My memory power is fading these days

I don't have the memory power I had when I was in college

I just can't seem to remember anything these days

If yes, don't worry. You are not alone! There are millions of other people like you. Ok, does it help if you knew you are not alone? Certainly not. You need to know how to "regain" your memory power.

First of all, lets see why your memory power did fail, in the first place. There is a one-word answer for that:

Inaction!

You have probably heard "Use it or lose it". This is true in case of your memory too. The more work you give to your "memory muscles", the better your memory becomes.

Think about your school days. Did you give more work to your memory those days? I bet you did. You had assignments, exercises and projects to complete. Most importantly, you had tests and examinations. You knew that the only way to pass the exam is to give work to your brain and your memory. There was a massive need for you memorize the information. And therefore, there was a massive action.

As days and years went by, and after you got into your job/business, the need to remember information was not much. You paid more focus on developing skills that will give you an edge in your job/business.

If you wanted to remember information, you did not make any effort. You just noted it down. So that you can refer it any time, when you needed. Or your secretary remembered it on your behalf! Or may be you wrote in MS Word and saved it on your computer.

What you did not realize was that you were doing a great disservice to your memory by not giving it work, by not trusting it, and sometimes, even by ridiculing it.

As more years went by, you started writing everything down, whether you could remember it or not. After all, it was much easier to write than to "strain your brain" and to "tax your memory muscles". Slowly, you acquired the habit of "not to remember anything" (Do you know of people who have to look into their mobile phone to tell you their own telephone number?) And then one fine day, you could not access the computer file, or your secretary was on leave, then you knew how irritating it was.

Very soon, you graduated to making the statements that are at the beginning of this article. See my point?

Ok, was that all too exaggerating? May be for some people. But I know that for a lot of people, that was the truth.

We all know, you can't change the past. So let's see what best can be done in the present to ensure a "memorable" future.

1. Give work to your memory every single day.

2. Once in a while try to remember your shopping list.

3. For every 10 speeches or presentations you make, take a commitment to memorize at least 1 of them rather than using a cue card or a ppt. (yes, that one speech can be the shortest speech of the ten!)

4. Once in a week, memorize ten new words and their meanings.

5. Sign up for a language course (or tennis, yoga, salsa, guitar, swimming, etc as long as you have to learn/memorize something)

6. Give company to your kid and prepare for the coming exam together!

7. Play the "memory tray" game with your family members. It doesn't matter even if you are a fully-grown adult. (This is a game where you place several small objects on a tray and let all players see it for a minute. Then you cover it with a cloth. The player who recalls the maximum number of objects is the winner)

The options are so many. The gist is: Give work to your memory muscles!

Of course, the above tips are just the starters. If you want to accelerate your process of memory improvement, you need to learn and use specialized memory techniques. Do these techniques work? I have been in the memory training field from the last 10 years. I know for a fact that the memory improvement techniques work like magic. I will talk about these techniques in a different article.

As of now, just do the "warm up" with the above steps!