Once you understand how learning occurs through pictures and associations, you will know how to remember everything you read using mental pictures.
The information you “input” into your brain using mental pictures and associations can be easily retrieved using the same formula.
This is access!
Access is better known as memory, and you will use access to learn how to remember everything you read.
Today, I’m going to show 7 simple steps to do just that.
How Do We Remember Using Mental Pictures?
Neuroscientists say that our brain works best using mental pictures through association.
When you want to learn how to remember everything you read, do this as an experiment:
Imagine what you were wearing two days ago.
Your brain did one or two things to help you remember.
The same will happen if you use pictures and associations to learn how to remember everything you read.
First, you may have accessed a picture of yourself immediately, and easily remembered what you were wearing.
Alternately, if you needed to think for a moment, several things may have popped into your mind that you associated with what you were wearing.
These would help you recall the exact kind of clothing you had on.
You might have remembered where you were, and that triggered your memory.
Perhaps you thought of what you were doing – whether you had any particular reason to wear a certain kind of clothing.
Maybe you remembered how you felt wearing the clothing.
These are clues to your brain to use mental images and other learning styles as you practice how to remember everything you read.
Learning Through Associations
All of these things are associations.
One thing reminded you of another.
They pair up in your brain with something else and voila – you remembered when you made the “connection” or “association” with the pictures.
This is a part of how to remember everything you read.
These mental pictures and associations are what help you learn how to remember everything you read; you will need to turn the words on the page or screen into mental movies.
This is what excellent readers and speed readers do.
The ancient Greeks and Romans often had elaborate memory contests to impress their fellow men with their “feats.”
You can benefit from their system to teach yourself how to remember everything you read using mental pictures.
Over 2,000 years ago, they used several systems, all based on associations and pictures.
Brain research today validates these systems as highly effective in learning how to remember everything you read using mental pictures.
Our teaching and testing system rely so heavily on what students can recall.
As a result, teaching memory techniques and a system of how to remember everything you read rewards everyone with better memory and higher self-esteem.
You are actually putting yourself in an empowered “state” for learning and for perfect reading recall.
Therefore, if you are trying to learn how to remember everything you read, you can boost your success by giving yourself reliable, long term strategies.
How to Remember Everything You Read Using Mental Pictures
Here is the first strategy, using 7 steps to learn how to remember everything you read using mental pictures.
This strategy is about how to remember things in order.
You can use it for understanding how to remember everything you read using mental pictures, or words in a particular order.
You can also use it for things like a grocery list or other things you have to do in a day in a particular order.
And, importantly, you can also use it to understand how to remember everything you read.
Memory Pegs
Look around the room you are in and see if there is a picture hanging on the wall.
If so, you can think of a memory peg like the hook in your brain that you will hang what you want to remember on.
To explain how it works, I am referencing Colin Rose’s book Accelerated Learning and Tony Buzan’s, Use Both Sides of Your Brain.
1………Bun……….Mercury
2………Shoe………Venus
3………Tree………Earth
4………Door………Mars
5………Hive………Jupiter
6………Sticks……..Saturn
7………Heaven……Uranus
8………Gate……….Neptune
9………Sign………..Pluto
1. Memorize
To recall the planets in order, “memorize” the pegs.
The pegs are next to the numbers.
Remember – you now know that “memorize” simply means to use pictures and associations like all memory experts do.
You’re connecting those neurons and dendrites in your brain, and you have a specific strategy for how to remember everything you read with the associations and things they remind you of.
2. Rhyme
What do you notice about the pegs and the numbers across from them?
They rhyme with the numbers they are next to.
3. Say it Aloud
Then, sit in your “success position” and begin to say the numbers and pegs aloud.
1 Bun, 2 Shoe, 3 Tree, 4 Door, 5 Hive, 6 Sticks, 7 Heaven, 8 Gate, 9 Sign.
Repeat the process much louder and again in a whisper as you learn how to remember everything you read.
4. Again, Without Looking
Then close your eyes, hold your head up high, and you say the numbers and the rhyming pegs.
You’ll realize that indeed this is a system about how to remember everything you read.
5. Visualize
Then think of what a bun reminds you of.
Be sure you look up into your visual memory position where you remember pictures and get a clear image of the bun.
You are quickly learning how to remember everything you read.
To verify, ask yourself things like, “Does the bun have sesame seeds on it?”
Or did you think of another kind of bun, like a hot dog bun, a sticky cinnamon bun, or even the buns we sit on?
Whatever it is, create colorful images of the bun and look upward into your visual memory position with the mental pictures you produced.
These pictures you create help you to teach yourself how to remember everything you read.
6. Connect
Finally, either on a paper or in your visual memory “screen” position, connect both the mercury and the bun together in a single humorous, colorful image.
It is usually best to draw your image in the beginning.
Maybe you drew a hamburger bun with a thermometer sticking out of it, …but whatever it was, you developed a system for how to remember everything you read.
Reinforce the memory by placing this image up on a visual memory screen, something like an inner blackboard as you learn how to remember everything you read.
7. Recall
Next, close your eyes, and you ask what is planet 1?
You will think of 1, the rhyming peg “bun,” and see the mercury connected to the bun.
You will quickly know that planet 1 is mercury, by recalling the phrase “1 Bun – Mercury”.
Then repeat the process with the other numbers, pegs, and associated images.
It’s best to review by holding your pictures in your visual memory position, one at a time.
As you draw or place your images in your visual memory location, play some of the Mozart music recommended in Chapter 13 or in the resource section to anchor the learning with another modality.
This is another way to learn how to remember everything you read.
After reviewing to see that you know the planets in order, give yourself a written test so you can see if you now know how to remember everything you read.
Have fun with this, and remind yourself that you now have a strategy to rely on your magic memory screen.
(You’ll be creating a helpful brain link so that when you hear the word “test,” you will smile.
You know that you now have a strategy to remember things on written tests as well as how to remember everything you read).
A Tried and Tested Technique
I often use this strategy in my teacher education courses.
Teachers experience first-hand how powerful it is to learn how to remember everything they read using mental pictures.
Before we begin the exercise, I run around the room, asking teachers to tell me, “What is planet 6, what is planet 2, what is planet 8, etc.”
I give them very little time to answer.
When they don’t know, I assure them that the peg memory strategy above will allow them to know the answers very rapidly for the “test.”
The teachers always feel amazed at their success.
Each one feels certain and can say to the other, “Hey, you know how to remember everything you read,” as well as how to remember things in order.
Note to Highly Visual Learners
Are you wondering why you would go through these kinds of exercises to learn how to remember everything you read using mental pictures?
Are you thinking it might take “too much time?”
Remember that you naturally make associations and pictures in your mind so quickly that you are hardly even aware of it.
This is a time-tested, excellent way to learn how to remember everything you read.
Part 2: Stay tuned for the number shape system and how to make mental images as you learn to remember everything you read.
I have watched these 7 steps work their magic over and over again to help kids and adults remember everything they read.
Try ’em out – and let me know how it goes for you!
Pat Wyman is the CEO of HowtoLearn.com and an internationally noted brain coach known as America’s Most Trusted Learning Expert. She has helped over half a million people in schools and corporations such as Microsoft, Intel and Google improve their lives with her learning strategies, learning styles inventory and courses, such as Total Recall Learning™.
Her superpower is helping people learn, read and remember everything faster. Pat is the best-selling author of more than 15 books and is also a university instructor, mom and golden retriever lover!
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