Train Your Brain for Success: Read Smarter, Remember More, and Break Your Own Records

We should point out that you may have come across many of the tips before, especially if you've spent much time on the Mind Tools site. In this way the book is not particularly original, but it is a good entry-level guide to some really useful personal effectiveness techniques.

Roger Seip is the cofounder of Freedom Personal Development, a training and personal development firm. He's delivered training and keynote programs for more than two thousand organizations.

So, keep listening to find out how to use your body as a memory map, how to easily remember someone's name, and why changing the way your eyes move can help you read faster.

Now, there's a lot of information packed into "Train Your Brain for Success" so let's get right to it. The book has two main sections.

The first section covers two important learning foundations. The first revolves around memory, and how to improve it. The second learning foundation focuses on reading strategies.

The book's second section is titled "The Components of Your Record Breaking Life." Here, the author teaches you tricks and strategies for maximizing your time, achieving your goals, finding your purpose and vision, and taking care of your mind.

The book opens up with an enlightening concept which the author calls: Success Leaves Clues. He starts by suggesting you write down a goal that's important to you, something you really want to accomplish in life.

Now think about this goal. Has anyone, at any time in history, accomplished a goal like this?

Chances are the answer is yes. This means whatever it is you want to do, someone else has already done it. They thought a certain way, and took certain actions, and accomplished this goal. If you're able to study what they did, there's a good chance you can end up in the same spot.

Of course, hard work, skill, and talent is also an important part of this. But what the author is saying is that you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. You can trek along the path others have forged in order to reach your goals a bit more quickly.

This is a simple and, we thought, uplifting concept. And, there are several more of these in the introductory chapter. Here, the author does a great job of explaining the dangers of staying in your comfort zone, and the power of visualization.

The result is that by the time you're done with the introduction you're going to feel excited, empowered, and motivated to set higher standards in your life, and accomplish your most important goals.

So let's look at the first section, which focuses on memory and reading strategies. The author encourages you not to skip this, since the second half of the book builds on the principles you learn here.

According to the author, our memory is perfect. Research suggests that everything we've ever learned, every person we've ever met, is recorded in our brains. So when we forget things, it's not a problem with our memory. It's actually a problem with our recall.

Although the author says this is true, he hasn't sourced or quoted any studies in the book, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt.

Even if your memory isn't perfect, there's still a lot you can do to improve your recall, and the author spends three chapters teaching you how to do this.

One of the best things we can do is to create a mental filing system. The author calls this the F.I.G. system, in which the acronym FIG stands for File, Image, Glue. It's a system you can use to recall whatever you need to, whenever you need it.

Here's how it works.

You first have to create a filing system. The author shows you two different systems you can create. With one of these systems, you're going to use your body to file, and remember, information.

Now, this system is going to sound a bit strange at first. But the author advises you to not judge the process, just the results.

What you're going to do is to create 10 visual files. These files will be the soles of your feet, your shins, your legs, your butt, your tummy, your ribs, your collarbone, your mouth, your nose, and your forehead.

You probably noticed this system started at the bottom of your body, with the soles of your feet, and ended up at the top, with your forehead. The visual order is important here.

Now that you have a visual filing system in place, you can start putting information into each of these files.

Here's a very simple example to show how this works. And this example uses all three elements in the author's F.I.G. system.

Imagine you need to go to the grocery store and pick up several items like olive oil, avocado, walnuts, salmon, spinach, and so on.

To remember a list like this, you're going to file each item up your body. So, visualize the first item, olive oil, oozing all over the soles of your feet. See yourself mashing an avocado on your shins. Next, crush some walnuts on your legs, and imagine sitting on your butt, on a piece of salmon. Last, fill your tummy up with spinach.

Each item on your list is going to go in its own body part file. And you have to put items in the files in order. So, you always start with the soles of your feet, and work your way up. Logic has nothing to do with this. It's all about visualization.

Another key element in this grocery store example is the action. The action acts as the glue that will hold the memory in place. This is why you're smashing avocados against your shins, crushing walnuts, and sitting on a salmon.

According to the author, you can remember hundreds of pieces of information using these ten body part files. The author goes into a lot more detail in this first section on how to better use this system. You learn how to create a wide variety of different lists, including To-Do lists, and how to remember all this information long term.

Again, using action or emotion when filing information is really important. If you don't use action or emotion in the process, the information isn't going to stick.

The author also gives us some useful tricks here for remembering names.

Chances are, you usually know right before someone is about to give you their name for the first time. So try hard to clear your mind before they do. Your brain works about seven times faster than people speak, and it's easy to let your mind wander while someone is giving you their name. So, clear your mind and focus on them.

After they say their name, try and repeat it three times. But do this with some skill. If someone named Grace just introduced herself, say, "Grace, it's nice to meet you Grace." And try to slip her name in one more time within the next few minutes. If it makes you uncomfortable to say someone's name twice in one sentence, say it once out loud and then whisper it to yourself after you say, "Nice to meet you."

These two simple tricks will really help you remember people's names short term. And there are several tricks you can use to remember names over the long term, and these are also covered in this section.

Now let's look at some strategies you can use to read faster, and take in more.

The author includes a fun test at the beginning of chapter four to measure how many words per minute you can read. While many people might think they're above-average readers, the truth is that most people can only read between two and three hundred words per minute.

But by the time you're done with the exercises in these chapters, you can easily push this number up to seven hundred, and with some practice to one thousand words per minute. We certainly found our reading got faster after just a little practice.

The author first goes into detail about what your eyes do when you read.

Your eyes stop moving four times per second when you're reading. This is called fixation. The only time information can register in your brain is when your eyes are stopped. And, you can't control how many times your eyes stop. It's a biological process.

What you can control is how many words you let into your brain at each stop. This is why eye span is important. Your eye span is the width of text you take in whenever your eyes stop.

Now, most people let in one word per stop. That's four words per second, or around 240 words per minute, which is the average adult reading speed. With a little practice and training, you can really widen your eye span, and increase your reading speed and comprehension.

So how do you do it?

Here's one simple exercise to help strengthen your eye muscles.

Stand up straight and look straight ahead. Without moving your head, look as far left as you can. Then, look as far right as you can. Go back and forth on a level plane, looking left and right, as fast as you can. Do this five times, and then sit down.

Chances are, this exercise will make you a little dizzy. It might even hurt your eyes. But that's because your eye muscles are weak. You'll quickly strengthen your eye muscles by doing this at least twice a day. And the stronger your eye muscles get, the faster you'll be able to skim a page while reading.

Here's another fascinating trick for reading faster. According to the author, we normally read by sliding our eyes from left to right across the page. But it's more effective, and faster, to bounce your eyes across the page.

It sounds a bit strange, maybe even counterintuitive. But bouncing lets you take in more words at a time. The author provides an exercise to show you what bouncing feels like. And you really can feel the difference in your eye muscles when you use this technique. With a bit of practice, you can use bouncing to quickly increase how many words you take in when your eyes stop.

Now, this only touches the surface of what's here. The author goes over many strategies and tips you can use to read faster and retain more information. But let's quickly look at the second half of the book, which focuses on setting, and achieving, significant goals in your life.

One key concept here is your keystone goal. In chapter eight the author encourages you to write out six goals you want to accomplish over the next 90 days. The goals need to be specific, measurable, meaningful, and attainable.

Once you've written out six goals, look at them carefully. Chances are, there's one goal that supports the majority of your other goals.

The reason is that a lot of times, your goals are connected. Some might even be in competition with each other. You need to figure out which goal is most important for achieving the other goals – this is your keystone goal. Once you start putting all your energy into achieving your keystone goal, the other goals will naturally start falling into place.

One chapter we particularly liked in the second half was chapter seventeen, titled "The Power Hour." Here you learn how to use the most important hour of the day, the hour when you first wake up, to improve your life using many of the strategies the author details in the book.

Think of this first hour as a warm-up for the rest of the day. During this time you're getting yourself into the right frequency to have a positive, successful day. You're creating a habit of positivity and intention. The author explains in detail what he does during his own Power Hour, so you get an idea of how it can work. He includes reflection, gratitude, affirmation and meditation, but you can really do whatever works for you.

We liked the idea of the Power Hour because most of us wake up in a fog, and don't do much to actively get into a positive state of mind. We felt this concept could be a powerful way to create the kind of day you want.

So, what's our last word on "Train Your Brain for Success?"

We thought this was a fun, engaging, and interesting book that's packed with good, useful information. We really liked that there are so many hands-on exercises. It kept the book really engaging, and you can feel yourself getting stronger mentally even while you're doing some of them.

It's worth mentioning that there are several interactive, online videos that walk you through many of the processes the author covers in the book. These are fun to work through, and they also help cement what you learn. You can access these videos using a link and code found in the back of the book.

"Train Your Brain for Success" by Roger Seip, is published by John Wiley and Sons.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.