Life is procession of events, starting at birth and ending with death. It’s catalogued by where we are, what we are doing, and who else is involved.

We experience this journey through what we see, hear touch, taste, smell and sense.

We then store these experiences as memories, with a personalised narrative attached.

This narrative gives experiences & memories meaning to us, much more than just the specifics of the event. We make our experiences mean something, especially the significant events.

It’s why two people can interpret the same event completely differently and why one person can remember the sights sounds and smells of the day, whilst others have no recollection whatsoever.

Memory formation

Insignificant events don’t get any meaning or narrative attached. Driving to work, making a cup of tea, reading most emails.

Significant events get catalogued and filed with similar events under a common narrative. The narrative becomes the primary key to memory recall, rather than having to page through individual memories Examples might be birthdays, vacations, Christmas and so on. Memorable but more similar than different.

Acute significant events (those accompanied by strong emotions) get a very personalised emotional hashtag, pinpointing how we felt during the experience. A car accident, bereavement, losing a valued item. These have unique narratives with common emotions / feelings.

The most memorable events, those accompanied by feelings of fear, get hashtags and a dedicated and highly meaningful narrative, effectively written in capital letters, and have a link added to the most powerful part of the human brain, the amygdala, home of our freeze, fight, fight survival trigger.

These fear based memories rank first in the search sequence when we recall memories. The ones which alert us to the highest risk and they’re the experiences we watch out for.

The most impactful fear based memories are those we experience at an early age, especially between the age of 4 and 9, the time when we have a rudimentary but impactful vocabulary and therefore an associated self talk.

Our experiences are converted to memory whilst we sleep. We review todays experiences from within in our short term memory and either discard them, or file them in long term memory for future use, along with their respective hashtags and narratives. Our hippocampus, which is housed right next to the amygdala, is responsible for this important work. It’s also conceivable that dreams are blips in this memory formation process, but that’s just my hypothesis.

Anyhow, memories are formed, ready for the next day . . . . .

So, why and how do we utilise this elaborate memory management system?

We use our memories to forecast our future.

Just like millions of businesses do. The past is the best prediction of the future that we can make, and to have no forecast would be unsustainable. We need to forecast where our basic survival needs come from, such as food, water, clothing and warmth. Forecast how well behave, forecast interactions with others. And forecast our outcomes.

We don’t just wake up and “exist” we wake up and execute the plan contained in our personalised, completely unconscious forecast, a forecast based on past experiences..

This forecast becomes our current, immediate, short term and long term planned reality.   Until we sleep tonight snd construct a brand new forecast.

As today’s insignificant and significant events unfold we carefully (and complete unconsciously) monitor actual events, paying special attention to events which have known hashtags, and even more attention to anything which is even remotely similar to the fear based hashtags.

That’s what memories are for, to forecast the future. Our future.

Memories should be renamed forecast-creators, they are used to predict future events, depending on where you are (location) what you are doing (event) and who is with you, or not (people) and emotions (how you feel).

When deviations to the forecast are noticed we quickly re-forecast next events, and what’s going to happen next.  (At the micro and macro level), then react (behave) accordingly. 

This is what humans call thinking.

We think about how close our reality is to our forecast, and if there’s a deviation, we think of ways to get back onto the forecast path.

We think when any of our senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) pick up similarities to past experiences.

We do this thinking when expected events occur, we think to ourselves “this is right / ok / familiar / expected”. We also do the thinking process when unexpected events occur.

Thinking is the process of anticipating or responding to inbound signals which might lead to possible variations or threats to the expected events contained in our forecast.

Then, when we sleep tonight, we file our memories and dream up our forecast for the next day. 

So, if you choose to extrapolate that out, life is in fact a series of re-enacted experiences creating almost unavoidable patterns or cycles of events.

We truly are creatures of habit.

Here are a couple of examples

Take the girl who experienced bullying at school, she stored that in acute memory, maybe also with the fear hashtag.

She added a narrative that there was something wrong with her, so each night she creates a key part of tomorrows forecast “don’t be in the wrong” 

In adult life she’s found a successful career in sales where not being in the wrong manifests itself as fear of failure; a great sales behaviour. The downside can be her competitiveness is overwhelming and she can also be prone to procrastination, because if she doesn’t make a decision she can’t make the wrong decision so can’t be in the wrong.

Or take the boy who frequently experienced criticism from an acutely disapproving and judgemental parent.  Whatever he did was never quite good enough to gain their praise or approval.

He catalogued these frequent experiences under the common narrative of not being good enough 

His forecast is consistent, he sets exceptionally high standards as a perfectionist nowadays, aiming to ensure he is good enough..  He hates criticism, yet he’s guilty himself of frequently dispensing it.  

He has a great career in design and produces amazing work, however his perfectionist streak can lead to over working and a feeling of isolation because if he keeps contact to a minimum he keeps criticism low too.

Can we change our forecast, and therefore our outcomes?

Any salesman will tell you a forecast is only ever wrong or lucky! And in this case your luck is in.

You can change your forecast, and therefore the path of your life, it’s takes two specific steps.

Step one is to determine where “life” isn’t providing the forecast you like.

This step requires you to become acutely self-aware of these three aspects of memory formation, storage and retrieval.

1. Location: If you’re not happy or excited about where you are (spiritually, emotionally, physically, work, home, socially), you might consider starting the journey of relocation.  

2. Events: If you don’t like what you’re doing, or the events going on around you (now, tomorrow or in future) then do whatever you are doing differently or do something different.

3. People: If the people you are invested in (spiritually, physically, emotionally) reciprocate then you are very blessed.  If they don’t, they’ll change as you change, so don’t worry too much about the people.  The right people will always be there at the right time for the right reasons.

Step two

Pinpoint and change the narrative which you’ve added to the significant and acutely significant experiences in your forecast creating memories. The ones which drive the undesirable behaviour, the behaviour which leads you to be whom you are with (or not with), what you are doing (or not doing) and where you are (in the widest sense of the word).

Reframe the narrative you’ve added to your memories. You’ve unconsciously made those events mean more than needed and you carry that meaning in your forecast today.

Change what you make things mean, and you’ll change the memory hashtag, the forecast and therefore the behaviours.

The girl might change the narrative to make it mean that it was the bully who had the problem, not her, and begin to appreciate that she can be in the wrong and won’t feel persecuted for it.

The boy might reframe his experience by looking at his grandparents and realising that his critical parent was only the way he/she was because of their upbringing and not as a result of the boys actions, and remind himself that he is good enough.

Thanks for reading.

Paul Roebuck
Behavioural Psychotherapist
PGCEE, FETC (A.Dip).
paulsroebuck@gmail.com
+44 7838 371155