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Your mind is an amazing resource, but as you age you willfind that your memory is adversely affected. An excellent way to improve yourmemory is to recognize each improvement as a succession of small victories tobe built upon each other. Classification Your memory can be divided into 8 different types: Episodic,Factual, Semantic, Sensory, Instinctive, Skill, Collective, and Past Lifememory. These divisions describe the function that each part of the memory isresponsible for. For example, factual memory is used for remembering facts suchas the date of Christmas is the 25th of December. Skill memory isinteresting, in that all skills involve your memory as well. Learning to ride abike, or baking, involved using your brain to remember each particular skill. Another way of classifying your memory is in terms ofduration – Short term, Long term and sensory memory. Short term memory refersto the recent memory, and is usually only held for a very short period of time.A common example would be when you meet many new people, cursorily introducedat a party. Long term memory, on the other hand, can be thought of as adatabase where all the information that you have learned is kept. Sensory memoryis conveyed through your senses of sight and sound, where you keep these“images" in your mind. People who are able to learn quickly or remember many factsare often thought of as being more intelligent. Is there really such acorrelation between intelligence and the memory? There is little differencebetween you and your neighbor, or someone else half the world away. What thenaccounts for this difference in intelligence? Your memory plays a key role inacting as a resource for you to draw upon the knowledge you have learned, andpiece them together to reason. By using your memory hand in hand with newexperiences, you will find that an individual who learns from mistakes will notmake the same mistake again. Again, this is the memory at work, allowing you toremember and hence avoid the error. To be in possession of a clear mind is a precious thing.Whilst older people are more prone to suffering from dementia, it can bereversed before it reaches an advanced stage. Keeping a healthy diet,exercising, sleep and having sufficient nutrients can help you to avoiddementia. Elderly people are less likely to have severe problems with memoryimprovement skills if they are confident in their abilities and work to improvetheir recall. Just as physical exercise increases your muscle mass, constantexercising of your mind will help you to improve your brain. Learning When studying or learning something new, it is always usefulto have someone to study with. By sharing knowledge, engaging in discussionsand teaching each other, it sends a signal to your mind that the information isuseful and this helps you to store it in the long term memory. Keep in mindthat systematic learning does not equate to memorizing by rote, but developinga process that will help you to recall the information that you have learnedeasily. There are many methods to help your brain create such linkages.? Confidence Lastly, confidence is an important factor when working toimprove your memory. As you gain greater confidence, you will learn to overcomemomentary lapses of memory. Confidence can transform the way you learn, andmakes a tremendous difference to your learning process Always begin by first identifying what type of memory youwant to improve, and then asking yourself how to go about doing so. Your mindhas different types of memory, and exercises to improve one type may not beeffective if it is not the right memory classification that you want to workon. |
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