Mind Palace

Would you expect anything less than me spending a lot of time in books? Isn't that what the Summer is for? Oh wait. You go to the beach? Hmmm. That's not what I do. I dive into books because I cannot stand to be outside with the extreme heat consuming me. So, my skin stays the same pale shade and my brain grows busier in learning. There is a lot to learn this Summer (more on that in a later post).

If you are a fan of the BBC show, Sherlock, then you know about his mind palace. It always comes up in the story when something desperate is happening and a critical piece of information needs to be retrieved. Something that most normal people would not or could not recall. But Sherlock closes his eyes for a moment and goes into his mind palace where he sees the information needed, and with that, the story continues and they get closer to solving the mystery. 

Did you ever ask yourself- what is the mind palace? Maybe you shrugged it off as something only a highly functioning sociopath genius like Sherlock can do. But that is not true. You and I can use mind palaces. It is something that anyone can learn, and it's a real thing which originated in ancient Greece.

This book, Moonwalking with Einstein, was loaned to my boss by one of our clients, and after reading it in a few days, Colin handed it to me, knowing I would enjoy it (he's perfectly right, of course) and we've been talking about memory ever since (actually, we were talking about memory long before. We are kind of nerdy).

Memory is a fascinating subject to learn about. It is marvelous how we remember things and how much capacity our brains have to store memories and images. We actually retain images better than numbers, words, and concepts, which is why mind palaces make so much sense. It is a 2,500 year old method of recalling almost anything we store, and it is how stories and learning was passed down before the written word and before the printing press. 

Since ancient times, we have lost so much of the need to remember things because we have computers, mobile phones, and books. But the art of memory is using the gift we already have in our minds. If there is something you want to remember, you can visualize a place that you are intimately familiar with, and place that memory in the scene so it co-exists, and when you need to recall it, just go into that mind palace and to that familiar place. Hopefully the memory you needed to recall will be there sitting at the same spot you left it. If you place a crazy image or silly scene, it's all the more memorable.

It is amazing. The fact that our brains can store knowledge as well as images that recall certain memories we store there. It seems super-human, and yet it is part of our making. We all under-utilize our brains and memories. God created us with these expansive minds that have so much storage capability.