Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0486: How to memorize the Soldier’s Creed for the US Army

Episode Date: January 18, 2016

Brandon wants to memorize the Soldier’s Creed for the US Army. In the episode I present a full plan for memorizing the creed, along with sample mnemonics for making the memorization quick and easy. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 486. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Brandon asked a question in an email about memorizing the Soldier's Creed of the U.S. Army. Now, like we did with two other creeds that we learned that Brandon asked about, we'll just put all of the keywords for each line in a memory palace. And this particular one will require about 12 to 15 memory palace locations because it's how many sentences it has.

And so basically, I'll just give you the keywords in this episode and show you how easy it is to remember each line just from that keyword. So let's look at just the first four lines. The keywords of these lines are, well, the first one, American soldier. I'm just making that one keyword. The second line, the keyword is warrior. In the third line, the keyword is serve. And in the fourth line, the keyword is mission. Now I'm going to read these four lines to you and see if you can remember those keywords when you hear them.

I am an American soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values. I will always place the mission first. Okay, now that I've read that, now I want you to try to create a quick mnemonic to remember American Soldier, Warrior, Serve, Mission. Now, ideally, you would, again, use a memory palace with about a dozen locations. But in this case, with just these four words, we'll just create a quick acronym. So just think AWSMW-S-M. So awesome.

Think of awesome. All right. So now I'm going to read these lines once more. See if you can remember those keywords. I am an American soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the army values. I will always place the mission first. Okay, now see if you can remember those key words from the

acronym awesome. American soldier, warrior, serve, and mission. All right, if you have those down, then you may actually have these lines close to being memorized at this point. Because if you just remember American soldier, you can remember that the line is, I am an American soldier. And if you remember warrior, there's a chance you'll remember the entire line being prompted by the word warrior. I am a warrior and a member of a team. And then if you remember the S for serve, you might remember, I serve the people of the United States and live the army values. If you find you constantly have trouble with that particular line, you can actually add a keyword for live. But very often that's not the case. And I tend

to go more minimal than a lot of people on which words I actively memorize and which ones I just leave to the prompts because the prompts have helped me to memorize those already. So next we have the M at the end of the word awesome. I will always place the mission first. All right, now I'm going to give you the rest of the key words and then I'll read the rest of the, actually I'll read the entire creed. And so you can use this to memorize these, but I would encourage you, of course, to create a memory palace of these key words and then to practice with a recording and to remember it that way. So you alternate between quizzing on the key words and then listening and reciting along with the text, both looking at the text and not looking at the text. So all the keywords are American soldier, warrior, serve, mission, defeat, quit, fallen, disciplined, maintain, expert, ready, guardian, and then finally American soldier again. And then to read the entire creed so that you can, if you've made note of these keywords, you can note where those keywords fall in each of those lines.

And generally it's toward the beginning, but it's often one of the heavier words. So here's the creed. I am an American soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values. I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade. I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained, and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment, and myself. I am an expert and I am professional. I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat. I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life. I am an American soldier. So Brandon, I hope you find that helpful and I'd love to hear how this memorization project goes for you. Just shoot me an email at timothyatmasterofmemory.com and I'd be happy to work with you a little more closely to help you refine your mnemonics for this and make sure that you get these things memorized. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn?

The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.