Dealing with Forgetfulness in 3 Easy Steps

1. Listen to yourself

Memory problems are, first of all, a clear signal of the body, which is worth paying attention to. Why do we forget important information? Let’s try to find the reason. To do this, we will conduct a small test in three areas: health, lifestyle and load level.

Health

Memory and concentration are impaired in depression and anxiety disorders. In addition to these diseases, there are other factors that affect our ability to remember – the level of the ferritin protein complex in the blood, the state of the thyroid gland, blood pressure …

It is better to recognize and neutralize a potential culprit as early as possible – in this case, the state of the nervous and other systems will not have time to deteriorate greatly. So, it will be easier to deal with forgetfulness.

Life

The most important indicator that is directly related to memory impairment is the quality of our sleep. Answer yourself honestly a few questions:

• Do you always manage to get enough sleep?
• Is your sleeping space well organized?
• Do you have some time in the evening to calm down, relieve the load of worries, switch to sleep?

So that memory does not suffer, you can not get enough sleep or sleep enough, but badly. The main thing is to determine the amount of sleep you need according to your needs and the feeling of recovery, and not according to general standards. Maybe you don’t need 8 hours of sleep. But it’s important for everyone to get enough sleep.

Load Level

Now the idea of ​​multitasking and super-efficiency is popular, but everyone has their own limit. If your memory is suffering, it is likely that you are trying to remember more than is possible.

Yes, someone, judging by social networks, can run three businesses, learn new languages ​​and cook meals for the whole family every day. But this does not mean that you should take an example from this person. Firstly, the image of a “workaholic” does not always correspond to the real state of affairs. Secondly, it may not suit you and your body.

2. Determine your type of perception of information

In order to remember important information, you need to know your leading representational system – the way in which it is more convenient for you to perceive information from the outside world.

There are audials among us — those who care about sounds and for whom reminders in the form of audio messages work best. There are visuals – lovers of images and stickers with inscriptions. And there are kinesthetics – those for whom it is important to “touch” information and who are comfortable writing lists by hand.

You can determine your basic channel for perceiving information using tests.

3. Correctly respond to forgetfulness

How do we usually react when we realize that we have forgotten something? In most cases, we begin to scold ourselves.

It must be understood that by criticizing ourselves, we activate the areas of the brain responsible for the perception of threat, and the brain in response to the threat produces evolutionarily programmed reactions such as “fight, flight or freeze.” Memory at this moment is not activated, but instincts are included.

It turns out an interesting situation: we scold ourselves to improve memory, but in fact we bring ourselves to a stressful state. And in it we are even less able to think and remember.

How to respond “correctly”? How can we make forgetfulness visit us less and less often, and it is better to stop bothering us at all?

1. Analyze the situation what exactly happened when you forgot something important, and how to avoid it in the future. For example, ask yourself what could have contributed to your forgetfulness at any particular moment—tiredness, hunger, or perhaps a simple reluctance to remember this information?
2. Support yourself. Tell yourself that you are an ordinary person and moments of forgetfulness happen to everyone. This is a reason not to punish yourself, but to take care of yourself. In general, say everything that we are so good at saying to our friends or even strangers, and so rarely say to ourselves.