steps to increase memory power

  Reduce Stress

Stress is one of the greatest enemies of the mind, and increasingly more common, the health of the entire body.  Stress can cause heart attacks, strokes, and the long-term degradation of one’s health.  Specifically, it kills your brain’s cells, and has a negative effect on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for recording and storing long and short-term memories.  Some of the best improve your memory information I ever received was to get ahold of stress, and eliminate as much of it as you can.  There are many ways to do this, but one of the techniques I’ve found to be most effective is meditation.  Meditation is effective in calming your nerves, finding your inner quiet and peace, and producing a deep state of relaxation.  It’s easy to learn some basic techniques, and these will go a long way in helping reduce your overall stress levels, thereby improving the power of your mind.

 Exercise Your Brain

If you were planning on running a marathon next summer, would you train your body to increase its performance and improve your chances for success?  Of course you would!  You’d specifically train your body to target the muscles and organs necessary for successfully completing a 26 mile run.  Well, your brain is no different than the rest of your body.  If you require increased performance and reliability from your brain, you have to continually use it and train it in ways that you don’t normally use it.  Try things like brushing your teeth or writing with your non-dominant hand.  Learn a foreign language or a musical instrument.  Read about or study a new area of interest that you have little knowledge of.  All of these things will require your brain to create new neural pathways, which will improve memory power and overall brain performance.

Listen and Actively Engage

How many times have you met someone at a party, a business setting, or any other situation, and five minutes later you can’t remember the person’s name that you just met?  It happens to all of us, and can be embarrassing, but it is an easy faux pas to avoid if you know how to do it.  Any time you are performing a task, speaking to someone, meeting someone for the first time, etc., make it a point to block out all other distractions and pay attention.  We humans make so many errors, and fail to remember a lot of important information because of the failure of this basic skill.  Try to pay close attention to detail in all aspects of your life and you will see that it becomes second nature, and pretty soon you won’t even have to try.  When you are meeting that new person, engage him and repeat his name back while you are being introduced.  This will help reinforce the name into your brain for future recall.  Be more engaged in all of your conversations and make an effort to listen more attentively and you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll be able to remember later.

By putting this information to improve your memory into use, you will soon see that your brain is sharper, and you will be recalling important information more quickly and accurately than before.  This improvement in memory power might not put you in the league of your 65 year old uncle, but the rest of your family, friends, and colleagues will think that you are one of the sharpest people they know!