In a recent article we tried to give you a first outline of an Operating Manual for the Brain. To sum it up: your brain is NOT a computer, it does not save anything to a kind of hard-disk where you need to access a file in sequence. Rather it works associatively, i.e. it can jump form every piece of information stored to any other piece of information, ANY other piece. And all that you've ever read, seen, heard, learnt is still there "somewhere" - but you may not be able to readily access that information, you "draw a blank". Essentially, this is quite the same AS IF the information was not there! If you still remember the twenty item shopping list we walked you through then you got a first glimpse at your brain's potential.



Consider this: your brain can take in millions of bits of information per second, from checking on your heartbeat, feeling a thorn just about to prick your skin, sensing the cold and making you "instinctively" roll down your sleeve, all while you may be talking to someone while from the corner of the eye watching your toddler lest he or she fell into a nearby pond, while your ear signals you there's a dog around and you shift your attention quickly to see if it's harmless or poses a danger, and all the while you are probably conscious of your white linen trousers you don't want to get soiled. Does that sound realistic? Would you agree that I only gave you the merest example, and that in that same second all that happened another myriad of things might have been registered simultaneously by your brain, all or most of it though relegated to your subconscious immediately? I can assure you: you'd swear you had never seen a dog at that moment if asked an hour later, however, if that same dog came chasing after your kid another two hours later it would look strangely familiar to you.

How often have you heard yourself or overheard other people say "Sorry, I forgot" or "Oh, I can't remember". And how often, when you were reminded (or reminded the other person) you (or they) would say "Now that you mention it ..." and they often would go on with the rest of the story effortlessly.

Whenever you (or someone else) remember something quite distinctly and clearly after such a little nudge, then it was never "forgotten" in the first place! Had it been completely forgotten it would be just as if you had never have heard of the fact ever in your life. That NEVER happens to a functioning brain, that happens ONLY if you are suffering from a brain disease, such as Alzheimer's (and -that's also by now a well established fact! - there is a good chance of staving off or completely avoid dementia in most forms if you have trained and used your brain constantly, precisely in the ways we suggest throughout our articles on learning strategies).

So your or your child's brain is a much, much more powerful computer than any you can buy. Only difference is: when you buy a computer you get a little brochure that tells you how to use it and has a trouble-shooting section etc. Not so with your brain. Since you came here to read this article then probably nobody ever handed you the right handbook for optimum brain use. Like your computer doesn't know how to use itself (even if the manual was stored on it), so your brain doesn't know how it's best used automatically. What we try to provide here therefore, step by step, is an operating manual for your brain. Guess what: while there are many different types of computers and thus many different manuals, there's only one human brain model worldwide. What you read here, you can use in Washington and New York as much as in Hongkong, in Paris, Singapore or when living in a polar region. The differences between the innate potential of one healthy person's brain to another are negligible. There are variations, just as there are different frames of body, but everyone, with a moderate amount of training, can run, not a marathon, but compete respectably in a public fun run.

As psychologists know since decades it is that what you believe you are. It's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if your children think they can't remember as well as the guy next door (and they might have taken the original cue from ... you!), begin talking to them about the above facts, about how their brain registers each and every little detail and e.g. when reading a bedtime story interpose every so often with a hint at what they might remember from today, build up their self-confidence and let them draw their own conclusions from what they remember but thought had forgotten. Within weeks, if not days, their memory begins to respond and the more it does so the more it opens to more and more positive associations whether it's the stuff in their homework or something else they tried to remember.