Page 121 - Use Your Memory

10 How to Increase by

100 Per Cent Everything You
Have Learned So Far

You have now completed the five individual Memory Systems:
Link, Number-Shape, Number-Rhyme, Roman Room and
Alphabet Systems. Each of these systems can be used either
independently or in conjunction with another system. Further-
more, one or two of the systems of your choice can be set aside, if
you wish, as 'constant memory banks' if you have certain lists or
orders of items that you will need to be able to recall over a period
of a year or more.
Before moving on to the broader systems, however, I want to
introduce you to a simple and intriguing method for instantly
doubling the capacity of any of the systems you have learned so far.
When you have reached the end of a system but wish to add
further associations, all you have to do is to go back to the
beginning of your system and imagine your association word
exactly as you usually imagine it, but as if it were contained in a
huge block of ice. This simple visualisation technique will dras-
tically change the association pictures you have formed and will
double the effectiveness of your system by giving you the original
list plus that list in its new context.
For example, if your first key in the Number-Shape System was
telephone pole, you would imagine that same telephone pole either
buried in the heart of your giant block of ice or protruding from
the corners or sides. If your first word in the Number-Rhyme
System was sun, then you could imagine its fierce rays melting the
edges of the ice block in which it was contained. If your first word
in the Alphabet System was ace, then you could imagine a giant
playing card either frozen in the centre or forming one of the six
sides of the ice block. If, therefore, you were using your 'second'
Alphabet System (the alphabet in a huge block of ice), and the first
item you wanted to remember was parrot, you might imagine your
parrot crashing through the centre heart, spade, club or diamond
of your card, shattering, with lots of squawking, and cracking, the
block of ice.

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