A new patient walks into a doctor's room and says, "Doctor, I cannot remember a thing. I hear something one minute and forget it the next. What should I do?" The doctor says, "Pay my fee in advance."
We laugh, but this is how many of us live. We forget things all day, and we decide that our memory is poor. Then we stop trying. This single decision does more damage than any real weakness.
The elephant and the thin rope
Have you seen an elephant tied to a small pole with a thin rope? The elephant is huge and strong. It could snap the rope in a second. Still, it stands there quietly. Why?
When the elephant was a baby, it was tied to a big pole with a thick rope. It pulled and pulled but could not get free. After many attempts, it gave up. The belief that "I cannot break free" went deep into its mind. As it grew, the belief stayed, while the strength grew. Today it stays where it is tied, though nothing is holding it except an old idea.
To a large extent, we are like that elephant. We carry old beliefs from school. "I am weak in maths." "I have a poor memory." "I cannot speak in front of people." We tried a few times, we failed, and then we stopped trying.
The fish and the glass
There is another story. Two fish are placed in a vessel of water. They swim happily. Then a piece of glass is put in the middle. The fish swim up to it and hit it again and again, and learn not to go beyond that point. After some time, the glass is removed. The fish still do not cross the line where the glass was. The glass is gone, but the barrier is still in their minds.
Fleas in a jar
Fleas keep jumping up and down and never stay still. Put a lid on the jar and, after a while, they jump only up to the lid and no higher. Remove the lid, and they still jump up to the same height and stop. They have become used to that height.
The boy who did not know
Now a story about a student who was very weak in mathematics, and slept in the maths class. One day the teacher warned him to stay awake and come with his homework done the next day. The boy tried, but in a few minutes he was asleep again. When he woke up, the class was over. He only remembered that he had homework. He looked at the blackboard, saw an algebra problem written there, and copied it down.
That night he struggled for many hours. Finally, he solved it. The next day, the teacher was shocked. The problem on the board was one that no mathematician in the world had been able to solve. The dullest boy in the class had solved it in one night.
Why? Because he did not know it was unsolvable. The others, even the cleverest, had a mental barrier. They thought that if the world's greatest mathematicians had failed, how could schoolboys do better? The boy had no such barrier. He just did his best.
I tell these stories in my classes because the lesson is the same every time. When we do not know what is "impossible", we try, and sometimes we succeed.
There is no good or bad memory
Here is what I tell every batch. There is nothing like good memory and poor memory. There is only trained memory and untrained memory. The father of memory is interest and the mother is repetition. If you take an interest, and repeat in the right way, memory grows.
Think of the child who cannot remember his lessons but knows the batting averages of every cricketer, and all the rules and records of the game. The memory is there. The interest was missing in one place and present in the other.
Also trust your memory. When you write down everything and make no attempt to remember, you are telling your memory that you do not trust it. The more you trust it, the more reliable it becomes.
Find your own barrier
Here is an exercise for this week. Take a sheet of paper and write down one belief that stops you.
- What did you decide about yourself a long time ago?
- When did you last test it?
- What small step would test it today?
Then do that small step. If the belief is "I cannot remember names", practise the names of five new people. If it is "I am weak in maths", pick one topic and solve three problems with full attention. You may find that the rope was thin all along.
This is one chapter from my book Train Your Brain.
