Long Term Memory - Memory Improvement Tips

Long Term Memory - making you uniquely you

You know how important your memory is. You lose it and you lose the concept of who you are. Your long term memory is what makes you the distinct individual you are - the person who has built up a lifetime of history with family and friends. The person who knows which forms go where or which widget goes with which at work. The person who has climbed Mt Everest or walked through a meadow blooming with flowers and delicious scents.

The person who knows their current phone number and home address. Who knows their child's face and feels the flutter of connection immediately upon sighting.

Lose your long term memory and you lose you ... which is sadly what happens to many thousands of people each year who are impacted by the onset of senility and Alzheimer's disease.

On the how to improve memory page we covered the top ten tips for improving your memory. On the Human Memory page you discovered some tips to help you get information into your memory so that you can retrieve it when you need.

Here are a few more memory improvement tools you can use to make sure that you are continually strengthening your long term memory.

• Play Remember Whens - This is a great strategy and children in particular love it ... even children in their 30s ... remember when we ... and talk about experiences both from your own childhood and theirs. Enrich the memory by trying to recall sights, sounds, smells and emotions. Regularly do this and you will continue to sharpen the neural pathways in your brain that connect your long term memories.
• Manage Your Stress Levels - If you have high stress levels over a long period of time you are regularly pumping the hormone Cortisol through your body. Do this long enough and you really impact your ability to recall -- that's why someone sitting at home playing Sale of the Century is screaming out all the answers long before the contestants on t.v. Yet once they find themselves in the studio their brain turns to mush and those easy to remember facts and figures vanish!
• Get the Right Vitamins Into Your Body - Boost memory with foods that are high in vitamins A, B1, B3, B6, B12, C, E and omega 3. If you aren't eating a well balanced diet then make sure you are taking supplements that provide you with these memory boosting vitamins.
• Play Association Games - This is a favorite in our family. Someone starts with a word and you need to repeat that word, then associate another word to it. The next person repeats the first two and adds a third. This is a game that the family can play after dinner and before putting on the t.v. It is most fun when there are four or more players and sometimes some of the associations can be hilarious. The nice thing is that as you are having fun you are strengthening the parts of your brain that aid long term memory.
• Read A Book - Sure read for enjoyment ... but also make a point occasionally to read with the intent of strengthening your memory. In both fiction and non-fiction books Ask yourself questions like
  • "When have I seen/heard/experienced something like this before?",
  
  
  • "What would this situation look like if 'x,y,z' where to happen instead?",
  
  
  • "How does this relate to my past/future/present?",
  
  
  • "Why might this not be true?"

  questions such as these cause you to fire off many different neural pathways in your brain as you use many different parts of your brain -- imagination, recall etc. All in all ensuring that you are keeping your brain active

Use Memory Improvement Tools To Thrive Throughout Your Life

Make use of these tips and the others tips found at the how to improve memory page and the Human Memory page ... and you will go a long way toward making sure that your long term memory is alive and well ... and consequently the divinely unique individual that is you - who is loved dearly by family and friends - thrives throughout your lifetime.

Go to the Improving Memory articles directory

Go to Memory Improvement tools home page from the long term memory page