STEP FOUR: Strategy #3 - Making It Silly

​So now you have been practicing visualization/visual imagery (strategy # 1) and elaboration/connection (strategy # 2) for a couple of weeks. The next strategy is a little more fun.
 
Understanding the structures and functions and also the organization of the brain helps us learn how to use our memory more effectively. I won’t bore you with too much neuroscience, but we know that the emotional structures of the brain and the memory structures of the brain are very close to each other. To be more accurate, our emotions are generated not by a single structure, but by a collection, or a circuit of structures. The same is true of our memory. As it turns out, the emotion circuitry and the memory circuitry ... 

actually share a few structures. There is significant overlap in these circuits. Therefore, our moods and emotions affect our memory.
 
This can work either for us or against us, depending on the situation. Information that has little or no emotional intensity does not get remembered as easily or as well. Information that involves high emotional intensity gets etched in our memories much more quickly and securely. This is true regardless of whether the emotion is positive/pleasant or negative/unpleasant.
 
This is the reason why we tend to remember more details about very happy or exciting experiences in our past, such as our wedding, the birth of our children, or our favorite vacation. We tend to remember fewer details about average or so-so events. This is also the reason we can remember even very small details about life threatening or extremely scary experiences. Those details also tend to remain in our memory for a long time.

Information with
high emotional intensity
is remembered better.

​We can use this tendency of the brain to our advantage. If there is information that we need to remember, and it does not already trigger a specific emotion for us, we can come up with ways to generate and attach emotion to that information. The easiest way to do this is to take the information-to-be-learned and make it silly in some way. This is best done in combination with visualization.
 
For the paper towel example discussed in the last two posts, I would get a mental image (visualization) of the paper towel, and make it silly by imagining myself balancing it on my head as I brought it up the stairs.
 
For the grocery list, make it silly by substituting a cow for the milk, with a chicken laying eggs on a slice of soft bread, all on the back of a cow.
 
For the doctor’s appointment, imagine traveling to the appointment on a unicycle, or driving racecar with the racecar’s number being the time of the appointment. 

Come up with silly visualizations.

​Over the next week, look for opportunities to come up with silly visualizations. This requires a bit of creativity, but again, you will get better at this the more you practice it. Share what you come up with in the comments section below, so you can all learn from each other’s ideas.