Journey System – Memorising Words using Journey System
Lesson Objective: To be able to remember a larger set of items using the Journey System.
The journey system is a powerful technique for remembering. It is based upon remembering stops in a journey and associating the items to be memorised, to the locations in your journey. An example of a journey could be one around your house. The Living room being one stop, the Kitchen being the next, Bedroom, Bathroom, Backyard, and so on. You can have many journeys and as many stops in each journey as you like. For example, some people have a 52 stop journey that they always use to memorise a deck of playing cards. They simply associate each card to a stop in the journey. One card per stop. Example, King Of Spades can be seen as a large spade being used to take hot bread out of the oven (oven being one stop in the journey). A more detailed lesson on memorising playing cards will be posted in the near future, so do not despair if you are having great difficulty memorising a deck of playing cards at the moment using only the information in this lesson. On with the lesson…
Here is Ron White describing the journey method:
Here is a little girl using this method:
Try making up a journey with 10 stops now. Make sure you can visualize and remember the stops clearly and with as much detail as you can as this will help with the recall process. Once you have made your 10 stop journey, it is time for the fun to begin. The aim is to associate the item to be memorised with a corresponding stop in your journey. Just say I want to remember the items:
Tennis ball, Amplifier, CD, Book, Stereo, Guitar, Playing Cards, Glue, Subwoofer and Cake.
Living room: I’d imagine it filled with TENNIS BALLS to the ceiling with family and friends falling about and playing games. I see Andre Agassi popping out from underneath a pack of balls. I throw the tennis ball at his shiny head.
Kitchen: I carry my guitar AMPLIFIER across the kitchen when I suddenly slip and the amp goes flying into the kitchen sink. I examine to see the extent of damage when I suddenly receive 10,000 volts of electric shock.
Bedroom: I wake up one morning hoping I’d find money from the tooth fairy, but instead I find a cheap pop CD that I hate.
Bathroom: Reading my favourite BOOK in the toilet when Oh noo it slips out of my hands and falls into yes you know where.
Backyard: Having a huge barbecue out the back. The boys are playing cricket. Music and dancing for the women. All of a sudden the ball is smashed into the brand new 50 stack CD STEREO. Pieces of plastic break off the STEREO sprinkling all over the backyard
Study: My annoying little brother comes into the study while I’m doing some research and shows me he can play Metallica with an off tune GUITAR. I end up trying to snatch the guitar off him but I get electrocuted instead. zZZapP!
Balcony: I decide to memorise a deck of PLAYING CARDS. Due to an error I flick the cards out and eventually throw the deck off the balcony in frustration. The cards shower a pedestrian crossing by.
Swimming pool: I decide to lie down and tan beside the pool. I ask my little brother to bring me some suntan lotion but instead he brings me GLUE. I whack on the glue thinking its suntan lotion. I start chasing my little brother around the pool with my hands glued to my face.
Garage: My mate is installing the third 15inch SUBWOOFER for my car in the garage. Once installed we put our ear muffs on and test the system. The next day I get complaints from New Zealand saying my system was a tad loud.
Gymnasium: I’m going for a record 350 kilo bench-press. On my eighth rep my evil little brother comes running in out of nowhere and slams a massive CAKE into my face. Luckily nothing happens to me because I’m huge and we both end up laughing the moment away.
As you are making up your stories try to relax, do not rush anything, take as much time as you can. The more detail you imagine while developing your story, the easier it will be to remember. For more notes on Relaxation and concentration see Lesson 9 (not released yet). Use your senses to touch, smell, hear, see, and taste the item to be remembered. Try picturing the item as being extremely big, maybe even as big as the universe. Imagination is endless.
Exercise: Create a journey with 20 stops and try to memorise 20 items.
Note: Your journeys must be concreted into your memory! You must know them better than your own address! If you can, also try to interact with the stops in your journey. This helps to create more powerful associations.
To get a full training course on this system click here https://memorise.org/memory-books