Absentmindedness is not chronic

 “I can’t remember where I put my keys, where I parked my car, and I have to turn around three blocks from home to check that the deadbolt is locked. I forget where I left my glasses and even why I went into the kitchen, am I getting old?”

Misplacing things and forgetting routine things is at best irritating but is often frustrating and definitely time wasting. Absentmindedness is an affliction of the elderly but it affects us all. Yet there are tricks to make it better, regardless of your age.

Absentminded, Encarta defines it as, “tending to be preoccupied or forgetful.” And in the definition is the clue to improvement. We really don’t forget, but we were preoccupied so never really thought about what we were doing, we never had Fixed Focus so as result our mind did not make the effort to file the data, we forget because we were absentminded.

You leave the house talking on your cell phone and your kids at the same time, while locking the deadbolt and pushing the remote lock button for the car, is it any wonder you can’t remember if you locked the door? There is no Fixed Focus, locking the door was so routine that it did not make an impression in your mind so when you try to recall if you did lock the door nothing is there.

Fixed Focus, even for a moment will cure forgetfulness. Even with the kids tugging and the cell phone beeping, pause for a fraction of a second and look directly at the key in the lock. If you want to be sure to remember then see the key in the lock and visualize red paint spraying out of the lock all over you as you turn the key, it only takes a moment but it will imbed the event in your memory.

Do you forget why you went into another room? What happened is that you thought about getting something but got distracted as you got up, so the cure is to take a Fixed Focus Moment and see yourself in the other room actually picking up the book you went to get, read the title, out loud if you need to, it will work.

When you set your glasses on the coffee table, visualize the table crushing under the weight of the glasses. When I have an idea in the middle of the night I take my watch off the night stand and drop it on the floor connecting the idea to my watch in my mind. When my watch is not where it should be the next morning it triggers the idea that I wanted to remember.

You can use props to help remember, like putting the envelope you want to mail on the dashboard so you see it, reminding you to stop at the Post Office. I read about a man who would get so involved in TV that he would forget he had a roast in the oven so he puts a small fry pan on the floor in front of the TV to remind him.

The cure for absentmindeness is Fixed Focus; thoughts or actions that briefly startle the mind so it remembers.

Create a Fixed Focus Moment by exaggerating, adding color, action and emotion to the routine things you do; we remember those things that are out of the ordinary. Your memory is fine it is just over stimulated; all it needs is a bit of focus. Now where was I going to publish this…