Did you know that any knowledge that you have acquired that is not actively being used is slowly being forgotten? This is a serious problem for a lot of people and they don’t even know it.

Have you ever been to a seminar or read a great book and be profoundly moved by some new knowledge only to find that after 2 or 3 months (or less), most of that knowledge is no longer within your grasp?

Another example – did your parents make you learn some kind of musical instrument as a child? But if for whatever reason, that practice did not carry through to your adult years, you will find that you can no longer play the instrument.

You may have spent tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life learning something. But unless you use that information everyday, your mind, by design, will soon move that information out of the conscious part of your brain to be archived in the unconscious part of the brain. And if a long enough time passes, you may not be able to recall that information again. Here’s the rule:

What you don’t use, you lose!

This is truly the reason why a lot of people are unhappy or unsuccessful. It’s not that they don’t know what they need to do to solve their life problems. But its because they don’t make it a habit or they don’t have a system to keep in their “active” memory that knowledge which is most important for their happiness or success.

You see, the process of forgetting is a very natural process. Our conscious mind can only handle so much “active” knowledge at a time. Without this mechanism, we humans would be overwhelmed with the data and quite likely go insane.

So the question I want to pose to you is – how to we keep knowledge that is most important and empowering for us “active” so that it can help us make the most of our life?

You see, you can broadly classify the knowledge in your mind as follows:

1. Important and Frequently Used
2. Important and Infrequently Used
3. Not Important and Frequently Used
4. Not Important and Infrequently Used

Knowledge that is used regularly is always kept “active” so you need not worry to much about these two quadrants. Knowledge that is not important and infrequently used, well you can simply ignore because it is inconsequential.

The key then, is to focus on the information that is important in your life that is rarely used. Extra care needs to be taken here because the content here is slowly being lost over time. But this information can help you in your life during rare but critical decision periods in your lifetime. How do you make sure you can count on this knowledge when you need it the most?

Three Steps To Keep What Is Important In Your Active Memory

The first step is to be aware of the four categories above. Whenever you learn something of value where you think – “Oh I really need to adopt that principle in my life or business”, you need to write it down. That’s why journaling is such a powerful practice. Keep a book where you write down all the important principles that you hold dear that you may not use everyday yet. Meaning, anything that falls into the quadrant with the “star” in the diagram above.

The next step is to create a powerful anchor so that you can recall it. What do I mean by an anchor? Well, this is a term in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). It means to create a trigger that you can use to actively recall a certain memory. There’s not enough scope in this article to get into how to install anchors but as a brief example, if every time you felt really excited and you snapped your fingers, you will begin to create a trigger. Repeat this often enough and the process of snapping your fingers will become your trigger to activate your state of excitement. You can use this process to “anchor” any emotion or memory.

The third step in the process is to create a system of active revision. Just as a smart student will set up a systematic schedule to revise his school work when exams are approaching – as adults, we need to have a system to revise the information that helps us most in our life.

Even the simple process of taking 10 minutes a day to count your blessings is a powerful practice. For example, if your family and your health is important to you, by taking 10 minutes a day to give thanks for your family and your health will help you to spend quality time with your family and adopt healthy habits and avoid unhealthy practices.

All too often, people do things to inadvertently hurt themselves or their loved ones simply because they have taken these treasures for granted. In other words, they have forgotten what’s important in their life.

Conclusion

So in summary, if you want to really improve the quality of your life and experiences, make it a habit to identify them and write down that which is most important to you. Create triggers to help you recall this information. And finally, set up a schedule to actively revise the information you have written in your journal.

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Tags: anchor, journaling, memory, nlp, priorities