…with Gary Moss

When I play scrabble I want to be an old elephant. They say, if you blow into an elephant’s trunk, it will always remember you. (Big Deal! If you blew into my trunks I would always remember you too.)

I think the point is. . . we all have the ability to remember. The simple truth is that we only chose to use it some of the time; and significant emotional events, like trunk blowing, are unforgettable.

Some years ago I became a teaching assistant at The Dale Carnegie Class. It was in part related to the teachings in the book ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People‘. On the first day of the class, 30 – 40 strangers would walk into the room. The teacher would tell everyone about the power connected to remembering peoples’ names. Then we began a two hour exercise to demonstrate the memory that we didn’t know we possessed. At the end of the 2 hours we each knew the first and last names of every person in the room.

Magic? No, not at all. A systematic technique applied by highly motivated people.

In the scrabble world I hear it all the time: “I can’t learn all that.” “I don’t learn that way.” “I’ll never be able to do that.”

The whiners and moaners are responsible for their own self-fulfilled prophesy. The truth is, unless you have a physical problem like Alzheimer’s, you most likely have a potential for remembering much, much more. . . IF YOU CHOOSE TO.

I also meet a set of people in the scrabble world who come in swinging. At the onset of discovering club and tournament scrabble, I was one out of that mold. At first, the seasoned players demolished me; I lost every game by a huge margin. But as I began to learn all of those strange words and I developed a plan, I found that I began winning.

Part of the secret to developing a skill is that I perceived the learning, including the struggle, to be fun. Others who don’t see it as fun, simply avoid the process. They might still play the game, but they accept their lower level in the ranks.

During my lifetime I’ve met a dyslexic scrabble player who achieved a ranking in the top 100 on the NSA charts.

During my lifetime I’ve met a blind scrabble player who took 1st Place in a tournament against sighted players.

During my lifetime I’ve watcher a watched a quadriplegic player who played, while laying on his stomach on a gurney, with a pencil held in his teeth, pointing to the letters that his assistant placed onto the board. (He was ranked in the 1500′s)

I’m convince that if you can read this, then you can remember more. Ready? Set? Goal.