Remembering people’s names

‘I can never remember names’ is such a common English phrase that entering it
into an Internet search engine produces over 250,000 hits. It is a simple fact that
many people have problems remembering the names of those they have met, even
a few minutes after meeting them. Fortunately, however, there is now an effective
strategy for dealing with a situation that for many people can be very embarrassing.

Tim Hallbom and Suzi Smith, therapists at the NLP Institute in California,
developed the strategy by studying the thought processes of people who
remembered names well. One of these, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was
particularly good. When asked how he was able to remember the names of people
he had met only once, often many months before, he said that he imagined the
person’s name written on their forehead.

Hallbom now teaches an expanded version of Roosevelt’s name strategy in his

classes. The strategy that he and Smith developed is based on the way people
learn and recall information, which is through the primary senses of sight, sound
and touch.

‘One of the things that brain researchers have discovered in the last few years is
that your internal dialogue occupies the same auditory nerve in your ear as
external sound,’ says Hallbom. ‘The reason we forget names is because when we
meet someone, we’re often involved in some other auditory internal conversation.’
In other words, we don’t hear the person’s name because we are thinking about
what we are going to say next, or wondering what sort of impression we’re
creating.

In remembering names, the first thing that Hallbom recommends is to listen very
carefully to what they’re saying. To get the visual part, imagine that you can see
their name written on their forehead. The final step involves the sense of touch.
You can do this by letting your finger imagine what it would be like to write the
person’s name as you’re seeing it and saying it to yourself. You can also move
your finger in little movements as if you were actually making a note of it.

According to Hallbom, if you use this process with everyone you meet, it will soon
become an automatic part of who you are and you'll just do it unconsciously
whenever you meet someone new.