The 5 things I learned in two months of meditation
According to research done in Harvard, I have a new brain now. Well, perhaps not quite, since the participants in the study clocked an average of 27 minutes a day over two months, whereas I'm averaging 20 minutes a day, six days a week. So I'll give my new brain a little more time to develop.
Nevertheless, It's been around two months since I started a (almost) daily meditation practice. This has not been my first attempt at meditating regularly, but I find it easier now than couple years ago, when I last tried to get into the habit. There are a few reasons why that is, which I will get to later in this article.
The approach I use is called vipassana, or mindfulness/insight meditation. It is simply the practice of being fully present in the moment, becoming aware of your breathing, other sensations, sounds, and even thoughts as they appear in the awareness. Too often we get carried away by our thinking. This practice helps you recognise when that happens, and return your attention to the present moment.
Meditation also makes you more aware of the fact that your self is not the same as your thinking. Thoughts arise spontaneously to the awareness, but since there is also a part of you that can observe those thoughts, the thoughts themselves cannot be what you truly are. If that were the case, then who or what is doing the observing?
But why meditate in the first place? I have known for quite a few years already about the research and positive outcomes associated with meditation, but that knowledge alone has not been enough to start doing it regularly. How many people smoke even though they are fully aware of the consequences? Behaviour change takes more than knowing something intellectually.
As you might know, I'm a huge advocate of podcasts and audio books. They are a wonderful way to learn new things utilising time–such as commuting, cleaning up the apartment, and long walks–that would otherwise go to waste. I have two new favourites: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, which is so well thought out and narrated that even though I'm not a history buff, I am completely drawn into the stories, which range from protestant reformation to Genghis Khan, and to the morality and ethics behind the atomic bomb. My other new favourite is The Tim Ferriss Show.
Tim does mostly interviews of people who can easily be counted as the top 1% in their field, whether it's venture capital, entrepreneurship, human performance, writing, coaching, arts or innovation. For example, most recently he did an hour+ long interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. To listen to Arnold speak in Nordic Business Forum would have cost you several hundred euros. The podcast you can download for free.
After listening to a few episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show, it is impossible not to notice how many of these world-class people mention their meditation habit. Josh Waitzkin, who coaches top-level athletes, finance managers, and other business people, even claims that meditation is one of the key practices for high-level performance improvement. Chase Jarvis meditates, so does Pixar's president Ed Catmull, and most recently The Governator mentioned that a year of Transcendental Meditation changed his life.
I thought, with this many people vouching for meditation, maybe I should give it another chance.
Now that I have two months of regular practice under my belt, I feel confident in sharing some of the lessons learned.
1. It's ok to be comfortable
The last time I tried meditating, sitting cross-legged on the floor or on a sofa, my back started aching real bad after a few minutes. Soon the pain made it almost impossible to concentrate.
You don't need to be in a lotus position to meditate. There's even a thing called walking meditation. If you experience pain like me, try sitting on a chair. An upright position is preferable, though, in order to not get drowsy and fall asleep.
Nowadays I sit on a hefty cushion on the floor, cross-legged, with a pillow between my back and a wall, so I can lean a little bit and thus avoid back pain.
2. It helps to get some help, especially when getting started
I don't think I would have gotten where I am without this How to Meditate -introductory article by Sam Harris (who was also interviewed in The Tim Ferriss Show), and his guided meditations. For the first two or three weeks half my sessions were done while listening to them. During the other sessions I listened to ambient ocean or rain sounds, which I found on Spotify.
Yes, it's ok to listen to music, ambient sounds, or whatever else you find helpful–especially if the environment is a bit noisy. I avoid music with lyrics, though, as that seems to make it more difficult to keep from getting lost in thought.
Now I mostly use Sattva (available for iOS and Android) for ambient soundtrack and to track how much time I spend meditating.
3. Meditation is exercise for the mind
If you want to get in a better shape physically, you wouldn't go to the gym and quit after the first day, when you realise that you can't do a 2.5 times bodyweight deadlift. You start with the weight you can manage and build strength gradually. The key is to keep practicing, not to reach an arbitrary goal.
I find it useful to approach meditation with the same mindset. It is a form of exercise, but instead of targeting a muscle, it's targeting the brain. Don't get frustrated if you seem unable to quiet your mind and constantly lose yourself in thoughts. Each time you notice having been lost in thought, and return again to the sensation of breathing, is like doing another repetition in the gym.
Gradually it becomes easier to quiet the mind, and you might also start noticing some rather exciting new sensations, one of which could be described as being hyperaware of everything within your sphere of experience. At least for me this is something that has started to happen of late during my practice.
4. Know your whys
It's easier to get motivation for doing something when you are well aware of why you are doing it. When it comes to meditation, there are multiple studied benefits. For me the main goal was to better cope with an uncertain time in my life (no income since January, trying to develop my own business and find new opportunities), without succumbing to anxiety or depression. So far the results have been pretty amazing. Although it would of course be impossible to draw a causal link from meditation to staying positive, as I can't say for sure what would have happened if I hadn't started meditating.
Secondary goal was to see if I can increase the ability of my unconscious mind to generate creative insights. I have realised, especially after I started teaching myself programming, that many of the more difficult problems do not get solved by using force. Instead, detaching yourself from the task at hand, and giving time for the unconscious mind to come up with an answer is a better and more effortless method. Also, according to Josh Waitzkin, learning how to effectively use the unconscious mind is another key skill of the high-performing people.
5. Find your time and stick to it
Figure out when is the best time for you to meditate. I have found there to be a significant difference between mornings, afternoons and evenings. It is a lot easier to concentrate in the morning, after breakfast and a cup of coffee. The quality of the practice is better, and it also gives a great start and clarity of thought for the rest of the day.
Being consistent with the timing and meditating every day–even if it's just for ten minutes or less–will also help in turning it into a habit.
Did I pique your interest? If you decide to try meditation, let me know how it goes in the comments. Also, if you know any good resources on the topic I'd be happy to hear about them.
How to use reframing to destroy a limiting belief
I think the topic of liming beliefs falls into "personal development basics," so to speak, but it is something that's useful to think about every now and then. It's also a topic I have never written about before, so hopefully it will be of interest to you :)
Now, what exactly is a limiting belief? Let's start with some examples:
I love photography but I'm never going to be good enough to make it for living.
It's always someone rich and famous who gets the kind of girl/guy I want.
I was bullied as a kid which made me an introvert, and because of that I can never become successful in relationships.
I am not smart enough to do well in business.
I would love to write a book, but I don't have the talent/patience/creativity.
My kids don't respect me because I don't have a well-paying job.
Women/men don't like me because I'm fat.
I'm overweight because of my genes, so I can never become fit.
As I've written before, our interpretation of the world and what happens around us is largely based on our beliefs. These beliefs can be roughly divided into two groups; positive and negative, or enabling and limiting. It's the negative, limiting beliefs that prevent us from achieving what we want in life, whereas the positive, enabling beliefs support us when we're reaching for our goals.
If you have a limiting belief that "you're not smart enough to do well in business" - even if you would say it modestly and still think you're pretty clever - it will inevitably affect your unconscious mind and how you behave. The only job of a belief is to prove itself true, and if you keep hammering that kind of belief into your head, sooner or later you will start to act according to it. Worse are of course the limiting beliefs that you really deep down know to be true.
It's worth to consider for a while where these limiting beliefs come from. I would say that there are roughly two sources; external influences and inner reasoning. By external influences I mean situations where a limiting belief is imprinted on us by outside forces, and by inner reasoning I mean our own thought processes; how we seek to understand, interpret, and explain events that happen around us, and consequently create beliefs on how the world works.
The external influence can be something our friends or parents have led us to believe, such as "You can't get a good job unless you get a university degree." We're also continuously bombarded by messages in media that guys need to be tall, have 6-pack abs, tan etc. to land a beautiful woman, whereas women are led to believe they need to be blonde, super skinny, yet paradoxically maintain large round breasts and small but firm butt (unless you're Jennifer Lopez or Shakira, that is).
There have been different beauty standards for ages and that is not the real issue. The problem lies deeper: As we almost inevitably fail to meet those standards, we start to believe that we can't have the kind of guy/girl that those same standards say we should desire. As we start to believe that and get into relationships, we can't escape this underlying, gnawing feeling that we have somehow 'settled' for that relationship because we can't do better. It's not what we really, truly desire, but it's good enough. Now obviously it's not a very healthy basis for a successful long-term companionship if both partners feel from the beginning that something is missing, that something could be better than it is.
Us humans have a built-in tendency to create patterns in our quest to understand the surrounding world. This tendency has helped us greatly to survive as a species, and to create all the amazing technology we have today. However, it works for both good and bad. We learn rapidly by associating different things to each other, giving birth to these patterns. We have been doing this already since we were toddlers; if we want mom's attention we simply need to cry and we get it. Or if we eat a lot of chocolate cake and then feel sick, our brains create a connection between eating the chocolate cake and the feeling of sickness that follows.
I think it's important to realize, that being able to create these kinds of connections is a very powerful ability. What if we didn't have it? Eating a chocolate cake and the feeling of sickness would be two completely separate events. We would be blind to the causality. Now just think how advanced this ability is in humans! All the sciences are based on it. Without being able to observe different phenomena and create patterns out of them, we would have only a rudimentary understanding of the world.
The problem with this amazing ability is, that it can also do us a disservice by creating connections that are false and potentially harmful to our wellbeing. A lot of people live their lives locked inside a limited set of rules. Rules that are conveyed from their beliefs. If you have observed as a child that other people in school get better grades than you, reasoned that maybe it's because you're stupid, and then started to really believe it, how do you think having that kind of belief will affect your future life? You're creating a reality in which it is an impossibility for you to get those good grades, or otherwise achieve same things the "smart people" do.
Or let's say you approach a woman in a bar who turns you down, and then witness another guy hit it off with her. Your built-in tendency starts to come up with reasons why the other guy was successful and you weren't. Maybe he was taller than you, so that's why you failed, or maybe he had more expensive clothes.
In the end it doesn't matter whether or not a belief is true. The limiting belief that "I'm overweight because of my genes, so I can never become as fit as the people in beauty magazines." might very well be spot-on accurate, but what if there are two people who both have similar genetic disadvantage, yet only one of them carries this belief? I'm certain that the person who has the limiting belief will not even bother trying to become fit or otherwise improve her health by exercising, whereas the other person keeps on working out, eating healthy and consequently improves her quality of life!
In essence, limiting beliefs create boundaries. They tell you what you can't do, what you can't achieve, what you can't be. Switching these negative limiting beliefs into positive enabling ones can hugely increase your faith and confidence in your abilities, and what is actually possible in life.
We have been creating these beliefs - both positive and negative - all our lives in our attempt to understand what is going on around us. And most people are completely oblivious to the fact that they have these beliefs. So the first step is to become aware that you have them, and then assess them critically. Which beliefs are such that help you achieve more in life, and which ones are holding you back? After this it's time to manually unlink those harmful connections and dismantle the limiting beliefs.
These beliefs usually contain three parts: external behavior, inner condition, and a link between the two. Here are couple examples:
"I am not smart enough to do well in business."
External behavior: do well in business
Inner condition: not smart enough
Link: to (do)
"Women/men don't like me because I'm fat."
External behavior: women/men don't like me
Inner condition: I'm fat
Link: because
Reframing is a cognitive technique that can be used to blast those limiting beliefs into oblivion. It can be used to destroy both existing beliefs and ones that are just starting to form inside your mind. In fact, it can become a very powerful tool to learn to recognize a limiting belief in the making, while the connection between external behavior and inner condition is still being created, and use reframing to prevent it from gaining foothold.
Basically reframing means consciously arguing against, or reasoning with the belief you have created. If you take time to think about a belief you have and apply reframing to it, you'll notice that the belief is most likely irrational and cannot be true, so why not just abandon it? After all, you are a rational person, aren't you?
Here are some ways to reframe a limiting belief. Let's use "Women/men don't like me because I'm fat." as an example:
Counter example: Think of a time when a woman/man has liked you, or liked someone else despite the person being fat.
Be specific: How does a guy/girl move from not knowing you to not liking you step-by-step simply because you're fat? The idea of there being an instant 'I see you - you're fat - I don't like you' causality is ridiculous, so what is really going on there? If you can't figure it out, then why are you still having this belief?
Outcome orientation: Think about what is going to happen to your success level if you keep thinking this way? What if you'd think differently?
"All"-ness framing: Do you think every single fat person in the history of the world has gone through their lives without another man/woman liking them?
Reframe external behavior: People fancy different things. Not all men/women are bothered by you being fat. Some might even find it sexy.
Reframe internal state: It's not that men/women don't like you, but you're probably not what they are ideally looking for in the opposite sex. This means you have an advantage, because you can come under the radar and surprise them with your other good qualities like sense of humor or wittiness.
One of the nicest examples of reframing (although it wasn't called that in the actual study, the principle is still the same) in real life that I've read about was done in a secondary school where the kids were divided into two groups for workshops. Both groups were taught study skills, but the other one also received a special module where they were taught that brain is not static, but more like a muscle that can be improved by working it out and doing proper exercises.
As a result, the kids who began to see their brains as something that develops and becomes better with practice started improving their study habits and grades. For me this is a clear example of how the limiting belief of "I'm not good at school because I was born stupid." was reframed. The walls built by that belief were torn down, and it became possible for the kids to do something that they couldn't have done before.
Please share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments! If you know of more ways to reframe limiting beliefs, let the rest of us know! :)
Evolving yourself into your best self
One of the biggest life lessons I had in 2009 was that my personality is in a state of constant change. The change may be small, subtle, and quiet or take big, life-changing leaps, but it's there and it's continuous. The fact that personality changes over time is not a big surprise in itself; I think everyone can take a look back a few years and immediately see how they were different back then compared to who they are now. However, I've hold the assumption that it takes major life experiences - such as break-ups, marriages, parents getting divorced, moving to live on your own for the first time etc. - for a personality to change, but considering everything that has happened in my own thought and behavior patterns during 2009, I have had to abandon that belief.
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of psychological personality is
a) the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.
b) the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.
In psychology, the act of learning implies behavior change. Meaning, that when something is learned, the behavior of the learner changes as a result. If personality then is an organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of an individual, learning changes also the personality of the learner. This does not require major life experiences. With open and curious mind it's easily possible to learn something new every single day, and the cumulative outcome of that learning is a changed personality.
It's very important to realize, that no one is born more confident, social, outgoing, competitive, creative etc. than anyone else. Your early life experiences are paramount in the forming of your personality, which affects how you behave and think in different situations. Although your personality greatly determines how you think and act, the way you think and act also affects your personality. It's a two-way connection.
Want to become more social? Study how those you consider more social than you behave in group situations. How do they look at people? How do they listen to others? What kind of body language they use? How do they project their voice? And most importantly, how do they behave differently compared to you? What is your current situation, and what needs to be changed to get from where you are to where you want to be?
You can learn a great deal by observing other people. After all, it is by watching others that we have learnt most of the essentials in life such as walking and speaking. We have an innate tendency to model our behavior after those around us. Just watch how two best friends mirror each others' wording, phrases, or body language and you know what I'm talking about.
So, in order to actually become more social, and have that characteristic become an ingrained, natural part of your personality, you need to first start behaving like a social person. Make a conscious effort to act differently than the "regular you" would. Use the information you've gained when observing others and model your behavior to fit the image of a social person you've created in your mind. It's not easy, and it takes focus and willpower to do something that doesn't come naturally to you, but the more you do it the easier it gets. This is a sign of the new behavior starting to become an integrated part of who you are.
If I had been told over a year ago that this kind of personality change is possible, I probably wouldn't have believed it. However, considering how much my own personality has changed during the past year, I can't really deny it either. For example, I began to build my confidence simply by starting to look people in the eye whenever I was walking outside. Then I focused on doing it while I was listening and speaking to others. And yes, it took quite a bit of conscious effort at first, but nowadays I don't even need to think about it. It comes automatically. After getting used to maintaining eye-contact, I began to study and focus on adopting more subtle signs of a confident person such as how to greet people, how to enter a room, how to take control of my environment, how to speak in a more confident manner etc. There is still work to do and room for improvement, but it's easy to recognize how I feel much more confident than I did only a few months ago, before I started to make this conscious behavior change.
Two more things you can do to help the process are visualization and having inner discussions inside your head. Visualize being in social situations and acting the way you would like to act. Imagine yourself being the soul of the party, imagine people enjoying having conversations with you. This might sound like fantasy stuff, but many top-level athletes, public speakers, and other successful people practice visualization. There is also a lot of literacy about its importance and effectiveness. And anyway, it's not like you're going to lose anything by doing it ;)
By inner discussions I mean talking to yourself like you're your own best friend. It's ridiculous how many people constantly criticize and put themselves down in their thoughts. Instead, psyche yourself up when going to a social situation. Say to yourself: "Bro, you look awesome tonight! Everyone is waiting for you to come so they can have a chat with you. You will leave a great impression on everyone as you talk with them in your calm, confident manner. You know and they know, that if you weren't going to show up the evening wouldn't be nearly as much fun as it's going to be now. All thanks to you!"
I believe strongly, that the inner discussions - or thought-chatter as some like to call it - and visualizations have an impact on your subconscious mind. I also believe, that we are in much less control of our actions than we would like to admit. Instead, the subconscious mind is steering us towards different paths, different decisions, depending on how we think and what our beliefs are. By visualizing yourself as a very social person, you're giving instructions to your subconscious mind that this social person is who you really are. As a result, the way you behave may start to change without you even noticing it at first, as it all feels very natural and you are just 'being yourself'.
A study [download PDF] was done in 2007 that very profoundly demonstrates just how powerful the mind can be, and how much power visualization has: A group of athletes were instructed to visualize exercising their hip muscles, and without any actual gym training or physical activity they had similar strength gains (24% increase in physical strength) as a control group who went to the gym and did the actual hip exercises (28% increase in physical strength). Apparently the mind cannot make a difference between real and imagined experiences. Considering that these people actually had significant physiological changes as a result of what they imagined, just think how much visualization could help to change your behavior, attitudes, beliefs, or way of thinking!
Your personality changes whether you like or not. The big questions is; are you willing to take responsibility of who you are now, and to consciously start guiding that personality change in order to become who you want to be, to become your best self?
Remember everything by understanding how memory works
This technique is something I discovered while reading the brilliant book Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown, who is probably the best illusionist on the planet. The whole memory trick is so juicy that I can't resist passing it forward.
What makes something memorable?
Have you ever considered why we remember certain events from childhood with amazing detail, but are having trouble to recall the faces we met at bus stop in the morning, or the taste of last night's dinner? Apparently, the brain is more apt to remember unusual and vivid images instead of things that are bland and ordinary. This can be further reinforced by having an emotional reaction to the image. I think the easiest way to demonstrate what I really mean by this is to try the linking system as explained by Brown. Below is a list of words. Take a minute and see if you can memorize them in the correct order:
cat
potato
painting
forest
baseball
cow
pencil
spaghetti
book
coffee
television
carpet
piano
canoe
cable
Easy? I think not. And what if you leave the list for 30 minutes. Would you still remember it? I don't think so.
So, how do you then memorize this list in the correct order with much less effort? The answer is using unusual and vivid images, linking them to each other and - if need be - further emphasizing the memory of the image by considering your own reaction and feelings to what you see or experience. To understand what I mean, just read through the below descriptions of images that I created in order to remember the items on the list:
Cat/potato - An orange cat (imagine Garfield) is balancing on a brown potato, trying to get it rolling to move forward. The cat has big round eyes and makes me want to pet her.
Potato/painting - I see a painting on the wall, with frames made out of round potatoes. The potatoes are starting to rot and the smell is making me nauseated.
Painting/forest - I am walking in a Lord of the Rings style elven forest with soothing dim blue illumination and paintings of different sizes hanging from the branches.
Forest/baseball - There is a perfectly round clearing in the middle of a forest where different animals of the forest are playing baseball. The sky is downcast but I still feel an urge to join the game.
Baseball/cow - A baseball player is hitting the ball, and as soon as it's speeding away he jumps on a cow and rides to the first base. I find the whole "bovine baseball" game amusing.
Cow/pencil - I am checking for pencils in a local office supply store, when a cow walks casually to me and asks which one I'd recommend.
Pencil/spaghetti - I am preparing dinner at home - spaghetti bolognese - but find out that I'm out of pasta. It seems perfectly ok to take a box of wooden pencils instead and pour them to the boiling water on the kettle.
Spaghetti/book - There is a book on my living room table with a string of spaghetti as a bookmark. I open the book and eat the spaghetti. Tastes like ink, paper and dust.
Book/coffee - I reach out for a book on the table, but find all pages wet and brown. They make my fingers feel wet too and when I open the book an aroma of coffee hits my nostrils. I feel a little angry that someone has poured a cup of coffee on my book.
Coffee/television - I am drinking a cup of coffee and hear a faint noise from the bottom of the coffee mug as I am taking the last sips. There is a small TV screen on the bottom of the mug with a sitcom on.
Television/carpet - I enter a strange room and feel disoriented; looking down I see flat TV screens on the floor, whereas on the walls there are carpets hanging.
Carpet/piano - I need to move a heavy piano but it seems impossible and I am getting a little frustrated. I am trying to get a carpet under it so I could then move it easier.
Piano/canoe - I have managed to get the Piano downstairs and to the river. Now I am trying to get it to a canoe that seems too small for it. The canoe is also constantly moving in the surf.
Canoe/cable - I am sitting on a canoe but without a paddle. Instead, I am pulling on a cable that hangs in the air between opposing shores. I am about midway through but pulling is hurting my hands and they are starting to turn red from blood.
Try seeing the images clearly in your mind with vivid colors and notice your own reaction to what you are seeing. You can use the images I created or create your own. Go through the list of words just once or twice using this method and see if you can remember them (you can test this by taking a blank piece of paper and writing down the list from memory). How about trying to remember them few hours or few days later? I find myself remembering lists created with this method still few weeks after first memorizing them.
Are you beginning to see how useful this memory trick can be for storing shopping lists in your mind? There are drawbacks, though. First of all, you have to use some other method to remember the first word on the list, as from that word all the other words can be remembered using the links you created. And what if you forget some link in the middle? Maybe the image you created was not vivid enough or you did not see it in enough detail to create a memory imprint. Now all the words following the missing link are potentially lost as well.
Don't worry. There is an even better memory trick. This was just a warm-up to familiarize you with the basic concepts of creating vivid images and associating them with other objects.
A mental route
This trick is known as the loci system. Instead of linking the things that need to be remembered to each other, you will link them to a specific location along a path that is stored in your memory. This is the actual method I use to remember what to get from grocery without having to write anything down. Basically the loci system means linking vivid images to specific places along a familiar real-life route. The locations are fixed along the route and should not be changed. Different images represent the things that need to be remembered.
Let me further clarify by using my actual shopping list loci as an example. I take these steps pretty much every time I go to the grocery, so they are natural for me to use (even when I actually take another route, such as go to the grocery straight from work, I can still easily recall this one). I underlined the actual words that serve as locations, but provided also the context so you better understand how this route works for me:
Grab keys and wallet from computer table
Grab bag from shelf
Put shoes on in the hall
Go to the elevator
Get out from the front door of the building
Open the metal gate leading to the street
Pass a big yellow mailbox
Go over the bridge towards shopping mall
Pass the kebab restaurant
Go up a small flight of stairs
Go to the entrance of the shopping mall
Take an escalator down to the grocery
As I live alone and like to have fresh food as often as possible, I rarely need to remember more than 10 different items. To see how loci system works, let's attach my shopping list to the above locations in a similar way words were linked to each other earlier:
Computer table - What the hell! Someone has poured milk on my table! It's on the keyboard and dripping to the floor. I feel my socks getting wet.
Shelf - I am about to grab my bag when I accidentally step on a tomato on the floor. Just great... Now I have to clean this up!
Hall - I am putting on my shoes when I realize they're made of ham! It smells a bit and I'm having hard time with the shoelaces since my hands are getting greasy and slippery.
Elevator - Some punk has written "Heinz" on the elevator wall using ketchup.
Front door - There are colored eggs in neat rows marking the way from elevator to the front door.
Metal gate - When I am opening the gate I see a herd of cows running past on the street.
Mailbox - The mailbox is made of cheese and I can see letters inside through the holes in it.
Bridge - Looking down from the bridge I see a whole road covered with bags of frozen vegetables.
Restaurant - The whole front of the restaurant is covered with hundreds of stacked yogurt cans.
and so on...
In my opinion there is no need to be specific with the mental images. It is enough that you understand the proper association from the image that you created. For example, I am not going to buy a herd of cows in the grocery, but instead when I recall the image I immediately associate it with meatloaf.
Unlike with linking words to each other, with this system you are not stuck even if you forget an image along the route. You can always just skip that loci and move to the next one.
This same method can be used to remember tasks, to-do lists and so on. You just need to create a mental image of a familiar route with static locations, associate that specific route with something such as "things to do today", and then attach images to the locations on that path. The really fun part starts when you create multiple routes - or what can also be called a memory palace. For example, each room in your house could be its own path with multiple locations. Just make sure that the locations are distinct and you always go through them in a fixed order. This way they become familiar quickly as you walk along the route in your mind a few times.
You can also create an imaginary "hub" with multiple doors, each of which leads to some familiar route with its own loci (e.g. childhood home, workplace, a friend's house, favorite park etc.). It is also possible to create completely imaginary loci, such as the insides of an alien spaceship or ancient tomb. However, I do not consider it worth the extra effort, since real life routes and locations are already imprinted in your mind and can be used just as effectively.
Try this out, have fun with it and let me know what you think. It might take a bit of getting used to at first, but soon you'll notice yourself speeding through the routes and creating mental images with ease. With e.g. shopping lists it becomes very easy and quick as you are likely to buy certain items over and over again, so you will find yourself reusing images created earlier and just placing them on the different locations along a route.