Transcripts

Scott Hagwood, author of the book Memory Power, says forcing yourself to really pay attention will help you remember people's names and there's another benefit too…

When you do that, people know intuitively, spiritually, whatever they know when you have their best interest in mind and it really is an establishment of a true relationship, business friendship or whatever, so get your mind off yourself and think about somebody else that you want to be able to remember their name.

Of course it's tough to pay close attention if what you're listening to is boring, like in a staff meeting.

And one of the ways to calm that boredom is maybe to ask yourself mental questions like, " What is it that they are saying that I didn't already know?; if they were to ask me a question right now what would I be able to say to let them know that I was paying attention?" (You know that kind of thing, you can play mental games with yourself).

Another reason we think our memories aren't any good is we keep telling ourselves that.

You know, your brain is trained to do what you want it to do and if you have that self talk, that negative self talk and if you think that your memory is terrible it's going to say, "Well, your memory is terrible, you're not going to remember this anyway." But the fact is that our memories are extraordinary.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.