a picture is worth a thousand words.

Wow.

And your visual cortex context takes up a lot more real estate in your brain. And we tend to remember what we see, right? You see a face, you remember the face. You go to someone and say, 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, I remember your name, but I forgot your face, right? And there's a proverb that says, what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. And what I do, I understand. What I hear, I forget. I heard the name, I forgot it. What I see, I remember. I saw the face, I remember it. And what you do, going through the power of practice, you really understand by doing. And so So if you tend to remember what you see, my tip would be try seeing what you want to remember. So you meet somebody named Mike, and for a split second, imagine them jumping on the table and singing karaoke on a microphone. And it sounds so childish, but who are the fastest learners, right? Children.

Yeah.

And they use their imagination. They use emotion. You meet someone named Carol, and imagine for a split second, they just bust into Christmas carols, right? And, you know, a person's name is Mary. I imagine them carrying 2 lambs for Mary Had a Little Lamb, or I imagine them in a wedding dress. Someone's name happens to be Mark, I imagine myself grabbing a Sharpie marker and putting a checkmark on their forehead. And even when it doesn't work, Josh, it still works because it gets you to focus on the person and it gets you to focus on the name.

Yeah.

You know, this simple technique is something that overcomes what I call the 6-second syndrome. Somebody tells you something or you read something and you have 6 seconds to do something with that info. Or once a handshake breaks, the name is— it just disappears into the ether. And it's a means to an end because once you know the person's name happens to be Mark, then You know, then, then the picture disappears. But when you're saying goodbye 30 minutes later, you remember, oh, who was this person? We put a checkmark on his forehead. What's his name? Mark. Right. So it's just a kind of little memory hack that helps. It goes a long way.

That's so good. You know, one of the things I'd love to ask you about is, and I know you've done some, some research on this and read some studies, what are some of the best herbs, vitamins, supplements, foods, things that people can do to optimize their neurological health and memory and focus.

Do you want to be able to remember confidently the information that you hear on this podcast? Do you want to improve your memory to easily and confidently be able to remember names and faces, client information, give a speech without notes, learn another language, remember what you read, and so much more? There's a solution, and I call it your quick recall. In just 15 minutes a day for 30 days, I've designed the ultimate course, How to Unlock Your Quick Recall. Just go Go to kwikbrain.com/recall. Enter podcast15 for your immediate discount as a thank you for listening to our show. Yeah, so I mentioned there are 10 levers that really can move the needle for that 2/3 to improve your brain health and performance. One of them is a good brain diet. So there's a whole area of science called neuronutrition. And your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it actually requires 20% of the nutrients, the energy. It's an energy hog, right? And while your brain is part of your body, it also requires different nutrients than the rest of your body. And I always prefer people get it from foods, good whole foods, local, organic, as best, as clean as you could do. But if we don't get it from our diet, then you could supplement it, obviously, also as well. So some of my favorite brain foods, and I'll show people how to remember it. Have you ever gone to the store, the market, and you go to buy one thing and you come back with maybe a bag or two? And when you're home, you realize that you forgot that one thing.

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

So this would be a good memory exercise. One of my beliefs is that there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and an untrained memory, right? And we need to exercise our memory. So it's a wonderful opportunity to take the stairs, right? To do the mental calisthenics, to memorize a list. So I'll give everyone like 10 of my favorite brain foods, and then we could talk about supplements. And just to remember it, There, I mentioned I wrote the memory chapter in Greece. There's an ancient memory technique, 2,500 years old, where they would remember, like orators remember their speeches or poetry based on placing information around locations they're very familiar with, like their home, right? And people could do this in their home, in their office, their school, the local mall. And you're taking like 10 places that you're very familiar with and putting the 10 things you want to remember in those places using your imagination and emotion. So for example, maybe everyone could do this. You could do this with me.

Yeah.

So everyone touch the top of your head right now and say top. That's your verbal memory, top. And we're going to just take 10 places on your body. Second place is your nose. So you say nose for your verbal memory. Third place, just going down your face, mouth. Fourth, let's go to the side. Everyone listening, go touch your ears. Your ears. And 5 is your throat. All right, so we're exercising our memory even doing this. So we're not just hearing about it, we're doing it. 6 are your shoulders. Everyone touch your shoulders and say shoulders.

Shoulders.

7 is your collarbone, your collar.

Collar.

8, just wiggle your fingers. If you're not watching this on video, I'm just wiggling my fingers. 8 is fingers. 9 is your belly. And then let's say 10 is your bottom. All right, so that's 10 places. And now what we're going to do is I'm going to share with you 10 of my favorite foods to boost your brain health. The first one is The first, and we're going to put it in those 10 places, are avocados, right? The monounsaturated fats, good for the brain. Your brain's mostly fat. So just imagine avocados, using it as a hair or scalp conditioner. You're putting guacamole on your head, and it would never happen, right? But because you could not just hear it, you could see it and kind of feel it, it becomes— you're using more of your nervous system to memorize it. And just very quickly, the second place is your nose, right? And the second brain food are blueberries. Berries are incredibly neuroprotective, right? High in antioxidants. So, I call them brain berries. But imagine blueberries coming out of your nose. What does that smell like? Use all your senses. What does that feel like? If you ever saw somebody and their blueberries were coming out of the nose, you would never forget that.

Yeah.

The 3rd place on your body, everyone, was your mouth. And I like broccoli as a brain food. Imagine broccoli stuck in your teeth. Now, everyone's bio-individual, has different food sensitivities, and so keep that you know, in mind. You could do microbiome tests and nutrient profile. But imagine a big stalk of broccoli stuck in your teeth, right? The sulforaphane is good for, especially when it's sprouted, is good for cognitive health. So you taste the broccoli in your teeth. All right. All right. The 4th place was our ears. So everyone touch your ears. 4th brain food, olive oil. So just imagine you're cleaning your ears with olive oil or you have olive earrings, right? There's limitless examples. And if you can't imagine it, Just imagine you can imagine it. All right, 5 was your throat and eggs. If your diet allows the choline in eggs, precursor to acetylcholine, which is good for cognitive health, imagine a hard-boiled egg in your throat. All right, it's just kind of stuck there. 6 are your shoulders. I'm a fan of green leafy vegetables, and again, some people can't readily digest it as easily, but just imagine shoulder pads made out of Kale and spinach. You look to your left and look to your right, you have shoulder pads made of kale and spinach. All right, 7 is your collar. And let's talk about salmon or sardines, right? The fatty fishes that are high in omega-3s, your DHAs, maybe wild-caught salmon. Maybe you have a necklace made out of salmon sushi, and maybe make it like a week old. So you really, you really use more of your senses. What does that smell like? What does that feel like? Imagine a necklace made out of salmon sushi. All right, we're almost done. 8th place are your fingers. So we go with your fingers. 8th brain food, turmeric. And so just imagine that golden powder all over your fingers. You just can't get rid of it. It's all over your fingernails, your cuticles. The curcumin is the active ingredient in turmeric. It can be very anti-inflammatory. 9 is your belly. A good snack food that I love are walnuts. So imagine eating walnuts out of your belly button. Oh, that's good. Walnuts are high in vitamin E, neuroprotective, but, you know, walnuts coming out of your belly button, you're eating them, something silly like that. And then finally, the 10th place is your bottom. Everyone touch your bottom. And 10th brain food, dark chocolate. I don't even need to hear what people are saying or seeing back there, but dark chocolate, not milk chocolate. Generally, what's good for your mood tends to be good for your mind.

Yeah.

So now, so imagine We're going to have a limitless, like, brain cocktail party. Josh calls you up and says, hey, while you're out, can you just stop by the market, the health food store, and just pick up these 10 quick things? And you're like, oh, I'm driving. I can't write it down. Or you're in the shower or can't— you can never— when you have these ideas, you can never write them down, right? I don't know why you pick up the phone in the shower, but now you just walk in the aisles and you just— you have your grocery list because it's on your body. So on top of your head, you have the first brain food, which is Which is what? The, the avocados.

I want to prove that I can do this now quick, Jim, because this is amazing. I mean, we've, you know, this was good. Yeah, this was, this is fantastic. So we've got avocados here. I remember that because that's what we're, you know, scrubbing into our head. I know we've got, uh, we've got the nose. So we got blueberries. I imagine blueberries coming out of the nose. We got mouth because broccoli is stuck in your teeth. We got olives. I remember that because actually there's a lot of remedies that I have people do with olive oil and garlic oil.

Nice.

That sort of thing is the base. And then we're going down to the throat, and that's where an egg is caught, you know, in the throat. The next is the shoulder pads of— we talked about kale and spinach, the greens there. We talked about the collar, which was salmon. Yeah, that had been there. Very good. Yeah. And then we went down to the hands. We talked about turmeric. By the way, I've had this happen plenty of times. I use turmeric a lot, so I've had the orange or yellow stain of that curcumin on my hands. The next we have belly button, which is walnut. We talked about there, right in the— and then we talked about the, the butt, the glutes there, the behind for, uh, for dark chocolate. So I mean, this is amazing. I mean, it really is, uh, such a great tool to learn fast.

And people could use this anywhere. They could use their body list every day and reuse it. They could use their home and go in the kitchen and say, okay, the microwave is the first place, the stovetop is the second, refrigerator, just go clockwise. The refrigerator is my third place, the dishwasher is the fourth, and the sink is the fifth.

Wow.

And, people could use this to even memorize a speech. I work with a lot of actors or TED speakers and teaching them the key points. And, a lot of people have a fear of public speaking where that fear stems from is like, I'm going to forget what I have to say, or somebody's asked me a question, I'm going to go answer it and I'm not going to remember where I was. But here, you just walk around your home or your office or the mall. And you can make these, you know, you're— there's no limit to the amount of locations you could use. And just using this principle of PIE, P-I-E, you have a P stands for place, map out your places. The I is imagine, imagine what you want to remember as a picture because we'll remember it better, like with faces. And then the E is entwine. Entwine is just you're putting the 2 things together. And what are you putting together? You're putting that image with the place. And, uh, yeah, that's a wonderful shortcut because most people, what's the alternative? They would have to repeat it over and over and over Yeah. Right? And that takes a lot of time, and it's pretty boring, you know. And so, yeah, that's just one key to be able to do it.