Most of us have been there: you meet someone, learn their name and then forget it, almost right away. Next time you’re introduced to someone, immediately think of a famous person who shares their name.
Photo by Richard.Asia
It should be easy to remember names, but it’s not. Forbes writer Kristi Hedges suggests association:
I received a life-changing tip that was a spin on this from a speaker who spoke to my Vistage group years ago. After meeting the 15 people in our group very briefly, he proceeded to go around the room and repeat each of our names perfectly. His trick? As you meet someone, consider a famous person (or famous to you) who shares their first name and looks somewhat like them, i.e. Ryan looks like Ryan Gosling (if you could be so lucky.) I’ve found that it can be harder to make the association, but once you do, it’s locked in.
It probably does help if the person looks like the celebrity, but it still works just to make the association. Reddit user hsumao suggests actually thinking of 2-3 celebrities that have the same name. This way, if you forget one association, you have a couple of others to draw from.
This method won’t work for strangers with unusual names. In that case, consider introducing the person to others. In fact, even for standard names, you might couple that method with this one to really lock the name into your brain.
Forbes has a few more tricks for remembering names, so be sure to check out their full post at the link below.
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