How do you manage to remember a speech? It’s a question I am often asked. For me, the simple answer is, using the Gentle Art of Repetition. Of course, there is more to it than just lifting up the top of your head and pouring in the info. That method didn’t work for me either.
In Greek mythology Memory is personified as a Goddess (that really pleases me!) a Titaness, the daughter of Gaia and Uranus, who slept with Zeus for nine consecutive nights and gave birth to the nine muses! On top of that, Zeus was her nephew.
Talk about miracles! The Greeks sure had imagination!
MNEMOSYNE became Titan goddess of memory and remembrance and the inventress of language and words.
Before the introduction of writing, Mnemosyne created a blueprint to conserve stories of history and the sagas of myth. She had a lot to remember! How did she do it? Well, they do say that women have a habit of remembering everything!
Psychology defines memory as having three basic forms: short term, intermediate and long term memory abilities.
Short term is anything from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Intermediate is a form of long term memory which can last for days or weeks. (the one we use most for speech learning.) Long term memories can be recalled years later and over a life time.
What is important is how we code it, store it, and later retrieve the memorised speech or event.
Memory is the diary we all carry about with us − says Oscar Wilde
I remember in my active days in the music Biz Nizz, I would be given a sheet of music and told to go away and learn it by the next evening. Sharp ears and plenty of repetition was my only option. One day, my music teacher shared with me a trick she had been using for years. ‘You start by learning the last 4 bars and then the penultimate 4 bars, and so on until you reach the beginning.’
It was a great technique to trick your brain into learning in a different way.
Later, I tried this method to learn poems on the Performance Poetry scene and of course, with speeches. It seems that something happens to the brain when you learn in reverse. It absorbs the information with less resistance and creates a special cache from which high speed retrieval is possible.
It is also a fun method to memorise and you should all know by now, the importance of having fun on your journey to success.
In the end, it all boils down to the Gentle Art of Repetition and how you tackle it. But learning a speech in reverse is a technique I recommend you to try.
If you scribble into Google, How to memorise a speech, you will find 237.000 results, and all of them at some point, will refer you to, The Gentle Art of Repetition.
Elizabeth Arden has a great quote for all of us entrepreneurs.
Repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers.
I enjoyed this writing. Very important and interesting idea, I´m just wondering if we write our text or speech in a reverse order would it make easier to memorise reading it in the normal way? ….
Another fascinating post to digest. The old Romans and Greeks certainly ran riot in the imagination department… Quite common, I know, but my short-term memory for names is not, now, very good. When I worked with children for around ten years and welcomed a new class, I would call the little dears, ‘love’, ‘darling,’ or whatever other endearment came to mind until I knew them all by name. It didn’t take long… then….I admire anyone, such as Georgia, who has the capacity, capability, and let’s face it, good fortune, to be able to train their memories. Rock on!