What Your Childhood Memories Tell you about Yourself

A counselor once told me that our memories work like a cheerleader's megaphone—only in reverse. The opening is wide, but there is not enough room for very many memories to crawl through the tube to come out at the other end and stick in our heads. So, we unconsciously pick the memories we hang onto. This is why he suggested I try to recall my earliest memory tied to a strong emotion. It would tell me something about myself. The stories from our past that we hang onto are our way of reminding ourselves who we are.

At five or so, I walked with my grandfather to a playground near his home. The road was tarred but not paved. I was looking at the rough surface when I spotted a $5 bill. I remember gleefully looking up at my grandfather and proudly showing it to him. He offered an approving nod.

My counselor guessed that choosing to keep this memory might speak of my closeness to my grandparents and my optimism. The road may be rough, but if you keep your eyes open, you'll discover wonderful surprises—and there is joy in sharing them.

The very fact I choose to remember talking to my counselor about this story, out of the many hours that we chatted, could say as much about me as remembering that story does itself.

What's your youngest memory tied to a strong emotion? What does it tell you about yourself?

Stephen Goforth

Getting the Most out of Your Memories

The principle for having something be memorable is to attend to what’s distinctive about it. The more you can attend to what is distinctive and be mindful of it, the more vivid the memory.

We’re constantly taking pictures and then throwing them on social media. But this is the ultimate form of electronic amnesia. You’re cheating your experiencing self because you don’t connect with what’s happening, and you’re cheating your remembering self because you’ve deprived yourself of a great memory. 

So instead of taking pictures of every moment of your vacation, pay attention to what makes a particular moment distinctive. Ask yourself: What is going to be most memorable in each picture I take? How can I compose the picture to focus on the vivid details that will bring me back to this time and place?  That’s when pictures become valuable — when they force you to pay attention to the things that are important to you in that moment.

Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath quoted in Big Think

Wanna be creative? Get some sleep!

One of the most interesting discoveries of neuroscience of the last 20 years is that when you acquire memories, they’re stored in temporary, fragile form, like cement. When you pour it, initially it’s soft, but when it dries and hardens, it becomes strong and durable. Memories are like that. They become hardened through a process of consolidation, which happens largely during sleep.

Memory consolidation actually transforms the memory, as well. It brings out details, hidden relationships. That can be the stuff of creativity and insight.

That’s why there are so many stories of people waking up in the middle of the night with a new idea or solution to a problem. Like Paul McCartney. He was awakened one morning with this melody in his head. It was the song, “Yesterday.” It just appeared to him. Sleep supercharges creativity.

Brigid Schulte writing in The Washington Post

Watch a Flower

Some years ago, a few close friends were (at the home of a friend who had survived cancer that should have killed him decades ago), eating and drinking out in his garden. It was dusk, and he asked us to gather around a plant with small, closed flowers. “Watch a flower,” he instructed. We did so, for about 10 minutes, in silence. All at once, the flowers popped open, which we learned that they did every evening. We gasped in amazement. It was a moment of intense satisfaction.

But here’s the thing I still can’t get over: Unlike most of the junk on my old bucket list, that satisfaction endured. That memory still brings me joy—more so than many of my life’s earthly “accomplishments”—not because it was the culmination of a large goal, but because it was an unexpected gift, a tiny miracle.

Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

The past isn’t gone

I survived Hitler’s horrific death camps. People ask me, "How did you learn to overcome the past?" Overcome? Overcome? I haven’t overcome anything. Every beating, bombing, and selection line, every death, every column of smoke pushing skyward, every moment of terror when I thought it was the end—these live on in me, in my memories and my nightmares. The past isn’t gone. It isn’t transcended or excised. It lives on in me. But so does the perspective it has afforded me: that I lived to see liberation because I kept hope alive in my heart. That I lived to see freedom because I learned to forgive. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice