Page 32 - How to Develop A SUPER-POWER MEMORY

56 Interest in Memory
through neglect and non-use. You see, you usually write
things down only because you refuse or are too lazy to take
the slight effort or time to remember. Oliver Wendell
Holmes put it this way: "A man must get a thing before
he can forget it."
Please keep in mind that the memory likes to be trusted.
The more you trust it the more reliable and useful it will
become. Writing everything down on paper without trying
to remember, is going against all the basic rules for a
stronger and better memory. You're not trusting your mem-
ory; you haven't the confidence in your memory; you're not
exercising the memory, and your interest is not strong
enough to retain it, if you must write it down. Remember
that you can always lose your paper or notebook, but not
your mind. If I may be allowed a small attempt at humor,
if you do lose your mind, it doesn't matter much if you
remember or not, does it?
Seriously, if you are interested in remembering, if you
have confidence that you will remember, you have no need
to write everything down. How many parents continually
complain that their children have terrible memories, be-
cause they can't remember their school work, and conse-
quently get poor marks? Yet, some of these same children
can remember the batting averages of every baseball player
in the major leagues. They know all the rules of baseball; or
who made what great play in what year for which team, etc.
If they can remember these facts and figures so easily and
so well, why can't some of them retain their lessons at
school? Only because they are more interested in baseball
than they are in algebra, history, geography and other
school subjects.
The problem is not with their memories, but with their
lack of interest. The proof of the pudding is in the fact that
most children excel in at least one particular subject, even