Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Strengthen Your Memory Right Now, with Jim Karol

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

When Jim Karol got laid off from his job at a steel mill in Allentown, PA, his prospects looked grim. When his doctor told him he also had a dangerously enlarged heart, Jim knew it was time to turn his life around. However, nobody could have predicted what happened next. In the first episode of a podcast series with author and memory expert Jim Karol, Dr. Daniel Amen, Tana Amen, and Jim recount the fascinating story of Jim’s redemption.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome everyone to a very special week with our friend, Jim Carroll.

We are going to have fun talking about memory. It'll be a little zany, I'm sure. Jim is a good friend of ours. He is the author of a new book, Ultimate Memory Magic, which is phenomenal. I wrote the foreword to the book. He and I also did a course together on Amen University, Jim Carroll's Memory Master Course. You want a better memory, read this book, take the course. We're going to talk about Jim's story, which I just dearly love. Jim also has been on national television, including The Tonight Show, The Ellen Show, The Today Show, Howard Stern. He also has held three Guinness World Records and has become a regular speaker at many prestigious places like MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. General Joseph Dunford invited Jim to host the chairman's holiday tour to Afghanistan,

Qatar, Turkey, Ireland, and Germany. That's actually where I met Jim. So funny story. Scarlett Johansson was there. And somebody I'd thought about once or twice in my life. Just once or twice. And I got to meet her. And I get a picture. You text me a picture of you and Scarlett.

I'm like, what is going on? But I told Tana afterwards, I'm like, it was really cool meeting Scarlett, but you have to know about my new friend, Jim Carroll. He's like, that wasn't the best part. Do I want to know about the best part if that wasn't the best part. And I'm like, do I want to know about the best part if that wasn't the best part? So welcome, Jim, to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Yes. Welcome, Jim.

This is fun. Good seeing you guys again. You look great. Thank you. So do you. Thank you. So let's start at the beginning because now you're an an author you're a memory athlete you're known around the world um but you really started not doing well in high school actually you were bullied because of your size um it's funny i was too he's big i'm not um and then you worked in a steel mill mill um so how did someone from a steel

mill transform himself into really a world-renowned celebrity how did that happen so let me clarify what i'm confused what you mean by that you mean someone is from a steel mill who wasn't required to use his memory very much. I mean, I'm, I don't know. I like the story of how that happened. Okay. That's it. I mean, I just want to make sure people working in steel mills don't go, what does he mean by that? I'm always hurting somebody's feeling.

I'm always having to clean up behind you. We had to use our head at the steel mill, but in a different way. Yeah, anyway, yeah, I worked at the Bethlehem Steel, just like the Billy Joe song living here in Allentown. It reminds me of my life back then. And it was a lot of fun. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was fun.

I got pushed around a little bit when I was in high school. And my first couple weeks at the steel got, I got pushed around a little bit when I was in high school and my first couple of weeks at the steel mill, I got pushed around again until I took matters into my own hands and things worked out. Yeah, seriously. I mean, I, I had such a blast on her afterwards. And, but unfortunately I got laid off. I lost my job. And when I got laid off, my wife was pregnant with our second child, and I didn't know what to do.

I'm like, wow, the only skill I have is crane operator, working in a steel mill, and I can do a couple card tricks. So I took my wife's Avon account, went door to door selling her Avon because she was eight months pregnant. And could you imagine me knocking on your door, hey, you want to buy some Avon? Look what I look like. I'm thinking I'm not answering the door.

I look like I should be in the WWE. I'm an Avon sales rep. But it worked out. I mean, I don't know if the women felt sorry for me or they liked my card tricks. I became the biggest selling Avon guy. And they hired me to do a show. Were you the biggest selling Avon guy or the only selling Avon guy? Probably the only guy.

I don't remember seeing any other guys. And yeah, and then they hired me to do a show and they had these big screens set up on the side of the stage and I would do card tricks and it would show up on a stage. And then here I am 5,000 shows later, I made that a career doing card tricks and traveled around the country performing at colleges. And then all the way up to about 1990, I had a dream of a daily number. It was just a dream. And as a joke, it started off as a joke, I told people, hey, play this number December 22nd and you'll win.

All right? And I did that from November 8th all the way to December 21st, probably about 31 different shows I had. And believe it or not, December 22nd, the number came up, 222, just like in the dream. So now that launched me as the psychic madman. I'm neither psychic nor a madman. The madman was because of working at the steel mill and the psychic because everybody thought, hey, I predicted a lottery. Hey, this is actually the 30th anniversary of that. 2020, December 22nd, 2020. I'm going to try to really hype this up this year,

maybe do another prediction. I don't know. So that was great too. So now I'm going around the country. Hey, he's the psychic madman and still no memory in sight. I didn't do any of the memory work. I'm still basically a steel worker doing magic tricks and putting my hand in bear traps and bending 60 penny nails and doing these feats of strength and everything. What had happened was about 49 years old, I had these pains in my chest.

I'm like, what the heck is this? Gas? What's going on here? I went to the doctor. They sent me to a cardiologist, and they told me I had cardiomyopathy. And I'm like, what the heck is that? He goes, you've got the heartbeat of a 93-year-old man. I'm like, well, any more good news?

He goes, yeah, you have an enlarged heart. And he actually said super enlarged heart. I'm like, wow, that's special. I have a super big heart. He goes, no, this is serious. I'm like, eh. I went home a super big heart no it doesn't know this is serious I'm like yeah I went home changed my diet first thing I did no more philly cheese steaks and 40 hot dogs a week a box of donuts every you know every day I mean I really packed it in guys so and then I started doing this exercise bike and I'm like boy this is boring but I know I had to do this I had to discipline

myself to stay on this bike. So I took out my deck of cards and I would look through them and try to count and stack, you know, put stacks together that I could make it easy to remember the cards. And then after a couple of days of doing that, I thought I'm not going to get off this bike until I could memorize this whole deck. I was on the bike that day for about two hours and 25 minutes. So you basically taught yourself to count cards? Yes, I taught myself. And I had to do something to keep from being bored, not knowing it was going to turn into what it did today.

So what started as two and a half hours on the bike got down to two hours to an hour and a half hours on the bike got down to two hours, to an hour and a half, to an hour. I was memorizing the cards in less than an hour. So now I'm like, well, geez, I have to stay on the bike for at least an hour. So I threw something else and I started throwing in pie, digits of pie. I wouldn't get off the bike until I could memorize the whole deck and then memorize 100 digits of pie. And then before you know it, the cards got down to two minutes. And the pi, it was insane what I was going through and what I was experiencing.

All the while, as Doc knows, it was doing something to my brain, exercising my brain. And if something was happening with energy, I felt energized. Even like now, I can feel the energy coming to me from talking about it. So I started memorizing 100 digits of pi every day. You know, 3, 1, 4, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5, 8, 5, 9, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Notice how I go two, three. It's almost like speaking Mandarin with English. There's tones involved with the memory.

I created all these systems, which we ended up calling mental matrix, thanks to Daniel. I mean, that was your idea to call it mental matrix, I believe. And so, yeah, that's kind of how it all started. And it energized me. And to make a long story short about that, probably around 10 years of doing that, I found out my enlarged heart was normal after that. Wow.

And I no longer have cardiomyopathy. So that's really freaky. I don't know what that is all about. I'm not a doctor. So it's very important. And Jim, I want you to tell our listeners you were exercising that really ended up giving you superhuman abilities. So one of the things I know, if you have an audience of 2,000 people, you actually pass out 2,000 tickets with a 12-digit number on it. And what is it? They tell you.

Don't even tell me. You don't have a ticket on you, I hope. I would be funny if you had a ticket. No, but I remember testing you on this and he knew every single one of them when I would pull it. Oh, no, it's crazy. So tell us about some of the, they're not tricks, the memory abilities you demonstrate in front of audiences. Yeah. But one thing, I know we're going to get people writing in wanting to know how to count cards. So just right off the bat, we're not going to get to teach you how to count cards. Well, take our memory master course if you want to learn how to count cards. Yeah, it's actually in the course. We're going to get so in trouble. We're not going to be able to go back to Vegas to speak anymore.

You don't like Vegas anyway. I don't like Vegas, but. I like Vegas. But that's how it started off as just to keep from being bored. And then I started developing systems to make it easier. I developed anchor systems and everything stuck. See, what happens with memory is the more you memorize things, the easier it is to link things and stick things to that original list. And the original list started as a bunch of celebrities, all right, that were in People magazine at the time when I developed the list. So like I would put Denzel Washington at number one, you know, as we described. And it would be easy for me to remember that because I would think of Washington being the first president, then instantly Denzel Washington would be there.

Or like Michael Jordan, I put it number 23, because he wore number 23 in his amazing, amazing career. So and this is what I thought if I could develop this anchor system, then it would be much, much easier to remember lists of other things. And like you guys had just mentioned, I wanted to make it entertaining. I didn't just want to memorize things. I wanted to make it entertaining. So I would put the movies that I memorized on tickets and the tickets would number from one to a hundred. And somebody would say, hey, I have number 23. And then that movie would be The Natural because Michael Jordan was number 23. And he reminds me of The Natural, Robert Redford in that movie. He's The Natural

of basketball. So I would create all these movies to the celebrities. And then after that, I started putting everything else to them, like country, like number six is Chris Rock on my list. All right. So the country I would put for Chris Rock would be Costa Rica. The state for Chris Rock would be Massachusetts because Chris Rock, Plymouth Rock. So it just really all fit together. And I used it in an entertaining way. I didn't want to come out and bore people with memories. So I made it entertaining and made up those tickets like you guys were talking about. And now the tickets are up to 2000. But the tickets also have a 12 digit number attached to them.

So you will not only, they'll, they'll, what will happen? They'll tell you the movie and you'll tell them the 12 digit number. Exactly. You can either tell me the movie or your, or your three digit ticket number. And then I tell you the 12 digit number. Exactly. You can either tell me the movie or your, or your three digit ticket number.

And then I tell you the 12 digit number attached to it. And it's, it's really bizarre, but people love it. And it's entertaining. So I have a question. Cause I actually, after meeting you,

I became really inspired by this and I like wanted to learn. And I, and I did, I actually started doing this. I, while I was exercising, I would, I started memorizing the president's forward, backward. And I'm like, well, that wasn't that hard. And then I memorized started doing this while I was exercising. I started memorizing the presidents forward, backward.

And I'm like, well, that wasn't that hard. And then I memorized the states. Not the states. The countries. I memorized where every state was and the capitals. Then I went to countries. No, I did. But here's the thing.

Here's my question for you. Am I really stupid or am I normal? Because it really worked and it lasted. But when I stopped exercising that and stopped doing it, it sort of didn't stick anymore. Now, when I went back to doing it again, it all started coming back. But when I got busy and stopped doing it, it kind of didn't last for me. So is it something you have to work like a muscle? It's a really, really good question. This is what my opinion is on that. See, when you memorize massive amounts of information like kids do in school, like doctors do in med school, half the stuff they don't remember because they don't need it for their specific jobs.

They just remember what they need for their job. So they have the ability to let that information deteriorate over the years, just like I do with my memory. I could remember anything I want, or I can let it just go. Right. And to remember it again, all you have to do is maybe review it once every two, three months. Okay. And, and it'll, and if you review it about three or four times, it'll be there forever. And it becomes automatic. So that makes sense to me. All right. When we come back, we're going to spend the next three podcasts getting really practical

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