- So it's a Sirius XM, here they are!
(phone ringtone)
Hello, this is Ron.
- [Richie] Hi Ron this is McKay from the Lisa show.
How are you this morning?
- Hey, I'm doing great.
How are you?
- [Richie] I'm well.
Is this a good time for your interview?
- Perfect I'm sitting here and I'm all ready for it.
- [Richie] Now, if someone's ever told you
that you'd forget your head
if it wasn't attached to your neck
well, then you are exactly like me
and that's why I'm so excited for this next segment.
I feel like I'm always forgetting things
whether it's people's names or where I set something down
or what I'm supposed to be doing later on this afternoon,
it seems like my memory with each passing day
starts to fail me just a little bit more
so, is memory something that you can actually
train and improve?
That's what we gonna find out from memory expert, Ron White.
Welcome to the show Ron.
- Thank you very much.
I'm very excited to be here.
Really looking forward to it.
- [Richie] Now I've already forgotten your name.
No, I'm kidding, Ron.
It's great to have you here.
Tell me what a memory expert is.
- Well, a memory experts probably I guess
it could be self-defined
but a little bit about me.
I'm a two time USA memory champion.
I used to hold the record for the fastest
to memorize a deck of cards in the United States
but I think really more importantly
I'm just somebody who loves the idea of learning.
I love the idea of memory
and I've been studying a memory technique
that's about 2000 years old
and that's how I define memory expert.
- [Richie] Okay, all right.
Well, I mean, I didn't realize we were going to
be speaking to a champion this morning.
so, now I feel like I've gotta be right on top of my game.
Have you always had a great memory?
- Well, I have had a decent memory I guess,
but to the level that it is now,
I'm getting ready to be 47 years old.
My memory is actually getting better
because I work at it
but I assure you this I am a memory champion you could say,
but my memory is really no better than yours.
My natural memory isn't.
- [Richie] Okay all right.
Well, I know that people love hearing about you
but I know that they're really listening
because they wanna hear how they can improve their memory.
So, let's dive in.
- Absolutely.
The first thing that people need to understand
is that their memory is not as bad as they think it is.
so, stop telling yourself that you have a bad memory.
The second thing that I would say
is start learning the language of your memory.
Your memory right now is telling you,
it is telling you it is screaming at you
what it needs to remember
and I'll give you an example here Richie
- [Richie] Okay.
- Have you ever been in a car accident?
- [Richie] Yeah (laughs) yeah
- Okay, how many years ago was it?
- [Richie] Ah, is there room in this discussion
to plead the fifth?
Or can I just, no, I'm kidding.
It was about a decade ago.
- About 10 years ago, was it day or night time?
- [Richie] It was during the day.
- And were you driving it with somebody else?
- [Richie] Ah, well that's part of why
there was an accident,
but I'll say I was driving.
- (laughs) Okay I'm not a cop don't worry.
Now, did you reckon to them or did they reckon you?
That'd be the last question about it?
- [Richie] Well, I rolled into a Lake.
- Ow so this was clearly the like's fault, that's okay.
- [Richie] Yeah it was 100 percent the fault of the Lake.
Not mine, not poor decisions.
- No so this was 10 years ago
and you were easily able to tell me
all the details about it.
Can you tell me just as easily, probably not,
where you drove last week
everywhere you went the gas station, everything?
[Richie]No.
- No. So what is our memory telling us with this example?
Our memory is telling us,
Hey, if you make something full of emotion,
like a car accident,
I will remember it for you for 10 years,
but if it is passive and if it is ordinary,
like driving to the gas station,
I'm not going to remember it in a week.
So we need to listen to what our memory is telling us.
The first step to improving your memory
is when you encounter something that you want to remember,
you need to evoke some emotion about it
and see it as a crazy picture
or see it funny or see it silly.
Let me give you a real quick example here.
- [Richie] Okay.
- Richie, if you were standing
in the doorway of the room that you're in right now,
what's the piece of furniture right to your left?
- [Richie] If I'm standing in the doorway, there's a chair.
- In and then go around clockwise.
What's next to the chair?
- [Richie] There is like a table.
- A table.
- [Richie] Yeah.
And then there's another chair
and yeah that's about this room.
- Then let's stop there.
Three is perfect.
- [Richie] Okay.
In that first chair I want you to imagine a washing machine
and I want you to see the clothes flying out of it.
Look at it and see it.
What are you seeing in that first chair?
- [Richie] I'm seeing a washing machine.
- On the table I want you to imagine a dam
like a dam that's holding back water
and that dam breaks and floods the room.
So what's on the table.
- [Richie] It's a damn.
- All right and on the third chair,
I want you to see a chef cooking your favorite meal.
What's your favorite meal?
- [Richie] Oh man right now pizza with so much cheese.
Let's just do it.
- (laughs) Okay.
Look at that chair and taste the pizza.
The key word is chef.
Now go back and tell me all three pictures.
- [Richie] Okay.
So a mess of a washing machine
throw in my clothes across the room.
That's in the first chair.
On the table I'm nervous
because it's a dam holding back water
and I don't want anyone to be in trouble.
The third thing is that another chair
and it's a chef cooking my favorite cheesy pizza.
- Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect.
And what this illustrates is,
is that if we make things have emotion,
we see them as a picture and we place them
in a location around the room.
Our brain will store it.
When I work with kids,
I will teach them how to memorize all 45 presidents
of the United States in about 60 minutes this way.
I say on the first piece of furniture,
imagine a washing machine for Washington.
On the second piece of furniture, imagine a dam for Adams.
On the third piece of furniture,
imagine a chef for Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson.
- [Richie] (laughs) I love it.
- Six year old Kids do this.
And so when we approach our memory from a simple way
of seeing pictures of seeing emotion
and storing the data in a room,
our memories are phenomenal.
- [Richie] I love this.
We're talking about improving our memory
with a memory champion, Ron white.
I love being able to visualize it
and give us emotion with those things
that we need to remember.
So I think that's great for things like a list,
or if we're studying for a test or something like that,
but is there a more practical everyday application
or does this just go across the board?
- It really goes across the board.
The only thing I've never been had success applying it to
is memorizing how to play the guitar,
which I want to try to do,
but let's take everyday life.
- [Richie] Okay.
- You walk into your friend's house,
and you're talking to somebody
and they say their name is Brian.
And then two seconds later you're looking at them
and you're like thinking what they just say their name was?
- [Richie] It's Brad, it's no, it Dave.
Yeah you know it's simple,
but you can't remember the name for the life you got.
- Correct.
Now let's think about this,
is the problem that we have a bad memory?
If you hear a name and you don't remember it
two seconds later,
that's not really a memory problem.
That is a focus problem.
So you're not listening.
If you were honest with that person, you would say,
Hey, you know a few minutes ago, when you told me your name,
I wasn't even listening to you.
Right?
- [Richie] Yeah.
- So what we need to do is we need to focus our brain
in everyday life.
So if all your listeners will do this,
the next time they walk into a room
and they see some people,
you know you're gonna meet them
in 10 minutes or five minutes.
So ask yourself this question,
what is their name?
Just develop that habit of anytime you see somebody
get curious, huh?
What's their name?
Your brain will not have an answer for that
because you don't know their name,
but it will focus your brain and tell your brain to listen
when they say their name.
The second key I would say is to visualize their name.
If they say their name is Richie,
maybe imagine dollar signs, but use a similar process.
- [Richie] Okay.
It's interesting.
So a practical application that I've seen recently
in my life that I think is doing what you're telling me.
So I take my dog, Robert,
who is a star of the Lisa show
on walks around our neighborhood.
And during the pandemic a lot of people who've been home.
And so I've met a lot of people that I otherwise
wouldn't have met.
And I think I probably would've never remembered
their names although I always ask
and try to remember their names.
And it wasn't until my wife said, who did you meet?
She started to get in the habit of
who did you meet on your walk today?
And knowing that I had to report back,
made me remember the names and locations of the people
that I met along my walk.
Am I practicing what you're preaching?
- You are not only practicing what I'm preaching,
you're taking a page out of my playbook.
The question that your wife is asking you,
who did you meet today?
Is a question that I ask myself at the end of the day,
who did I meet today?
Oh, you know what?
I met that guy and he had really big ears.
And in other words I'm trying,
I try to think of something unique about his face.
Oh and I was imagining a stove on his ears
because his name was Steve.
And I'm cooking those ears
and I'm putting those ears in the stove
cause his name is Steve.
- [Richie] This sounds ridiculous
but I'm sure that it helps.
- Yeah.
You know what? And it is a little ridiculous,
but I'll share this with you.
If you meet somebody today and you do that,
you imagine you're cooking their stove as a Steve,
and then in six weeks you see them at the store
and you remember their name,
they don't care if it was ridiculous,
all they care is wow that person remembered my name.
I'm important to that person.
On our end, the process is a little bit silly
and you know laughable.
On their end it is wow.
I mean something to that guy.
- [Richie] The value of developing a great memory
aside from helping us make or build great relationships
by remembering either someone's name
or a detail about their life, what are other values?
Like why should we go to the trouble of doing this?
- Well, if you think about it,
I was reading a book a 200 year old book this weekend
by Isaac Watts called the improvement of the mind.
It's a great 200 year old book.
And that book, he said something that was so profound to me.
He said, everything we say, everything we talk about
relies on our memory.
This conversation that you and I are having right now
is relying on your memory.
You are remembering a conversation that
your wife had with you this week.
You are remembering walking with your dog.
Every conversation we have,
everything we say it relies on our memory.
It only makes sense that if we lose our memory,
the quality of our life is going to decrease.
If we improve our memory,
the quality of our life will increase.
We'll be able to study and pass tests easier,
we'll be able to give speeches without notes.
We'll be able to remember
our favorite points or quotes or verses
and just close our eyes and think about them.
So it's everything.
Memory is everything.
- [Richie] For those of us,
and I'm not speaking for me, although yes I am,
that have a really hard time focusing.
And when I can actually focus in,
I'm able to remember those things.
If we started with our focus,
do you have any hacks or tips that we can do
to kind of silence whatever that keeps us
distracted from having a great memory?
- This is one of my biggest problems.
One of my biggest problems is my focus.
This weekend I put my cell phone
in between my mattress and box springs
and I put it on silent and I did not look at it
for the entire weekend.
- [Richie] Wow.
- Yes, it was the first time I've done that
in maybe 20 years.
- [Richie] Wow.
- And I did it in part for my focus
and every time I had a thought relating to my phone
and what I thought about,
I would put it in a journal.
It was amazing how my hand
was naturally reaching for my phone
when I was at a red light.
It's amazing.
So here's what I could say as far as your focus,
try to take a little bit of a break
from social media as much as you can,
watch what you eat,
but also give yourself permission to not be perfect.
Your mind is going to wander.
It will wander.
And when it does wander, don't beat yourself up.
But just say to yourself,
ah I just caught my mind wandering
time to get back on track.
And I think giving yourself permission is important.
- [Richie] All right Ron, here's the big test.
What was the chef making me?
- (laughs) Pizza?
- [Richie] Yeah you did it.
Thanks.
Ron White a two time USA memory champion.
You can find out more about Ron
and how you can improve your own memory
at blackbeltmemory.com or brainethnic.com
Thank you so much for being with us.
- Hey, I loved it.
- [Richie] Coming up, I'm going to tell you
all about daddy's picnic day,
that's part of your morning and...
- Well that was a lot of fun.
I hope you heard me today live on Sirius XM dish network.
I loved it.
I'll see you guys later.
I've got stuff to work on.