Episode 53 with Chester Santos - How to improve your memory

Um, what are the things that a little bit of what we're going to be talking about today?

And also if you happen to have any kids or grandkids in school, some of what we talk about today, memory skills development will be useful there as well.

You know, caught my interest because growing up, I would often just get the comment from people. People would often say to me, Chester, wow, you have a really good memory. Mm-hmm So with those comments, kind of just in the back of my mind, when I caught that episode on TV, I thought, Hey, people say I have a good memory. Maybe I could do well in this. National memory competition.

But, uh, I quickly found out when I looked into what the best people in the United States were scoring in these, uh, competitions in the various events, memorizing decks of playing cards, hundreds of digits, hundreds of names perfectly in just a, like a few minutes. Mm-hmm I quickly realized that, although I probably was. Above average to start out with I wasn't on that level. Mm-hmm so that's when I started doing research, I wanted to, you know, if I was going to compete, I wanted to do well.

So I started doing research or I, how can I improve my memory from where it's currently at? Uh, based on that research, I started playing arounds. With different techniques. I found what seemed to be working best for me personally, mm-hmm, , uh, stuck to training myself in that small subset of techniques until eventually I was able to win, uh, the United States memory championship.

And again, since then, you know, I've been training people around the world in the small subset of techniques that I feel can help you out the most right away. Mm-hmm uh, in your career. Personal life, you know, for personal development and to help out kids, uh, in school. Yes,

And, and one of the things that I, that I wanted to, to touch on, on this, uh, um, episode with you is that, um, and I have my own view and I would love for your point of view as well is I think that we all have capabilities. That we are not, uh, in touch with so that the power of our mind is amazing yet we are not fully making the most out it. And of course not everyone's mind is the same and not everyone is going to have the same capabil capabilities.

But I think that there's a lot of untapped, um, power that, that we are not getting in. Would, would you say that that's true.

Those UN what tend to be unused areas of the brain, but you know, this doesn't just apply to memory there. I think there are extraordinary, uh, capabilities that we can unlock in other areas as well. It just happens to be that mine, uh, specifically is memory, but probably we have untapped, uh, mathematical ability. Probably we have untapped, you know, creative. Uh, juices that we were, you know, creative juices were not tapping into.

Um, I would guess that there are probably some techniques you can learn to help you in other areas that are gonna unlock this hidden potential as well.

and I was thinking, I don't even know one person's number now.

But nowadays it's kind of scary that you give somebody even one phone number and they can't do it. And then it's, it's getting so bad that there are a lot of people out there nowaday. That don't even know their own phone number. Mm-hmm so it's a really good example of the use it, or LoseIt principle. Now, some people might say, well, okay, we don't need to remember phone numbers. Cause we do have the phone to help us. That is true.

However, isn't it scary that when presented now with even one number, people feel very handicapped. They feel like they don't, they no longer have the ability that mental power to even commit one number. To memory. I think it's really good, uh, uh, way to demonstrate when we look at that, it demonstrates the danger. A bit in this digital dependency. Another example I like to give related to that, uh, to, to illustrate this digital dependency is also navigation. So we've become overly dependent.

I think on the GPS, I, I think, you know, things like the phone to remember numbers. and the GPS to help you navigate. It's good if we use it just as a useful, helpful tool, but there's a danger in completely turning off your brain. So you have people, for instance, that are driving Uber and Lyft. This is not at all to, to signal them out and it doesn't apply to all Uber and Lyft drivers of course, but I mean, I, I have been in an Uber wear.

Something's wrong with the network connection in that location, or something's wrong with the app? You'll either have to drive around until they can catch a signal or they have to restart their phone a bunch of times until eventually the issue with the app resolves itself. Even if they've already been driving in that city for five plus years, they haven't even learned a few basic landmarks in the city that everybody should know how to get there. Mm-hmm so it's another good example.

I think of what happens when you shut off your brain. Uh, there is a danger in this digital dependency. Mm

Like, if, like, if I don't even know, and I've seen this, like people just going from the same place that they go, like they go to work every day to the same place and they still use like the map on their phones and it's like, yeah, this is incredible.

So let us not neglect that brain P let's not let us, let's not let our brains just wither and die. Right. The various mental capabilities that we have. So, um, I, I, I say use technology when it's useful, but. Be aware that if you're not using your brain at all, you you're gonna lose certain abilities over time. It's J it's gonna happen. Yes,

And as I haven't practiced some of these languages, I noticed. Now I can't hold the conversation in some of these languages, a basic conversation, even though I used to be fluent. Yeah. And even with Spanish, I, I actually, like I grew up in Argentina. Spanish is my mother tongue and. And I noticed that a few times when I'm on, like on the phone with some of my family members, I'm like, how did you say this in Spanish? And it's like, wow, this incredible.

And it's part of what you were just mentioning about the lose or the power of practicing. Um, I wondered if, if you can explore a little bit more into.

So if people want to Google or look, look it up later, cognitive reserve is the terminology that you're gonna find over used over and over in the research. This basically means building up some extra brain muscle. And although no scientists, no doctor can tell you how to prevent yourself from getting Alzheimer's or any other form of dementia.

No one can tell you how to prevent it from happening, but they think you might be more resistant if you build up this extra brain muscle, this extra cognitive reserve, one of the top ways is learning foreign languages, cuz you're really exercising your brain. Uh, you are building all of those extra pathways, but you do need to keep practicing or else. Uh, you know, even those new pathways are, are gonna start to, to die off.

And I wonder, uh, Chester, if you would be able to, to share a little bit for those that don't think that they have a good memory or that can't remember anything, what can they start doing? To actually change that.

Yeah. And people that listen to this later can follow along and see how they do with the exercise. But first let me cover the three principles that memory champions like myself use that really anybody can learn one. Take the information, whatever it is, you want to remember, turn it into something that you can picture in your mind, something that you can see. Okay. We're very good at remembering things that we see. So, uh, a quick example, let's say you go to a party, Brian, you're at a party.

You're meeting a lot of new people. All right. Two weeks after that, party's over, you're talking with one of your friends that was there and your friend says, Hey, Brian, do you remember that attorney that we met a couple weeks ago? He was at the party with us. as your friend describes to you, the person, a lot of times you can picture exactly who they're talking about. obviously your friend can picture who they're describing to you. Right.

But a lot of times, neither one of you can manage to remember that person's name and it's really frustrating. Right. So why does this happen? Well, we tend to be pretty good at remembering what people look like, right. Their face. We can call up into our mind and image of what they look like, because when we're meeting them or interacting with people in various ways, We see the face, right. It's recorded into our visual memory, but the name is something much more abstract to the brain.

So one way to get better at names, I turn them into visuals. So if I meet someone named Mike, I might picture a microphone. Cause that would remind me of the name. Mike, if I meet someone named Alice, I might picture a white rabbit because that reminds me of Alice and Wonderland. All right. So really I was going over that to just illustrate the power of visuals, cuz that's the first principle. If you can picture something. It's easier to remember.

Second principle is try to involve more and more senses as you can from there because when you activate more senses, you're activating more areas of your brain and you're building more and more connections in your mind. To the information. So at one point I started in this, uh, we have a popular show in the United States. It's the, the longest running science show in, in us history. It's called PBS Nova science. So I started an episode.

If people wanna look it up online later, they can watch it was called. How smart can we get on PBS Nova science or just Google my name in PBS. But anyway, I performed some memory feed. Then I trained David Pogue. People might, might know him from the technology industry. Uh, he's a correspondent for CBS news. Um, and, uh, also the New York times, um, I trained him and he was able to perform some pretty cool memory feeds after just a little bit of training next.

They had some brain scientists, neuroscientists, come on the show and explain for everybody watching at home on TV. How was Chester able to perform those crazy memory feats, how in the world did, uh, David POG do it just after just a tiny bit of training from Chester and the brain scientists confirmed that it's because with these techniques that I've learned over the years, and that we'll talk about today during the interview.

We're recruiting extra areas of the brain areas of the brain that most people never use when trying to commit things to memory with these techniques, we're using more of the brain to help us. And part of this is learning to use more senses when you're encoding the information so that you're activating more of the brain. So that's the second principle involve more, as many senses as you can.

Third and final principle while you are seeing and experiencing all of this in your mind, make it weird, unusual, extraordinary to take advantage of the psychological aspect to human memory. So there's a psychological aspect to memory.

If right now in the room that you're in Brian, if an elephant crashed into your room at this moment, and it started to spray water on you with its trunk, that actually happened right now, you would probably re remember that for the rest of your life, even 40 years from now. You at dinner one night, you would be telling people you'll you will never believe this. 40 years ago, I had this guy on my podcast and we were doing the interview. I kid you not an elephant, just crashed into the room.

It was insane. It might be stuck in your memory forever without you. Even trying to commit it to memory right now, although nobody fully understands how that works in the brain. How is it that, you know, sometimes in one instance, something's gonna go straight into long term memory. Whereas other times we might spend weeks. Months trying to get important, like training material, exam material, uh, maybe it's presentations. We try to get it into long term memory, but we can't do it. Right.

Whereas in one second, something like the elephant crashing the room, you know, it stays there forever now, although nobody understands how it works. Just realizing that there is that aspect to human memory. That psychological aspect. We can harness it. We can take advantage of that and we can apply it to things that would be very useful to remember names, to get more of networking, you know, presentations to be a more effective per persuasive speaker training material.

You know, there are a lot of obviously practical, uh, benefits, practical uses for remembering things. So that's it. Those are the three principles, I think, pretty easy, uh, really to put it in practice visual. First additional senses, if you can. And while you're doing that, make it weird, unusual, extraordinary mm-hmm And, you know, once you understand, uh, that those are gonna be useful, you can start to use them with various techniques.

And you'll, I think people will be amazed at how easy it is to remember.

And some of these big events, like everybody remembers that, even as you say, even if, even if they weren't actively trying to remember, there was something so different, so shocking, so wild that yeah, they remember it. Um, Before we get to the exercise that I'm looking forward to, to seeing how that goes. What is the difference for you between, um, information in terms of knowledge and wisdom?

Um, you need to have the knowledge to end up in the end with wisdom, but probably just having the knowledge doesn't necessarily result in the wisdom. You really need to take the time to try and understand, uh, process it and then even. Put this to use, uh, put the knowledge, uh, to use in some way to where it becomes, I think wisdom.

And I think that it's, as you say, like remembering or memory and that knowledge, um, it's the first step of course, for, for that. Yeah. Wisdom and, okay. Let's get Chester into the exercise. I'm looking forward to.

Part of it will be adding to your knowledge base. Um, so I'm gonna have you quickly commit to memory Brian, the following random list of words, it's gonna be. Monkey iron rope, kite house paper, chew, worm envelope, pencil river, rock, tree, cheese, and dollar. So it's a pretty long list there. How most people would approach this. Yeah. How most people would approach this is they would just write that list out over and over again. Right.

Mm-hmm they would read it over and over or recite it to themselves over and over until they feel that it's, you know, been drilled into their head. when you do things like that, you're really not making the most efficient use of the brain. If people manage to get into their memory, it's only in the very short term, right? Mm-hmm and people, when they go about things in that way, rote memorization, they find it to be very difficult, uh, boring.

So we're instead going to, uh, use those three principles, uh, that I talked about earlier. We're going to keep those in mind. And I'm going to guide you through a story, a visual story. So I'll guide you through visuals. You'll just see and experience this happening in your mind. And everybody that listens or sees this podcast later, I encourage them to try and follow along, to see how they do for now.

We're talking about random words, but I promise that I will get into practical applications for business and, you know, personal development later on. So the first word was monkey. So I want for you to visualize a monkey. That's it. See this monkey in your mind, but make sure that. It's dancing around or something it's making monkey noises, whatever monkey would sound like, just see and hear the monkey. Try to vividly, uh, experience this in your mind.

The monkey now picks up a gigantic iron, maybe like you would iron your clothes with, because that was the next word I gave you iron. So just visualize that the monkey is dancing around with this giant iron. The iron starts to fall, but a rope attaches itself to the iron. Maybe even feel the rope. Maybe it feels sort of rough, really interact with that rope. You look up the rope, you see that the other end of the rope is attached to a kite it's flying around.

Maybe you try and reach up and touch that kite there. The kite. Now you see crashes into the side of a house. Do your best to actually visualize that happening in your mind. See that house. The house you notice is completely covered in paper. It's completely covered in paper for some strange reason. Sure. The hat paper, a shoe appears out of nowhere. Now it starts to walk all over the paper. Maybe it's messing it up as it's walking on it. That shoe, the shoe smells pretty badly.

So you decide to investigate and see why you look inside of the shoe and you find a smelly worm. Crawling around inside of that shoe. Really see that smelly worm was the next word worm. All right. The worm now jumps out of the shoe and into an envelope or envelope, maybe it's going to mail itself or something. I don't know. But envelope was the next word out of thin air magically, a pencil appears, and it starts to write very quickly all over the envelope. Maybe it's addressing.

That pencil, the pencil now jumps into a river and there's a huge splash, like you would never expect, expect to see when that little pencil hits the river. The river you notice is crashing up against a giant rock. That rock flies out of the river and it crashes into a tree really see that tree in your mind, the tree is growing cheese. You probably haven't ever seen a tree like that. This one's growing cheese and out of the cheese comes a dollar. Maybe see a weird looking dollar.

Come out of the cheese, last word I had given you was dollar. Okay. Now some people may already know this, but I'm going to run through this again in about 20 seconds. And your job is to simply replay through this little story that you've created in your mind. So we started off with a monkey, ask yourself, what was that monkey dancing around with? It was an. Iron what then attached to the iron. It was a rope. The other end of the rope was attached to what it was attached to a kite.

What did the kite crash into? It crashed into a house. The house was covered in paper. What walked on the paper? It was a shoe. What was crawling in the shoe? It was a worm. The worm jumped into. Envelope what road on the envelope? It was a pencil. The pencil jumped into the river. The river was crashing up against the rock that flew into a tree. What was that tree growing? It was growing cheese. And what came out a dollar. So now you should be able to Brian pretty easily. I think.

or cite for me the entire list of random words by simply playing through the story in your mind, each major object that you see in the story will give you the next word. So take your time, give it a try and people can see, you know, they can fall along and see how well, well they do. Go ahead.

So they've had me over the years on a lot of different TV shows, science channel discovery channel, a bunch of news programs most recently was BBC world news. They'll all, you know, they'll have me come do a memory feat and then give tips for viewers at home as to how they can improve their own ability to remember things. But I wanna make it really clear for your audience that there's nothing different about my brain compared to everyone.

Else's, I've just learned these types of techniques that are very powerful and effective. I've put. A little bit of training in practice. Now we covered right there. It's random words, but this can be applied to anything at all. Even very complex types of information. I was a speaker over at Harvard university. If EV anybody goes to my website later, they'll see a testimonial from the Harvard graduate council. I worked with the law students, medical students, business students.

So it's just about building mental note cards. All right. So. Monkey can represent something else, something a little bit broader. Um, let me just quickly. Talk about how, how I apply this to a presentation, for instance, to give you what I, an idea of what I mean by mental note cards. So let's say I were going to give a, a speech or presentation about healthcare in the United States.

Always a huge topic, uh, for discussion over here in the us, uh, I might start off my story with an image of a stethoscope that the doctor uses to check your heartbeat. That's just gonna remind me the broad topic is healthcare. First thing I wanna hit on in my presentation talk about to the audience is the high cost of healthcare in the United States. So maybe shooting out of the stethoscope are a bunch of hundred dollars bills.

All right, next thing I wanna hit on next talking point is that under current healthcare programs, In order for us to get certain things covered. We have to find a way to navigate through or cut through a lot of red tape. So maybe wrapping itself around the a hundred dollars bills is all of this red tape. So I. That should give people an idea of how you could perhaps outline a presentation, outline all of the major points, subpoints, and then use images to help guide you.

So you can at least minimize the amount of notes you use so that you're a more effective and persuasive speaker, maintaining eye contact with your audience, rather than shifting through an, a lot of notes. This could. you know, maybe not a presentation, but you're meeting with clients, potential clients for, you know, entrepreneurs and business. Here are five, 10 key things I learned about you and your company.

And my research here are five, 10 key things I learned about you and your competitors. Uh, here are five ways as to how myself and my services. can benefit you in your business when you're able to do that, maintain eye contact with a person, demonstrate that you actually have this knowledge, right? Mm-hmm expertise. People have a lot of confidence in you and your abilities. And as we talked about in, in today's world, people are very dependent on these digital devices.

So when you can demonstrate that you have some memory skills, suddenly you become much more memorable mm-hmm

So even if it wouldn't make sense to anybody else, as long as it makes sense to you to remind you of that piece, piece of information, that's the type of image you wanna use. So, you know, and there are always different ways as to how to go about it. So in the case of names, for instance, you know, If I were trying to commit to memory the name, Jane, I might use a chain, uh, as the visual cue.

So in that case, it's sort of a sound alike, but in other cases, like I listed the white rabbit to remind me of Alice, it's more of a symbolic connection, right? So there are various ways as to how the imagery can remind you of what you want to remember, but it's, uh, you know, really whatever is gonna make sense to help you as a mental note card. And,

So it probably seems pretty obvious, but a lot of times when people are introducing themselves to us, our mind is all over the place. We're thinking. All sorts of other things, we don't pay any attention to the name. So step one is if you meet someone named John, just nice to meet you, John, or please to meet you, John, that's it. You have to pay attention for at least one second in order to repeat the name back to the person. Right? So start doing that. Eventually it's going to become a habit.

You'll find that you're automatically doing it. All right. Step number two, early on in your interaction, ask them just one question using their name. That's it. So, so John. How do you know Chester or John? How long have you been with this organization? That's it just use it once early on. I want to clarify, I don't mean use the name over and over in the conversation to where it starts to seem a little bit weird, maybe. Um, really just using it once is, is enough to reinforce it in your mind.

Okay. Step number three. Take a few seconds or less to think of a connection between the person's name and literally anything at all that you already know. So John, maybe think of John Lennon mm-hmm or maybe John is a character from a TV show or movie that you like, but it could be something as simple as you have a friend or family member that has that same name. For instance, I have an uncle John, you know, so.

Thinking of a connection between the name and literally anything at all that you already know really helps that name stick better in your mind. And I think in that third step, that's also probably a really good opportunity to come up with your image as well. Mm-hmm and then step four, whenever you leave the party, the meeting, whatever type of function, it might be, make it a point to actually say goodbye to people using the names. So, you know, I hope to see you again, some.

John. And if at that point you've forgotten the name, ask them their name again right then and there, because at that point they're not as likely to be offended because they might not expect you to know the name yet. I think at that point, they're much more likely to really appreciate the fact that you care enough to get their name. Right, right. And to know it the next time you see them. So you're, you're expressing interest in the person and they really, uh, appreciate that.

So those four steps. Are really gonna help people out. They'll give you that opportunity to come up with your image. And really there is one extra step to this. If you can connect that image to something unique about the person's look. So, you know, if I think that Alice, that I'm eating has really cool or interesting looking hair, I might imagine that the white rabbit is getting tangled up in her hair.

This is very powerful and very effective because the next time you see someone that you previously met, all you have to do. Is ask yourself what is unique to you about their look, what you personally noticed before is very likely what you personally are gonna notice again. So you're likely to notice the hair again, you're gonna that, that image of the rabbit getting tangled up and the hair is gonna come right back to you and remind you that the name was Alice.

So if you can, man, I gave you a lot there, I think in terms of names. But if you do manage to put that all together, There is no doubt in my mind at all, that you will be better than ever at remembering people's names. You know, might not be 100% even I'm not 100%, but if you can make a big improvement, uh, this will pay huge dividends for you in your career and in your personal life, it, it adds to popularity. It adds to your likability factor.

And of course, likability, you know, affects how well we do in business and, and really in, in. Mm,

So you really develop the, the ability to remember names. I have you go through sample presentations. I teach you Korean. So you really apply, uh, this to languages and I make it clear how you apply techniques to learning any language. And you'll learn how to memorize decks of playing cards. All, all sorts of cool, fun, interactive exercises. So people. I encourage you to go to memory school.net. Uh, I would visualize maybe a giant fishing net to remember that it's dot net.

So memory, school.net is where people can go. And for your audience, I set up code, uh, C a, uh, for conscious action. I don't know how many people might be interested, but I did set it to 25 uses. So as long as you're one of the first 25 people to use code CA, what it should do is take the, uh, there's a $200 enrollment fee. It should actually set that down to zero. Oh, wow. Uh, so it will completely wipe out the $200 enrollment fee. You'll only pay for the first month of access, that's it?

And of course it's a monthly access. You can cancel at any time when you, you know, you develop, uh, your skills to where you're already a memory master. Um, you can stop, uh, logging in at that point, but I definitely recommend people give it a try at least for a few months. And again, Code ca@memoryschool.net, you won't have to pay the initial enrollment fee.

So that's one of my favorite quotes. Um, it applies, you know, not only to your memory, but it applies really to anything at all that you might want to improve upon, you know, in terms of personal professional development, if you'll just get started and you know're consistent, I think. It is, I've just been really inspired by what I've seen. People that I've worked with, uh, the transformations that I've taken place in their lives.

And, you know, I love to see how surprised they are at how incredible they are at remembering things. Uh, now. But it was just a matter of getting started. So, yeah, that's a, a quote and I think, uh, I, I, I want everybody to know that wonderful.

Post, uh, most consistently. So, uh, please connect with me there.

And if you learn something and something was interesting for you, let us know on the comments of the episode, that will be amazing. And we'll see you next time. Bye.