Harry Lorayne, the authority on memory training, made a statement that has stuck with me for years, “Memory is the stepping-stone to thinking, because without remembering facts, you cannot think, conceptualize, reason, make decisions, create, or contribute. There is no learning without memory.” Yet memorization is not taught in school. No wonder the bystander effect runs rampant in business and only a few athletes are successful when the game is on the line …without remembering facts, you cannot think, conceptualize, reason, make decisions, create, or contribute – without knowledge we are afraid of failing; we are afraid of embarrassing ourselves, but have no problem letting someone else try. It’s as if we are contented with our inability to make decisions due to our lack of understanding of the benefits of creativity and innovation.
Not true, we just lost our imagination!
A psychiatrist I spoke to about memorization stated, “we are brought into this world with a creative imagination but, in her opinion, our imagination is smothered by the educational system insisting memorization is bad!” Thereby suppressing imagination and making it difficult to ever ask, “What if?” and reducing our ability to become creative and innovative. Never taking a chance because, without imagination, we find it difficult to dream about where we would like to be. We are contented to stay the course and perform the same way repeatedly, even if it is failure. We are happy letting someone else try.
It’s easy to turn it around, but first we must deal with what we know and use our imagination. Start by increasing our knowledge of whatever we are trying to accomplish in business or as an athlete, then expand our imagination using what we know. Examples:
- Use our Imagination to Memorize individual faces, their names, their phone numbers, and emails, then recall them instantly when you run into them at the airport, at a conference, or during a meeting
- Use our Imagination to Memorize what it takes to hit a baseball, sink a putt, or shoot a basketball, then visualize hitting a bomb, sinking a 40’ putt, or shooting a three at the buzzer.
As George Elliot said, “It is never too late to be who you might have been!” So, let’s use our imagination to increase our creativity, to become more innovative and to be a difference maker versus sitting back and waiting for someone else to try!
To revitalize our memorization, let me recommend Harry Lorayne’s and Jerry Lucas’ book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0345337581
Just Imagine the next Blog,
Al McCormick
