Miri Swift's Key Ideas from Besser denken
by Hartwig Hanser

Perceptual filters influence our ability to remember.

Memories are stored via perception, which is influenced by a series of filters:

•    physiological (sensory)
•    emotional
•    psychological (interests)
•    knowledge
•    language

Everyone believes there is only one way of perceiving things. But perceiving always means interpreting and evaluating.

This is why nowadays perception is described as construction and remembering as reconstruction.

Only a recall stimulus brings learned memories into the focus of our consciousness.

A trained brain remembers better, also its owner is healthier.

Go on mental walks.

The hippocampus functions as a bridge between short- and long-term memory. New material is transferred to long-term memory while we sleep.

Many act completely wrong before exams. They fill up the limited hippocampal memory until late at night and then sleep too little, so the hippocampus cannot do its job properly. Everything that could not be transferred to the cortex is ruthlessly displaced by new material and lost.

We cannot remember anything long term by pure memorization without understanding. Cramming is mere pseudo-learning.

Most of us have a preferred input for new information. As a rule, this is also the sensory channel through which it is best remembered. Find out which way you prefer to receive information. When you find yourself in a situation where you need to learn something new quickly, you can pour the material into the form that suits you best. It also allows you to recognize where your weak points lie. These can then be specifically trained.

If you take in new information with several sensory channels, it is easier to remember it, as the content is saved in several different areas of the brain.

Stress and problems can impair memory performance. The brain simply switches off when it is mentally overloaded. Instead of brain jogging, it is therefore better to identify mental stress and try to reduce it. Relaxation methods can also help the memory.

Everything we have ever learned is part of our metaphorical knowledge network. To find out which threads are connected, we have to follow our own associations. Being able to register our own associations is the basis for differentiated thinking.

Our passive knowledge always exceeds our active knowledge many times over.

Completely free association often fails because of the compulsion to consider every possible solution.

Some restrictions are justified and should be respected. It is often more useful to look for answers within thought patterns and mental pigeonholes than outside them.

If framework conditions or principles can be identified that any solutions to a specific problem must adhere to, the search for the optimal recipe will be much more productive. Many impractical ideas can be filtered out from the outset. This allows us to gain a quicker insight into the alternatives that are actually feasible.

Feelings are essential for good decisions.

If you think back to moments when you made bad decisions, you often realize that you had a bad feeling - you just didn't listen to it. To prevent this from happening in the future, it is important to pay close attention to the body's warning signals and consciously take them into account when making decisions.

Because these signals come from personal experience, they usually provide us with reliable clues as to what is good for us and what should be avoided.

Paying attention to your body is an indispensable aid to living well and making wise decisions.

If you want to improve your self-regulation, you should only worry about your own experience and your personal evaluation system.

What the rest of the world thinks is completely irrelevant in this context.

How to realize good resolutions:

1. Keep a logbook
2. Identify triggers
3. Establish a new neural network

Unfortunately, schools and universities often teach us that writing language has to sound weighty and that it is not enough to let the content work on its own.

True to the motto: if you have little to say, at least do it with a lot of bluster.

Worse still, incomprehensible words can also be used to deliberately disguise things.

Feelings arise within us based on the meaning we attach to things. We can decide whether we focus on the negative or positive aspects, whether we see something as a loss or a gain.

Let's not see problems of any kind as a nuisance to be avoided at all costs, but as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Always do what is most important first. Simply leave everything else to the side. We have to learn to put up with things remaining undone. You'll be amazed at how little difference it often makes: either someone else takes care of it, the matter takes care of itself or it doesn't even matter.