Control your memory! How to become happy by remembering good memories? Why can't you keep bad memories? This article is all about memories.
“Everything you remember now will stay with you forever.” Think about it carefully.
– But is something sometimes forgotten? - Yes, you will forget what you want to remember and you will remember what you wanted to forget.
Cormac McCarthy, "The Road"
This quote about memories makes you think. “You will forget what you want to remember, and you will remember what you want to forget.”
Are you not familiar with the situation when, even after many years, an awkward situation comes to mind and makes you blush? What awkwardness there is - we remember all the moments when we were scared, hurt or sad.
Can you remember happy moments that filled you with equal amounts of positive emotions? Good memories are forgotten, fade, and only rare ones still bring a smile to your face.
Working with your memory is part of personal growth. Life is filled with beautiful moments that we ignore and very soon forget. Let's talk about memories: where are they stored, how do they affect us and why do we need them?
About memories
Some interesting information
Where are memories stored?
A special neuron is responsible for remembering new information and erasing old information. To prevent your brain from being overloaded, when you learn something new, you forget something old every time.
Human memory has three sections: • Semantic : knowledge about science and the environment • Episodic : life events, biography (most strongly associated with emotions, therefore cannot be called reliable) • Procedural : motor skills and unforgettable information
Interesting fact! Particularly vivid episodic memories are stored throughout life. 122-year-old Jeanne Calment from France could still remember what happened to her at 10 years old! In 1889, she saw the Eiffel Tower being built and met the artist Van Gogh, an experience she would remember for the rest of her life.
What are memories?
Memories are the brain's ability to recall images and situations experienced in the past. The moments in life that evoke the most emotions are remembered best. They are much easier to remember even in the smallest details. Memories can be voluntary or involuntary.
- Arbitrary are those that we try to evoke on our own. For example, names, dates, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
- Involuntary are spontaneous and appear when we encounter images or smells that we have observed in the past. Involuntary ones are associated with emotions and therefore remain in consciousness longer.
The main difference between voluntary ones is that they constitute conscious memory, while involuntary ones constitute unconscious, unintentional memory.
Memories are:
- nostalgic;
- pleasant;
- painful;
- joyful;
- fragmentary;
- sad;
- nightmarish;
- romantic, etc.
Forming in our subconscious, they necessarily pass through conscious emotions, which means they carry their imprint.
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How are memories formed and what are they for?
Memories are formed through the perception and memorization of information from the past, but the processes of their emergence depend on the individual characteristics of the psyche, emotional state, and memory capabilities.
They appear when we are ready to perceive them and change our attitude towards our past life.
Such moments can be compared to audio recordings. Playing them over and over again each time, a rethinking occurs with the acquisition of new details and episodes.
Why are memories needed?
Analytical psychology expert Patrick Estrad, author of the book “Memories that Guide Us,” talks about memories, their meaning and importance:
Our memories shape our personality, proving human uniqueness. Our personality, lifestyle, fears, talents, desires and relationships with people are based on it.
Memories of the past affect our emotions. And our emotions, in turn, influence memories. That is, when the mood is bad, only sad moments will come to mind. They will make you feel those experiences again. For example, memories of a past love will make a person feel lonely.
But it also works the other way around: good memories can help and free us from the captivity of sadness. Patrick Estrad tells his client's story. He was tormented by bad memories of his father. But when he met his love, he began to remember happy moments with his father too.
By remembering something from the past, we may notice things and feelings that we were not aware of before. It helps people better understand themselves and the present.
Memories allow us to return to our own past and continue our history; they enrich and saturate our personality.
Patrick Estrad
“Memory”: the meaning of the word
Linguists distinguish up to two main meanings. In general vocabulary you can often see its use in the plural. “Memory,” the meaning of which boils down to memory archives and elements of literary activity, is also associated with the past, the analysis of past events and their influence on the present (in psychology). Let's consider two main interpretation options.
In the dictionary D.N. Ushakova:
1. Mental reproduction of what is stored in memory.
Examples:
Memories of childhood influence a person’s entire subsequent life and behavior.
Pleasant memories give strength for new achievements.
2. In the plural, the word denotes a literary work that describes events that the author witnessed. Such a presentation is also called memoirs or notes.
Examples:
The war story is based on the memories of a direct participant in the hostilities.
The film “Memories of the Future” is based on the book “Testaments of Youth” by Vera Brittain.
3. In colloquial speech you can hear the humorous expression: “There is only one memory left,” when the speaker means that nothing else has been preserved, everything has disappeared without a trace.
Examples:
Only one memory remains of his high spirits.
All that remains of the girl’s former beauty are memories.
Why is it important to keep only good memories?
Memories influence our mood, emotions and perception of the world around us. I think you already understand why it is important to keep only positive memories and get rid of bad ones. But we will still talk about this separately.
Events in the life of every person can be both pleasant and not so pleasant. Bad moments are also a part of our life. And we remember them too.
How do bad memories affect us?
Memories of the past that cause us pain have a negative effect on the body. Try to remember something unpleasant. What do you feel? People can be so deeply immersed in memories that they will clearly feel all the feelings and emotions they experienced then, as if they were there again on that day.
Accordingly, if those emotions were negative, then every time a person remembers that day, he will feel the same pain. Each time it will harm the body with negative emotions.
Subsequently, this can lead to health problems and a deterioration in overall vitality. Memories of the past bring suffering and heartache. Experiencing them constantly, a person becomes gloomy and all the colors in his life fade.
What if you remember only the good?
Let's look at the situation from the other side. By remembering only good things, a person will fill himself with positive feelings and see life optimistically.
We come to the conclusion: only good memories should be left in memory. They will fill a person with energy, inspire and delight. By keeping only the positive in his head, a person in old age will understand that his life was happy, since there was a lot of good in it.
Negativity should be erased from memory. There is no need to keep resentment and anger towards someone inside yourself. Get rid of the bad, be determined not to remember bad things. Concentrate on any pleasant events, try to “force” them in your head.
Treat your memory like a computer: you monitor the contents of your hard drive, save what’s important, and delete what’s unnecessary.
February 5, 2015
Tatyana Petrochenko I help adults and children find joy in the ordinary, make friends, create, believe in themselves. I have three children and three grandchildren, I believe in love and that “man was created for happiness.” Life is really interesting, because in life there is love and disappointment, creativity and despondency, losses and unexpected discoveries... My life anchors and beacons are family, work, writing, books, yoga and, probably, something else that I’m talking about so far I have no idea...
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“The past never goes away, it lives in a collapsed state at every moment of my life”
Carl Gustav Jung
It’s amazing that the richer and more meaningful my life becomes, the more often I turn to memories. In theory, my present “here and now” should prevail over the distant and half-forgotten past, or at least compete with it. But everything happens the other way around. The past, when I boldly call him to visit me, comes not only with sadness about the past years, but also with priceless gifts of awareness of myself in the present.
In fact, the longer a person lives, the less opportunity he has to build something radically new, and the more a cultural layer of memory accumulates.
At the age of forty you can still easily learn several languages, master a new profession, give birth to a child, but suddenly becoming a ballerina or realizing your dream of becoming a sea captain is no longer possible. At fifty, you can experience bright spiritual and intellectual discoveries, start doing yoga or ballroom dancing, but it’s too late to have children. At sixty you can start building a house, do charity work, realize your dream of writing a book, but getting a master of sports is already problematic.
There are, of course, exclusives who give birth at fifty-five, marry nymphets at seventy and jump from a parachute on their 80th birthday, but this is rare. Everything has its time. The time to scatter stones is the time to collect them.
The baggage of memories at 20-40-60 and 80 years old differs not only in volume, but in the attitude towards one’s memories, their emotional coloring, and self-worth. Although there are memory dominants that do not lose their emotional charge at any age.
Memory is the cultural and psychological layer on which our “today” stands, it is the foundation from which our today’s “I” draws strength from past successes, tenderness from warm relationships, inspiration from fascination with natural beauties once captured, trust to peace - from meetings with good people, peace - from the sniffling of your newborn baby ...
But there, in the deep layers of memory, are hidden the roots of our anxieties, black slugs of unforgiven grievances, drooping shoulders of disappointments, uncryed pain of losses, words and tears stuck in the throat...
As I explore my memories and myself in them, I reflect on what they give me. Inspiration or sadness? Strength or destruction? How do they treat me and how do I treat them?
Remembering my past, I sometimes yearn for missed opportunities, irrevocable days and years, but more often memories give me strength, trust in my feminine wisdom, confidence that even now I can cope with difficulties.
Sometimes memories come suddenly, swirl and involve you instantly. I feel like I’m spinning on a carousel - images of the past are rapidly flashing, replacing one another, everything is mixed up and it’s no longer possible to make out who, with whom, where... what happened in the beginning and what after... History merges into one emotional experience...
It happens on the contrary, as if I am descending into an unknown tunnel - slowly, timidly, stopping for a long time at each step, carefully examining everything that is nearby, resurrecting faces, words, feelings in detail... Often what looked tragic and unwanted from the present turns out to be necessary, then What seemed fleeting and of little value is seen as essential and resourceful.
The first touches on your memories are almost always scary, judging from my own experience and the experience of my clients.
This is understandable: human lives are woven not only from rainbows, chamomile fields and Chopin's waltzes. Our destinies are sometimes intertwined with long torrential rains, a loud lonely echo, funeral bells and the soul-shaking angry grinding of iron on glass.
There is no exact knowledge of what you will encounter on the way to the past. But this path beckons, despite the dangers and difficulties, just as mountains beckon to a climber, since they exist in this world.
It is interesting to observe how the trajectory of time changes in memories. In our ordinary life, time moves in a straight line - from morning to night, from Monday to Sunday, from birth to death. And when we are immersed in memories, time seems to be rounded - one memory extends a hand to another, one story is linked through a person significant to us with another, one experience flows and develops into the next or previous one. And all this envelops the rememberer, as if filling the voids and darning the holes of our Self.
Researchers of the phenomenon of memory say that a person seems to “forget” about 90% of the information about his life. It turns out that the years, decades of our lived life, I put emphasis on the word OUR - mine, yours, his... - fall forever into the deep psycho-cultural layers under the personal foundation and become accessible only with a deliberate desire to get to the bottom of them and bring them to light.
In fact, we do not forget, we repress our past life, take it away for storage in distant attics and basements.
Russian philosopher Lev Karsavin wrote that to restore oneself through memories means to resurrect oneself by uniting one’s present self with one’s past self, thereby recreating one’s integral Self.
My reflections on memories are subjective and colored by my personal relationship to the past, my degree of awareness of the present, contact with myself and others. In this self-exploration, I am interested in relating myself to those who are sensitive to the passage of time, to the rustling of calendar sheets, to the whisper or cry of human feelings. These are creative people - artists, writers, philosophers, filmmakers... They approach life a little differently, more openly, more freely allowing themselves to handle it.
I began to collect their thoughts about memory and memories and read into their reasoning - they are polar and contradictory. This not only did not add certainty to my thoughts, but prompted me to remember and observe again and again, to dissect my life and recreate it, to clear tiny shards with a small brush and find their home...
This is not psychoanalytic work in its traditional sense, it is self-knowledge through the experience of the past and its analysis through the prism of the present. This kind of inner work helps me restore myself to the fullest, and I notice several interesting aspects along the way.
- Firstly, purely subjectively, my life began to feel not only denser and more meaningful, but also longer.
- Secondly, in the course of this work, some memories bring me clues to today's actions, thoughts, and experiences.
- Thirdly, when I study my past with interest, and my life is filled with a deeper awareness of the present, my existential anxiety about death sooner or later becomes much less.
- Fourthly, I clearly observe an influx of powerful resource states and updated ideas about myself.
Memories are essentially a psychological upgrade: me as a person, my attitude towards my parents, my childhood, my choices... And these changes inspire new excavations and comprehension.
I will give an example from personal experience.
It was difficult for me to talk, to remember about my childhood, about my life in Crimea before leaving for Leningrad. I couldn’t understand what was blocking this part of my memories: a provincial complex, a forgotten difficult experience that had gone deep into the subconscious, hostility towards my small homeland...
Several years ago, I decided to describe the places of my childhood for my children - just so that they would learn a little about what can now be called “fading nature.”
The result shocked me. Line by line, image by image, my childhood came to life, my neighbors and friends “came to life.” While I was writing, little Tanya became warm, real, and attentive to everything around her. My “inner child” became visible, caressed, and heard. I felt my heart fill with warmth and tenderness for long-forgotten places and people.
Sitting down to reminisce, I didn’t even imagine how many interesting things were contained in childhood memory. It was an amazing, interesting and touching adventure into the past, which ended with a completely unexpected ending for me. I had an epiphany - I realized what was holding back my childhood memories, what was blocking my perception of the world. I admit, finishing that text, I cried my eyes out, and then, rereading it, editing it, I cried and cried. Until I cried out all the accumulated tears, all the packaged emotional pain.
What did this give me? Firstly, by consciously and deeply digesting the past, I unraveled important knots in my present self. Secondly, I definitely felt an influx of new mental strength, creative impulses and an increase in self-esteem. Thirdly, the end result was a pretty decent story. Fourth, I experienced great creative and human pleasure from the process with the clever name “reflective writing.” And fifthly, this story became the beginning of my group work in the field of “meaningful narrative” and the development of the literary therapeutic workshop “I Remember...”. Now this tool serves not only me, but also the members of our fascinating group. It is better to talk about this experience separately.
Working with memories for me is not only a way of comprehending and transforming unpleasant moments and preserving joyful ones, but they are also “flashbulbs of memory” that give birth to new stories, essays, and articles. Some of them, by the way, and the one I just mentioned (“Old Courtyard”) can be read here.
And for you, my interlocutors, to spark thought and arouse curiosity about archaeological research in your individual memory, I will give you a small selection of contradictory statements from creative people.
Read and reflect, join and oppose, try to remember and enrich yourself with your treasures hidden in the bins of memory.
And one more thing - take out your old photo album, look through it, look at yourself, at your loved ones, at what surrounded you, remember your mood, your light dreams and watch, watch yourself... I assure you, there will be extraordinary discoveries.
And for these discoveries to become transformative, creative, giving birth to new strengths and self-understanding, they can and should be creatively processed. And this is also part of my personal and therapeutic practices, which I can tell you about with pleasure.
The best way to forget is to remember.
Sigmund Freud
Memories are the sweat of the soul. Milorad Pavic
Memories, whether joyful or bitter, are always painful; at least that's how it is for me; but this torment is also sweet. And when the heart becomes heavy, painful, weary, sad, then memories freshen and live it, like drops of dew on a humid evening, after a hot day, freshen and live a poor, stunted flower, burned from the heat of the day.
Fedor Dostoevsky
Loneliness cannot be filled with memories; they only make it worse.
Gustav Flaubert
You never know when memories will come flooding back to you. They come unexpectedly, just like that, without any warning, without asking permission. And you never know when they will leave. The only thing you know is that they'll damn well come up again someday. This usually lasts a few moments. Now I know what to do. You can't dwell on them for too long. As soon as memories come, you need to quickly brush them aside, and do it right away, without regret, without concessions, without fanning the fire in them, without plunging into them. Without causing yourself pain.
Federico Moccia
Joy is found in peace and memories.
Janusz Leon Wisniewski.
Your memories are just an old lantern hanging on a street corner where almost no one walks anymore.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Good memories are almost always preserved, and if you try hard, you can return to them and even relive some semblance of those pleasant feelings that you once experienced.
Have you ever thought that happy memories are much more valuable to a person than anything bought with money? Cash, bills, property, business - you can lose all this... Or you can not have it at all. But memories of past bright minutes, hours, days can make even someone who has nothing else happy.
Even if everything disappeared, she would still feel like the richest: after all, she had her memories.
Oleg Roy
The more I forget you, the more I miss you. El Tweet
Memories are not part of us, it’s better to let them go next to us. They have their own right to wander. Believe me, memories know when to move away, to disappear for a while. Those who have locked them inside themselves complain about their constant presence.
Elchin Safarli
I learned that everything changes, people change. And this does not mean that you should forget the past or try to hide it. It just means you move on and the memories are a treasure!
Nikki Sixx
For it is precisely the feeling of exile that should be called that state of unfulfillment in which we constantly remained, that clearly felt, reckless desire to turn back time or, conversely, speed up its run, all these burning arrows of memories.
Albert Camus
Self-development #Awareness #memory #Self-exploration #Freewriting
My personal example, My story
There was also a period in my life when memories caused me pain. I moved to another country at the age of 10, and this event “broke” my happy childhood life. I lost everything: friends, dreams, goals, communication. As a child, I was popular in class, the children themselves were drawn to me, and I always had friends with whom I could walk and play. After moving, I realized that I didn’t know how to make acquaintances, and I didn’t have sufficient knowledge of a foreign language for this. My life has lost its colors. I lived only in the past, remembered my cool life in my native country, remembered friends and happy moments. By the way, almost immediately all these friends stopped communicating with me.
You can find more stories about me on this page!
Memories can help us find a way out of a difficult situation, but they should not bind us. The past does not exist, there is only now. When I realized this, I finally divided my life into two parts: before and after. After – my new present life. And “before” must be forgotten. My past no longer matters to me. My life is completely different now.
But it is impossible to forget the past. We will not forget important moments in life, no matter how much we want to (see quote at the beginning). The past can only be accepted and let go. Live in the moment.
How to remember all good events?
Pleasant events do not need to be “forced” into your head. But you can remember more if you use the following tips:
• When you absolutely want to remember something forever, you need to use it constantly. Try to remember this moment often. • Create reminders of this event: photographs, diary entries, etc. • Memories can be associated with material things, “souvenirs”. • Try to use all the senses. Consider in detail what you want to keep in memory, remember the smells. Do this consciously. • You will have a good memory if you take care of your health. Eat right, rest, exercise and find a hobby. Having a good memory is useful: memories of travel and cool events will be brighter and more detailed.
Memories that won't be forgotten
Another interesting tip on how to remember events: make them unusual. Strange, dangerous, funny and other emotional moments are remembered better. Here I will give my own examples, because I love doing strange things
