Remembering Names

Hello from Coach Meg!

First, thank you to readers who sent in additional suggestions on bunion treatments and prevention. You reenergized and spawned new avenues of exploration for which I'm grateful!

Now onto remembering names. Many of us describe ourselves as "bad" at remembering names, as if sadly we did not inherit the genes for storing names in our working memory. This article confirmed something I suspected - we don't remember what we're not interested in. Mindfulness, or paying attention to the moment, depends in part on our motivation. Mindfulness happens and things get filed in our memory files when we care about people, places, knowledge, or experience.

I also often wonder whether a factor in declining short-term memory with aging, is that life's intensity of pressure and purpose declines a little, and we simply don't drive our brains as hard to perform?

I recently wrote an article for a new PBS website, Next Avenue (where grownups keep growing), titled It's 10 o'clock. Do You Know Where Your Keys Are? I emphasize that even if we care, we ARE interested in remembering names, or not losing our keys, our ability to mindfully attend to the moment may be hijacked by stress, frenzy, or distraction. We are disconnected from our natural interest in other people who do matter to us, or not losing things of value.

If find remembering names challenging, what do you think is going on? Genetic wiring? Not enough interest? Insufficient life intensity/pressure? Too little mindfulness?

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Thank you!
Margaret Moore/Coach Meg