Crippling Anxiety: How I Beat Panic Attacks to Become a 3x USA Memory Champion | John Graham | E75
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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.
John Graham, three-time USA memory champion.
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.
A lot of the people that will listen to this podcast, they're going to sit in this board meeting and they have this great idea, but they can't speak. What would you say to them?
So how can I go in front of 400 million people and memorize 700 different things without collapsing to the ground? It's because...
John Graham, three-time USA memory champion. How cool is that? When somebody gives me their name, I don't even remember it for one second. And here he is memorizing like trizillion numbers in minutes. But John, you somehow taught yourself how to memorize. Tell me more about that.
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.
When I'm listening to this story, John, and I binge watch some of your videos, to me, that's mind blowing because I'm the person that grew up without memory. That's my identity. I'm attaching to that identity. If somebody gives me their name, I don't remember it two seconds later. I ran away from any subjects that actually needed memory. So I made sure to not go that route. And you just somehow woke up one day and decided to remember things. How is that even possible?
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.
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