Bad Boys: You're Losing Your Memory

What Was I Going to Say?

I’m ready to write something and as I sit at the keys, it’s gone. It was a spectacular idea. I know it was. Damn. It’s the second time this week, or is it the third? Suddenly I’m forgetting things — things that I’ve never forgotten before.

I used to be known for this memory of mine. Some folks even steered clear of it, feared it. They knew it could track details for decades and offer them back at lightning speed. Now what? A brain of mush has moved in where the razor sharp memory was. . . .

-Stop-

That’s the voice of a Bad Boy of Business. Bad Boys are negative messages, bad tape recordings, in our heads. Bad boys are ideas that we tell ourselves that undercut our success and productivity.

The bad boy here is “You’re losing you’re memory.”

What’s happening?

You’re Losing Your Memory

We all have points of reference by which we define ourselves. Most intelligent folks include a good memory in their list of definitions. When we start to forget things, it’s not pretty. We start hearing that bad boy talking us into believing that we’re losing our edge and that life will be downhill from there.

“You’re losing your memory,” he says. “You’re losing it.”

That’s not’s not what happening at all. It’s only how it feels.

What’s really happening: Chances are that we’ve been taking in a great deal of information — more than usual, more than we’re able to process fully. If we’re multi-tasking or skimming text, then perhaps, we’ve never captured the information at all.

The problem comes when we believe we can push beyond our capacity without allowing ourselves a chance to process the information that we’ve already “learned.”

The solution: Tell that bad boy to hit the road.

I need to give my brain a rest and take some time to breathe. My memory needs time to process. It’s broken. It’s on strike. If I treat it right it will come back to me.

Take a moment. Concentrate on learning one thing at a time. Take the time to process the information. You find your memory is still functioning.

I’m taking a minute to think about that — before I forget to.

–ME “Liz” Strauss