THE IMPROVEMENT OF MEMORY

Are you one of these average persons? If so, you are struggling under a handicap both socially and commercially; consequently, you will be interested in, and profit by, reading and rereading. It describes and explains these natural laws of remembering and shows how to use them in business and social conversation as well as in public speaking. These “natural laws of remembering” are very simple. There are only three. Every so-called “memory system” has been founded upon them. Briefly, they are inspiration, repetition, and association. The first mandate of memory is this: get a deep, vivid and lasting impression of the thing you wish to retain. And to do that, you must concentrate.

SEEK NOT FOR WORDS, SEEK ONLY FACT AND THOUGHT

After you have your ideas firmly in mind, then rehearse your talk from beginning to end. Do it silently, mentally, as you watch for the teakettle to boil, as you walk the street, as you wait for the elevator. Get off in a room by yourself and go over it aloud, gesturing, saying it with life and energy. Can you hope, then, to get the real message out of your talk unless you have at least rehearsed it that many times? As you practice, imagine there is a real audience before you. Imagine it so strongly that when there is one, it will seem like an old experience.

DO NOT MEMORIZE VERBATIM

Don’t read, and don’t attempt to memorize your talk word for word. That consumes time, and courts disaster. Yet, in spite of this warning, some people reading these lines will try it; if they do, when they stand up to speak they will be thinking of what? No, they will be attempting to recall their exact phraseology. They will be thinking backward, not forward, reversing the usual process of the human mind. The whole exhibition will be stiff and cold and colorless and inhuman. Do not waste hours and energy in such futility. When you have an important business interview, do you sit down and memorize, verbatim, what you are going to say? Do you? No. You reflect until you get your main ideas clearly in mind.

“SHALL I USE NOTES WHILE SPEAKING?”

Make notes, during the preparation-elaborate ones, profuse ones. You may wish to refer to them when you are practicing your talk alone. You may possibly feel more comfortable if you have them stored away in your pocket when you are facing an audience; but, like the hammer and saw and axe in a Pullman coach, they should be emergency tools, only for use in the case of a smash-up, a total wreck, and threatening death and disaster. If you must use notes, make them extremely brief and write them in large letters on an ample sheet of paper. Then arrive early at the place where you are to speak and hide your notes behind some books on a table. Glance at them when you must, but endeavor to screen your weakness from the audience.

PLAY SOLITAIRE WITH YOUR NOTES

Having gotten your various ideas and illustrations down on scraps of paper, play solitaire with them-toss them into series of related piles. These main piles ought to represent, approximately, the main points of your talk. Subdivide them into smaller lots. Throw out the chaff until there is nothing but number one wheat left-and even some of the wheat will probably have to be put aside and not used. No one, if he works right, is ever able to use but a percentage of the material he gathers. One ought never to cease this process of revision until the speech has been made-even then he is very likely to think of points and improvements and refinements that ought to have been made.

CLARIFY YOUR IDEAS

Many students of speech have found it illuminating to dictate their talks to the Dictaphone, and then to listen to themselves. Illuminating? Yes. And sometimes disillusioning and chastening also. It is a most wholesome exercise. This practice of actually writing out what you are going to say, will force you to think. It will clarify your ideas. It will hook them in your memory. It will improve your diction. Having assembled and marshaled the facts of any problem, think out for you the solution of those facts compel. Thus your speech will have originality and personal force-it will be vital and compelling. There will be you in it. Then write out your ideas as clearly and logically as you can.

CHANGE YOUR PITCH

The pitch of our voices in conversation flows up and down the scale from high to low and back again, never resting, but always shifting like the face of the sea. Why? No one knows, and no one cares. The effect is pleasing, and it is the way of nature. We never had to learn to do this: it came to us as children, unsought and unaware, but let us stand up and face an audience, and the chances are our voices will become as dull, flat and monotonous as the alkali deserts of Nevada. When you find yourself talking in a monotonous pitch-and usually it will be a high one-just pause for a second and say to yourself: “I am speaking like a wooden American. Talk to these people. Be human. Be natural”.

HOW A PRIZE-WINNING SPEECH WAS CONSTRUCTED

A Speech is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The person, who starts nowhere, generally gets there. That is just as true of speaking as of shooting. But do speakers realize it-or, if they do-do they always act on it? They do not. Most emphatically they do not. Many a talk has just a trifle more plan and arrangement than a bowl of fish stew. What is the best and most effective arrangement for a given set of ideas? No one can say until he has studied them. It is always a new problem, and eternal question that every speaker must ask and answer again and again.

THE SECRET OF RESERVE POWER

A speech ought to be prepared somewhat in the lavish and discriminating spirit. Assemble a hundred thoughts, and discard ninety. Collect more material, more information, than there is any possibility of employing. Get it for the additional confidence it will give you, for the sureness of touch. Get it for the effect it will have on your mind and heart and whole manner of speaking. This is a basic, important factor of preparation; yet it is constantly ignored by speakers, both in public and in private. The way to develop reserve power is to know far more than you can use, to have a full reservoir of information.