Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Use Stories to Help You Remember Anything, with Jim Karol

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

Did you know that by improving your memory, you also improve your overall health? So if your memory is bad now, it’s important to get it functioning at optimum levels. Fortunately, there are some easy tools you can use to start improving your memory right now. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are again joined by memory master Jim Karol to discuss some of Jim’s most effective tricks to radically improve your memory today.

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 back, everyone. We're with our good friend, Jim Carroll. We're so excited to have him on the podcast. He has a new book, Ultimate Memory Magic.

He and I together have a course on Amen University, Jim Carroll's Memory Master course. We're giving you tips and tools to have a better memory. But before we get back to that, and we have so much more to talk about, Jim, talk to our listeners about your work with Wounded Warriors. What do you do with them? When did that start? I know this is a very important part of your life. Well, it all started back, wow, maybe Oprah was on, when the Oprah show was on, she made an appearance at Walter Reed and my wife watched the show. She goes, wow. She goes, that's what you should do. You should go down to Walter Reed.

So I, yeah, I'm like, Lynn, you just can't call Walter Reed. Hey, I'm Jim Carroll. And I couldn't do it. You know, it's all connections and things. So I'm at a poker tournament. And one of my loves is playing poker because that's the only thing I'm not banned. Because you can count cards. Of course it is.

Or you can read people, too. So I'm at the Celebrity Cobra Tournament. I think it was the Mark Wahlberg Foundation. And here's Montel Williams. He comes up to me, and he goes, hey. He goes, he's wondering why I have this big crowd around me. And then the next day, he says, hey, how would you like to get down to

walter reed he was the first one to take me to walter reed but then after that the cat was out of the bag because then i got to know elaine rogers she's the president ceo of uso metro and she started bringing me down every every like month and i would teach these classes which i now call cognitive intelligence where I would not only show tricks but I would help the warriors with their memory and stuff like that so one day this is the boy this one boy whose name's Brett he goes Mr. Carroll could I take your course I said of course you can Brett and I go why are you even asking he goes well the dog my doctor told me there's no hope for my memory first of of all, ESPN, positive thinking. Never

tell somebody anything dire like that. I said, no, you can take my course. I didn't tell Fred that. He takes my course. I swear, I was so proud of this kid. The very first day, one hour and 15 minute course, he knew the first 13 states of the union. That is amazing. You can't tell me this kid doesn't have a good memory. So what I did as a reward was I taught him our card thing that's in Jim Carroll's memory master course, where you have a deck of cards, you shuffle them up, you remove one, and the person has one minute to look through the deck and to see what, to determine what card is missing 44 seconds later i had a timer brett hits the timer at 44 seconds not one minute and goes mr carroll that card's a

two of heart i turn it over it's a two of heart i gave him a big hug that's what drives me this kind of stuff you know and that's why i started doing the stuff every month down with elaine rogers and walter reed and then i got to know a couple of other people and before you know what I started doing the stuff every month with Elaine Rogers and Walter Reed. And then I got to know a couple of other people. And before you know it, I'm doing tours. And now I did 17 military bases in the last two months. Wow. It's insane.

Now 2020 is going to be bizarre. So, yeah, that's my passion. My passion is to help the folks that protect us and keep us safe. And not only the current ones, but the veterans and especially the disabled veterans with invisible wounds, which some people call PTSD, traumatic brain injury. I call it invisible wounds now. And that's what I'm all about. I just want to look at it. If I could help one person, how do you get me to think about that? So we're going to add another P to your ESPN. So positivity, but also passion, because your passion drives you to be better every day.

And so what are some of the other things you teach the wounded warriors? Let's get back to our listener because they're like i want a better memory i want a better memory so buy ultimate memory magic but you know we want to give them some tools so i have quite really quickly i have a question about some of our people who you know your book um memory rescue we have a lot of people who listen who are headed to the dark place that that are scared. This is the question I have. And I like what you're saying about positivity. And you always want to go to the hopeful place.

But some of these people are thinking it's too late for them. And is it too late? Will this kind of work? Will working their brain this way, will it actually help them get better? Jim, you have stories. Well, in my opinion, yes. You have stories. No, no, no, no, no. I have tons of stories with people that it did help. I mean, this one lady, she was pushing 70. She was about to turn 70. She had stage four cancer. You talk about being the dark days, all right? And I don't want to get into details, but but she took she read this like you did with the states,

memorizing the states and capitals and as they were put into the union, like one Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, et cetera. And I come to her home and there's a bunch of people around and she's she's going, Jim, give me a number. I go twenty three. You know, and she goes, Maine, the capital is Augusta. I'm like, get out of here. I was so proud of her. She had all the states. I gave her a big hug, not knowing six weeks before that, she was in the bed with stage four cancer about to give up.

So no, there's something here. There's something here. There's positive hope. As long as there's hope, as long as there's passion, as long as you're positive, I'll put the money on that anytime. I agree with you. Now, from a scientific standpoint, if someone's suffering with their memory, will working

their brain like this help to improve it in any way? Well, there's a whole chapter on Jim's work in memory rescue. So yes, I mean, if you want to keep your brain healthy, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind, blood flow, aging, inflammation, and so on. But you also have to work your brain. And Will Rogers said it a long time ago, which is the brain is like a muscle. The more you work it, the more you can work it. And that's why I love Jim's story because he's 49, he's got heart disease, he gets on a bicycle and he starts working his memory. And then over time, we're what, 17 years later, he's a world expert on memory. Awesome.

And I didn't want to be, I didn't even have any intention of being this. I mean, I just wanted to keep from being bored on the bike. That's why I know this works. It can really work. And I think it can work for everybody. I believe everybody out there has the ability to improve their brain. And in my opinion, in improving your brain, it improves your whole wellness and your health. I really, truly believe that now.

I mean, it's not just my heart condition. I mean, I improve my knee problems, my back problems. I was suffering from severe back problems, especially working in a steel mill in the beginning of my life. And now I have these back problems settling in. Boom, now they're gone. Well, what's good for your brain is good for your heart is good for your knees is good for – So when you're taking care of yourself – Yeah.

Well, you know, nutrition. Look, nutrition is a big part of it. It's all part of it. You're ESPN. So one more strategy for this podcast. When if someone goes, help me have a better memory, what else would you say? And then in the next podcast, we'll talk about the mental matrix a bit. Well, here's one that I don't even know if I told you about yet. I have this thing now where if people give me a list of things that I don't even know if I told you about yet. I have this thing now where if people give

me a list of things that I have to remember, like maybe items from a grocery store or just words at random, we know the average person can only remember like seven bits of information. I can double that just by telling a story. Like for example, say I give you the word cinder block. I'll double it. 14 words at random. Cinder block, toe, a bear, a potato, a swimming pool, a taxi cab, a priest, a spaghetti, ping pong balls, which Daniel can relate to very well, a butterfly, a can of Coke, a table, and a triangle. 13 words I just gave you. I can tell a story right now that every one of the listeners, probably 90% of them would remember all 13 of those words. Here. This morning when I was leaving to go to the store because I knew I had this podcast, I'm backing up my car. Oh, by the way, we'll throw car and car will be the first word. That'll make it 14 words. So I'm backing

up my car and all of a sudden I hear a stomp. I hit into a cinder block. I'm like, who put a cinder block in behind my car? And I look back and it fell on a bear's toe. I'm like, what's a bear doing in my yard? The bear is eating a potato. Like, come on, that's really, see, the more outrageous you make the story easy. So the bear is eating a potato. He looks at me and he throws it at me. And up in upstate New York right now, people have their pools drained. So he goes in my neighbor's pool and I look and there's a taxi cab in the bottom of a swimming pool. What's this cab doing down there?

So I go to the edge of the pool and in the back of the cab in the backseat is a priest and he's eating spaghetti, but he's not eating spaghetti and meatballs. He's eating spaghetti and ping pong balls. So he rolls the window down. He looks at me, he has a ping pong ball in his mouth and he goes, he spits it out. It turns into a beautiful butterfly. The butterfly lands right aside of me on a can of Coke, which was sitting on a table shaped like a triangle. Now, just from telling that story, you probably would remember all 14 words. I backed my car out of the garage. What did I hit? A cinder block. A cinder block. The bear's toe potato. Bear's toe, eating a potato. He threw that at me in a place. See,

this is what I do. It's just passion, like you said, making up stories, using your brain and focusing. If you don't focus on the story I just told you, you wouldn't remember the 14 words. But if you were focused, when I do this at military bases, I have a thousand people shopping out all the items, but I'm done. That's what it's all about to me. So it's working it, making it visual, making it a little crazy. The more crazy you make it, the more likely you are to remember. Yeah, that instantly my brain went to- We're going to come back and we're going to talk about the mental matrix and more with Jim Carroll, author of Ultimate Memory Magic. You can also go to amynuniversity.com and sign up for Jim Carroll's

Memory Master Course, where we go over all these techniques in great detail. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.