Hey guys, Ron White here, 2 Time USA Memory Champion. In this video, I'm going to tell you why
you can't remember. I'm going to prove to you or not prove to you, but I'm going to make the case
that your memory's not bad. You don't have a bad memory. You're just not approaching it the right
way. And I'm going to list five things that I think are keeping you from being able to remember
well. By the way, I have a course, a full memory course called Black Belt Memory. You know when you
get a black belt in karate, you're the best? Well you can get a black belt in memory if you want.
In my course, you can learn how to memorize names, numbers, speeches, decks of cards,
improve your grades if you're a student, remember names and faces if you're a business person,
give speeches without notes. It's an awesome course. Click the link down below, get a free
gift and get my Black Belt Memory course. Now, what are the five steps, I'm going to
give all five of them to you. So, if you want, you can just click stop on the video, but that's
after you get them. But I think you need to watch this whole video because I'm going to go and
give bullet points and describe each one. So, don't just go for the bullet points of this.
Listen to all of them, listen to all of it all the way through because I'm going to explain
each one in detail. Number one, you are not focused. You're not focused. Focus is the
worst, the biggest reason that you're not remembering something.
For example, you meet somebody. "Hi, my name's Ron." "Hi, my name's Brian." Oh my gosh. What did
you just say your name was again? Is it possible? Is it possible to forget a name in two seconds?
No, you didn't hear it, remember it, know it, and then forget it in two seconds. What happened?
You weren't focused. You never heard it in the first place. You shook their hand. You said
your name, they said their name, and you never heard their name because you weren't focused.
The first reason you're not able to remember your schoolwork or your studies or the speech or the
poem or the verses that you're trying to memorize, you're not focused. Maybe you've got other things
on your mind, maybe you're looking at social media, maybe it's loud in the room and there's
the TV playing. You're watching TV and you're trying to memorize, you're not focused. Focused
is crucial to memory. Find a place where you're going to learn where you're not distracted.
Take your cell phone, put it on airplane mode, put it on silent, or put it in the car
and tell yourself, "Hey, I'm going to study for 20 minute chunks and in this 20 minute chunks,
I'm not going to have the TV on. I'm not going to have my cell phone on. I'm not going to have my
computer on." At the end of the 20 minutes, I'll take a five minute break and I'll go look at those
things. But you have to be focused. You can't multitask and memorize at the same time. Okay,
you just can't do it. What are some good ways to focus your brain? As you're walking towards
somebody, ask yourself the question, what is their name? What is their name? What is their name? Now,
don't say that out loud. It's going to freak the person out, but it will focus you to be listening
when they say their brain. Why? Because what's happening when you're walking towards that person,
you're thinking, what do I think of them? What do they think of me? Have I seen them before?
What things are we going to talk about? And your brain's not focused
on what they're about to say. They say their name, you weren't listening.
You never heard it. You don't remember their name because you never heard it.
If you're a student or you're a business person and you want to be focused when you're reading,
read the back of the book, read the table of contents, read the chapter of summaries.
Read that first. Why? It'll focus your brain on what to look for when you're reading. You're
looking at the author's outline before you read the book because that is what the author thinks is
important. What's on the back of the book, what's in the table of contents, what's in the chapter
summary. First reason you can't remember is you're not focused. The second reason you can't
remember is you're stressed. You're stressed. Stress is the worst enemy to your memory.
Think about it, think about a time when somebody in your life died, somebody you love passed away
or you got a divorce or a relationship breakup. Around that time you were probably forgetting
where your keys were, you were probably forgetting everything. You couldn't remember anything. You're
forgetting to pay bills. I had a bill that went 30 days late a couple months ago and I'm like,
oh my gosh, you can't believe that I went 30. Well, what happened in that month? My dad died.
My memory was just shot. I was forgetting to pay bills, I was forgetting to email people back.
I was stressed. Stress is the worst enemy to your memory. So, if you're in a stressful situation,
you know what Einstein used to do? When Albert Einstein was trying to solve the problems of the
universe, the theory of relativity, if he had a conflict with somebody,
he would go and resolve that conflict. Not because it was going to help him solve
the math problem, but he knew that if he had a conflict with somebody while he was
trying to solve a math problem, he'll be stressed about it. And he needed a relaxed,
calm mind, free of any clutter to solve the problems of the universe of physics.
So, if you are stressed about something that is able to be solved through resolving it through
a conflict like Einstein used to do, resolve the source of your stress and then get back to
your memorizing, your schoolwork or whatever it is, you'll be able to approach it better.
You're you're not focused, that's a reason. You're you are stressed. You are tired. If you're tired,
you're not going to be able to memorize. And this has a couple different things,
get a good night's sleep, but try to get a natural sleep. If you can, try not to fall asleep through
medication or things that are going to make you pass out because that's not a natural sleep. You
need to get a natural good night's sleep to be fully rested and functioning the next day.
So, getting a good night's sleep is part of not being tired, but also things that go fall in that
category is good nutrition, exercise helps you rest, it helps you sleep, it helps you wake up
refreshed. But here's another thing, I found that if I tried to memorize first thing in the morning,
that's when I was the most productive. Why? Because throughout the course of the day my
brain is making decisions. Some of the decisions, there's something called decision fatigue. Have
you ever seen, remember Steve Jobs? When you used to look at pictures of Steve Jobs, he was wearing
that black turtleneck in every picture. Mark Zuckerberg, he's wearing the same colored t-shirt
in every picture. These geniuses or whatever, they wear the same shirt every day. Their closet
is just a closet of the same pair of clothes. Why? Because they believe in something called decision
fatigue. They think if they get up in the morning and decide what shirt they're going to wear,
that takes a little bit of mental energy and they don't want to expend any mental energy on that.
Their closet's all the same, they grab a shirt and they put it on, and they go about their day.
That little micro decision consumes a little bit of energy. Now I'm okay with that. Okay.
I wear different colored shirts on every day, but here's the idea behind it. If you want to
be rested, if you want find the optimal time for you to memorize when you're rested. For me,
it's the first thing in the day. Why? Because I don't have an entire day of decision fatigue
and then try to memorize at night. You're not focused, you're stressed, you're tired. I have
two more reasons why you're not memorizing well. The next one is very huge. You're not
organizing the data. And what do I mean by organizing the data? The first thing that I
do when I want to memorize something is I look at it. I've memorized the United States constitution,
it's 4,563 words. Okay. I've memorized everybody who died in the war in Afghanistan, from the
United States Military, it's 7,000 words. The first thing that I did before I tackled the
project is I organized the data. I looked at the Constitution and all right okay, it's about 4,500
words. It's segmented into different articles. Some of these articles, this article deals with
this, this deals with this. And I got to feel for it. But even deeper than that, when I looked at
the Constitution, I noticed there were things like bullet points kind of. It wasn't really a
bullet point, it was like a sentence with comma, comma, comma. So, it just listed a bunch of words.
Well, I took those and I made it a list and then I took the first letter of each word and I created
a story out of it with the first letter. I was organizing the data and I was telling myself,
okay, for this I'm going to use a mine palace, which is a memory technique that I have in my
Black Belt Memory course. For this I'm going to create a story using the first letter of
each word. I organized the data. I created a plan before I attempted to memorize it.
The Mind Palace is I think one of the best memory tools. I'm not going to make this video about the
Mind Palace, but I'll put a video, a link down below in the description on the Mind Palace,
and it's also in my Black Belt Memory course. The fifth and final reason you are not able
to memorize or remember what you study is you're not reviewing it. Reviewing it is one of the most
overlooked things in memory. You will study for a test today and you'll study all day. And then at
the end of the day, you start memorizing tomorrow. But you don't go back and review what you did the
day before. If you want to remember, review is a key component of the memory process. Always review
what you did the day before. So, if I memorized 50 data points today, before I memorized my 50
for the next day, when the next day arrives, I would review the 50 from the day before.
I'm always reviewing the day before. Review is crucial and it's one of the biggest reasons people
aren't remembering what they study. They study something today and then
they wake up the next day and they expect to remember it perfectly. You're not going to,
you're going to review it, and you're going to find that you remember 75% of it. Well then what
do you do? You focus on the 25% that you don't remember. You go back and memorize that again,
making it stronger. And then you review it all a hundred percent again and maybe you get 90%
of it. And then there's 10% that you don't know, so you make that stronger. And then you
keep reviewing it until you got it down, and then you add new data. But review is something called
spaced repetition, where you're reviewing a little bit today, you review tomorrow,
and then you focus on the areas that you have trouble with, your trouble spots in your review.
I have an entire video on spaced repetition, and I'll put that down below in the links. But
there are five primary reasons that you are not remembering and you're not able to memorize.
You are tired, you are stressed, you are not focused, you are not organizing the data,
and you are not reviewing. If you do all five of these things, you're going to have a much better
chance at memorizing, whatever it is you want to memorize. And if you really want to get good at
memory, click the link down below it's my Black Belt Memory course, you'll learn how to memorize
anything and it's a wonderful course, you'll get a certificate from me. If you like this video,
give me a like. Comment below what do you struggle with the most? What keeps you from
memorizing? Let me know in the comments down below and I'll see you in the next video.