4 Always Remember Names
"Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any
language."
~ Dale Carnegie
There is no such thing as a good or bad memory for names, there is only a good or a bad strategy. In
this chapter you are going to learn strategies that can make a huge difference to your name memory.
Make a commitment today to improve; it is a commitment that will provide you with numerous
benefits and save you from many embarrassing situations.
In Chapter 3, I showed you the self-fulfilling circle. Get rid of your limiting beliefs about your name
memory and start to focus on finding a strategy that can help you. Become motivated and interested in
names and how we brand people according to that name.
Imagine you meet a person and they say that they will give you a million dollars if you could
remember their name a week from today. Would you then remember it? Of course you would. We are
all brilliant at names if we are motivated enough to hold on to them.
The methods that I will be sharing with you have been used for centuries. They require you to think
differently and to use your incredible associating mind. Some people say that they have tried
association to remember names and it doesn't work for them. It doesn't work if you don't practise,
nothing in life works unless you work with it. All the memory champions are using association
methods and can easily remember about a hundred names in less than half-an-hour. I believe that if
you copy the strategies of the champions you can get the same results and if you don't you won't.
The untrained memory is not very reliable. The average person leaves their memory to chance, hoping
that the name will somehow stick. The strategies that I will share with you work – use them!
Now if you want to remember names like a memory master you have to focus on the four Cs.
1. #CONCENTRATE
When you meet someone with the same name as you, do you remember their name? Yes, because you
are interested in that name, you always hear it, and your attention is at a peak. The name has meaning
to you and you also connect it to yourself. If you follow this basic strategy with every person that you
meet you will remember their names.
When we get introduced to people they normally say their name so quickly that nobody can get it.
Take control of the introduction, to be able to really get the name you have to slow down the
introduction. Put your elephant ears on and really hear the name, make remembering names something
that is important to you.
Oliver Wendel Holmes said, "A person must get a thing before they can forget it." You need to
really hear the name first, if you don't hear something you will not remember it. You have to first get
it to turn it into a memory. If you hear the name, and repeat it back to the person you will improve
your recall. If you don't hear the name, ask the person to say it to you again, and if it is a difficult
name ask the person to spell the name too.
Listen and get genuinely interested in the other person's name. We are normally so worried about
being interesting, that we forget to be interested. When you become interested you will want to listen
to the name. Learn to listen to people from their perspective and not your own. Not only will it
improve your name memory, but your social intelligence too.
2. #CREATE
You have to create an image for the name in your mind, to be able to re-create it later.
Have you ever heard people say, "I know the face, but I can't remember the name...?" You never hear
people say, "The face is on the tip of my tongue". We remember faces because they form an image in
our mind. The names don't normally 'stick' because we try to remember it with our auditory memory
or our little voice. It doesn't make sense to try to stick a sound to a vision – of course it won't stick.
Plus, auditory memories are never as solid as visual memories.
To hold on to a memory we must make an image out of the name. Remember how we created images
out of names when we learned the presidents? When you give a name meaning you can then hold on to
it.
When you put a name into your mind and you don't do anything with it, it will disappear and you
won't be able to find it again. This is because working memory doesn't store information. So to store
it you need assistance from your short and long-term memory. You have to really think about the name
to remember it because we only remember what we think about.
When you are introduced to someone, you only have twenty seconds to think about the name and make
an association. If you don't do anything with the name in twenty seconds the name will be gone. The
more connections and meaning you can give the name, the more it will 'stick'.
Some of the names will naturally create a picture like the surnames Baker, Cruise or Gardner. My
surname is Horsley so you can think of a horse and Bruce lee. My first name is Kevin and it sounds
like Cave in, making it easy to create an image and meaning out of my name. Other names may be
more difficult, but by using a bit of creativity any name can be given meaning and turned into a
picture.
3. CONNECT
Remember that all learning is creating a relationship between the known and the unknown. You will
already know the face so you need to connect the unknown name to the known face. When you see the
face it must act as a trigger or peg to bring the name to your awareness.
Here are some methods to make the connection. All the methods you learn here take a great deal
longer to explain than to use.
