GW's Easy Number Memory System

The science of memory training has long been based, interestingly enough, not on left-brain rote memorization of numbers, or items on a list, but on the right-brain connection of numbers, or items on a list, with some visual cue or image. It’s called a “peg system”. You learn the “pegs”, the visual cues, and then you “hang” your number or item on the “peg”. The idea, or rather the proven science, is that the “peg” is easier for your memory banks to recall then the number or item itself. Ancient Greek storytellers used a ‘peg system’ to memorize 25,000 lines of poetry, such as Homer’s famous mythological poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. To assist with their voluminous assimilation of text they connected each line of poetry with an item they imagined set in one of myriad rooms in a magnificent royal palace. Thus, as they entered the poem they imagined entering the palace doors, and as the story of the poem progressed they pro- ceeded with revealing in their “mind’s eye” one intricately designed room at a time, until the poem ended and they exited the palace. We see the world in living color. So I decided that I would base GW’s Easy Number Memory System™ on various colors. There are 26 let- ters in the alphabet, but I only needed ten “letters” in GW’s Numerical “al- phabet”, that is, ten colors to represent the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 0. From those ten numbers I can represent any whole number from 1 to infinity. Thankfully, we won’t need to memorize beyond 100 digits for the training drills in this book! I was taught the Secondary Complimentary Color Wheel at the age of five, and that simple arrangement of color would cover me on six of my ten numbers. Once I had assigned colors to my first six “numerical letters”, I still needed four more colors to cover all the numerical digits from 1 through 9 plus 0. I thought about iconic colors and the first two that popped into my mind where gold and silver, so I assigned those colors as follows: Gold as 7 and Silver as 8. That left just two numbers, 9 and 0. The final iconic colors that rounded out my “alphabet” were Black for 9 and White for 0. Black is actually the absence of color, but I’m taking poetic license here and making it one of my ten “numerical letters”. White light is actually the blending of the three primary colors, red, blue and yellow. And so I gave Black to the number 9 and White to zero. You can think of GW’s Easy Number Memory System™ as “smart software” for your brain. You have the ability to literally re-wire your brain to do so many powerful things, far beyond simply memorizing num- bers through GW’s peg system. But this simple memory system will generate neurogenesis (new neuron cells), steroidogenesis (endogenous production of hormones) and synaptogenesis (development of new synaptic connections) in your central nervous system (your brain). All things that will improve your cognitive functioning, now and well into your long life.