 Working on your memory actually increases your confidence when you're going into a presentation or a job interview. I can't tell you how many times where I spent time focusing on just remembering names and coming back later at an event, two, three day event and remembering that person's name after meeting hundreds of people throughout the weekend, how impactful that was and really sets you apart. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Now, we talked about an exercise and I'd love to give our audience an exercise that'd be fun for them to start working on their memory now that we know it's something we can train and improve no matter where we are in terms of how we view our memory. Yeah, sure, let's start with that. So what I want to teach you here just a short glimpse into that is a memory palace because that's the most powerful method. It's already 2000 years old so the old ancient Greeks used that to give speeches and it sounds a bit wild to use techniques which are 2000 years old but they work pretty well so let's dive into it. So what we first need is a memory palace and a memory palace is a sequence of locations. For example, through your apartment. So let's imagine yourself in front of your apartment, AJ. So you're standing in front of the front door and that's the first location is your door, okay? And then you go inside and look to the right. What is there? What is next to the door? What is it, AJ? It's a guest bathroom. The guest bathroom, okay. So let's take the guest bathroom. So that's location number two. So if you pass by, what is next? The dining room. The whole dining room but let's say you don't use the whole room but enter the room and what is next to the door here? Is it a table or a board or what is it? Yeah, there's a bench. The bench, okay. So we have door, we have bathroom, we have bench. What comes next? Then it would be the full dining room table. The dining room table is number four, okay? Let's do seven. What comes next? Okay, then there's the kitchen island. Okay, number five, number six. There would be the sofa. Okay, and number seven. The television. Okay, so everyone knows right now how it looks in your apartment, nice. So please recall the first seven. So door, bathroom, bench, table, island, couch, TV. Perfect, easy. So that's your memory fellas right now. And that's the tool we use to memorize a shopping list right now, just easy one. And so you would tie each item to each specific place. And Johnny, what do you wanna buy? It's your shopping list. Okay. First one, first item. Uh-oh, steak. Steak, okay. And what you do now is you connect it to the door. So you imagine yourself in front of your front door, you're opening the door and it's smelling like nice steak and or the door is made of steak, something like that. But the important thing is you have to see it in your mind and smell it in your mind. And you have to trust the method. So don't go back and back and back, but just go with the story. Okay, second item. Hot sauce, it is the bathroom on the right. Okay, hot sauce. Yeah, yeah. So how do you memorize it in your bathroom, AJ? Picture and get next to the sink and the soap to wash my hands. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, next item, Johnny. Sparkling water. Sparkling water on the bench. So what do you imagine? I would say it's like there's some fountain out of the bench. It's like sparkling water. You're coming home and you're so happy about your fountain. So you get a nice drink here from the water fountain, the sparkling water fountain here. Okay, number four, Johnny. Number four will be eggs. Eggs, okay. The location number four was a table, right? That's correct. So what's your story? I'm picturing a chicken walking around the table laying eggs. Now we are getting close to it. So you're making creative and like not the normal realistic story. And yet maybe smash the eggs on the table. Everything is over the place and yeah, maybe two days old, it smells quite, okay. And what's number five? Item number five. Candles. Candles. So my kitchen island is on fire covered in wax. Because of candles, so you didn't, yeah. Okay, cool. Numbers? I had to light candles because of Johnny's cooking in the kitchen. Special, special state. Okay, two to go Johnny, what's the next item? Next item will be apples. Apples, okay. Okay. I'm picturing my dog, Puppers, sitting next to a bushel of apples on the couch that he's trying to eat. He's pretty happy to have the dog there, nice. Cool. And last item, Johnny. Bananas. Bananas, television. So I'm picturing the woman from Chiquita banana on the TV juggling bananas. Okay, the question is, you wanna buy a woman or a bananas? But anyway, so let's see if you memorize them correctly. So what are the items? Steak, hot sauce, sparkling water, eggs. Candles, apples, bananas. Perfect, easy. And you could also do that backwards. It's no big deal about that because you just go backwards through your memory balance. And that technique just doesn't work for seven, but it also works for 20 or 40 or even 100. Wow. That's actually my grocery list, weekly. Okay. Thanks for letting us know. He doesn't need to memorize it, but now I sadly have Johnny's grocery list memorized. So he can call you then and ask for that. Simple pleasures. Yeah, so next week when I visit you, Johnny, before the boot camp, I have your shopping list memorized. Yeah, you got it. And the cool thing is, you will be able to recall it even tomorrow because it's connected now to the locations and it's really about that connection. Making a story, create a connection and then you will be able to memorize even more. So what I start or what I would suggest to start with, create a memory palace through your apartment, write down 10 words, 20 words and connect them to the locations and you will see, works pretty well. See, and now you don't need pages open on your phone in your list. You're using your mind. It's like a secret notebook. There's one or like secret cheating papers for school kids. So you're just walking through their room and their mind during the class test and there is everything. So yeah. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. So is this because I already have my home memorized because I live in it. It's something that is visually cute in my mind. I could walk through it blindfolded in the middle of the night, no lights on it, no exactly where I am. That's what I'm using to link my existing memory to something that I need to memorize in the future. Exactly. So this memory palace is your tool, which you already have and then you connect it to other items. I have, you have seven locations now and I have about 2,000 locations in different places in the world. I'm not living in a palace. So no worries. It's just 30 in my apartment, but there is the apartment of my mother. There is the shopping mall. There is the park. There is the hotel in Las Vegas, for example, which I visited once. And I'm still walking through these locations using them when I try to memorize stuff. So it's also nice memories. So you are always there walking through on former buildings. Speaking of Vegas, I live here and perhaps you and I will have to have a separate conversation. You know what I mean, Johannes? So I need to make a little money out of here. I see. I'm not sure if that's allowed today. It was back then. There was no problem, but there was has been this 21 movie. Maybe this is thought out. Oh yeah. After that, they changed everything. So it's quite tough, but let's have a private talk and see if we can get something out of it. Johnny's going to be arrested at his memory valve. Yeah. So we can use this not only for a shopping list, but if we have a big presentation coming up where we have key points that we want to get across or even a job interview where we've prepped our answers and we want to be able to mention those key words when we're responding. And that leads to confidence, right? You're not second guessing yourself or facing doubt. So working on your memory actually increases your confidence when you're going into a presentation or a job interview or even socially and you're meeting people for the first time. I can't tell you how many times where I spent time focusing on just remembering names and coming back later at an event, two, three day event and remembering that person's name after meeting hundreds of people throughout the weekend how impactful that was and really sets you apart in a networking situation. Now, are there any other techniques or strategies that maybe aren't 2,000 years old that you were excited to learn in your journey? Actually, no. I mean, it's a bit too simple to phrase it like that because it's all about visualizing images. And this memory palace method is the main key to all the other disciplines or all the other techniques. For example, if you want to learn vocabulary, you also would try to memorize the word by memorizing an image. I'm not sure. Do you speak any foreign language? Well, my memory of my French training from high school and college is fading. I wish I would have known the memory palace back then when I was taking exams. Yeah, so I mean, the key part is always to... Even if it's a foreign word which you don't understand try to create an image out of that. It's quite tough now to find a good example here in English because you know that word already, but maybe a foreign word like a German word. Let's see. I mean, do you have anything you want to learn in German right now? Johnny, you know some German. I only know one phrase. Ich heiß Johnny, V.I.S. du. Okay, so... I'm not sure how to explain that. I'm very honest, yeah. I mean, it's always about... Let's say you have the Spanish word caza, caza. And caza means house, okay? So what you do is you have this word caza and you have to think about something what that word reminds you of in your native language. So caza in English, what is it close to? What could it be? Castle. Castle, yeah? So you think about a castle and you think about a small castle. A small castle is a house. Oh, you have caza and you say, okay, caza is a bit like case and then you say, okay, you lose your case in the house or something. And yeah, and that's actually the story. This method is called the keyword method. So if you want to look it up, you can find a lot of stuff about that. The keyword method and the internet. We're learning vocabulary. Now we love asking every guest what their X factor is, what it is that makes you extraordinary. I have a feeling that we might know what your answer is. But what do you think has helped you become an extraordinary memory champion? It's a mixture. I mean, this is my whole story about overcoming depression and going to, at some point I have to decide I have to use a wheelchair. I didn't want to use it. But to become the world champion, I have to go to a world championship and without a wheelchair, I wasn't able to walk any more really good. It was just falling down the floor and I had to make this decision. And this point in my life when I was crying and I was depressed, I was like, I want to be a world champion and I have to do everything in my power to do that. And it's not just about training. It's about doing more than that, doing the right, making the right decision. And I think that was a crucial point. And that's my, I'm not sure if that's an X factor, but it's the moment when everything changed for me. Not on sport, but over time and making the decision and finding out what is necessary to achieve your goals. Sometimes it's not what you think of. It's not just training, it's even more. It's maybe ending a bad relationship or it's maybe about overcoming a depression or getting a wheelchair, whatever. And that was my key point here. And now, yeah, of course, my X factor is I have a really good memory if I want to have. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can our audience find out more about you and the training that you offer your clients? Yeah, just visit my website. It's just my name, Johannes. And then there's a minus or a hyphen, I think you say hyphen, mellow.com and Johannes minus mellow.com or a memory spots TV on YouTube. Those are quite nice sources. So it would be nice to hear from you. And thank you very much for letting me be on the show here. Hope you will remember the items for Johnny next week. So, yes. I already remember, I'm going backwards now. Yeah, hopefully many people might start with memory spots right now because in the U.S. there are not too many, but the three times world memory champion is from the U.S. So, Alex Mullen and maybe you have the next one there. So, let's get into it. And is that the most championships ever won? Is that three? It's not because back in the days in the 90s there was someone Dominique Bryan from the U.K. who won eight times. But Alex is still a young competitor, he has 29 and he just started in 2014, okay, seven years ago. But he was a first from the U.S., going to the number one spot in the world ranking and he grabbed some world records from me which was not very kind, but he's already a friend and it's always nice to get in touch with all these people all around the world. And when is your next competition? My next competition is next weekend, middle of August, and it's an online competition. So, I am also doing a Twitch stream on it and it's in the middle of the night for me. My first match is 4 a.m. in the night. And an interesting experience to complete at this time. Let's see how it works. But I'm quite of a late night person, so maybe not that late, but I try my best to have a good competition. And what is your Twitch username for our audience? It's awesome, memory sports TV. Easy to memorize, memory sports TV, and that's it. Awesome, go enjoy some smoky whiskey. Johnny and I appreciate you. I will and hopefully you have a nice weekend, thanks. Goes good with steak. Thank you so much. Steak and eggs and hot sauce and everything. Bananas.