By Gary Craig
There's something scary about drugs that concerns a growing number of physicians and should wobble the knees of every patient on the planet. It's obvious to any mathematician but somehow has escaped the general scrutiny of the health industry.
It has to do with combining meds.
Ever since I can remember I have been fed the perception that drugs are governmentally evaluated and thus are safe if taken under the guidance of competent physicians. However, even if we accept the presumed safety for the ingestion of one drug, we must ask ourselves how might that safety change if we take multiple drugs?
For safety assurances, proper testing should be done for every drug combination we are advised to take. If we take Prozac and Tylenol, for example, we should be presented with all the possible benefits and consequences before allowing these two foreign substances to mix with the chemicals our bodies already create. Same thing goes for combining Paxil with Viagra or Interferon with Lipitor.
The list of possible problems here is monstrously long because there are a b'zillion drugs and mega b'zillions of combinations. Nonetheless, I've never seen or heard of any studies that test any of these combinations ... have you?
Thus, if you take two drugs, the odds of their combination having been adequately tested for safety are skimpy at best. But if you take 3 or more drugs the danger possibilities multiply even faster.
Here's how the mathematics work: If you take 3 drugs then adequate safety testing of the various combinations require 7 separate tests. If you take 4 drugs the combinations require 25 separate tests. If you take 5 drugs it amounts to 121 tests. If you take 10 drugs the number of required safety tests total 362,881.
The conclusion here should be obvious. Namely, there is questionable safety testing if you take 2 drugs and nominal, if any, safety testing if you take 3. Beyond that you are clearly into the land of, "I have no idea what these combinations of drugs will do."
To me, this tosses our dedicated docs into a tenuous position. They have patients with problems who aren't willing to exercise, eat right, do EFT for emotional issues ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?284 ) or much of anything else to help their own health. Instead, the patients hope the physicians will produce a magic pill (or pills) to make their problems go away.
I have met many patients who are on several drugs and take some drugs to counteract the effects of other drugs. As a non-physician I look at this with a shudder. These folks are being fed chemical cocktails with little or no safety testing behind the combinations. Maybe I need some help with my perceptions here but, to me, they are playing drug roulette.
I don't know if lawyers have picked up on the simple, but compelling, math here. But I do know that I wouldn't want to be a doctor in court facing these clear facts.
In the 15+ years I have been involved in the health field, I have had the good fortune to count many physicians as my personal friends. With few exceptions, they agree that it is our lifestyles, diets and emotional stresses that cause most of our health problems ... and ... the vast majority of these problems would vanish if people would live common sense lives. Yet patients repeatedly abuse their bodies and ask for more and more "miracle drugs" as the convenient solution. I don't envy the docs at all as I often hear them complain that this is a highway to NobodyWinsVille.
Maybe what we really need are good salespeople to persuade folks to take care of themselves. I suspect that, if truly persuasive, they would do more good than the ocean of drugs at our disposal.
Love, Gary
PS: The Free EFT Get Started Package ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?284/1 ) can help any newcomer learn the valuable EFT process. If you want to save time and dive right in, get our low cost DVD Library ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?284/2 )
Steve Bishop is an experienced EFT Trainer & Practitioner who has attended personal trainings on a number of occasions with Gary, here in the UK and also in America. For an appointment call 0800 1974 294 or visit www.mreft.com
Monday, 18 December 2006
The EFT Medical University -- Anyone Can Be An MD
I hereby establish EMU (EFT Medical University). It has no curriculum and costs nothing to attend. Nonetheless, a diligent group of EMU graduates will bring more healing to the planet than all the world's drugs, surgeries and radiations combined.
To graduate, you need only be persuasive enough to convince one person (including yourself) to consistently exercise, eat sensibly and eliminate the angers, fears and traumas that drain our immune systems. Exercise is freely available in multitudes of forms, Sensible diets boil down to simple choices and emotional health can be achieved through proper use of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques).
How obvious!
To some, however, this is easier said than done. That's why doctors' offices are filled with couch potatoes who guzzle beer and gorge on chocolate cake AND are hoping for a magic pill that will wash away their unhealthy lifestyles. Docs know this and it's the reason why so many of them are shaking their heads in wonderment these days. They are placed on a pedestal by drug companies and the medical establishment and are expected to produce unrealistic miracles where simple common sense will do the job.
So, from a health point of view, the world doesn't need yet another medical procedure. Instead, it needs persuasive salespeople that can drum home these simple ideas. Properly done, I predict that our medical bills will drop by 80%.
So, be a student of EMU and convince just one person (including yourself) to consistently practice these lifestyle shifts. This will earn you an MD (Major Do-gooder) and will equip you to be among the premiere healers on the planet.
Gary Craig, MD
PS: You can learn all the EFT basics with the Free EFT Get Started Package.
Published Thursday, November 09, 2006 6:31 PM by Gary
To graduate, you need only be persuasive enough to convince one person (including yourself) to consistently exercise, eat sensibly and eliminate the angers, fears and traumas that drain our immune systems. Exercise is freely available in multitudes of forms, Sensible diets boil down to simple choices and emotional health can be achieved through proper use of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques).
How obvious!
To some, however, this is easier said than done. That's why doctors' offices are filled with couch potatoes who guzzle beer and gorge on chocolate cake AND are hoping for a magic pill that will wash away their unhealthy lifestyles. Docs know this and it's the reason why so many of them are shaking their heads in wonderment these days. They are placed on a pedestal by drug companies and the medical establishment and are expected to produce unrealistic miracles where simple common sense will do the job.
So, from a health point of view, the world doesn't need yet another medical procedure. Instead, it needs persuasive salespeople that can drum home these simple ideas. Properly done, I predict that our medical bills will drop by 80%.
So, be a student of EMU and convince just one person (including yourself) to consistently practice these lifestyle shifts. This will earn you an MD (Major Do-gooder) and will equip you to be among the premiere healers on the planet.
Gary Craig, MD
PS: You can learn all the EFT basics with the Free EFT Get Started Package.
Published Thursday, November 09, 2006 6:31 PM by Gary
Friday, 17 November 2006
Psychological Factors in Chronic Pain: An Introduction to Psychosomatic Pain Management
By Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, M.D., PhD
This lecture was presented at the 14th annual meeting of the AmericanAssociation of Orthopaedic Medicine, Tempe Arizona Feb.21, 1997 and is published here as an article taken from Gary Craigs amazing EFT website, www.emofree.com.
Introduction:
Most pain treating physicians have a vague notion, that there may be a psychological component contributing to the severity of chronic pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain defined pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with the actual or potential tissue damage"(1). The well respected British neurologist and researcher Barry Wyke demonstrated(2), that the neurological signal from a painful stimulus travels from the receptors in the periphery ("nociceptors") to the thalamus, where the message is split: one pathway goes up to the sensory cortex, telling the patient where the pain is and what particular sensation it causes (warm, pulling, pressing etc.). The other pathway goes to the frontal lobe, which is now accepted as being partially part of the limbic system. Stimulation of this area gives the patient the emotional experience that goes along with having pain ("it makes me sick, hopeless …I feel terrible …I am afraid ..etc.). Patients, that had their frontal lobes removed, can still tell, where nociceptors are stimulated, but there is no suffering whatsoever that goes along with the experience. It is really the "psychological" component, that has earned chronic pain the attention it is given in modern medicine. Why then are we not focusing our attention on the ways in which we can help patients in this area? Why are most of us still trying to "fix" pain with all the invasive procedural approaches available today? Why not develop a psychological intervention, that treats the emotional part of chronic pain and leave the rest alone?
One of the main reasons I found for this dilemma can be explained quite simply: Medicine is a science, that has clearly come into it’s adulthood. Many safe injection procedures and other technical approaches are available today. These are teachable, learnable and reproducible. Psychology however is a young science(3) with many diverting opinions ,each exploring different personality models, being based in often contradictory philosophies. Most pain practitioners have been disappointed with the results, when we send our difficult pain patients to the local psychotherapist (may he be working in a hospital setting or in private practice), even though rare individual practitioners may have consistently good results. It appears, that both the practitioner and the method used play an important role, more so than in other areas of pain management . Psychological approaches are always unique and specific to the individual and do not lend themselves to be studied with a "double blind study".
The literature:
The literature is full of descriptions of "multidisciplinary pain centers" and their management of patients. Outcome studies show, that the idea works better than physical therapy and medication alone, but comparisons against individual successful practitioners have been skillfully avoided. In fact, these pain centers seem to be using up tremendous financial resources with results that are questionable. The psychological literature is full of anecdotal reports of patients improving with psycho-therapeutic approaches alone(4,5,6) but is disappointing in terms of good well organized studies. One study stands out, that will be highlighted here:
In 1992 the San Francisco Spine Institute published a paper in Spine Magazine(7). 100 adults with MRI proven severe lumbar disc herniations were preoperatively interviewed regarding five possible traumatic situations in their respective childhood:
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
Emotional neglect/ abandonment
Loss of one or both parents (divorce, death etc.)
drug abuse at home (alcohol, prescription drugs etc.)
The patients were assigned to 3 different groups:
None of these risk factors
One or two risk factors
Three or more
The long term postoperative success was as follows:
95% excellent improvement
73% improvement
15%improvement
What does this mean? The result of surgery and postoperative pain have little to do with the surgical procedure itself but largely depend on factors that date back to the childhood of the patient. It can be easily extrapolated from this study, that the same is true for many or all of the other procedures used in pain management, including osteopathic manipulation, prolotherapy and others. A follow-up study demonstrated, that brief targeted psychotherapy that addresses these specific issues, could improve the postsurgical results dramatically in groups B and C. Pelletier showed, that patients, who had a"severe"childhood, but matured through the process of good psychotherapy, ended up having a higher life-expectancy than people, that had a "happy" childhood.
Another study, conducted by several AAOM affiliated physicians (Klein, Eek, Dorman et al) pointed indirectly in the same direction as the Spine Institute study: Patients were examined regarding the severity of their MRI findings before undergoing prolotherapy treatment. There was no correlation between outcome and the severity of the lesion: patients with severe pathology had the same success rate as the group with no demonstrable pathology, i.e. some patients with no demonstrable pathology did not improve with prolotherapy, others with severe pathology did improve. This study did not look at the probable underlying psychological problems even though I would dare to say, that just as in spinal surgery the outcome of the treatment was determined by the same 5 psychological factors, not by the severity of the lesion.
Neurophysiology:
Much has been written lately on the connection between the limbic system, the place where emotional memory appears to be stored, and the autonomic nervous system( ANS)(8,9). Especially valuable is the literature on Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (PNI). The hippocampus and amygdalaregion show regional constant arousal in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress(10). The stress signal discharges itself over the limbic-hypothalamic axis into the hypothalamus. From here the signal travels 3 ways:
Down via releasing factors to the pituitary
Down the sympathetic pathways, creating peripheral target specific vasoconstriction and wind-up effect on nociceptors ( upregulating pain volume and perpetuating tissue damage)
Down to the nucleus ambiguus in the brainstem, from here down one branch of the vagus ("smart vagus’) to the enteric nervous system, stimulating the emotion-specific visceral release of several of over 70 informational substances (among those the more well known neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine etc.)(11,12).
Example: the feeling of fear has been related to vagus stimulation of the kidney area and sympathetically induced release of cortisol and norepinephrine.
When a conflict from childhood is uncovered, a new intracerebral neuronal connection is made from the limbic system to the cortex. The patient becomes more "conscious". The conflict induced electrical energy from areas in the limbic system can now flow to the cortex instead of constantly arousing areas in the hypothalamus. This energy becomes a source of greater vitality and clarity. However, the pathway from the conflict to the hypothalamus is habituated and needs to be uncoupled ("deconditioned"). Pawlow, Francine Shapiro(13), Roger Callahan, and this author(4) have reported on the need for uncoupling techniques. Shapiro has well researched the treatment called E.M.D.R (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing)(13). While the patient remembers the past event, her/his eyes are moved forth and back for 33 seconds or longer. This breaks the habituated ANS response.
Successful therapeutic interventions have to fulfill therefore 3 criteria:
Target the 5 common childhood conflicts listed above
Uncover these conflicts. Often a light trance state is required to accomplish this
The process has to be finished with an uncoupling technique
To help the practitioner seek out a treatment, here is a list of more well known modalities that are suitable:
Milton Eriksons Hypnotherapy(14) and various offshoots: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), E.Rossi’s Neurobiology(9)
Biofeedback psychotherapy and it’s offshoots: Psycho-Kinesiology(4 ), Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET)
EMDR(13)
Bert Hellinger’s and Satyr’s "Family Sculpting"( 15)
Co-Counselling(16)
There are many other techniques that work, but these are the most reproducible, learnable approaches that target the most common 5 factors (i.e.childhood trauma) of chronic pain. The treatment successes published in the literature using one or more of these approaches are quite stunning, yet have so far failed to awaken the appropriate interest in the medical/scientific community at large.
Conclusion:
Because of the intricate neuronal network in the brain, that links the limbic system with the hypothalamus (and virtually any other structure), chronic pain cannot be successfully treated without addressing the psycho-emotional component. The main reason, why some patients get well at all with only interventional technical approaches - but without psychotherapy of some sort- is that most physicians counsel their patients to some degree (often not knowing that they do) and lessen the limbic system arousal by demonstrating confidence and acceptance. However, this type of therapy is not targeted and does not consciously use the tremendous benefits these approaches have to offer.
Literature
H.Merskey: PainTerms: A list with definitions and notes on usage. Recommended by the IASP subcommittee on taxonomy. Pain, 6, 249-252 (1979)
B.Wyke: Articular Neurology and Manipulative Therapy. In E.F.Glasgow et al.(Eds). Aspects of manipulative therapy (2nd ed.) New York: Churchill Livingstone (1985)
H.Ellenberger: Die Entdeckung des Unbewussten. Zuerich (1985)
D.Klinghardt: Psychokinesiologie. Bauer Verlag Freiburg (1996)
R.Hamer: Krebs - Psyche, Gehirn, Organ. Die Zusammenhaenge. Amici di Dirk Verlag. Koelln (1991)
J.Sarno: Mind over Back Pain. Warner Books (1986)
J.Schofferman: Childhood Psychological Trauma Correlates with Unsuccessful Lumbar Spine Surgery. Spine, Vol17, Nr.6, suppl. pp 138-144 (1992)
F.Willard: Nociception and the Neuroendocrine-Immune Connection. 1992 International Symposium. Am.Acad.of Osteopathy. University Classics. Athens, OH (1994)
E.Rossi The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing. New York (1986)
D.Goleman: Emotional Intelligence. New York (1996)
C.Pert: Neuropeptides and their Receptors: a Psychosomatic Network. J.of Immunology, no 135, pp 8205- 8265 (1985)
S.Porges: Emotion: an Evolutionary By-Product of the Neural Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System. Institute for Child Study. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-1131 (1994)
F.Shapiro: Eye Movement Desisitization and Reprocessing.Guilford Press (1995)
D,Cheek: Hypnosis. The Application of Ideomotor Techniques. Paramount Publishing (1994)
B.Hellinger: Anerkennen, was ist, Koesel Verlag (1996)
H.Jackins: Fundamentals of Co-Counselling. Rational Island Publishers (1982)
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
This lecture was presented at the 14th annual meeting of the AmericanAssociation of Orthopaedic Medicine, Tempe Arizona Feb.21, 1997 and is published here as an article taken from Gary Craigs amazing EFT website, www.emofree.com.
Introduction:
Most pain treating physicians have a vague notion, that there may be a psychological component contributing to the severity of chronic pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain defined pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with the actual or potential tissue damage"(1). The well respected British neurologist and researcher Barry Wyke demonstrated(2), that the neurological signal from a painful stimulus travels from the receptors in the periphery ("nociceptors") to the thalamus, where the message is split: one pathway goes up to the sensory cortex, telling the patient where the pain is and what particular sensation it causes (warm, pulling, pressing etc.). The other pathway goes to the frontal lobe, which is now accepted as being partially part of the limbic system. Stimulation of this area gives the patient the emotional experience that goes along with having pain ("it makes me sick, hopeless …I feel terrible …I am afraid ..etc.). Patients, that had their frontal lobes removed, can still tell, where nociceptors are stimulated, but there is no suffering whatsoever that goes along with the experience. It is really the "psychological" component, that has earned chronic pain the attention it is given in modern medicine. Why then are we not focusing our attention on the ways in which we can help patients in this area? Why are most of us still trying to "fix" pain with all the invasive procedural approaches available today? Why not develop a psychological intervention, that treats the emotional part of chronic pain and leave the rest alone?
One of the main reasons I found for this dilemma can be explained quite simply: Medicine is a science, that has clearly come into it’s adulthood. Many safe injection procedures and other technical approaches are available today. These are teachable, learnable and reproducible. Psychology however is a young science(3) with many diverting opinions ,each exploring different personality models, being based in often contradictory philosophies. Most pain practitioners have been disappointed with the results, when we send our difficult pain patients to the local psychotherapist (may he be working in a hospital setting or in private practice), even though rare individual practitioners may have consistently good results. It appears, that both the practitioner and the method used play an important role, more so than in other areas of pain management . Psychological approaches are always unique and specific to the individual and do not lend themselves to be studied with a "double blind study".
The literature:
The literature is full of descriptions of "multidisciplinary pain centers" and their management of patients. Outcome studies show, that the idea works better than physical therapy and medication alone, but comparisons against individual successful practitioners have been skillfully avoided. In fact, these pain centers seem to be using up tremendous financial resources with results that are questionable. The psychological literature is full of anecdotal reports of patients improving with psycho-therapeutic approaches alone(4,5,6) but is disappointing in terms of good well organized studies. One study stands out, that will be highlighted here:
In 1992 the San Francisco Spine Institute published a paper in Spine Magazine(7). 100 adults with MRI proven severe lumbar disc herniations were preoperatively interviewed regarding five possible traumatic situations in their respective childhood:
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
Emotional neglect/ abandonment
Loss of one or both parents (divorce, death etc.)
drug abuse at home (alcohol, prescription drugs etc.)
The patients were assigned to 3 different groups:
None of these risk factors
One or two risk factors
Three or more
The long term postoperative success was as follows:
95% excellent improvement
73% improvement
15%improvement
What does this mean? The result of surgery and postoperative pain have little to do with the surgical procedure itself but largely depend on factors that date back to the childhood of the patient. It can be easily extrapolated from this study, that the same is true for many or all of the other procedures used in pain management, including osteopathic manipulation, prolotherapy and others. A follow-up study demonstrated, that brief targeted psychotherapy that addresses these specific issues, could improve the postsurgical results dramatically in groups B and C. Pelletier showed, that patients, who had a"severe"childhood, but matured through the process of good psychotherapy, ended up having a higher life-expectancy than people, that had a "happy" childhood.
Another study, conducted by several AAOM affiliated physicians (Klein, Eek, Dorman et al) pointed indirectly in the same direction as the Spine Institute study: Patients were examined regarding the severity of their MRI findings before undergoing prolotherapy treatment. There was no correlation between outcome and the severity of the lesion: patients with severe pathology had the same success rate as the group with no demonstrable pathology, i.e. some patients with no demonstrable pathology did not improve with prolotherapy, others with severe pathology did improve. This study did not look at the probable underlying psychological problems even though I would dare to say, that just as in spinal surgery the outcome of the treatment was determined by the same 5 psychological factors, not by the severity of the lesion.
Neurophysiology:
Much has been written lately on the connection between the limbic system, the place where emotional memory appears to be stored, and the autonomic nervous system( ANS)(8,9). Especially valuable is the literature on Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (PNI). The hippocampus and amygdalaregion show regional constant arousal in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress(10). The stress signal discharges itself over the limbic-hypothalamic axis into the hypothalamus. From here the signal travels 3 ways:
Down via releasing factors to the pituitary
Down the sympathetic pathways, creating peripheral target specific vasoconstriction and wind-up effect on nociceptors ( upregulating pain volume and perpetuating tissue damage)
Down to the nucleus ambiguus in the brainstem, from here down one branch of the vagus ("smart vagus’) to the enteric nervous system, stimulating the emotion-specific visceral release of several of over 70 informational substances (among those the more well known neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine etc.)(11,12).
Example: the feeling of fear has been related to vagus stimulation of the kidney area and sympathetically induced release of cortisol and norepinephrine.
When a conflict from childhood is uncovered, a new intracerebral neuronal connection is made from the limbic system to the cortex. The patient becomes more "conscious". The conflict induced electrical energy from areas in the limbic system can now flow to the cortex instead of constantly arousing areas in the hypothalamus. This energy becomes a source of greater vitality and clarity. However, the pathway from the conflict to the hypothalamus is habituated and needs to be uncoupled ("deconditioned"). Pawlow, Francine Shapiro(13), Roger Callahan, and this author(4) have reported on the need for uncoupling techniques. Shapiro has well researched the treatment called E.M.D.R (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing)(13). While the patient remembers the past event, her/his eyes are moved forth and back for 33 seconds or longer. This breaks the habituated ANS response.
Successful therapeutic interventions have to fulfill therefore 3 criteria:
Target the 5 common childhood conflicts listed above
Uncover these conflicts. Often a light trance state is required to accomplish this
The process has to be finished with an uncoupling technique
To help the practitioner seek out a treatment, here is a list of more well known modalities that are suitable:
Milton Eriksons Hypnotherapy(14) and various offshoots: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), E.Rossi’s Neurobiology(9)
Biofeedback psychotherapy and it’s offshoots: Psycho-Kinesiology(4 ), Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET)
EMDR(13)
Bert Hellinger’s and Satyr’s "Family Sculpting"( 15)
Co-Counselling(16)
There are many other techniques that work, but these are the most reproducible, learnable approaches that target the most common 5 factors (i.e.childhood trauma) of chronic pain. The treatment successes published in the literature using one or more of these approaches are quite stunning, yet have so far failed to awaken the appropriate interest in the medical/scientific community at large.
Conclusion:
Because of the intricate neuronal network in the brain, that links the limbic system with the hypothalamus (and virtually any other structure), chronic pain cannot be successfully treated without addressing the psycho-emotional component. The main reason, why some patients get well at all with only interventional technical approaches - but without psychotherapy of some sort- is that most physicians counsel their patients to some degree (often not knowing that they do) and lessen the limbic system arousal by demonstrating confidence and acceptance. However, this type of therapy is not targeted and does not consciously use the tremendous benefits these approaches have to offer.
Literature
H.Merskey: PainTerms: A list with definitions and notes on usage. Recommended by the IASP subcommittee on taxonomy. Pain, 6, 249-252 (1979)
B.Wyke: Articular Neurology and Manipulative Therapy. In E.F.Glasgow et al.(Eds). Aspects of manipulative therapy (2nd ed.) New York: Churchill Livingstone (1985)
H.Ellenberger: Die Entdeckung des Unbewussten. Zuerich (1985)
D.Klinghardt: Psychokinesiologie. Bauer Verlag Freiburg (1996)
R.Hamer: Krebs - Psyche, Gehirn, Organ. Die Zusammenhaenge. Amici di Dirk Verlag. Koelln (1991)
J.Sarno: Mind over Back Pain. Warner Books (1986)
J.Schofferman: Childhood Psychological Trauma Correlates with Unsuccessful Lumbar Spine Surgery. Spine, Vol17, Nr.6, suppl. pp 138-144 (1992)
F.Willard: Nociception and the Neuroendocrine-Immune Connection. 1992 International Symposium. Am.Acad.of Osteopathy. University Classics. Athens, OH (1994)
E.Rossi The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing. New York (1986)
D.Goleman: Emotional Intelligence. New York (1996)
C.Pert: Neuropeptides and their Receptors: a Psychosomatic Network. J.of Immunology, no 135, pp 8205- 8265 (1985)
S.Porges: Emotion: an Evolutionary By-Product of the Neural Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System. Institute for Child Study. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-1131 (1994)
F.Shapiro: Eye Movement Desisitization and Reprocessing.Guilford Press (1995)
D,Cheek: Hypnosis. The Application of Ideomotor Techniques. Paramount Publishing (1994)
B.Hellinger: Anerkennen, was ist, Koesel Verlag (1996)
H.Jackins: Fundamentals of Co-Counselling. Rational Island Publishers (1982)
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
Thursday, 16 November 2006
SECRETS OF HIGH £ CLASSIFIED ADS
Classified ads, when used effectively, can be one of the quickest and inexpensive ways to increase sales and customers.
A single well-written classified ad can generate hundreds of thousands in sales, yet can cost you pennies to run. Unfortunately, most people don't appreciate the pulling power of classified ads. They think classifieds ads are for selling cars, or finding jobs, not for expanding a business.
And while it's true a classified ad is a good way to sell a car, or find a job, it is also true that classified ads can be used to launch and operate multi-million dollar business. In fact, many businesses rely exclusively on these small low cost ads to generate all their sales. The reason is simple. Once you have discovered how to harness the power of these ads, you really won't need to run expensive display ads.
The key point about classified ads is that they are most effective when used as 'lead generators'. In these ads, you are not trying to convince someone to spend money with you in the ad. Instead, you're trying to identify a potential customer by having that customer contact you as a result of the ad. Once potential customers have identified themselves, you follow up with your direct mail offer for the product or service you want to sell.
Writing an effective classified ad is one of the most exacting forms of copywriting. With twenty words or less you have to say something that will cause potential customers to call you. And you can't rely on eye-catching illustrations or professional layouts to catch the reader's attention. It's all in the wording.
Here's what we do when we need to write a classified ad that really works:
1. Define what we want the ad to accomplish. Do we want the customer to read the ad and smile? Or do we want him to read the ad and call us? (In most cases we want the customer to call us immediately upon reading the ad.)
2. Define the profile of the person most likely to purchase our product or service. (Is it a man or woman, young or old, rich or poor?) If you can't identify who you are going to sell a product to, it's almost impossible to write an ad that will get their attention.
3. With the 'most likely customer profile' developed in step two, you should list the 'hot buttons', those words, ideas, and concepts most likely to gain the immediate attention of anyone in the profile group. These hot buttons might be phrases like 'work at home', financial freedom,' 'overnight weight loss,' 'immediate loans' or 'overseas jobs'.
4. Using the list of hot buttons we came up with in step three, we should see how we can weave them into a 20 word or less ad that accomplishes the goal we set in step one. When writing the ad, the first three words are extremely important and must be selected with purpose. They should call out to our potential customers.
5. If our goal is to get the reader to identify himself to us as a potential customer we should offer free additional information. This way we get the customer to call us and give us their name so we can send them something. We normally do this by saying, 'For Free Information Packet call 0800 1974 294.'
6. After the ad is written to our satisfaction, we search out a number of highly targeted newsletters and magazines that our customers read. Then we find the ones with the least amount of classified ads, and run our test ads there. (We always avoid general interest publications. The ad rates are too expensive and the response too small.)
7. Before the ads appear we develop our ad response pack. This is free information that people who see the ad will be calling about. And it is this response pack that will generate the sale. Obviously having a good response pack is critical to the success of the project.
8. When the ads appear, we keep track of the total number of enquiries for each ad, from each publication. This lets us know which ad works best, and which publication pulls best. We use this information when we roll the ad out on a wider scale.
One final point. The success of a classified ad is determined by the Sales and is related to the follow-up effort, the response pack, not the lead generating classified ad. Generally if you get five or more responses to a low cost classified, you are on the right track.
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
A single well-written classified ad can generate hundreds of thousands in sales, yet can cost you pennies to run. Unfortunately, most people don't appreciate the pulling power of classified ads. They think classifieds ads are for selling cars, or finding jobs, not for expanding a business.
And while it's true a classified ad is a good way to sell a car, or find a job, it is also true that classified ads can be used to launch and operate multi-million dollar business. In fact, many businesses rely exclusively on these small low cost ads to generate all their sales. The reason is simple. Once you have discovered how to harness the power of these ads, you really won't need to run expensive display ads.
The key point about classified ads is that they are most effective when used as 'lead generators'. In these ads, you are not trying to convince someone to spend money with you in the ad. Instead, you're trying to identify a potential customer by having that customer contact you as a result of the ad. Once potential customers have identified themselves, you follow up with your direct mail offer for the product or service you want to sell.
Writing an effective classified ad is one of the most exacting forms of copywriting. With twenty words or less you have to say something that will cause potential customers to call you. And you can't rely on eye-catching illustrations or professional layouts to catch the reader's attention. It's all in the wording.
Here's what we do when we need to write a classified ad that really works:
1. Define what we want the ad to accomplish. Do we want the customer to read the ad and smile? Or do we want him to read the ad and call us? (In most cases we want the customer to call us immediately upon reading the ad.)
2. Define the profile of the person most likely to purchase our product or service. (Is it a man or woman, young or old, rich or poor?) If you can't identify who you are going to sell a product to, it's almost impossible to write an ad that will get their attention.
3. With the 'most likely customer profile' developed in step two, you should list the 'hot buttons', those words, ideas, and concepts most likely to gain the immediate attention of anyone in the profile group. These hot buttons might be phrases like 'work at home', financial freedom,' 'overnight weight loss,' 'immediate loans' or 'overseas jobs'.
4. Using the list of hot buttons we came up with in step three, we should see how we can weave them into a 20 word or less ad that accomplishes the goal we set in step one. When writing the ad, the first three words are extremely important and must be selected with purpose. They should call out to our potential customers.
5. If our goal is to get the reader to identify himself to us as a potential customer we should offer free additional information. This way we get the customer to call us and give us their name so we can send them something. We normally do this by saying, 'For Free Information Packet call 0800 1974 294.'
6. After the ad is written to our satisfaction, we search out a number of highly targeted newsletters and magazines that our customers read. Then we find the ones with the least amount of classified ads, and run our test ads there. (We always avoid general interest publications. The ad rates are too expensive and the response too small.)
7. Before the ads appear we develop our ad response pack. This is free information that people who see the ad will be calling about. And it is this response pack that will generate the sale. Obviously having a good response pack is critical to the success of the project.
8. When the ads appear, we keep track of the total number of enquiries for each ad, from each publication. This lets us know which ad works best, and which publication pulls best. We use this information when we roll the ad out on a wider scale.
One final point. The success of a classified ad is determined by the Sales and is related to the follow-up effort, the response pack, not the lead generating classified ad. Generally if you get five or more responses to a low cost classified, you are on the right track.
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
Improve Your Memory
INTRODUCTION
Can you remember a dozen instances in which you forgot some thing during the past week?
The answer to that question makes little difference, because you have been forgetting things--little things and big--and if your lapses have been forgotten, so much the worse. But, since you're reading this page right now, it's probable that your forgetfulness has been plaguing you more and more frequently. And you don't know what to do about it. And you're asking me.
And I’m asking you: Have you tried to figure out why you've been forgetting? Have you noticed when you've failed to remember? Have you noticed what things you've forgotten?
Of course you have got a memory, and unless I'm wrong, it's a pretty good one. If you wanted to take the time, you could sit down and rattle off literally thousands upon thousands of facts ...the "seven-times" table, who's president of the United States, your middle name, if you have one, or, if not, that you haven't got a middle name, the formula for baby's breakfast, what causes hiccoughs, how to spell "hiccoughs," how to cure a rasher of bacon or a rash, how to obtain a writ of mandamus, how long it takes to boil an egg or get to Pittsburgh when traffic's with you ... you've got enough facts in your mind to fill a hundred jumbo filing cabinets!
But for all that you still forgot to bring the car in to have the oil changed last week, your telephone bill sat in a drawer and went three weeks overdue, your secretary had to remind you that it was your wife's birthday, you put your report card down somewhere and then completely forgot where it was ... and you're getting pretty discouraged over this whole memory situation.
Remember this: Unless you learn something--really get it into your mind in tile first place--you're not ever going to remember it! Unless you understand something the first time, the odds are that the next time will be just another first time.
Trace the thought back a step further, and consider this: Unless you pay attention, you probably will not learn. And another step--unless you're interested for one reason or another, you won't be paying attention.
So you're not going to remember anything in which you don't take an interest upon first encounter.
Of course it's obvious that you must often rely upon your memory to bring you information about things which don't interest you. If you've been asked by the lady next door to pick up a quart of milk on your way home, maybe you don't care whether she drinks her coffee black or not; suppose you don't like your job, or school, or cleaning the house ... these are responsibilities which you've got to meet. Even if you're not genuinely interested in some things, you've got an interest in them, right?
So: since the best way to remember things is to take an interest in them, and since you've sometimes got to remember things about things in which you're not ordinarily very interested ... what's the answer? Create an interest in them!
--Ah, come on, how do you expect me to get interested in addressing two hundred envelopes, or putting out the garbage, or algebra?
Simpler than you think! Get interested in exercising your memory muscles! Make your memory your hobby, watch it work, teach it new tricks, carry it around with you and show it off, and pretty soon it'll be taking fine care of itself!
In the following chapters I'm going to suggest a few of the tricks that you can play with your memory, in order that many of the things you've been forgetting will become more fun to remember. At the same time, you'll begin to realize that some things aren't worth the time and effort it would take to commit them to memory, if they can be taken care of in some easier way; part of this book will be devoted to a number of memory-minimizers--suggestions for avoiding memory tasks which might cost a bit too much of your time.
It won't be a system, or a course, or just a book of puzzles to test your rote powers ...but a discourse on the practical application of memory principles. And as you learn more about your own memory, you'll take a greater interest in it, and use it to better advantage. The results of all this will be evident almost immediately--in your daily life.
After a very short while, you'll start to get the hang of it yourself. And as you become more familiar with your memory you'll derive pleasure and satisfaction from the game of finding new ways to strengthen--and reinforce your memory.
MEMORY FACETS
Memory is far and away the most remarkable of all your mental functions. Were your mind unable to store up an enormous part of all the information fed it by your senses, each new moment of existence would bring with it the necessity of "starting from scratch" in everything you think and do. You'd have to wear a little tag with your name on it, on the chance you might meet someone to whom you'd like to introduce yourself; every time you picked up a book you'd have to examine it to see how the pages turned ... and you wouldn't be able to read it anyway, because the letters and words would be meaningless to you!
Everything you do is made easier for you by your memory ... each activity is simpler because in the past you've had experiences which told your mind and body what to expect and how to act in certain situations. Your life is a continuous lesson, because the countless things you do prepare you for doing them again ... because experience eliminates travel on the trial-and-error route by teaching you the right or wrong way.
Even if you were to leave your memory completely alone, without ever giving a thought to using it more efficiently, it would continue to serve you loyally and well ... but, why settle for a meager pension when, by investing just a bit of consideration, you can reap a vast fortune? While attending a lecture you're sure to pick up a few tidbits of information, just in hearing the words.
But if you could know how to prepare all those facts for more efficient remembering, if you were able to multiply your chances of remembering tile information, think of how much more knowledge you'd be able to absorb!
The first step toward strengthening your memory is to find out exactly what it is. There's much more to it than a bunch of assorted facts and ideas swimming around in the gray matter of your brain ...as you'll discover when you read tire next few pages.
Your Entire Memory
It should be made clear, right about now, that in this book the term "memory" means more than merely the mind's retentive abilities: it means, to freely adapt the dictionary's assertion, all means by which one can recall or make available to tongue-tip any information or knowledge one feels like using. This will include every trick, gimmick and short cut that we can devise; anything we can do to avoid being caught in the mental cold.
Suppose we take a look now at your memory's total make-up ... for our purposes, its parts can be classified into two basic categories: "natural" memory, or your own mind's function of remembering, and "artificial" memory--devices for retaining information outside the framework of your mind.
All In The Mind
Your natural memory is the result of an exceedingly intricate network of retention of facts, ideas, and physical activity--all of which are learned through sensory perception, and then stored in your mind and limitlessly cross-referenced, for future use. This is how it happens:
Facts "Camembert just had six kittens." That sentence tells you, first of all, the fact that six kittens have begun to exist. It also reveals, in the word "just," the fact that their birth was quite recent. But, because of your mind's retention of other facts, previously learned, the sentence tells you even more-you know that Camembert is a cat, and that the kittens are her offspring, and that she is a lady cat. You know these things because of your previous knowledge that kittens--baby cats-are descended from female cats... information which comes from your mind's ability to register facts.
Abstract Ideas
Now, what is a cat? Can you picture one in your mind? Unless you know Camembert, your impression of "cat" will probably not be an accurate picture of Camembert herself ... but still, you have a very good idea of her basic parts, at least. This impression is the image of an abstract idea, one built on a whole slew of impressions in your past involving cats and cat-ness. Then, too, how many are "six"? One more than you have toes on a foot, three and three, one less than days in a week, half-a-dozen... another abstract idea that is so well documented in your mind that you need give the word- and the concept- no more thought than it takes you to think of what letter follows "G" in the alphabet.
Motor activity
If you swim, or ride a bicycle, or climb up a step ladder to get things off a high shelf, or move you arm to avoid putting your hand into flame, or walk, I’m sure that you don’t spend every active moment thinking about these things; they come to you so naturally that you don’t even have to give them thought. If you type, no doubt you can now type many more words in a minute than was the case the very first time you tried a typewriter. But that took time and practice.
Through repeated experience, effort and practice, your mind comes to retain memory of motor activity.
But all this mental memory-activity is only a part of the total picture. Remember, our definition of memory plainly calls for all means of making information available.
Your artificial memory
Even if you were going to be able to devote full time to the task of feeding your natural memory's supply of information, you couldn't possibly begin to nourish it nearly enough to satisfy your needs. When you come right down to it, you simply haven't got the time to remember all of the things you need to know every now and then. It doesn't pay to memorize the entire San Francisco telephone directory on the chance that you'll one day have occasion to call someone then ... when you need to, you can always look the number up. And when the time comes that you must call someone in San Francisco, the directory becomes a device for reinforcing your natural memory.
Few people can awaken themselves automatically each morning at specifically desired times, unless waking time remains constant (waking then becomes a habit, as long as retiring time is constant). But if you usually wake up at 8:00, and on one special morning you must rise at 7:00, you've got to rely upon outside assistance--an alarm clock. This is a device.
Suppose you have approximately 100 accounts in your sales territory, or 100 members in the club of which you're secretary, or 100 relatives and friends to whom you must send wedding invitations. If you've come to know them gradually, one or two at a time over a period of years, the odds are that you remember the addresses of most of them, or at least of those to whom you write most frequently. But what if you take over a new territory, what if you join a new club, what if you take on the task of sending invitations to the guests of the groom? You couldn't possibly expect to remember all those new names and addresses right off, and it really wouldn't pay to set yourself to the task of memorizing them at the first possible moment, for, to make their recall habitual would be quite a difficult and time-consuming undertaking. So you condense the task in a very simple way: you prepare your own little address book, writing in it the names and addresses that you need. When you no longer require the bundle of information which it contains, you can put it away; or, if the information is continually needed, you simply make a habit of carrying it with you, or keeping it convenient. That book, too, is a device.
Do you get the picture? First, your mind is able to feed your memory directly--ideas, facts and motor information (physical activity)--from its own storehouse of knowledge. Because your memory is serviced by the mind alone in such cases, we refer to this activity as your natural memory.
And when your mind is unable to furnish the information which you seek, you can aid your natural memory with external devices: your alarm clock is such a device; so are your address book, your shopping list, the dictionary, your wristwatch, timetables, cookbooks, the letters on the typewriter's keyboard whenever you have to look, etc. All of this we call your artificial memory.
Memory-minimizers
All sources of information--your own perceptions, books and newspapers, people, and in fact nearly every single thing with which you come in contact--can both supply information to your natural memory, and perform as artificial memory-minimizers. Why should you bother to memorize the population figures of Bechuanaland, when the almanac is right on your book shelf? No need to memorize travel directions you'll need only once, when one of the passengers in your car can tell you what turns to make while you're driving there.
But when the information you want to make available is of so specialized a nature that no standard reference works or handy authorities are at your service, you'll want to contrive memory-minimizers that are precisely suited to your needs. For instance, the salesman's address book; the student's lecture notes and class schedule; the housewife's clippings of favorite recipes.
Memorize or Minimize
Whether you're going to memorize a specific thing, or merely keep it available for easy reference by means of artificial devices, is of course up to you. Let frequency of use, importance, degree of actual interest, and so forth, guide you in deciding. But don't forget, it's very important that your external storehouse be accessible, and even in occasional command of your attention, lest you forget to remind yourself. No sense in preparing a valuable memory-minimizer, only to misplace it and its usefulness. If you use an appointment book, refer to it regularly, at regularly scheduled times; always keep reminder notes dealing with the subject in the same place.
By organizing your time to use your natural memory only for those things for which you require mental remembering, and taking care of the unnecessary-to-memorize in an efficient manner, you'll be able to cut your task in half with surprisingly little bother. By eliminating the chore of committing many little needed things to mental memory, you leave your mind more free of interference; uncluttered and clear and with more time for all those other things that you'll want to have right with you at all times.
Memory Tricks
Your life is touched by a never-ending barrage of sensory impressions-a continuous attack by countless little "sense-arrows," which invade your body through eyes and ears, mouth, nose and fingertips...all over you! These impressions crash the gates and head straight for your brain, there to be sorted and filed for future reference.
As you read this page, vision sensarrows are carrying its message to your brain; and because your mind is aware of your overall general goal, everything is being filed under the heading of "memory" ... "making mine better." That, then, is your target: success at gathering information about the psychological aspects of memory, and utilizing it to strengthen your own ability to remember. Or, turning the minds own habits to your practical advantage, much like a matador studies the bull's style of charging and turning, and then uses this knowledge to help him turn in a better performance during the corrida. A helpful image.
To better visualize several of the basic aspects of your memory's "style" try this: imagine your sensarrows to be solid things; some will be larger than others, thus less difficult to locate in your mental filing cabinet. Then, too, should several arrows bunch together, the resulting cluster would be much easier to find then a lone and lonely arrow.
Using this image as a starting-point, let's begin to analyze your mind's memory habits, and see if they don't afford a few suggestions for strengthening your ability to remember.
Opening the drawer
Before those sensarrows can get into your mental filing cabinet, you've got to open the drawer. Let your sesame be the words, "I want to remember, I can remember, I shall remember!" As important as knowing the best ways to go about strengthening your retentive ability is your attitude. If you're convinced before you start that nothing's going to help, then you're absolutely right, even though you're dead wrong. The doubts that you have will always be present in your conscious thoughts, leaving no room for practical memories.
But an optimistic outlook clears the rocks from the road at the outset! If you're confident that you can reach your goal, the route will be fun, and everyone knows that fun is more fun than work! When you come to a hill, a difficult part of making your memory better, just making believe that it's fun will make it a lot easier!
Experiments have demonstrated that people generally retain memory of pleasant things more accurately, and for a longer time, than memory of unhappiness. So it follows, doesn't it, that by being an optimist to begin with, your memory is automatically a great deal better?
The Value of Attention
Suppose you're sitting in your parlor playing checkers, and in the next room the radio's on and a news commentator is speaking in a resonant voice about:
the latest U.S. satellite attempts;
a flood in Brazil;
A Lithuanian poet who won the Nobel Prize;
the day's World Series game;
newest developments in women's fashions;
stock market activity;
the weather forecast.
From time to time something which the commentator says will cause you to perk up your ears and listen more carefully, because he’s speaking about a subject which interests you. If your fashion-conscious, you'll certainly want to hear about the clothes you'll be wearing next season. If you're a baseball fan. You’ll be listening when he announces the score of the game. If you’ve planned a fishing trip for the next day, you'll be curious about what the weather's going to be like.
And the news items to which you pay closer attention will make deeper impressions upon your memory. Do you know who won the World Series last year? Who won the Nobel Prize? What was the high close of IBM stock last December?
Well attended impressions are large sensarrows; they can be more easily located in your memory, and are easier to remember.
Motivation for paying attention
What are the conditions which enable you, or force you, to give your attention to one thing, and not the other?
It has already been stated that a vital part of paying attention is interest. Now, the interest that I'm talking about doesn't have to be that genuine desire to know more about whatever it is you're trying to concentrate on, for its own sake; but, speaking in broadest terms, it refers to your motivation- any reason which you have for knowing or remembering.
And every reason that you could possibly have is one either of reward, or avoidance of punishment. Actually, both are pretty much the same: reward is a profit, while avoidance of punishment is a zero--better than a minus.
If you're genuinely curious about something, you desire to reward yourself with additional information about it. If you stand to make money by remembering more about the things you're selling, cash is your reward motive. If you want people to think highly of you for being able to intelligently discuss current events, or popular novels, or history, or anything...if you want people to think more of you for your remembering their names, or playing chess well, or reciting poetry, or telling funny stories, social acceptance is the reward you seek.
If you want to avoid the discomfort of having flunked your geometry course, or the displeasure of having forgotten to keep a promise, or the annoyance over having forgotten the main theme of the third movement of the Symphonie Fantastique, your reward will be the maintenance of security ... avoidance of self or social dissatisfaction. You are trying to avoid jeopardizing your chances of winning the reward of social acceptance.
Generally, the stronger your motive for remembering something, the greater an interest you'll take in it, and, consequently, the better your attention will be. And, when you pay attention, you stand a better chance of remembering!
Now... precisely what are the circumstances which act as motivations for remembering, and how do they do it?
Impulsive curiosity
Impulsive curiosity is that trail which induces you to take a second look, or to try to find out more about something, because you can't quite believe what you saw or heard the first time. The surprise, the exaggeration, the intense, the unusual...these things provide vivid impressions--large sensarrows. Someone swims across the English Channel. A woman's hat contains a live bird in a cage. A new species of animal is discovered. You meet a man who's nine feet tall. You smell garlic for the first time. You see a building constructed entirely of glass.
Curiosity out of familiarity
Curiosity inspires you to want to know more about something, after a little information, or even a lot, has aroused your genuine interest. Your hobby, your country, celebrities, a member of your family, something about which you don't fully understand, and would like to ... these things, and countless others like them play familiar roles in your everyday life. When someone begins to speak about something and you recognize what it is he's speaking about, your personal pride and ego will focus your attention upon it, so that you might learn even more about it.
Competitive nature
Man instinctively likes to win--arguments, athletic contests, fights, games ... his ego is satisfied when, after pitting his mind, or his body, or both, against other men, nature, or his own past performances, he comes in first. If you bring yourself to believe that you might become an excellent card player, your chances of remembering the rules and the finer points of play increase tremendously, because your motive is inborn, and your goal appears close enough to induce you to reach out for it. If you won a spelling bee in the fourth grade, chances are that you'll forever take pride in your superiority at spelling, and consequently will remember how to spell difficult words with comparative ease. All this ties in with ego, and desire for social approval.
Money, fame, possessions
The cash profit is a powerful motivation indeed. The contestant on a quiz show will show an amazing command of knowledge about the subject which can win for him security, the luxuries he has always sought, the fulfillment that comes of being revered by many people. The commission incentive endows salesmen with the drive to remember enormous gobs of information, from names of customers to the smallest factual details about products.
And so forth ... motivation, based on desire for reward or fear of loss, inspires attentiveness, which in turn produces strong memories. When you open the filing cabinet drawer, when you prepare your mind to receive information, the sensarrows come pouring in from whatever direction your sights are focused on.
Once you have directed your interests, factors involving the nature of the sensarrows, in regard to their relation to other sensarrows, come into play. ...
Association
When an impression reminds you of other past impressions, it hangs in your conscious observation for just a little tiny bit longer, and then becomes a stronger memory. Suppose you see a picture of the flag of Iran. You might notice at the time that its colors are the same as the colors of the Italian flag, which you remember because the Italian family living next door always dresses up the house for Christmas in red and green. Or, maybe those colors are in your drapes. Or perhaps as a painter or printer your work involves colors, and you're reminded by the Iranian flag that red and green can be mixed to produce a deep brown. Or maybe your name is George W. Randall, and your initials tell the colors, top to bottom--green, white, red.
Remember, your mind is elaborately cross-referenced and any sensory impression is just as likely to touch off a reminiscence of something seemingly unrelated, as one of something which is closely allied. And with every association the memory of an impression is reinforced that much more. One may conclude from this, therefore, that the more you know, the easier it becomes to remember.
Association is the fundamental principle behind every artificial "system" for strengthening memory. Here, very briefly, is how it works: By constructing your own list of things with which to associate, you can remember any other things that come along, simply by connecting the thing to be remembered with the appropriate thing from your artificial list. Then, by mentally thumbing through your list, you will be reminded of the thing you're trying to remember when you come to its partner. More about this very important part of memory improvement later.
Pattern
Your mind tends to organize the impressions it receives, and to reduce them to simple formulas wherever possible. This saves it, and you, a lot of trouble, because the knowledge that something fits into a certain pattern gives you a head-start in trying to remember it.
The Arabic numeral system, which is the one we commonly use, is actually little more than an ever-continuing repetition of ten digits--0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9--in a never-changing order. Perhaps you've never counted as high as 355,966 ... but you know as well as I do that the number which follows it is 355,967. That's because you know that seven follows six, in the system's repeating and repeating pattern.
How does this tendency toward pattern act upon your ability to remember? Well, for one thing, rhyming lines of poetry are more easily memorized than are sentences of prose. Words are easier to memorize than nonsense syllables. Sentences am easier to memorize than groups of unrelated words. Try naming all the letters of the alphabet, stating them at random without relying on the order in which you've learned them!
Furthermore, you'll find that it's easier to remember things in groups than singly, and less difficult to memorize lists when they are placed in alphabetical order, or in size place, or chronologically, or in any established pattern that will lend itself to your list.
Sensarrow clusters
Remember those clusters of sensarrows that are so much easier to locate in your memory than lone impressions? We've already mentioned one way in which they're formed--association. The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to recall specific things about it, because each specific thing is hooked up to other sensarrows. Pattern also plays an important part in this means of remembering by association: visualize your total knowledge of a subject as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, and think of each isolated bit of information about it as one of the parts. When you receive an impression from that part, you recognize it as part of the entire picture, and associate it with the overall subject, while at the same time classifying it in the pattern which is formed.
More than one sense
Now we come to still another method by which your mind brings into existence those easy-to-locate sensarrow clusters. When you see an apple, a little vision sensarrow is discharged to your brain. When you smell the apple, an olfactory sensarrow shoots out at your nose. When you pick up the apple and take a bite out of it, touch and taste sensarrows join the others in your brain. Even the sound of the crunch as you bite down on the apple produces another impression by which you can identify the apple you're eating. So appleness can be identified by the sum of all the impressions which you've received: a round, red, shiny thing that smells and tastes such-and-such a way, and makes a crunching sound when you bite it. The entire experience leaves a much more vivid impression with you than would just a look at an apple!
Repetition
Here's another supposition to suppose: You've found a brand new way to travel to school, or to work, or to the market. All you've got to do is walk two short blocks east and catch a bus that you never even knew about, until the people next door told you. (When they mentioned it, you paid attention because you were motivated by a desire to discover a better way to gel where you're going.)
You walk the two blocks east the next chance you get, wait at the corner for the bus, and discover that it is indeed a very nice way to get to where you're going. You decide that you'll travel that way from now on. So, each day you walk those two blocks and take that bus.
The first time you take the walk, you look around you and notice the houses, the trees, the store windows, the sidewalks, and everything else. But you don't really remember most of it. The next time you make the trip the same sensarrows as last time pop out at you. And the next time, and the next time, and the next time. Pretty soon, you know everything about that route "by heart," and all because you've been exposed to it over and over. The sensarrow which you received yesterday from the elm tree in front of the third house from the corner has piled itself on top of the sensarrow which you got from the same thing the day before, and the day before that. Repetition of the same impression anchors the impression firmly in your memory.
This is the principle of memory which helps you to learn by studying. When you want to make sure you can understand something and remember it well, you repeat it to yourself, again and again. Of course the number of repetitions necessary to commit the thing to memory will vary with variations in all the other elements that determine the size of the sensarrows. After all, if the sensarrows are fairly large, it takes comparatively few of them to build a visible cluster!
Overlearning
You can, by studying a thing for a certain amount of time, commit it to memory well enough so that you can recite it backwards and forwards, inside out and upside-down...well enough so that you really know it quite well--and still forget it a day later. This is because your retention "runs out of gas"--you haven't overlearned. Overlearning imparts longevity to your memories far and away out of proportion to the degree to which you practice it. As soon as you're sure you've got it, it's good practice to put in another half hour on it, to increase the life of your memory by weeks, months, years!
Interference
Just as a radio program comes through to you better when no static disturbs your radio's reception ... just as you can hear the music better when there's no dust on the phonograph needle ; .. just as the contents of a speech are better understood when there aren't any boisterous hecklers distracting your attention ... so your mind retains its memories more effectively in the absence of other activity on the same wave-length.
Consider these alternate situations:
A. You begin at 1:00 in the afternoon to memorize a bunch of facts about the Revolutionary Period in American History. By 3:34 you decide that you've got the material pretty well learned, so you hop off to the movies for a change-of-pace. After five hours of first the Alamo and then the Civil War, you return to your room to refresh your previous learning. But all that stuff about Texan independence, and those Civil War dates and data, have somehow gotten confused in your memory with Valley Forge, Bunker Hill and Saratoga. Before you're through re-learning the Revolutionary War, you've spent another two hours!
B. At 1:00 you get down to studying the Revolutionary War, and decide at 3:30 that you know your stuff. Then, for a cllange-of-pace, you go outside and get into a baseball game. While you're standing around in the outfiels, your mind reviews what it's just learned, and there aren't any new facts and dates to confuse you. So when you return to your room to review, you find that just about twenty minutes of study are sufficient.
Interference by material which is in any way similar to the things you've memorized, confuses your memories. After a session with the roster of your customers, visit old friends, rather than going to a party full of strangers. After memorizing your speech for the PTA, bake a cake instead of reading that book you've been saving. This principle is an important one to keep in mind when you read about spaced learning-combining study with "strategic" rest periods.
When forgetting occurs
It’s a funny thing. . . you forget the greatest part of the material which you are going to forget, very shortly after you’ve learned it. The graph of your memory curve takes a sharp downward turn almost the second you stop memorizing, than gradually levels off as time goes by. Suppose you memorize 100 words of a foreign language vocabulary list today. Depending on how well you've done your work, you might remember anywhere from none to all of it, tomorrow. But, assuming that you've done a pretty fair job, let's say that tomorrow you still retain memory of fifty words. On the next day, you might remember forty, then 35, then down to thirty words, which you'll remember for quite some time.
Now, if tomorrow you re-study the fifty words you've forgotten, by the next day you might know about 70 of the original 100.
And if you then study the 30 you've forgotten, you'll bring your knowledge of the vocabulary up to a pretty high level.
The important thing to remember is that the sooner you can review something you've memorized, the better off you'll be, since your memory from original study will be fresher, and therefore much fuller. Perhaps this is why spaced learning-the next factor we'll discuss--is so effective ... it provides a deterrent to rapid memory fade-out.
Spaced learning
If you spend an hour at study, then fifteen minutes at a "break," another hour at your work, another break, and another hour of study, you will have learned more, and memory of the learning will last longer, than if you spend three or even four--straight hours at work.
Perhaps this is due to the reverie in which you are bound to indulge during the break period, reasoning out in your own thoughts the things you've been memorizing. Or, perhaps your mind simply begins to wander when you press it for too long periods of time. At any rate, spaced learning really does work ... try it. Studying for several short periods of time, with intervals of relaxation, generally produces longer-lasting memories than does one long, intensified study period.
Fringe benefits of spaced learning
A peculiar trick which your mind occasionally plays is remembering more of something some time after memorizing it, than very shortly after completion of the memory task. This seems to be a direct contradiction of the memory curve, but it's a very specialized case. Soon after you've completed a turn at the books, you'll be able to remember a certain portion of the material you've covered, right? But, a few hours, or a day later, when you've spent a little time thinking about the subject, a few points which might have slipped your immediate memory will come to your attention through pattern and association with the related points which you have been able to remember. So, in effect, you are remembering a little bit more than you actually learned at the time of study. This phenomenon might be a delayed memory of the "forgotten" material's actual position on the page, or a belated understanding of the words which at first you failed to understand, but later found rational in the light of your thinking about the entire subject.
Dredging for lost memory
Often a name you've forgotten, or a fact that you tried to remember but couldn't, can be brought into your memory's focus through reverie ... think the thing you've forgotten-remind yourself of every point you can which may bear an association with it. It's easier to remember things that are meaningful to you, through their relation to other things you know.
Imagination
When you remember the name of a friend, or the appearance of a house, or the color of a flower, you are utilizing your memory of past impressions. But when you think of your friend growing flowers in front of a particular house, despite the fact that he doesn't even live there, and despite the fact that you've never known him to be interested in gardening ... you're employing your imagination. This is active use of the memories which you have passively collected.
Sometimes your imagination plays tricks on you, however. Have you ever walked into a room and gotten the powerful impression that you had been there before? I'm sure that you've experienced this "false memory" at one time or another ... you can't help feeling that you've heard a song before, you're sure you know that face, why can't you remember when it was that you spoke about that subject in the past. Well, it's quite likely that you never did do any of those things, although you might have heard a similar tune, or discussed something related. Sometimes an impression will touch off a great number of isolated associations in your mind, creating the composite image of the new impression so vividly that you can't help wondering...but don't worry about it--it happens to everyone. Just try hard to avoid confusion between false and real memories.
Your mind's got quite a "personality," hasn't it? And now that you know it a little better, you're ready to analyze what you've learned about it in the light of strengthening your memory, and see what possibilities you've uncovered for turning its ways to your advantage.
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
Can you remember a dozen instances in which you forgot some thing during the past week?
The answer to that question makes little difference, because you have been forgetting things--little things and big--and if your lapses have been forgotten, so much the worse. But, since you're reading this page right now, it's probable that your forgetfulness has been plaguing you more and more frequently. And you don't know what to do about it. And you're asking me.
And I’m asking you: Have you tried to figure out why you've been forgetting? Have you noticed when you've failed to remember? Have you noticed what things you've forgotten?
Of course you have got a memory, and unless I'm wrong, it's a pretty good one. If you wanted to take the time, you could sit down and rattle off literally thousands upon thousands of facts ...the "seven-times" table, who's president of the United States, your middle name, if you have one, or, if not, that you haven't got a middle name, the formula for baby's breakfast, what causes hiccoughs, how to spell "hiccoughs," how to cure a rasher of bacon or a rash, how to obtain a writ of mandamus, how long it takes to boil an egg or get to Pittsburgh when traffic's with you ... you've got enough facts in your mind to fill a hundred jumbo filing cabinets!
But for all that you still forgot to bring the car in to have the oil changed last week, your telephone bill sat in a drawer and went three weeks overdue, your secretary had to remind you that it was your wife's birthday, you put your report card down somewhere and then completely forgot where it was ... and you're getting pretty discouraged over this whole memory situation.
Remember this: Unless you learn something--really get it into your mind in tile first place--you're not ever going to remember it! Unless you understand something the first time, the odds are that the next time will be just another first time.
Trace the thought back a step further, and consider this: Unless you pay attention, you probably will not learn. And another step--unless you're interested for one reason or another, you won't be paying attention.
So you're not going to remember anything in which you don't take an interest upon first encounter.
Of course it's obvious that you must often rely upon your memory to bring you information about things which don't interest you. If you've been asked by the lady next door to pick up a quart of milk on your way home, maybe you don't care whether she drinks her coffee black or not; suppose you don't like your job, or school, or cleaning the house ... these are responsibilities which you've got to meet. Even if you're not genuinely interested in some things, you've got an interest in them, right?
So: since the best way to remember things is to take an interest in them, and since you've sometimes got to remember things about things in which you're not ordinarily very interested ... what's the answer? Create an interest in them!
--Ah, come on, how do you expect me to get interested in addressing two hundred envelopes, or putting out the garbage, or algebra?
Simpler than you think! Get interested in exercising your memory muscles! Make your memory your hobby, watch it work, teach it new tricks, carry it around with you and show it off, and pretty soon it'll be taking fine care of itself!
In the following chapters I'm going to suggest a few of the tricks that you can play with your memory, in order that many of the things you've been forgetting will become more fun to remember. At the same time, you'll begin to realize that some things aren't worth the time and effort it would take to commit them to memory, if they can be taken care of in some easier way; part of this book will be devoted to a number of memory-minimizers--suggestions for avoiding memory tasks which might cost a bit too much of your time.
It won't be a system, or a course, or just a book of puzzles to test your rote powers ...but a discourse on the practical application of memory principles. And as you learn more about your own memory, you'll take a greater interest in it, and use it to better advantage. The results of all this will be evident almost immediately--in your daily life.
After a very short while, you'll start to get the hang of it yourself. And as you become more familiar with your memory you'll derive pleasure and satisfaction from the game of finding new ways to strengthen--and reinforce your memory.
MEMORY FACETS
Memory is far and away the most remarkable of all your mental functions. Were your mind unable to store up an enormous part of all the information fed it by your senses, each new moment of existence would bring with it the necessity of "starting from scratch" in everything you think and do. You'd have to wear a little tag with your name on it, on the chance you might meet someone to whom you'd like to introduce yourself; every time you picked up a book you'd have to examine it to see how the pages turned ... and you wouldn't be able to read it anyway, because the letters and words would be meaningless to you!
Everything you do is made easier for you by your memory ... each activity is simpler because in the past you've had experiences which told your mind and body what to expect and how to act in certain situations. Your life is a continuous lesson, because the countless things you do prepare you for doing them again ... because experience eliminates travel on the trial-and-error route by teaching you the right or wrong way.
Even if you were to leave your memory completely alone, without ever giving a thought to using it more efficiently, it would continue to serve you loyally and well ... but, why settle for a meager pension when, by investing just a bit of consideration, you can reap a vast fortune? While attending a lecture you're sure to pick up a few tidbits of information, just in hearing the words.
But if you could know how to prepare all those facts for more efficient remembering, if you were able to multiply your chances of remembering tile information, think of how much more knowledge you'd be able to absorb!
The first step toward strengthening your memory is to find out exactly what it is. There's much more to it than a bunch of assorted facts and ideas swimming around in the gray matter of your brain ...as you'll discover when you read tire next few pages.
Your Entire Memory
It should be made clear, right about now, that in this book the term "memory" means more than merely the mind's retentive abilities: it means, to freely adapt the dictionary's assertion, all means by which one can recall or make available to tongue-tip any information or knowledge one feels like using. This will include every trick, gimmick and short cut that we can devise; anything we can do to avoid being caught in the mental cold.
Suppose we take a look now at your memory's total make-up ... for our purposes, its parts can be classified into two basic categories: "natural" memory, or your own mind's function of remembering, and "artificial" memory--devices for retaining information outside the framework of your mind.
All In The Mind
Your natural memory is the result of an exceedingly intricate network of retention of facts, ideas, and physical activity--all of which are learned through sensory perception, and then stored in your mind and limitlessly cross-referenced, for future use. This is how it happens:
Facts "Camembert just had six kittens." That sentence tells you, first of all, the fact that six kittens have begun to exist. It also reveals, in the word "just," the fact that their birth was quite recent. But, because of your mind's retention of other facts, previously learned, the sentence tells you even more-you know that Camembert is a cat, and that the kittens are her offspring, and that she is a lady cat. You know these things because of your previous knowledge that kittens--baby cats-are descended from female cats... information which comes from your mind's ability to register facts.
Abstract Ideas
Now, what is a cat? Can you picture one in your mind? Unless you know Camembert, your impression of "cat" will probably not be an accurate picture of Camembert herself ... but still, you have a very good idea of her basic parts, at least. This impression is the image of an abstract idea, one built on a whole slew of impressions in your past involving cats and cat-ness. Then, too, how many are "six"? One more than you have toes on a foot, three and three, one less than days in a week, half-a-dozen... another abstract idea that is so well documented in your mind that you need give the word- and the concept- no more thought than it takes you to think of what letter follows "G" in the alphabet.
Motor activity
If you swim, or ride a bicycle, or climb up a step ladder to get things off a high shelf, or move you arm to avoid putting your hand into flame, or walk, I’m sure that you don’t spend every active moment thinking about these things; they come to you so naturally that you don’t even have to give them thought. If you type, no doubt you can now type many more words in a minute than was the case the very first time you tried a typewriter. But that took time and practice.
Through repeated experience, effort and practice, your mind comes to retain memory of motor activity.
But all this mental memory-activity is only a part of the total picture. Remember, our definition of memory plainly calls for all means of making information available.
Your artificial memory
Even if you were going to be able to devote full time to the task of feeding your natural memory's supply of information, you couldn't possibly begin to nourish it nearly enough to satisfy your needs. When you come right down to it, you simply haven't got the time to remember all of the things you need to know every now and then. It doesn't pay to memorize the entire San Francisco telephone directory on the chance that you'll one day have occasion to call someone then ... when you need to, you can always look the number up. And when the time comes that you must call someone in San Francisco, the directory becomes a device for reinforcing your natural memory.
Few people can awaken themselves automatically each morning at specifically desired times, unless waking time remains constant (waking then becomes a habit, as long as retiring time is constant). But if you usually wake up at 8:00, and on one special morning you must rise at 7:00, you've got to rely upon outside assistance--an alarm clock. This is a device.
Suppose you have approximately 100 accounts in your sales territory, or 100 members in the club of which you're secretary, or 100 relatives and friends to whom you must send wedding invitations. If you've come to know them gradually, one or two at a time over a period of years, the odds are that you remember the addresses of most of them, or at least of those to whom you write most frequently. But what if you take over a new territory, what if you join a new club, what if you take on the task of sending invitations to the guests of the groom? You couldn't possibly expect to remember all those new names and addresses right off, and it really wouldn't pay to set yourself to the task of memorizing them at the first possible moment, for, to make their recall habitual would be quite a difficult and time-consuming undertaking. So you condense the task in a very simple way: you prepare your own little address book, writing in it the names and addresses that you need. When you no longer require the bundle of information which it contains, you can put it away; or, if the information is continually needed, you simply make a habit of carrying it with you, or keeping it convenient. That book, too, is a device.
Do you get the picture? First, your mind is able to feed your memory directly--ideas, facts and motor information (physical activity)--from its own storehouse of knowledge. Because your memory is serviced by the mind alone in such cases, we refer to this activity as your natural memory.
And when your mind is unable to furnish the information which you seek, you can aid your natural memory with external devices: your alarm clock is such a device; so are your address book, your shopping list, the dictionary, your wristwatch, timetables, cookbooks, the letters on the typewriter's keyboard whenever you have to look, etc. All of this we call your artificial memory.
Memory-minimizers
All sources of information--your own perceptions, books and newspapers, people, and in fact nearly every single thing with which you come in contact--can both supply information to your natural memory, and perform as artificial memory-minimizers. Why should you bother to memorize the population figures of Bechuanaland, when the almanac is right on your book shelf? No need to memorize travel directions you'll need only once, when one of the passengers in your car can tell you what turns to make while you're driving there.
But when the information you want to make available is of so specialized a nature that no standard reference works or handy authorities are at your service, you'll want to contrive memory-minimizers that are precisely suited to your needs. For instance, the salesman's address book; the student's lecture notes and class schedule; the housewife's clippings of favorite recipes.
Memorize or Minimize
Whether you're going to memorize a specific thing, or merely keep it available for easy reference by means of artificial devices, is of course up to you. Let frequency of use, importance, degree of actual interest, and so forth, guide you in deciding. But don't forget, it's very important that your external storehouse be accessible, and even in occasional command of your attention, lest you forget to remind yourself. No sense in preparing a valuable memory-minimizer, only to misplace it and its usefulness. If you use an appointment book, refer to it regularly, at regularly scheduled times; always keep reminder notes dealing with the subject in the same place.
By organizing your time to use your natural memory only for those things for which you require mental remembering, and taking care of the unnecessary-to-memorize in an efficient manner, you'll be able to cut your task in half with surprisingly little bother. By eliminating the chore of committing many little needed things to mental memory, you leave your mind more free of interference; uncluttered and clear and with more time for all those other things that you'll want to have right with you at all times.
Memory Tricks
Your life is touched by a never-ending barrage of sensory impressions-a continuous attack by countless little "sense-arrows," which invade your body through eyes and ears, mouth, nose and fingertips...all over you! These impressions crash the gates and head straight for your brain, there to be sorted and filed for future reference.
As you read this page, vision sensarrows are carrying its message to your brain; and because your mind is aware of your overall general goal, everything is being filed under the heading of "memory" ... "making mine better." That, then, is your target: success at gathering information about the psychological aspects of memory, and utilizing it to strengthen your own ability to remember. Or, turning the minds own habits to your practical advantage, much like a matador studies the bull's style of charging and turning, and then uses this knowledge to help him turn in a better performance during the corrida. A helpful image.
To better visualize several of the basic aspects of your memory's "style" try this: imagine your sensarrows to be solid things; some will be larger than others, thus less difficult to locate in your mental filing cabinet. Then, too, should several arrows bunch together, the resulting cluster would be much easier to find then a lone and lonely arrow.
Using this image as a starting-point, let's begin to analyze your mind's memory habits, and see if they don't afford a few suggestions for strengthening your ability to remember.
Opening the drawer
Before those sensarrows can get into your mental filing cabinet, you've got to open the drawer. Let your sesame be the words, "I want to remember, I can remember, I shall remember!" As important as knowing the best ways to go about strengthening your retentive ability is your attitude. If you're convinced before you start that nothing's going to help, then you're absolutely right, even though you're dead wrong. The doubts that you have will always be present in your conscious thoughts, leaving no room for practical memories.
But an optimistic outlook clears the rocks from the road at the outset! If you're confident that you can reach your goal, the route will be fun, and everyone knows that fun is more fun than work! When you come to a hill, a difficult part of making your memory better, just making believe that it's fun will make it a lot easier!
Experiments have demonstrated that people generally retain memory of pleasant things more accurately, and for a longer time, than memory of unhappiness. So it follows, doesn't it, that by being an optimist to begin with, your memory is automatically a great deal better?
The Value of Attention
Suppose you're sitting in your parlor playing checkers, and in the next room the radio's on and a news commentator is speaking in a resonant voice about:
the latest U.S. satellite attempts;
a flood in Brazil;
A Lithuanian poet who won the Nobel Prize;
the day's World Series game;
newest developments in women's fashions;
stock market activity;
the weather forecast.
From time to time something which the commentator says will cause you to perk up your ears and listen more carefully, because he’s speaking about a subject which interests you. If your fashion-conscious, you'll certainly want to hear about the clothes you'll be wearing next season. If you're a baseball fan. You’ll be listening when he announces the score of the game. If you’ve planned a fishing trip for the next day, you'll be curious about what the weather's going to be like.
And the news items to which you pay closer attention will make deeper impressions upon your memory. Do you know who won the World Series last year? Who won the Nobel Prize? What was the high close of IBM stock last December?
Well attended impressions are large sensarrows; they can be more easily located in your memory, and are easier to remember.
Motivation for paying attention
What are the conditions which enable you, or force you, to give your attention to one thing, and not the other?
It has already been stated that a vital part of paying attention is interest. Now, the interest that I'm talking about doesn't have to be that genuine desire to know more about whatever it is you're trying to concentrate on, for its own sake; but, speaking in broadest terms, it refers to your motivation- any reason which you have for knowing or remembering.
And every reason that you could possibly have is one either of reward, or avoidance of punishment. Actually, both are pretty much the same: reward is a profit, while avoidance of punishment is a zero--better than a minus.
If you're genuinely curious about something, you desire to reward yourself with additional information about it. If you stand to make money by remembering more about the things you're selling, cash is your reward motive. If you want people to think highly of you for being able to intelligently discuss current events, or popular novels, or history, or anything...if you want people to think more of you for your remembering their names, or playing chess well, or reciting poetry, or telling funny stories, social acceptance is the reward you seek.
If you want to avoid the discomfort of having flunked your geometry course, or the displeasure of having forgotten to keep a promise, or the annoyance over having forgotten the main theme of the third movement of the Symphonie Fantastique, your reward will be the maintenance of security ... avoidance of self or social dissatisfaction. You are trying to avoid jeopardizing your chances of winning the reward of social acceptance.
Generally, the stronger your motive for remembering something, the greater an interest you'll take in it, and, consequently, the better your attention will be. And, when you pay attention, you stand a better chance of remembering!
Now... precisely what are the circumstances which act as motivations for remembering, and how do they do it?
Impulsive curiosity
Impulsive curiosity is that trail which induces you to take a second look, or to try to find out more about something, because you can't quite believe what you saw or heard the first time. The surprise, the exaggeration, the intense, the unusual...these things provide vivid impressions--large sensarrows. Someone swims across the English Channel. A woman's hat contains a live bird in a cage. A new species of animal is discovered. You meet a man who's nine feet tall. You smell garlic for the first time. You see a building constructed entirely of glass.
Curiosity out of familiarity
Curiosity inspires you to want to know more about something, after a little information, or even a lot, has aroused your genuine interest. Your hobby, your country, celebrities, a member of your family, something about which you don't fully understand, and would like to ... these things, and countless others like them play familiar roles in your everyday life. When someone begins to speak about something and you recognize what it is he's speaking about, your personal pride and ego will focus your attention upon it, so that you might learn even more about it.
Competitive nature
Man instinctively likes to win--arguments, athletic contests, fights, games ... his ego is satisfied when, after pitting his mind, or his body, or both, against other men, nature, or his own past performances, he comes in first. If you bring yourself to believe that you might become an excellent card player, your chances of remembering the rules and the finer points of play increase tremendously, because your motive is inborn, and your goal appears close enough to induce you to reach out for it. If you won a spelling bee in the fourth grade, chances are that you'll forever take pride in your superiority at spelling, and consequently will remember how to spell difficult words with comparative ease. All this ties in with ego, and desire for social approval.
Money, fame, possessions
The cash profit is a powerful motivation indeed. The contestant on a quiz show will show an amazing command of knowledge about the subject which can win for him security, the luxuries he has always sought, the fulfillment that comes of being revered by many people. The commission incentive endows salesmen with the drive to remember enormous gobs of information, from names of customers to the smallest factual details about products.
And so forth ... motivation, based on desire for reward or fear of loss, inspires attentiveness, which in turn produces strong memories. When you open the filing cabinet drawer, when you prepare your mind to receive information, the sensarrows come pouring in from whatever direction your sights are focused on.
Once you have directed your interests, factors involving the nature of the sensarrows, in regard to their relation to other sensarrows, come into play. ...
Association
When an impression reminds you of other past impressions, it hangs in your conscious observation for just a little tiny bit longer, and then becomes a stronger memory. Suppose you see a picture of the flag of Iran. You might notice at the time that its colors are the same as the colors of the Italian flag, which you remember because the Italian family living next door always dresses up the house for Christmas in red and green. Or, maybe those colors are in your drapes. Or perhaps as a painter or printer your work involves colors, and you're reminded by the Iranian flag that red and green can be mixed to produce a deep brown. Or maybe your name is George W. Randall, and your initials tell the colors, top to bottom--green, white, red.
Remember, your mind is elaborately cross-referenced and any sensory impression is just as likely to touch off a reminiscence of something seemingly unrelated, as one of something which is closely allied. And with every association the memory of an impression is reinforced that much more. One may conclude from this, therefore, that the more you know, the easier it becomes to remember.
Association is the fundamental principle behind every artificial "system" for strengthening memory. Here, very briefly, is how it works: By constructing your own list of things with which to associate, you can remember any other things that come along, simply by connecting the thing to be remembered with the appropriate thing from your artificial list. Then, by mentally thumbing through your list, you will be reminded of the thing you're trying to remember when you come to its partner. More about this very important part of memory improvement later.
Pattern
Your mind tends to organize the impressions it receives, and to reduce them to simple formulas wherever possible. This saves it, and you, a lot of trouble, because the knowledge that something fits into a certain pattern gives you a head-start in trying to remember it.
The Arabic numeral system, which is the one we commonly use, is actually little more than an ever-continuing repetition of ten digits--0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9--in a never-changing order. Perhaps you've never counted as high as 355,966 ... but you know as well as I do that the number which follows it is 355,967. That's because you know that seven follows six, in the system's repeating and repeating pattern.
How does this tendency toward pattern act upon your ability to remember? Well, for one thing, rhyming lines of poetry are more easily memorized than are sentences of prose. Words are easier to memorize than nonsense syllables. Sentences am easier to memorize than groups of unrelated words. Try naming all the letters of the alphabet, stating them at random without relying on the order in which you've learned them!
Furthermore, you'll find that it's easier to remember things in groups than singly, and less difficult to memorize lists when they are placed in alphabetical order, or in size place, or chronologically, or in any established pattern that will lend itself to your list.
Sensarrow clusters
Remember those clusters of sensarrows that are so much easier to locate in your memory than lone impressions? We've already mentioned one way in which they're formed--association. The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to recall specific things about it, because each specific thing is hooked up to other sensarrows. Pattern also plays an important part in this means of remembering by association: visualize your total knowledge of a subject as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, and think of each isolated bit of information about it as one of the parts. When you receive an impression from that part, you recognize it as part of the entire picture, and associate it with the overall subject, while at the same time classifying it in the pattern which is formed.
More than one sense
Now we come to still another method by which your mind brings into existence those easy-to-locate sensarrow clusters. When you see an apple, a little vision sensarrow is discharged to your brain. When you smell the apple, an olfactory sensarrow shoots out at your nose. When you pick up the apple and take a bite out of it, touch and taste sensarrows join the others in your brain. Even the sound of the crunch as you bite down on the apple produces another impression by which you can identify the apple you're eating. So appleness can be identified by the sum of all the impressions which you've received: a round, red, shiny thing that smells and tastes such-and-such a way, and makes a crunching sound when you bite it. The entire experience leaves a much more vivid impression with you than would just a look at an apple!
Repetition
Here's another supposition to suppose: You've found a brand new way to travel to school, or to work, or to the market. All you've got to do is walk two short blocks east and catch a bus that you never even knew about, until the people next door told you. (When they mentioned it, you paid attention because you were motivated by a desire to discover a better way to gel where you're going.)
You walk the two blocks east the next chance you get, wait at the corner for the bus, and discover that it is indeed a very nice way to get to where you're going. You decide that you'll travel that way from now on. So, each day you walk those two blocks and take that bus.
The first time you take the walk, you look around you and notice the houses, the trees, the store windows, the sidewalks, and everything else. But you don't really remember most of it. The next time you make the trip the same sensarrows as last time pop out at you. And the next time, and the next time, and the next time. Pretty soon, you know everything about that route "by heart," and all because you've been exposed to it over and over. The sensarrow which you received yesterday from the elm tree in front of the third house from the corner has piled itself on top of the sensarrow which you got from the same thing the day before, and the day before that. Repetition of the same impression anchors the impression firmly in your memory.
This is the principle of memory which helps you to learn by studying. When you want to make sure you can understand something and remember it well, you repeat it to yourself, again and again. Of course the number of repetitions necessary to commit the thing to memory will vary with variations in all the other elements that determine the size of the sensarrows. After all, if the sensarrows are fairly large, it takes comparatively few of them to build a visible cluster!
Overlearning
You can, by studying a thing for a certain amount of time, commit it to memory well enough so that you can recite it backwards and forwards, inside out and upside-down...well enough so that you really know it quite well--and still forget it a day later. This is because your retention "runs out of gas"--you haven't overlearned. Overlearning imparts longevity to your memories far and away out of proportion to the degree to which you practice it. As soon as you're sure you've got it, it's good practice to put in another half hour on it, to increase the life of your memory by weeks, months, years!
Interference
Just as a radio program comes through to you better when no static disturbs your radio's reception ... just as you can hear the music better when there's no dust on the phonograph needle ; .. just as the contents of a speech are better understood when there aren't any boisterous hecklers distracting your attention ... so your mind retains its memories more effectively in the absence of other activity on the same wave-length.
Consider these alternate situations:
A. You begin at 1:00 in the afternoon to memorize a bunch of facts about the Revolutionary Period in American History. By 3:34 you decide that you've got the material pretty well learned, so you hop off to the movies for a change-of-pace. After five hours of first the Alamo and then the Civil War, you return to your room to refresh your previous learning. But all that stuff about Texan independence, and those Civil War dates and data, have somehow gotten confused in your memory with Valley Forge, Bunker Hill and Saratoga. Before you're through re-learning the Revolutionary War, you've spent another two hours!
B. At 1:00 you get down to studying the Revolutionary War, and decide at 3:30 that you know your stuff. Then, for a cllange-of-pace, you go outside and get into a baseball game. While you're standing around in the outfiels, your mind reviews what it's just learned, and there aren't any new facts and dates to confuse you. So when you return to your room to review, you find that just about twenty minutes of study are sufficient.
Interference by material which is in any way similar to the things you've memorized, confuses your memories. After a session with the roster of your customers, visit old friends, rather than going to a party full of strangers. After memorizing your speech for the PTA, bake a cake instead of reading that book you've been saving. This principle is an important one to keep in mind when you read about spaced learning-combining study with "strategic" rest periods.
When forgetting occurs
It’s a funny thing. . . you forget the greatest part of the material which you are going to forget, very shortly after you’ve learned it. The graph of your memory curve takes a sharp downward turn almost the second you stop memorizing, than gradually levels off as time goes by. Suppose you memorize 100 words of a foreign language vocabulary list today. Depending on how well you've done your work, you might remember anywhere from none to all of it, tomorrow. But, assuming that you've done a pretty fair job, let's say that tomorrow you still retain memory of fifty words. On the next day, you might remember forty, then 35, then down to thirty words, which you'll remember for quite some time.
Now, if tomorrow you re-study the fifty words you've forgotten, by the next day you might know about 70 of the original 100.
And if you then study the 30 you've forgotten, you'll bring your knowledge of the vocabulary up to a pretty high level.
The important thing to remember is that the sooner you can review something you've memorized, the better off you'll be, since your memory from original study will be fresher, and therefore much fuller. Perhaps this is why spaced learning-the next factor we'll discuss--is so effective ... it provides a deterrent to rapid memory fade-out.
Spaced learning
If you spend an hour at study, then fifteen minutes at a "break," another hour at your work, another break, and another hour of study, you will have learned more, and memory of the learning will last longer, than if you spend three or even four--straight hours at work.
Perhaps this is due to the reverie in which you are bound to indulge during the break period, reasoning out in your own thoughts the things you've been memorizing. Or, perhaps your mind simply begins to wander when you press it for too long periods of time. At any rate, spaced learning really does work ... try it. Studying for several short periods of time, with intervals of relaxation, generally produces longer-lasting memories than does one long, intensified study period.
Fringe benefits of spaced learning
A peculiar trick which your mind occasionally plays is remembering more of something some time after memorizing it, than very shortly after completion of the memory task. This seems to be a direct contradiction of the memory curve, but it's a very specialized case. Soon after you've completed a turn at the books, you'll be able to remember a certain portion of the material you've covered, right? But, a few hours, or a day later, when you've spent a little time thinking about the subject, a few points which might have slipped your immediate memory will come to your attention through pattern and association with the related points which you have been able to remember. So, in effect, you are remembering a little bit more than you actually learned at the time of study. This phenomenon might be a delayed memory of the "forgotten" material's actual position on the page, or a belated understanding of the words which at first you failed to understand, but later found rational in the light of your thinking about the entire subject.
Dredging for lost memory
Often a name you've forgotten, or a fact that you tried to remember but couldn't, can be brought into your memory's focus through reverie ... think the thing you've forgotten-remind yourself of every point you can which may bear an association with it. It's easier to remember things that are meaningful to you, through their relation to other things you know.
Imagination
When you remember the name of a friend, or the appearance of a house, or the color of a flower, you are utilizing your memory of past impressions. But when you think of your friend growing flowers in front of a particular house, despite the fact that he doesn't even live there, and despite the fact that you've never known him to be interested in gardening ... you're employing your imagination. This is active use of the memories which you have passively collected.
Sometimes your imagination plays tricks on you, however. Have you ever walked into a room and gotten the powerful impression that you had been there before? I'm sure that you've experienced this "false memory" at one time or another ... you can't help feeling that you've heard a song before, you're sure you know that face, why can't you remember when it was that you spoke about that subject in the past. Well, it's quite likely that you never did do any of those things, although you might have heard a similar tune, or discussed something related. Sometimes an impression will touch off a great number of isolated associations in your mind, creating the composite image of the new impression so vividly that you can't help wondering...but don't worry about it--it happens to everyone. Just try hard to avoid confusion between false and real memories.
Your mind's got quite a "personality," hasn't it? And now that you know it a little better, you're ready to analyze what you've learned about it in the light of strengthening your memory, and see what possibilities you've uncovered for turning its ways to your advantage.
Steve Bishop
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
0800 1974 294
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
EasyStop Smoking Cessation Programme
*******IT'S NOT MAGIC, BUT SOME PEOPLE SAY IT FEELS LIKE MAGIC!******
STOP SMOKING: Your ability to stop smoking permanently depends upon a number of very important factors.
Question 1: Am I physically addicted? If you really can stop smoking by using willpower alone, you are one of the lucky ones. If not, then you have a physical addiction to nicotine, which is why your previous attempts to stop smoking have created withdrawal symptoms. Part of the method that you choose to help you stop smoking must work on this physical level.
Question 2: Am I psychologically addicted? If you reach for a cigarette with a cup of tea or coffee, if you light up after a meal or if you smoke more when you are socialising or drinking the answer is 'yes'. Part of the method that you choose to help you stop smoking must address this psychological habit.
If you answered yes to question 1 & 2, you now know to permanently stop smoking; you need to address both the habit and the addiction! You are not alone. Tens of thousands of smokers are right there with you, finally question 3.
Question 3: Do I want to stop smoking? The question is not can I stop smoking, but do I want to stop smoking? Uppermost in your mind must be the desire – that is, you want to stop smoking or you have at least one very good reason to stop smoking. If the answer to this question is yes, then you are already half way there, and I can show you how to ‘make the switch’ from smoker to happy non-smoker. If the answer is no, then the timing is not yet right for you!
The method that you use to stop smoking will also have a significant impact on your success. If you fall into both categories, you need a method that tackles both categories with equal power. Anything less is like chopping the head off a weed but leaving the root to grow back.
During my research I have come across many different therapies to stop smoking that claimed to have very high success rates. The truth is often very different.
However I use the proven EasyStop approach to stop smoking which was developed and improved over the last 10 years; which not only uses the most powerful hypnosis techniques, and the more up to date NLP techniques but also incorporates a unique behaviour modification programme. Many of my clients using this method report that they are easily maintaining their ideal weight and some say they've even lost a little! How great is that?
This unique stop smoking method is licensed and can only be practiced by appropriately qualified stop smoking specialists around the world, and is known as the EasyStop method. This involves 2 sessions each lasting about an hour and a simple 7-day behaviour modification programme to follow between the sessions. This unique method to stop smoking deals with both the habit and the addiction. In fact, I am so confident that you will stop smoking using the EasyStop method, that I am able to offer the unique 12 month EASYSTOP GUARANTEE. If you want to stop smoking and join thousands of other happy non-smokers call me now…
Steve Bishop 0800 1974 294
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
STOP SMOKING: Your ability to stop smoking permanently depends upon a number of very important factors.
Question 1: Am I physically addicted? If you really can stop smoking by using willpower alone, you are one of the lucky ones. If not, then you have a physical addiction to nicotine, which is why your previous attempts to stop smoking have created withdrawal symptoms. Part of the method that you choose to help you stop smoking must work on this physical level.
Question 2: Am I psychologically addicted? If you reach for a cigarette with a cup of tea or coffee, if you light up after a meal or if you smoke more when you are socialising or drinking the answer is 'yes'. Part of the method that you choose to help you stop smoking must address this psychological habit.
If you answered yes to question 1 & 2, you now know to permanently stop smoking; you need to address both the habit and the addiction! You are not alone. Tens of thousands of smokers are right there with you, finally question 3.
Question 3: Do I want to stop smoking? The question is not can I stop smoking, but do I want to stop smoking? Uppermost in your mind must be the desire – that is, you want to stop smoking or you have at least one very good reason to stop smoking. If the answer to this question is yes, then you are already half way there, and I can show you how to ‘make the switch’ from smoker to happy non-smoker. If the answer is no, then the timing is not yet right for you!
The method that you use to stop smoking will also have a significant impact on your success. If you fall into both categories, you need a method that tackles both categories with equal power. Anything less is like chopping the head off a weed but leaving the root to grow back.
During my research I have come across many different therapies to stop smoking that claimed to have very high success rates. The truth is often very different.
However I use the proven EasyStop approach to stop smoking which was developed and improved over the last 10 years; which not only uses the most powerful hypnosis techniques, and the more up to date NLP techniques but also incorporates a unique behaviour modification programme. Many of my clients using this method report that they are easily maintaining their ideal weight and some say they've even lost a little! How great is that?
This unique stop smoking method is licensed and can only be practiced by appropriately qualified stop smoking specialists around the world, and is known as the EasyStop method. This involves 2 sessions each lasting about an hour and a simple 7-day behaviour modification programme to follow between the sessions. This unique method to stop smoking deals with both the habit and the addiction. In fact, I am so confident that you will stop smoking using the EasyStop method, that I am able to offer the unique 12 month EASYSTOP GUARANTEE. If you want to stop smoking and join thousands of other happy non-smokers call me now…
Steve Bishop 0800 1974 294
www.myhypnotherapycentre.co.uk
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