You are making your morning cuppa, and as you remove the top off the milk carton, your phone rings. In order to have a hot cuppa at the end of your call, according to the law of evaporation, do you add the milk before or after your call?

Believe it or not, this scenario is the ONLY piece of knowledge I can recall from two years of studying senior chemistry! No doubt, I was taught other interesting and valuable information. However, none of it seemed relevant to me at the time, so my brain discarded the content in order to keep space for knowledge that may serve me better. 

Selective retention is something that our brain does on a daily basis. Despite this, a whole lot of useless information finds its way into the filing cabinet in our heads, which can be handy if you’re a game show contestant or a regular at Trivia Night at the bowls club (Thursday, by the way).

Since our brain has limited storage capacity, it makes sense that we prioritise information that is relevant to us and will be useful to how we want to live. We can easily clutter our minds with the contents of every post on social media or multiple series of our favourite Netflix show, but what might we be sacrificing by storing this subject matter in our neurones? Huge advances in technology mean that our world today is very different from times past. Our brain was never designed to absorb and store the massive amounts of information that we are now exposed to.

When we downsized our home recently, I continually had to ask myself: Do I really need this? Can I justify the valuable space needed for this item? The same audit could be done on what we feed our brains. What knowledge do you want to want to learn that you can use to improve your life? It might be knowledge that will help you reach unfulfilled goals, enhance your career, open the door to an enjoyable pastime or even enrich your relationships.

Storing information about another person’s world is a fundamental component of friendship. Remembering someone’s birthday, enquiring after her sick relative, baking his favourite cake; these thoughtful gestures tell a person that knowing their world is important to you. We make room in our minds for those we care about. We remember their important dates, their likes, their challenges. Such knowledge strengthens our connection. We are all wired with a longing to be known by another person. The deeper the knowledge, the closer the connection.

What do you want to store in your brain? Do you need a declutter process in order to retain and access more important content that is relevant to your life? Thanks to senior chemistry, I can access knowledge that tells me the rate of cooling evaporation will be slowed down by adding milk to my cuppa before I answer the phone. That might be the most useful information you retain today!

Linda Gray
 linda@relationshipsanctuary.com.au
 0401 517 243