Will-It: Recall Names in Seconds

Submitted by Tyke Crowley on

Saturday morning, you immediately recognize the person in front of you in line at your favorite café. You know you know this person. Work associate? Friend of a friend?  Facebook friend? Then, your worst fear happens, she turns around and recognizes you, “Hey, good to see you.  Want to join me for a cup?”

Has this ever happened to you?  If you’re like most people, you easily recognize faces, but somehow the names escape you.  The programming in our brain, which remembers faces, needs to be updated to coop in a world where we may have to remember thousands of names.  The good news is with a little practice, you can will-it to remember names in seconds.

First, do you know these names: Tony, Michelle, Becky, Carol, Don, Nick, Joanne, Steve, Liz, Aaron, Zach and Sasha.  Of course, you do.  Yet, would you remember their names if you were introduced to these twelve people in one minute?  Here’s the problem; most people try to remember each face with its own name. However, the trick is to match faces to names you already know. 

To remember everyone’s name, you need to make pictures of the names you know and link these names to a prominent feature on a person’s face.  For example, if I meet a woman with curly hair named, Rose, I picture roses all over her hair.  When I see her again, my mind automatically remembers her face from her prominent feature, her hair, and in my mind’s eye, I see the roses. I recall the picture to trigger her name.

It’s a simple process called: N.A.M.E. It!

  1. Notice a striking facial feature.
  2. Ask yourself, “What is their NAME?”, before you meet them.  (This focuses your attention.)
  3. Make a picture in your mind’s eye that matches a thing that sounds like their name to a striking feature like eyes, nose or mouth. The crazier the picture the better.
  4. Echo their name out loud as you think of your picture.

So get creating pictures for names you already know.  So, the next time when you meet someone new, remembering their name will be as easy as recalling the word, NAME!

As Always, Make Each Day CountTM! ~Tyke