Memory Most Valuable Faculty
The development resulting from use of the games and exercises of the first book has already influenced the memory faculty of the child. The faculties of visualization, observation, attention and concentration, all contribute to the proper operation of this faculty. They are the tools with which the desired result can be accomplished. It is of greatest importance that these tools be sharpened and tempered by use of the exercises given in Book One. It is now important that you know and understand the principles and methods of memory operation. Study this book with your children, if they are old enough to understand it.
For smaller children follow the plan of making the instructions into stories, and the exercises into games. Encourage the children in making the effort necessary for improvement and to expect a great deal of themselves.
The story of the success of great leaders of present day business and industrial life reveals the fact that they had an unusually retentive memory. That their minds were great storehouses of facts and figures regarding their business.
Others who had worked along with them for years, but were not able to absorb and retain the knowledge, could not progress as fast or as far. All have the natural endowment of a good, dependable memory and all have the faculties, which, if properly trained, will result in conscious ability to use the memory for all the needs of successful living.
Your memory is your ability to make an impression upon your brain which you can recall at will.
This involves two mental processes; first, the making of an impression upon the brain; second, the ability to recall it at will. The problem of memory is to know how to accomplish these two things and to be able to produce the result easily and quickly.
Five groups of nerves connect the brain with the outside world, these are the five senses. They are the avenues of approach over which all impressions or sensations are conducted to the brain.
The ease with which any impression can be recalled will depend,—first, upon how strongly it is made.
Your senses are unequal in their ability to impress the brain. Some make stronger impressions than others, not so much because of the thing to be impressed, but because of the natural unequal strength of the groups of nerves. All experience or knowledge that makes a strong, definite impression is more easily recalled than in those cases where the impression is less distinct.
Nature has endowed one of the senses with a peculiar ability to make impressions upon the brain which are many times stronger than those made by any of the others. To learn to properly use this one sense is the greatest aid to memory improvement.