John Graham
speaker
114 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
John Graham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Kids are really, really good at memory. Why? Because they use their imagination. I'm 38 years old, and my imagination is as good as any seven-year-old.
I wasn't born with a gifted memory, photographic memory, anything like that. It was all learned. As a child, I was very, very shy, reserved, cautious. So I thought, I'm going to win Grandmaster of Memory. So I trained for like four months, signed up for my first competition. My heart is pounding out of my chest and I bombed. I completely bombed in that competition.
Every moment of your life that you've ever pushed away, that you couldn't handle, it's still inside of you. It's suppressed. I was having panic attacks every single day, multiple times a day. That's when I learned it was an emotional root issue.
So how can I go in front of 400 million people and memorize 700 different things without collapsing to the ground? It's because...
Yeah, I was working a boring cubicle job in Denver for a bankruptcy office. I mean, how much more boring can you get, right? And I read an article about this book called Moonwalking with Einstein. And the subtitle is what grabbed me. It's called The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. So it was a book. It was a moment that grabbed my soul. Like it was a divine moment.
I went to Barnes & Noble. I bought the book. I read the book. So I was 27 years old at the time. I wasn't born with a gifted memory, photographic memory, anything like that. It was all learned. I took this book, I learned some techniques that involve visualization, imagination, connections, linking, making stories. And I just went all out and I started learning like this was real.
Like people could literally memorize decks of cards. Within seconds, I ultimately was able to memorize a deck of cards in 21 and a half seconds, like 52 cards in order, just to show you what's possible, right? So I just took the book and ran with it. And then years later, I became three-time champ, grandmaster of memory, international performer, all from that, just learning how to do it on my own.
I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be someone that everyone looked up to. And this was sort of an avenue for me. I thought, wow, I could be like a grandmaster. People will be in awe at what I do. I mean, it's funny because that's what happens now, right? People are in awe. It's not my motivation now, but yeah, it's, I shattered my belief that I had a bad memory when I read that book.
Because it is. It's just that it's a belief, right? We know how powerful beliefs are. But many of us don't know the alternative. We're not shown an embodiment of a person or someone who does that to know that it's possible. That's why this day and age is so powerful because we can pull up YouTube or this podcast and see, oh my gosh, that's possible. And that opens so many doors.
So we're in a very... wonderful time. And that's what happened to me. That book just shattered everything that I knew. I thought photographic memory was a thing. I thought, you know, eidetic memory was a thing. It's not. It's largely a myth, believe it or not. It's on TV. We watch too much TV and movies to be convinced of all these things, right? So I learned what the mind wants.
The mind loves visuals. The mind loves emotions. The minds love places. Like think of a restaurant. Think of a specific restaurant like Applebee's. in your hometown. I don't like Applebee's, but think of a specific restaurant.
You walk into the restaurant in your mind right now and you go, oh yeah, I remember the time the waitress spilled all over my dad or the time we had this memory or the birthday party. You remember it instantly because of that location. We attach memories to locations as well. So I use strategies that involve using what the mind wants in order to remember massive amounts of information.
And we can all do this.
Good question. I don't get asked that often. As a child, I was very, very shy, reserved, cautious. I intuitively sought out the secrets of the universe. I was very different, and I never showed that with other people. I think I tried to fit in too much, and that blinded me for years.
I just wanted to be like everyone else, but internally, and it showed up later in high school and college where I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to show my creativity to the world, but I was afraid, and We can talk about that later. There's a lot of wounding anxiety internally that suppressed what I had to bring to the world. But I always felt sort of like an alien in this world.
And maybe I am, you know, in a way. I thought that many things were possible. And I think looking back, maybe I forgot about that over all the years, just trying to fit in and be okay with the crowd.
Well, you learn, or I learned, and it goes along with wanting to be somebody, right? I said earlier, I wanted to be somebody. I learned that when the adults around me had a look of disappointment or the parents or whatever, that I was doing something wrong. And internally, you try to figure out how to avoid moments like that because they're painful.
Being embarrassed or having someone disappointed in you for your choices or what you do or your grades is extremely painful emotionally. And that's sort of the crux of where anxiety starts is you try to build your life to avoid moments like that. That's why we're always thinking ahead how to play out this scenario or what to say to this person so we don't give too much and are hurt on the inside.
And that developed my programming. And the best way to cope was just to be vanilla or neutral around people and not give my bold opinions or not to show my true self too much. Because what if that's embarrassing or what if they make fun of that or things like that? So I was a very, very reserved person for many, many years, even around close friends and family.
The panic attacks started more within the last five years. So really late. The anxiety was probably always there. When I was 13 years old, I had a chest surgery. My sternum was kind of caved in. I have sort of like a chest bowl. Like I always joked you could eat cereal out of it if I laid down. And it was kind of cool. Like everyone loved it, but I was very insecure about it.
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