Change Your Brain Every Day - What’s a Mental Matrix? With Jim Karol

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

Jim Karol, author of “Ultimate Memory Magic,” has developed the ultimate tool to help you remember huge lists and other large numbers of items. It’s called the mental matrix, and it just might blow your mind. In the final episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast series with Jim, he describes what the mental matrix is, and how you can use his (or your own!) to turn your brain into a well-oiled memory machine.

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. We are still here with our friend Jim Carroll talking about memory magic, and we're having so much fun. You just told a story and I actually

can still remember the words because of the outrageous story you told. So that's great. That was a great tip for listeners. If you have to remember a list of words, come up with an outrageous story and it will really help you to remember them. I love that tip. So thanks, Jim, for that. Welcome back. So we're talking about memory magic. Well, and you have something called the mental matrix. Can you talk to our viewers and listeners about that. Okay. Now that's going back to the podcast, the first podcast where when I was riding that bike and I had all these cards memorized in my head and I wanted to memorize more information. So I had to come up with what I call an anchor system. Now at the time there was someone out there.

I forget who it was. I noticed there was an anchor system called the sun system. Now, at the time, there was someone out there, I forget who it was, I noticed there was an anchor system called the sun system. Like the words would rhyme with the numbers, like one is a sun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, four is a door, five is a hat, et cetera, et cetera. And then what you do is if you have those words memorized, and somebody names a word like cue stick, I'm sitting in my basement, there's a cue stick over there, I would say, like, I would put that in it, say you want to put it at number one, well, one is the sun. So I visualize pointing the cue stick at the sun and the sun's a giant pool ball or something like that. And this is the system that was available. And I thought, well, that's cool. But I have to

memorize 52 cards. And I want to put this to a better system, so I need more words. So I developed this thing with these celebrities where I memorized the top 100 celebrities at that time in People magazine. And I put them in a numerical order from 1 to 100. Like just for an example, we'll use one as George Washington. I put him at 1 because Washington was the first president. Therefore, it was easy to remember Washington would be at number one. Brad Pitt, I would put at two. B for Brad, second letter of the alphabet.

Brad Pitt, two syllables, two Ts in Pitt. Hey, Brad Pitt, perfect fit for number two. Number three would be Tom Cruise. I would visualize Tom Cruise, number three, because there's three letters in Tom, T-O-M, three letters, and then Cruise begins with a C, the third letter. So therefore, Tom Cruise was number three, and George Foreman, Foreman, was number four. We'll just use that for now, just to show you. So I would continue, obviously, up to 100, but just for the sake of time. So Denzel Washington was number one, Brad Pitt, number two,

Tom Cruise, number three, George Foreman, number four. Now, if you'd remember that, you could easily attach information to it. Like say you wanted to memorize the first four states of the Union. Well the first state of the Union is Delaware. Therefore if you know Denzel Washington is number one, just visualize Washington crossing the Delaware but not George Washington. We're gonna make it funny again. There's Denzel Washington with the George Washington hat crossing the Delaware. And Denzel Washington was the first president, right? Brad Pitt is number two. Guess what the second state of the union is?

Pennsylvania. Therefore, if you remember Brad Pitt, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You'd remember two is Pennsylvania. Three, Tom Cruise. Well, I live in the Northeast. You guys are West Coasters. In the Northeast, our big vacation resort is New Jersey Shore when I was growing up. So I visualized Tom Cruise cruising the shoreline, Atlantic City, down the Wildwood, down the Cape May.

So therefore, every time you think of Tom Cruise, you remember cruising the Jersey Shore. Therefore, Jersey is three. And then the fourth state of the Union, believe it or not, is Georgia. So if you remember George Foreman, you would remember George Georgia. So now watch. Now, if you remember the second state of the union is Brad Pitt, I mean the second celebrity is Brad Pitt, what's the state, Connor? Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.

Yeah. Pennsylvania. The first one, what's Denzel Washington? What's it? What river? What's the state there? Yeah. Tom Cruise cruising first one, what's Denzel, Washington, what's River, what's the state there? Yeah. Tom Cruise, cruising where?

The Atlantic. Well, Atlantic. So that's right. New Jersey. New Jersey. New Jersey. And the fourth state, Georgia. Georgia. Foreman, Georgia.

Right. And I would continue all the way to 100. And then it wouldn't only be this information, okay? It would be massive amounts of information countries capitals i mean so much information i would put these to like i did a show for a bunch of cardiac surgeons and i had to memorize their names and their birthdates because i wanted to walk up to the people and so like the one guy dr schwartz i i put him at number 17 on my list because my celebrity is Arnold Schwarzenegger. So therefore, Dr. Schwartz was 17 on a list and I remember his birth.

And this is what I do. I call it the mental matrix. That makes sense. The mental matrix today, now it used to be 1 to 100. Now it's 1 to 10,000 movies. Oh my gosh. to 10,000 movies. And the information going out this way is 272 things or more for each one of those numbers. That's why I call it the mental matrix. Yeah. So it's like tree branches. In the few minutes we have left, talk to us about some other things people will learn and ultimate memory magic. I call it ultimate memory magic,

but the book is memory is just the heart of the book. The book should be, it's really about ultimate brain health. It's about a healthy brain, developing a healthy mind, not giving up. It gets into, it dabbles into cognitive intelligence, the word I brought up before where we didn't even touch on that, the ability to read people. And how important is that for somebody? And no matter what you do for a living, whether you're especially a policeman or a doctor, to be able to read that person. Like, think about it, Daniel, somebody walks in your office, isn't it important to be able to read that person when they come in? And I'm sure

you do it very well. And that's what the book's about. It's not just about memory. It's about the whole scope of mental health, brain health from the eyes of a guy that worked in a steel mill, not from the eyes of a guy that is well-trained and PhDs. I mean, that's what's really cool about this. It's what do I see? You know, what did I stumble upon here? You know, and it's starting to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And this book can help other people see this. I mean, in other words, you don't have to be an educated person to look at this book and get something out of it. I mean, I try to keep it down.

You know what I mean by that, Daniel? It's like really powerful. It's just powerful. I could see where this would be really- Well, that's why I love the book so much because you make it super easy to understand. Yeah. Where a lot of doctors write above people's level and people just get confused so they don't do anything your book is very practical actionable as is our course which i'm pretty excited about i could see where this would be really helpful to students this would have been really helpful to me in nursing school probably

helpful to you in medical school no question i mean question. I mean, why do we torture children where we don't teach them how to learn and how to have fun with it? It should be required for anyone who has to learn anything. That's the key to learning is that you have to have fun. You have to be inspired. You have to want to do it. Like I have my grand have my grandkids i have four grandkids i have i have them competing against it they're nine eight seven and three and they compete with each other and name that tune oh that's like hey whoever names the tune first gets a dollar for the dollar store later you know and i and i play these things i play these songs not knowing my three-year-old grandson was listening and he joined the game. Like you hear this, what's that thing with hard days night, that riff they play?

All of a sudden I hear hard days night, the Beatles. Like what? That's so cute. It's amazing. And it don't matter if you're three or 93, you can learn and you can improve your brain. That's so great. That's what I want to do. If I could touch one person every day, hey, I did your brain. That's what I want to do. If I could touch one person

every day, hey, I did my job. That's wonderful. Well, we're rooting for your success. And the new book is called Ultimate Memory Magic. Our course is Jim Carroll's Memory Master Course. There's so much you can do to improve your brain and your mind. And we're so grateful to see you again. We look forward to whenever you come out. It's a pleasure seeing both of you. Thank you for having me. I mean, you guys, I miss you so much.

I can't wait to see you guys again soon. That was really great. Thank you. All right, my friend. Take care. 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.

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