Sense-training also has a financial aspect. The more attuned your senses are, the more you will hear, see, understand and remember. We seem to imagine that we see everything that is worth seeing, and hear everything that is worth hearing, and that these two leading senses never call for the attention of practiced discipline. We’re wrong. It is the trained mind that wins, always and everywhere.
Train Separately: Use Unitedly
In one way all the senses may be trained together. If you take a walk and on returning try to remember everything that has appealed to your senses, you are reproducing sights, sounds, odors, and mental images of touch. In practical work, however, it is found best to train the senses separately. This does not prove that you must educate the senses together. No more does the fact that when you examine a piece of cloth to see that it is all wool you do not trust to your sight alone, but run your fingers along the edge to compare it with your recollection of the peculiar feeling of pure wool. To use the senses together is one of the precautions necessary to obtain accurate knowledge, and the more highly developed each sense is, the better is it as a guide to facts. You can train your senses separately and use them together.
Accuracy and Speed
There are two desirable attributes in the power of observation – one is accuracy and the other is speed. It is necessary to look at some things very carefully in order to be sure whether or not they move, or whether or not they change color. Sometimes, a very close inspection of material is necessary in order to discover defects. All these operations depend on accuracy in noticing difference and agreement, and this accuracy is the direct result of attention. One of the first, and also one of the most difficult things in training the senses is to separate the action of one from another, as for instance to keep sight distinct from hearing.
Each sense plays its part in the problem of memory. According to the relative development of their senses, some persons remember things through the sense of sight, while others remember through impressions of sound. Often the memory of individuals is keenly responsive to the senses of touch, smell, and taste, but these are of less general utility in ordinary everyday life.
The Deficient Sense
There are very few people who have an equally good memory for sights and for sounds; therefore it is necessary that the sense which is deficient should be developed. The natural tendency is to put all the work on the sense which seems to do it the more easily, and this works to the detriment of the other functions, which should be compelled to bear a share of the burden. For instance, if you find it difficult to remember anything in writing or in print, try reading it aloud to yourself, taking note not only of the meaning of the words but also of their appearance, their relative position on the paper, and their actual sound. You will thus be sending to the brain a visual impression and an aural impression at the same time (both being physical impressions), and with them you can create a better mental impression of the meaning of what you are studying.
How to Remember Names and Faces
Look for a distinguishing mark, as well as try to get a general impression. People who pay attention and really look at the face will not forget that face.
Names by Sound: Faces by Sight
The great difficulty in remembering people’s names arises from the fact that the name is a “hearing” while the face is a “seeing.” We have little or no difficulty in remembering names that we are in the habit of seeing, especially when they are usually presented to our attention in immediate connection with the face to which they belong. The faces used in magazine advertisements, for instance, are always associated with the name. We are in the habit of seeing both together; they have been presented so often to the mind as ideas of equal strength, that they have been blended into one idea, and either the name or the face instantly recalls the other. Names of famous persons, which are continually before us in the newspapers, are easily remembered, because we have the visual memory of them to help us. We seldom forget the names of persons with whom we correspond, because we are familiar with the visual appearance of the written name, and it has gradually blended with the general, memory of the person to whom it belongs.
It is the names that we never see written or printed that we forget; the names of people just introduced to us, or whom we meet casually in society or business. Whenever you find yourself unable to recall the name of a person that you have met dozens of times, if you will think it over, you will usually discover that it is a person to whom you have never written, and whose name has never been to you anything but a sound.
Sound and Spelling
In order to bring the sight memory of a face and the sound memory of a name together, to establish some connection between them, so that one shall recall the other, concentrate upon paying attention to the name when you hear it. Ask how it is spelt and also pronounce it aloud, paying particular attention to the spelling and to any peculiarities that the name suggests.
Every time you think of person, be sure to recall the name at the same time, and mentally spell it. Every time you meet a person whom you know, recall the name, even if it is not necessary to address him or her by it; and, in recalling it try to get the visual memory of it, or spell it to yourself,
The most important thing is to pay attention to the name upon the first introduction. Many persons are singularly careless in this respect, and do not really hear the names. They are under the impression that it is impolite to show a desire to have the names repeated. This practice allows the “sight” impression of the person to be so much stronger than the “sound” impression of the name that the ideas do not unite. The stronger completely obliterates the weaker. In order to cure yourself of this habit, if you have contracted it, try for a while to get a stronger impression of names than of faces, when you meet people for the first time; and, above all, do not forget to turn the name into a visual memory if you can.
At fifty the memory for proper names begins to decline, but an effective remedy is found in carrying out the hints just given, and using proper names when speaking to or of the people concerned. Do not be content with such phrases as “Mr. What’s his Name.”
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