PLAN No. 573. MEMORY CULTIVATION
The following is the method employed with profit by a well known eastern man who teaches the cultivation and improvement of the memory. He inserts ads. in all the papers as follows:
“Stop forgetting. It may cost you money. Memory can be perfected by my simple Home Method. Education not necessary. Easy to master. Sent prepaid for 50 cents. SEND NOW TO ——————”
“A good memory worth gold. Helps you succeed—is better than education. MY HOME METHOD easily and quickly applied; easy as reading a book. Send 50 cents for it, prepaid, NOW. Address ————————”
“How is your memory? If it is bad, better it; if it is good, perfect it. MY HOME METHOD gets results. Easiest thing in the world. Send 50 cents NOW; get it prepaid. Address ———————”
The copy for the course, or folder, is substantially as follows:
How to Cultivate Your Memory
Forgetfulness is not a disease—it is a habit—and a bad and costly habit.
Perfect memory is necessary in all kinds of business. Why have to make notes of everything you wish to recall? Why “have a name or fact on the tip of your tongue,” unless you can speak it?
Your mind is just like your muscles, so far as training goes. If you wanted to become physically strong, you would not overdo your exercise the first day. You would start with simple things, and then do the more difficult feats. It is the same way with your mind, follow these directions carefully.
How to Concentrate Your Mind
Memory depends entirely upon concentration. If you have riveted your mind on what you hear or see or read, the impression is deep. It is like talking into a phonograph. If you whisper, the record on the wax is shallow, and difficult to reproduce. If you speak in a clear voice, then the record of what you say is cut deep, and can always be reproduced clearly.
To learn how to concentrate, you must start with simple things. But the first lessons must be useful.
The best way to concentrate is to begin with things that denote action.
For example, go into a room once a day, with nobody around to disturb you. Take a sheet of plain paper, and with a heavy, black pencil write something on it like this:
“I can make my mind travel into any fact or study.”
Place this before you on the table, and have nothing else on the table that will interfere. Set this paper on the edge, so that it is plainly visible when you sit in a chair about two feet away from the table.
Now, first of all, relax. Get your muscles eased. Sit back in the chair, breathe slowly, take a few long breaths, and close your eyes.
Sit in a comfortable position. Avoid all muscular strain.
Then open your eyes and look at that paper.
Look at it and ask yourself what it means. What is your mind supposed to do if it travels into any subject?
If you are going to run a race, you wear as little as possible. You must feel like racing. And so, your mind must not be weighed down with other thoughts.
Close your eyes and think about your mind’s ability to travel back into the past.
What did you do a year ago today? What did you do a year ago yesterday? What did you do five years ago?
Keep the idea before you of making your mind travel back into anything you wish to remember.
Keep the Mind in a Definite Thought Channel.
Now, after a few minutes of this practice, take another sheet of paper and write on it:
“I can dig up any fact in my mind.”
Again relax and close your eyes, and then study these words. If your mind is going to dig facts out of your memory, it must not have other things to do at the same time.
Try to dig up the name of somebody you have forgotten, or something you have read.
Now, as you proceed from day to day, get relaxed and take some book or paper and read some useful thing. Try to shut out every other thought, so that your mind can wade into the facts.
Then sit back in your chair, with your eyes closed, and analyze what you have read. Ask yourself questions about it. The more interesting the subject, the more readily you will go into it.
After a few weeks you will begin to look into things more carefully, and make your mind impressions deep.
Get into the habit of concentrating on what people tell you, on what you read, or see, or hear.
Then you will soon learn how to shut out everything that does not pertain to the subject, and you will make your impressions stronger. Also, you will begin to bring out truths that you have almost forgotten.
Remember that the subjective part of your mind never forgets.
The more you get into the habit of permitting your mind to flit, the less you will be able to remember. The best students are those who make their studies interesting. The best business men are the persons who take interest in their business.
Tie yourself down to everything you do.
And then, every once in a while, hold a mind review.
Think of the different places you have lived, what you did, the people you knew, what became of them.
Exercise your memory regularly.
Unless it is exercised, it falls into disuse—like an unused muscle—and becomes weaker.
Within a few weeks, you will be able to concentrate your mind on anything you do or read or say. That is practice of the right kind. It is scientific practice that considers your memory as a necessary part of your entire being.
And remember, that you should so concentrate on these lessons that you can repeat the thought, the ideas contained in them.
With this kind of practice, memory will become a strong asset with you—and it is a valuable asset, too.
PLAN No. 574. CUSTODIAN FOR U. S. SEE [PLAN No. 217]
PLAN No. 575. PICTORIAL BUSINESS MAGAZINE
A western advertising man induced a talented local cartoonist to join him in the publication of a pictorial magazine of purely local events of interest, and together they soon made it the most talked-of publication in the city which had a population of about 100,000.
The magazine was well printed, on good paper, and contained items of interest to and concerning prominent people in all lines of business—merchants, lawyers, doctors, dentists, judges, politicians, and other well known people.
The artist was quite gifted in reproducing the features of people, and the faces thus drawn were often attached to bodies of supposedly the same people in more or less grotesque positions there being an element of humor in most of the drawings. The humor, however, was of the clean, inoffensive kind, and was greatly enjoyed by the victim as well as by his acquaintances.
In a short time they had over 2,000 regular subscribers to the magazine, which was published weekly, and with the growth of the circulation the advertising space became more and more valuable, so that inside of three years their annual income was considerably in excess of $4,000.