Partnering with your brain part 3: Foundations of memory and learning with Collin Jewett
Links
Superhumanacademy.com
Maven.com
Elementalkinetics.com (Hint: You’re already here!)
Memory Palace
Transcript
Collin Jewett 0:00
The brain and memory are not super well understood. If you talk to a neuroscientist, they can tell you okay, well the hippocampus is responsible for it's part of the brand's responsible for transferring things from your short term memory from your long term memory and they can, they can share a lot of those things with you, but exactly how all that works is still kind of nebulous.
Doesn't matter because from a practical standpoint, there are some things that work, okay. And that's what we care about. Like you don't need a neuroscience degree to get better at remembering things.
Ericka Thomas 0:30
You're listening to The Work IN. I'm your host Ericka Thomas, a certification collector and refugee from the body brand nation sharing 25 years of experience in the fitness industry to recruit and support the next generation of fitness professionals, coaches and wellness educators. Join me and raise the standard of professionalism in the industry by bringing trauma sensitive training to the health conscious and health curious alike. Let's get started with today's work in the work in is brought to you today by elemental kinetics online resilience studio chronic stress and trauma lives in the body. Ready or not. That puts creative fitness professionals front and center as the first line of defense in support for Trauma Recovery. Yet few get the training they need to help them navigate their own stress curve. Let alone support for their clients.
Elemental kinetics offers personalized coaching and mentorship for fit pros so they can expand their professional scope, burnout proof their business and change the face of fitness through trauma informed class design for any format. Check it out at elemental kinetics.com
Welcome back to The Work IN I'm Ericka and this is part three of our three part series called partnering with your brain. If you haven't heard part one and two, be sure to go back and check those out. Last time Collin Jewett and I discussed how we can choose to experience moments in ways that will improve our memory and how stress kills creativity.
Colin is the director of coaching for superhuman Academy and e-learning company known for their blockbuster learning and memory courses. As an engineering student, Collins struggled with the transition from high school and found himself failing, feeling stupid and being rejected a job fairs. He knew he needed help. So after a tearful experience with his guidance counselor and making some humbling changes, Cullen learned how to work with his brain to turn his college career round and get on the Dean's List, landing a senior engineering position out of college. Today he's the author of two books on learning and lifestyle. Design and has helped executives psychologists and nuclear engineers become learning experts. He's on a mission to share the love of learning with as many people as possible and ultimately transform the education system.
Now there's a lot going on in your head when you're standing in front of a room teaching a class. Whether you teach math, or kickboxing, history or yoga. There's a process that our brains go through to lock information in as teachers, instructors and coaches. We need to be aware of that so we can support our students and clients in their learning process. Today, you're going to hear about a foundation that you need to learn just about anything, what memory hooks are and how to use them. How to create a location filing system for your memories, and why forgetting is important to this one's going to be good.
So let's dive back in to our work in with Collin Jewett.
How does that cultivation of curiosity and creativity how does that affect our memory and learning?
Collin Jewett 4:18
Yeah, so I like to use this paradigm of there's a million different ways you can do this as usual. If you've heard of Bloom's Taxonomy, that's one way of thinking about learning. I'm not going to dig into it because I like my way better. I think Bloom's Taxonomy super useful but I think it misses some key layers. Essentially, Bloom's Taxonomy just kind of says sorry, memory is at the base and then you go up for memories kind like these different levels of learning at the top is origination essentially like creating something new, which is actually is combination.
But it fails to go below that which is that creativity and that curiosity that's really where things start is curiosity about the world around you. Alright, so let's let's connect that so my the way that I like to set up like kind of like a learning process from a place where everyone can start no matter what. You think about yourself, or what your past experience has been, is curiosity, asking questions. As you ask questions, let your brain be creative and consider solutions and think about combinations. of things. Okay, that's the next step. And incorporate your different senses as well and embody it.
So memory like I talked about before, you have different the brain and memory are not super well understood. If you talk to a neuroscientist, they can tell you Okay, well, the the hippocampus is responsible for it's part of the brain is responsible for transferring things from your short term memory from your long term memory and they can they can share a lot of those things with you but exactly how all that works is still kind of nebulous. Doesn't matter because from a practical standpoint, there are some things that work, okay. And that's what we care about, like you don't need a neuroscience degree to get better at remembering things.
Okay. So where creativity plays a role in that it's about what I talked about before those conceptual units and the format of the information that you're trying to take in, if you try to take in information that is perceived as being bland and unembodied, and kind of abstract, it's going to be extremely hard for you to remember it because your memory works. Power for practical standpoint, again, a few different ways, some universal things regardless of who you are, or what kind of person you think you are, whatever.
There are some things that are true about your memory, which is that the more hooks the more memory hooks the better so the more senses that are engaged with a piece of information, the better you will remember it. So in school, oftentimes, and probably work in lots of places. You have somebody lecturing, and you're sitting there and you're hoping to absorb useful information somehow magically. And you're experiencing it in an auditory fashion. That is one sense that is being involved. If you don't do anything extra in your mind, then that's the only sense that's been involved. We've got one hook. If you happen to have your eyes open during the lecture, you might have a second hook and no promises there. You know, you haven't had your eyes open, you might also see the professor standing up there waving their arms around and saying something. And that might provide a kind of helpful second hook because you have an episodic memory you were actually there you have the experience of sitting in a classroom listening or sitting in a meeting and your boss talking or something.
That episodic hook is often not super helpful. And the reason for that is because unless you've, you've made it in your own mind, there's often not a explicit connection between professor or boss or coworker standing and waving their arms around and the actual concepts that you're trying to grasp. Unless they're very good at expressing unless they're actually embodying the expression of it, or they're showing like a diagram or something. Okay. So universal, the more sensory hooks, the more it can you can make that that memory and experience rather than just a piece of abstract floating information, the more easy to remember so let's go to names because he talked about that earlier and I haven't addressed it specifically. So you tell me that your name is Erica, if I experienced her name Erica purely as a word that I listened to. I have that one hook and that's it. And I'm relying on that one hook to remember your name. I'm hoping that that auditory memory is good enough to kind of cross fingers.
I can add more hooks if I want though. I don't have to just rely on the auditory memory. I know somebody named Ericka very closely. So I could also imagine you and her hanging out you know sitting next to each other sharing a cup of coffee I don't know. That is one more hook. Now there's kind of like this experiential there's a personal connection with another person and that can tie you guys together a little bit. Alright, so that's that's another hook. I could also think of like, if I wanted to, this is not the best but it's an easy place to start. You'll hear his kind of like, if you watch the office, you've got you've got like Michael Scott and his mnemonics. I don't know if you watch that, but he has this. He's kind of making fun of mnemonics and says you're bald. I'll call you baldy and that's how I remember your name whatever.
But but that's legitimate. It's based on something legitimate which is I'm taking I can connect the something about the way your name sounds, I can connect to your physical appearance somehow. So the name Erica has done a like Rick in the middle of it. I think of a rickshaw like a little three wheeled taxi. Okay, I could see it riding on the ridges of your glasses right now. That's kind of like the Michael Scott mnemonic is taking like that down and he's like taking an image it's legitimate. There's there's something to that right. So that without that could be another hook. It's a sound alike. And then I've made an image and I've connected it to some feature. Now your glass I don't know if you always wear glasses, so maybe that wouldn't be the best feature with it. But there's there's a million different possible books here. Right.
I could also remember the place where I met you noticed this has been well known for a long time, but it's become even more explicit that our memories are inextricable from locations. It's really interesting. And so that's also one of the best ways you if you've ever heard the memory palace technique. Never heard of that. Okay. So one thing you can do is you can take information and you can put it in a place in your mind. It sounds really complicated. It's not it's not at all I can take you with the rickshaw riding on your glasses and I can imagine you sitting in the corner of my office. The value to doing that is because I can always recall the corner of my office the same way every single time. I know what it looks like. And it's just stuck in my memory. I can't get rid of it. Because of that I now have a consistent place. If I want to remember your name, I can always I know where I put you in my office. I can always go back to that spot and see what's there. Others Erica? Oh, she's got a rickshaw riding on her glasses. Why is that? Rick? Rick? Erica gives me some connection.
Ericka Thomas 11:30
Interesting. And that works?
Collin Jewett 11:33
in memory palaces are extraordinarily powerful these if you've ever heard of memory competitions, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, every single person who ever competes in memory competition, I guarantee if you ask them if they're using memory palace, they say yes. 100% Because what you can do if you're so let's say you want to remember a grocery list. super basic example. What you could do is put each of the elements of that grocery list so let's say I want to I want a jar of pickles. I can imagine that jar of pickles on my coat rack. Cool. Alright, now the next thing I want let's say I want to go cheese. I don't know. I can put the goat cheese on my table. So that'd be the most basic and I would like kind of walk through if I want to remember the grocery list all he was walking around my house and I say what was in this corner I was sitting on top of that coat rack. Now that's the jar of pickles. I see it there. And then I can make that a much more interesting experience. So check this out. I can go up to that jar pickles. I can open up the top. It's really tight. I can feel that tension of trying to open it. I can hear the pop sound of the pickle jar opening I can reach in I can pull out a pickle I can feel the the liquid dripping down. I can smell that pickle smell I can take a bite of it. I can imagine the taste. Oh my goodness. I've just engaged so many senses. I can't help but remember that experience now it's locked in. I know I need to dry pickles from the grocery store.
Ericka Thomas 12:54
And now I need a jar of pickles!
Collin Jewett 12:56
It's in your head. That's right. And if I want to remember since I can recall my my apartment the same way every time. Then I know I can go on the same path and I can see those items again. Because that's something that's consistent and I can hold on to it. It's kind of like saying, if you purchase something from the store and you come home, you know what that thing looks like? And if you saw it, you'd recognize it. That's kind of how our memories are like, you might have had this I know I know this but I can't remember what it is. You get that feeling I if I saw it, I would know. Yes, that recognition. Yeah, so that's the equivalent of like, I bought something in the store. I come home I know it looks like but then what do I do with it? I just chuck it. I just throw it somewhere in my house. I can't find it. I know what it looks like I know it if I see it, but I can't find it. That's the problem. We have that problem in our memories all the time. We know it would look like if we saw it and we don't know where it is. And that's what memory palaces do. So you can now I know where to now I know where it is and then I will recognize it when I see it. It's like creating a filing system in your brain using locational cues.
Ericka Thomas 14:03
Interesting makes sense. Yeah, totally. Makes sense. It totally makes sense. Okay, so now I have another question because that kind of triggered this this question for you. What about those words that are on the tip of your tongue and you cannot find that word even though like when you started this sentence? You knew what you work.
Collin Jewett 14:26
Yeah, and there's actually a word for that phenomenon and I sound to my tongue but I can't stop. I actually can't remember it. There is a word for funny. Yeah, so experiences like that. I mean, like this is where like discerning comes into to memory and it's also important remember, forgetting is actually a really important function of your brain. It needs to forget things to work efficiently. And there there are a few people who have lived in history that are documented who could not forget things. And they had other serious social impairments and things like that, that came along with that because their brain was kind of wired in a different way. And they remember like everything that came into their head, but the normal healthy functioning brain that doesn't have any like weird, extra genetic stuff. You know, if you do Hey, there's there can be some really cool advantages to that though. Like synesthesia. Super cool. I wish I had it. It's kind of neat. But if you haven't and it's if you're suffering with I'm sorry, I guess I shouldn't shouldn't play lightly with things like that. But But anyway, forgetting is an important function of your brain. It is really important so we can get frustrated with forgetting but if you haven't intentionally tried to make something memorable. It's not just going to happen automatically unless the information was already presented in a highly sensory or like experiential way. Interesting. Or, like I said, earlier, you see only what you aim at. If it was something that you already valued and you thought was really important to your long life that you remember it and you could pay attention to it.
Ericka Thomas 16:02
Right. So yeah, I love what you said about how important forgetting is is actually a critical component. If in in Trauma Recovery, because for many people the problem isn't isn't necessarily the trauma itself. It's that it's been tied to this emotional experience, that they cannot I don't want to say forget necessarily, but they but they can't unlearn the reaction that their body is having from that experience. And part of that unlearning is kind of forgetting that emotional connection. You know, the thing that made it so horrific or so meaningful in that moment. So you know, there's there's times when we hold on to memories that we don't want to hold on to, and they get tied into this nervous system response and because the brain is always trying to make meaning out of things and, and, and protect us and and be the most efficient. You know, the learning there for the brain and the nervous system is Hey, every time I feel this way, that must be just like that one time that this happened that was dangerous. And so now we have to react the same way. So some of the processes that you're talking about really are retraining, different pathways to learning. The same way that sometimes people can get stuck into negative pathways.
Collin Jewett 17:41
Yeah, yeah, it's actually so I'm not a trauma specialist. I can't tell you how I know you've worked. You've worked a lot more on that than than I have. So you should, you should speak on that. So I won't talk about like how to overcome trauma with this. But what I can say is we can learn something really valuable about how our memory and our our learning works from trauma.
If you think about memories that you can't forget what made them so memorable, that there's an emotional connection, deep emotional connection. That's another hook you can put in so if you're trying to remember something that's, you know, healthy and you want to add something to your life, having an emotional connection to that information or experience makes it that's just another memory hook. It's another thing we can use. But also with with, with with trauma and in memory, things that are extreme. are much more memorable. And I think there's there's adaption reasons for that. It's like your brain is like, Oh, wow. I am not prepared to respond to this situation. I need to hold on to this and learn as much as I can from it because if I ever go through this again, I need to be prepared. So it makes sense that you'd hold on to those things, even if you don't want to your brain is trying to help you to overcome the next time or be prepared next time. Doesn't always work that way. I know that's that's one of rough parts of how our mind works. But we can take advantage of that too though.
When it comes to learning new things. We can we can kind of make it more fun that way. When it comes to like I said with the the images so for example, I said there's like a pickle jar on the the coat rack and there's goat cheese on the counter. I can take a combination. I can use creativity to make that experience not only more sensory, but more absurd and extreme. So instead of having goat cheese on table I could have an actual goat on the table doing a salsa dance and like taking over my chairs. Okay, that is more extreme. It's more absurd. And it's more removed from my normal experience of reality. And it forces my brain to pay more attention to it. It's like whoa, that's new. I need to hold on to this because I'm like this is something that's outside of my normal experience. And if I don't hold on to this then maybe I will miss something important for handling the situation the next time. So it's kind of a way to hack your memory a little bit to like if I really want to remember something, I can take that information, convert it into a sensory experience and then make that sensory experience more extreme and absurd and removed my normal experience my normal reality. And that will cause your brain to be like oh that's important. I need to hold on to that.
Ericka Thomas 20:26
Yeah, I think that's I think that's a good point, because it's something that you're going to notice. Right. And we've said a couple of times here that a lot of this is about paying attention and in the moment right and for many of us, this is going to be new skills that we're practicing that the important thing I think for people to take one of the takeaways from today although there's so many takeaways is that we we need to repeat these things these for the brain to change. You can't just one time, ask a few extra questions and be a little curious. Like that's not going to fix any memory that's not going to help you learn anything new over the long term. You have to take these little skills and repeat them because you're replacing old habits of how to behave in your in your perceived environment. Right we have our perceived environment we have our the behaviors that have gotten us this far. And those are easy because they've there are habits and there's they're efficient. We do them all the time. So when you first start anything new, it's going to feel a little bit challenging, just because you have to focus more on it. The more you practice, the easier those things become. And over time, we can get better memory. Yes. And we can make things easier to learn with we incorporate some of these things that we've been talking about today.
Collin Jewett 21:59
Exactly. Yeah. So I mentioned now I've got my, my kind of perspective different from Bloom's taxonomy. So I start with curiosity, then creativity and then memory and the last one is application. It's, you know, knowledge that doesn't get deployed is useless. It doesn't do anything for you. Just having knowledge in your brain and never, never incorporating it into your life in any way. Like maybe it's subtle. Maybe it maybe just changes the way you behave a little bit. But if it never gets integrated, incorporated in the way that you live or behave or our thing, it's useless. It's not doing anything. And that's really the highest level is getting the application level. And this might be slightly controversial, but I would say that I said this in my first book, and it might be a little too too extreme. But I say like the only two ways of learning are through teaching and by doing those are really the only two ways and I kind of nuanced that with like, that can be inside your own mind teaching it, which is putting language to something and articulating it in a way or doing it which can also be inside your mind like acting out things embodying it like we talked about before. So yeah, if if people want some like what what can I do like today? What can I do tomorrow? To start working on this start? Start from the beginning. Start with curiosity, start asking questions, go on a walk. In, look around. Do you pay attention to the things around you look at them in closer detail in a way that you haven't. Maybe in a long time? Start asking questions about them and don't worry about what the answers are. It's okay. open ended questions questions you could never figure out the answers to. Those are often the best ones. If you can Google it, it's probably not the most important question to honestly,
Ericka Thomas 23:46
I love that.
Collin Jewett 23:49
Your personal questions now. Should I marry? What should I do with my life?
Ericka Thomas 23:53
Yeah, that's right. That's a little beyond Dr. Google. So
Collin Jewett 23:57
yeah. And then from there you think about know if you've got if you've got problems or ideas, and you want to be more creative, combined, combined, combined, combined, taking us to things that already exist and throw them at each other and see what happens. Yeah, and application is our creativity then memory like memory obviously take the tech the combinations of things to make things more interesting, more sensory. And then application just it's not worth learning things if they don't change who you are, how you behave, or how you see the world like that's the whole point of learning.
Ericka Thomas 24:31
Well, and I think in the fitness industry, you've got a bunch of people that that's what they love. They love to do, they love to teach and I know for me personally, whenever I'm learning some sort of new format, new modality new thing, the first thing I want to do is share it, share it, share it, edit it and that's what helps to stick for me. It helps me to learn it for long term if I can teach it. And if I can't teach it, then I'm just telling somebody next door. Like hey, did you know this fun fact.
Collin Jewett 25:06
That's the Fineman technique in action. You try to explain something to somebody who knows nothing about it to the child or just someone who's unfamiliar with the topic. And if you can't explain it in a way that they can understand you don't understand it well enough. Yes, I that's actually a good way to identify gaps in your understanding or weaknesses. Because if you can't articulate it, or or, you know, create a metaphorical or embodied connection that some anyone can understand you don't understand it as well as you could.
Ericka Thomas 25:38
Interesting. Yeah. Well, Colin, this has been an amazing conversation. I have learned so much today. Hopefully I'll remember it tomorrow. I've got it recorded, so I can listen back and so does everybody else. I want to thank you so much for coming on the work in it's it. I think it's going to be a fascinating lesson for our audience. And for those of us that this has sparked some curiosity about to maybe learn more about learning, how can people find you and maybe work with you?
Collin Jewett 26:17
Yeah. So there's a couple of ways. I do some one on one coaching, but like I said, I actually like you said, I'm the director of coaching for Superhuman Academy. So if you go to superhumanacademy.com And you click on coaches, you'll find me you'll also find all my other amazing coaches. They're all fantastic. They bring different things to the table. But if you want to know like, you should connect with you can talk to me and I can kind of help you find the right coach or maybe we'll end up working together, if that's what you're interested in. So that would be superhuman academy.com. And the other place if you specifically want to work with me and learn more about the things I was talking about how to apply them in your life, and go much, much, much deeper than we did on this podcast episode. You can go to maven.com I teach a alive cohort based course on Maven.com. I think our next next cohorts probably gonna be in January. So if you're listening to this anytime before January 2022, probably then but we'll we'll keep running them so maven.com If you click on courses, you can look for discover your inner super learner. That's my course. And that is a super great time, you'll learn you, you'll we go really deep down the rabbit hole, all this stuff and it's super, super fun, especially to be doing it with other people from all over the world. So those would be the two places.
Ericka Thomas 27:33
That's awesome. Tell me a little bit about the two books that you have out, as well.
Collin Jewett 27:38
Yeah, I'll be really brief. So the first one, I actually wrote it while I was in college, like kind of having the first experiences and kind of figuring some of the stuff out at the very beginning. It's called out of your wheelhouse you can find it on on Amazon. I've been thinking about doing an audio book for it. I haven't gotten around to it yet. So maybe you've waited for a long time to listen this episode might be off. But yeah, physical copies on there. And it's really about it's kind of my personal experience of figuring out at least the basics of this stuff. I've come a long way since then, but it's got a lot of good stuff in there. I think it's still super relevant. And then the second one I co authored and edited and published with all of those other coaches I mentioned. So they are learning experts and coaches from all over the world. There's 18 of them who contributed to this book. It was a super, super fun project. It's called the superhuman playbook. You can also find that on Amazon. And yeah, you get to hear perspectives from people all over the world with totally different backgrounds who teach this kind of thing for a living and it's super cool. It's got everything but it does have some fitness stuff in there too. Like talking about, like embodied learning and relating it to fitness. It's got all sorts of sorts of cool stuff in there. So
Ericka Thomas 28:54
definitely check that out. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Collin.
Collin Jewett 28:57
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Ericka Thomas 29:00
Thank you my curious listener. If you liked what you heard, and you want to learn more you can find all the links to connect with my guest today at elemental kinetics.com forward slash that dash work dash in as well as free resources for fitness professionals to design trauma sensitive classes. With confidence and creativity within your scope, and without the burnout for you and your students. Get your free guide to holding space at elemental kinetics.com And I'll see you next time on The Work IN
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
I’m Ericka
The Work IN is for fitness professionals and refugees from the body brand nation who are ready to make trauma informed instruction the gold standard of professionalism across the industry.
I’m a highly caffeinated resilience coach, course creator and entrepreneur with over 2 decades of experience as a fit pro and a certification collection that includes registered group fitness, RYT, trauma release exercise and more.
If you’re looking for a way to expand your professional scope and burnout proof your business with trauma sensitive, creative class design you’re in the right place. Let’s chat!