Page 280 - Use Your Memory

24 Re-Remembering -
Remembering What You Have
Forgotten

I recently sat down to a relaxed and delightful dinner with some
business associates who included the newly elected president of a
training and development organisation. He announced at the
beginning of the meal that he had to get something off his chest or
he'd explode: his car had just been broken into, the front wind-
screen smashed and his briefcase stolen. He was particularly
frustrated because the briefcase contained his diary and a number
of other items important to him.
As the predinner drinks were downed, and the hors d'oeuvres
completed, we began to notice that our friend was not really
participating in the conversation and that he seemed to have a
faraway look on his face as he very occasionally jotted notes on a
scrap of paper. He eventually burst into the conversation again,
announcing that he was ruining the evening for himself because
he could remember only four items that had been contained in his
stolen briefcase, that he knew there were many more, that he had
to give a full report to the police within two hours, and that the
more he tried to remember the more blocked he became.
Consider what you would have recommended that he do in
order to recall.
Several of us at the table who were familiar with Memory
Principles then took him through the following exercise: instead
of continuing to allow him to concentrate on what he could not
remember (what he in effect was doing was concentrating more
and more on the absence of memory), we took him through what I
call Reliving the Immediate Relevant Past. We asked him when he
had last had his briefcase open. It turned out that it was at the
office just before he left work, at which point he suddenly remem-
bered that he had put two important magazine articles on the top
of the pile in the briefcase. We then asked him when he had last
had the briefcase open before leaving home for work. It turned out
to have been the previous night after dinner, and he remembered
having put in two more articles plus a tape recorder and a cal-
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