And here they are. We are going to talk about all of them in great detail.

1. Disbelief
2. Disinterest and
3. Disuse

These are the 3 devils of a poor memory. Now let us examine the above three factors one by one so as to understand how each one of them impoverishes our memory capacity.


How many times did we hear our elders and teachers say, “Don’t depend on your memory. Write it on a piece of paper!”

If you don’t believe in your memory capacity, there is no way in which you can improve your memory.

Belief has a magical effect. If you very deeply believe in a particular thing, it will become true. Thomas Alva Edison always believed that he can make an electric bulb and he could make it happen.

I can make a couple of suggestions to you on how you can draw upon the power of belief in respect of your memory capacity.

From now on, start believing in your own memory capacity. In fact, you have an excellent memory, eagerly waiting only to serve you. You may tell yourself and others a 100 times a day that you have a great memory.

OK, you may ask, does it really help? Yes it does. Many people tell to themselves that they have a poor (terrible, pathetic, worst…) memory. By doing so, they are “helping” themselves to really have a poor memory. Well, it takes the same amount of mental energy to think positive or to think negative. In such case, would you not choose to think positive?

Remember what Henry Ford said long time back:

Whether you think you are right or you think you are wrong, you are right!

Well said! That’s the power of belief. Use the power of belief to your advantage.

I may add, simply believing that you have a good memory and doing nothing about it is not going to help. This is merely a first step. You need to take all the steps to reach the destination.


It is an established fact that whatever you are genuinely interested in, you ought to have a great memory in that aspect. If you have to remember any thing, the brain must have an interest in the thing.

The brain tends to remember what all is interesting and forget what is not so interesting. But the irony of life is, not all important things are really that interesting.

Your memory in a particular area is directly proportional to the interest you have in it.

For example, a student who has to pass his exams has to clear all the papers, irrespective whether a particular subject is interesting to him or a boring one. Similarly, not all the names of people you meet in your life are interesting! You simply can’t say, “How can I remember such a boring name?”. Can you?

In such cases, you are under an obligation to make that particular subject interesting. There are ways of achieving this task. In fact, the whole book is about it. For the present, what you should note is that memory is interest driven.


You learn the contents of a report today thoroughly. Down the line, after six months, you are trying to recall all the points of the report. The chances are you may not be able to recall even one third of the contents. What has happened to the thoroughly learnt report?

This happens because of the time gap between the time of learning and the time of attempting to recall. If you are not in regular touch with the material which you have learnt, you will tend to forget most part of it, sooner or later.

Use it or lose it!

You have to find a way of using the knowledge at specified time intervals in order to keep the material in you brain intact.

From today, whenever you find yourself being attacked by these three devils, fight back! Its easy.

We will be discussing how to fight back in the next post, so stay tuned.