Today, we’ll talk about how your brain learns and why your biological memory systems can help you reach your goals or hold you back from success. Stay tuned and I’ll share one strategy to use those memory systems to your advantage and help your brain move toward success!

There’s a famous patient in neuropsychology named Henry Molaison who changed how we understand memory. Henry suffered from severe seizures, which limited his daily activities. Doctors tried medications, but nothing gave him relief. As a last effort, doctors removed his temporal lobes from his brain. Although this gave him relief from his seizures, he couldn’t remember anything before his surgery in 1953!

Although he worked with his doctor, Dr. Brenda Milner consistently for over 50 years, each time she came to visit he introduced himself as if he never met her before. From these studies with Henry we learned that our brain has different types of memories.

We can take what we learned from Henry to help us understand why you learn bad habits (without even being aware), how you can unlearn these negative habits, and how to find more time in your day.

Show Highlights

[01:18] Learning from a case study of a man named Henry, known as “Patient HM.”

[02:38] Patient HM’s background.

[05:34] How Henry’s memory improved although he didn’t remember doing the tasks.

[06:07] Explicit or declarative memory and implicit memory and how we use these types of memories.

[07:19] Practicing bad habits will keep you from succeeding.

[10:42] Our brain’s hard wiring learning systems make it easy for us to learn bad habits.

[12:17] Weekly challenge activity: Keep an activity log during the week. 

[13:47] Check out my personality quiz - link below!

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