How to Master Your Memory | 5x Memory Champion Nelson Dellis

Nelson Dellis (0:00)

For everyday people, there are so many opportunities in day-to-day things to memorize. You meet people, memorize their names.

You see numbers on billboards, or people give you their phone numbers, or you see license plates. You can try to commit those to memory. Everything around you is a potential to train or practice the techniques. So I think that's another thing too, is to find a way that makes memory fun for you that you can train.

Michael Gervais (0:37)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training, I am a high-performance psychologist. Today, I am really excited to welcome Nelson Dellis as our guest on our last episode for 2022 Nelson is widely recognized as one of the most leading experts in the field of memory. He is a five-time USA Memory Champion. How about it? He's a Grand Master of Memory and holds various world records in memorization. For example, he memorized nine decks of cards in 30 minutes.

That is pretty epic. Nelson is also an accomplished Mountaineer. He founded Climb for Memory, which is a nonprofit organization raising awareness for Alzheimer's research by organizing mountain climbs around the world. As many of us are focused on habits and changes that we want to implement heading into the new year, I'm really excited to learn more from Nelson about how memory, and well-being, and performance are related, and then to drill down specifically how we can enhance our memory. What are the best practices and tactics to do so?

Nelson, welcome to the show. How are you?

Nelson Dellis (1:53)

I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, Michael.

Michael Gervais (1:55)

I think that many people, when they hear about memory champions like yourself, or some of the memorization records that you've set, they have this fascination because they know the value of memory, and they might even be envious a little bit, but not necessarily motivated to do the work to improve their memory. I just wanted to start with this.

Why does investing in memory matter to you personally, and why do you think it would be a good investment for others as well?

Nelson Dellis (2:27)

It's a great question to start with. I started learning about memory and memory techniques just over a decade ago. My grandmother had been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite a while, and eventually passed away from complications related.

And that's kind of what's set this journey off for me. You know, I've not really thought much about memory improvement until then, until I started witnessing kind of her mind go away and it was just, it was a horrible affair for our whole family and for her. But, you know, as a bystander, a close bystander, I was kind of fascinated in a weird way because I couldn't believe that somebody could become essentially a shell of themselves, right? And it was just weird and heartbreaking and all these things altogether to watch. And that had a profound impact on what I thought about myself and the future and what's in store for me. So that's kind of what got me to obsess in a way over memory techniques. Now, you know, I didn't know anything about memory techniques. So when I discovered these championships, that kind of was the hook for me. I'm a very competitive guy. So I needed kind of that entryway to hook onto these techniques and to have a reason why past the family motivation to really push to get to a level that was going to be life-changing. Well, you don't have to get competitive to have a life-changing experience with this. But so essentially that was my motivation was the experience that I went through with my family, and then also kind of this competitive reason. And, you know, past that, I've also come to realize other things. This has been a long journey of mine.

And part of it is, you know, I really believe that memory is who we are at a fundamental level as a species and to be able to really harness that skill and to be able to tap into it, of course, has affected my life and I can, you know, use it to my benefit in many situations. But it makes me feel like I'm more in tune with the universe, maybe with humanity.

It's a really deep feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment there somehow.

Michael Gervais (4:52)

Okay, cool. So for this conversation, I want to know how you're conceptualizing memory. Are you considering it or are we talking about the innate ability that we're born with or are we talking about the skill that we can enhance, a trainable skill?