Pay Attention! It might just help your memory.

Incredible memory skills are usually attributed to people who have learnt some kind of special technique to recall a large number of things in a certain order - either that or people claim it comes from some freakish natural ability.

Memory is driven by the attention you pay to something and the emotional connection with it.    Most memory techniques play on both of these.  They make you pay real attention to it and they help you add the emotive connection.

Cast your mind back just a week or so...to the Olympic Opening Ceremony to be exact.  There was a a section of the ceremony dedicated to the theme from Chariots of Fire, played by The London Symphony Orchestra, with a cameo appearance from one of Britain's favourites - Rowan Atkinson.

Think about Atkinson's performance, what do you remember of it?  Try to recall it.  Try to do this as well as you can before you read on....

Do you remember the single repetitive note he played?  The look of boredom and disgust on his face as he played it?  Do you remember he took a photo on his smart phone? Do you remember him sneezing and trying to find a tissue and using all manner of props to keep the repetitive note playing?  Do you remember him closing his eyes and imagining running on the beach in an all white strip alongside the other runners from the famous scene in the film?  Jogging away from the pack to re appear in a car? Driving ahead to take the lead and then getting out of the car to continue running and win the race?  Do you remember him opening his eyes again to find that in his daydream, the music had finished and he was still playing his solitary note alone?  Do you remember he then played a mad little flurry of notes as his grand finale?

How much of this did you recall before I reminded you?  Or rather my 4 year old daughter did.  It was her that reminded me.  She recounted this story to me tonight.  I was astounded as to how much she remembered compared with me. We had let her stay up to watch the opening ceremony and this was the level of detail she remembered of it.

This was emotive for her - she paid real genuine attention to what she was watching and hearing.  How often can we really say that as adults?  Children live in the present tense more than adults who tend to be distracted by the past and the future much more readily.  How much attention was I really paying to the ceremony?  How distracted was I even on this most 'important' of evenings?

How much of life passes us by when the example we should be following is right there in front of us - demonstrated by a 4 year old.....