Most of you are aware that doubling your memory, going from fair to great, is easy when you learn the association-mental imagery strategy.

All it takes is producing a picture in your minds eye that reminds you of something that looks, sounds or feels like something you already have in your long-term memory.

If you want to remember a great lady named Sister Rose Thering, who had her obituary in the N.Y. Times on May 8, 2006, you mentally visualize a long-stem rose, pushed through a wedding ring (Thering), being held by a nun.

Another baby-step example is recalling a form of moth called a Sphinx Caterpillar.

Create an association that is weird, exaggerated or ridiculous because the brain more easily remembers the unusual, not the mundane.

I see a five-foot tall pussy-kat sleeping on a pillow (Kat-pillow = caterpillar), with the face of a pharaoh (Egyptian King), and the body of a lion, which recalls the Sphinx of Giza. It is associated with strength and wisdom. That is my link to recall the Sphinx Caterpillar.

Too Easy

Q. But what about abstract, philosophical, theoretical or indefinite words?

Our examples were concrete, factual and objective; it is easy to imagine and visualize words or phrases like Sister Rose Thering and Sphinx Caterpillar, you say.

How about these?

1. Love 2. Disease 3. Lightness 4. Durability 5. Justice 6. Anxiety 7. Panic 8. Schizophrenic 9. Humor 10. Optimism

The principle is the same