A couple of months ago a very nice gentleman called to let me know about a great training program that can teach our employees extremely valuable tools to help them do their jobs better. Blah, blah, blah. I probably get at least 3 phone calls a week from some company wanting to bid for our lawn care, save us money on our printing, will clean our office better, give us cleaner drinking water and faster internet service. Sure, I let them bid, as long as I don’t have to sit through a presentation (either in person or on the phone). What usually happens is, they can’t beat the current price we’re paying, but they promise to do a better job. Thanks anyway. So how did seven of us end up at Freedom Personal Development’s Memory Training Workshop earlier this week? When the persistent nice gentleman called the second time, he asked if he could come in and give a short demonstration for no cost, no obligation. I thought that it might add a fun twist to our next Employee Meeting so I agreed. Jay showed up and asked us to say some items and he’d remember them. I think it was 15-20 things (I forgot how many we yelled out because I hadn’t gone through the training yet). Anyway, he waited until we were finished and recited them back to us. He even remembered our names after the first introduction. I know salesmen are supposed to be energetic, but this guy was way beyond passionate about this program. He made it sound incredible and life changing. He was right. We learned that our memories are perfect…we just have trouble recalling the information when we need it. So we learned several techniques to mentally “file” images that we associate with things that we want to remember. One example: if you want to remember my name, Michele, you might picture you and me playing Tug-of-War with an enormous sea shell. The trick is to attach the person’s face to an image of their name. (This works with “phone” friends too because you hear their voice and it triggers this image). We also learned a fun way to remember the Quadratric Equation by telling a story with a bee and a circus tent. We didn’t know at the time that we were learning this difficult algebraic formula, but after we learned the story, our teacher wrote it out as we recited the story back to her. AMAZING!! How can memory training help employees do their jobs better? We learned how to remember the list of people to call back, how to memorize customers’ kids’ names and birthdays, how to remember which coverage applies to which class. The possibilities are endless. It takes practice to attach images to things because it’s a new way of thinking. But if I can recall 20 unrelated items perfectly, then anybody can. Shoot, sometimes I can’t even remember why I walked across the office. I have to go back to my desk, sit down and wait until it comes to me. Hopefully, when I get really good at the memory thing, I’ll save myself a trip.