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We’re diving into the myth of memory and how it messes with our heads, especially when we argue with family. You know how it goes—two people recall the same convo and end up at each other's throats over who said what. I used to do this all the time with my sister. But guess what? Our memories are not as perfect as we think they are. I’ll share some insights that helped me stop the fighting, and it’s all about recognizing that both sides can be right and wrong. By understanding how memory works, we can chill out, have more compassion, and maybe even stop the endless debates over who remembers things correctly.

The podcast takes an enlightening dive into the concept of memory and how it affects our relationships, particularly with family. The host shares a personal story from his life about how he used to argue with his sister about their past conversations. It’s fascinating to hear him reflect on those moments, recalling how both of them were convinced of their own recollections. He emphasizes that memory isn't as clear-cut as we often think. Instead, it's more about how we reconstruct memories, often mixing them with emotions and fragments of other experiences. This realization has helped him reduce arguments with family, making conversations more peaceful. He encourages listeners to consider how their memories might be flawed too, and how understanding this can foster compassion and reduce conflict in everyday interactions. Overall, the episode is a gentle reminder of our shared human experience, highlighting that we're all imperfect in our recollections and that it's okay to be wrong sometimes.

Takeaways:

• Today's episode dives into the myth of memories being perfect and how this affects our arguments.
• I share a personal story about how remembering things can lead to family arguments over misunderstandings.
• We explore how our memories are not as reliable as we think and can be flawed.
• Realizing our memories are imperfect helps us to stop arguing and accept different perspectives more easily.
• I encourage listeners to send in their gratitude stories, making our connections more meaningful.
• Understanding the emotional impact of memories can help us communicate better with our loved ones.

Hey, welcome to my podcast.

On today's show, I'm talking about the myth based on a true story.

You know, the beginning of the movies or you see on TV shows or even in books, based on a true story.

I'm going to talk about that and I'll talk about our memory and the way we can stop arguing.

We really, when I come, come across this, the fact of how our memory works.

It totally stopped me arguing with my family for years.

I used to argue with my family about so much.

But just recognizing what I'm going to share with you in this podcast will stop you arguing with your family, believe me.

Welcome to Stillness in the Storms.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host and this is the podcast that will help you to quieten your mind and find that stillness you need to overcome whatever comes your way.

I've decided over the next few podcasts I want to share just a little thank you, a little gratitude and a really brief story of why I want to thank this person.

And also I want you to send in your thanks, your gratitude on a very similar story, about a minute, minute and a half long.

And I'll play some of them on the podcast either at the beginning or the end.

And if you're particularly listening to it on anchor, it makes it so much easier.

You can just hit the record button, send in a little snippet and don't worry about the quality, don't worry about the thing.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

I can probably clean it up in pre post or whatever you call it.

I don't know, in editing.

We'll just call it editing for now, shall we?

I was writing about this story and this person in my book the Gift of no Choice.

The an Incredible Journey from Deep Despair to Freedom and Joy.

And throughout the book I. I share my different stories about different things.

And this story, when I was writing it, I kind of forgot it, but it was in the back of my mind.

And you know what?

Some people really do help you in life in the most dire circumstances, but you may not realize at the time how much help they are.

And this person is one of those people.

You know, before I broke my neck, I was.

I broke my neck when I was 18 and just before that I was hanging around with this individual and we would have fun and we're just friends.

There was nothing in it.

And I didn't treat her brilliantly.

I don't know why she wanted to hang around with me, but I was a typical 17 year old that I didn't treat her that nice.

And I was never really that polite to her, but I kind of liked her company.

It was one of those relationships that, you know, I don't love you, but I kind of just want to be in your company.

And there's a couple of songs that come out, ZC Top, I'm not in Love, and things like that.

But when I broke my neck, I went away 200 miles.

I was 200 miles away from home.

I spent 12 months away in hospital.

And over the first few weeks, I used to get a card and a letter every few days.

And whoever was there, whether it was a nurse or my family, they'd read out the card and a letter and I would very much brush it off.

It's like, yeah, I know it's just her.

But really, over the weeks, it really started to make a difference.

I was looking forward to it.

And it was that connection to home that I didn't have.

You know, I was lying on bed rest.

I could barely.

Well, I couldn't talk at the time.

And she would tell me what was going on with my friends and what was going on in Truro.

And then after I started getting out of bed, or I think I was still on bed rest, but she used to come up and stay up there over weekends, and she used to spend hours beside my bed, and we used to be chatting, we used to have a laugh.

And you know what?

She did so much for me.

And I don't know if she ever realized it, but, you know, I always used to brush it off at the time, but now I realize quite how special she was and quite how special.

I needed that relationship.

I needed that connection beyond family of someone that was just real.

I was just there.

Someone that I knew before my accident that treated me the same.

And, boy, did she treat me the same.

You know, she was great.

And that's Claire, and she knows who she is.

I just want to share that, and I want you to share your stories.

I have so much of a deep gratitude for Claire now that I've grown out of my egoic, narcissistic.

Well, narcissistic.

Trying to grow out of it still.

Okay.

My egoic, narcissistic self that, you know, Claire, I love you.

Thank you.

You know, I mean that from the depths of my heart.

You helped me through a lot.

But today's podcast, and please send in your stories.

If you're listening on Anchorage, hit the record and send me your stories just to thank you.

One, one and a half minutes.

That'd be perfect.

So on Today's podcast I was talking about the myth of this is based on a true story.

So how many times do you and a sibling.

And I'll say it with me and my sister, we would say something and I would say something back, and then within two hours, we'd be arguing about what we said.

I would say to her, I didn't say that.

And she would say, you did say that.

And I'd be like, no, I didn't.

You said this.

And here's the thing, here's the really crazy thing is I could remember in my head her saying it.

And I could also remember me saying it.

And it wasn't just, well, I can remember the words.

No, I can remember their voice.

I can remember where they were looking, what they were doing, why they were saying it, how they were saying it.

And the same with me.

And of course, they would do the same thing.

Yet both of us cannot be right.

How can both of us be right?

It's impossible.

It just doesn't work.

So who's wrong?

Both of us are right and both of us are wrong.

But here's the problem with our memory.

It's not so much the way we remember things, but it's the way we recall those memories.

And if I said to you, now, think of a rabbit, think of a rabbit in your mind and make sure it's a really good image of a rabbit.

Have you got that ready?

What about the rabbit?

Is it chewing on a carrot?

Is it gray?

Has it got long hair or short hair?

Is it on the grass or is it in a hutch?

What colour is the sky behind it?

Then, as I was saying those things to you, you were zooming in and out and you were creating them on the fly.

Well, this is what we do with our memories.

We think we have a full picture of the memory until we're asked questions or until we start to create it even more.

We then create the memory based on fragments that we stored.

And here's the thing, we don't listen very well.

We're terrible listeners.

We're brilliant at listening to what we're saying.

We're terrible at listening to what the other person's saying, but yet we think we hear what the other person's saying.

Do you see where this is going?

So what we do is we store fragments.

We store what we hear, what is the baseline of it, and we store it in a very analog way.

That isn't a digital version.

Difference between digital and analog.

A digital version is an exact copy, naught and ones, whereas an analog one is roughly, you know, if you had an analog light, you can turn it up and you could have it on any kind of level.

If you got a digital light, it's on or off or 50%, 100%.

You cannot have 52%, whereas analog, you can have all of them.

So when we store things in.

I'm really geeking out here now, and I apologize, I'll get back to like normal life in a moment.

But when we store things in an analog way, the brain doesn't know to go, okay, that's a conversation with your sister.

I'm going to store that in truth.

And then you watch a movie that's very similar and your brain goes, I'm going to store that in the movie Untruth, or maybe partly true.

If it's based on a true story, your brain doesn't know those things.

So what your brain does is just store everything in the best way, in a mingled way somehow in your mind.

And it relies on the way we recreate it.

And it's, it's very similar to if you bump into when I was visiting my nan in hospital just a couple of years ago and she was 90 something, and I'm trying to remember her exact age and I'm going to get it wrong if I say it.

So she was 90 something and she couldn't remember what she had for dinner, she couldn't remember what was going on or who visited her day before.

Yet I would sit there and she would tell me in brilliant detail about where she was, Iran and working in Scotland and working on the airplanes during the war.

And she told me about this wonderful story about the way when the pilots would go out and fly sorties over Europe, but just before they went out they would have a little box and they would put them on the table on the way out the door.

And that was their belongings and that was the different things that they would want to go to their family as their letter and things like that.

And then when they come back, they would pick up these boxes and they were taken back to their dorms or wherever they were sleeping.

And she would always look, her and her friends would always look to see if there's any boxes left, because if there was a box left, it meant they didn't come home.

And she told this story with vivid detail.

The color of the boxes, the size of the boxes.

How can someone do that yet they cannot remember?

Now then, in part it's the way we store things, in part the way the, the brain isn't very Good at doing it as it gets older, the proteins and all that and the neurons.

You know, I'm not a neurologist, but it gets harder to do.

The more you do something, the harder it becomes.

And it depreciates eventually.

But how can they remember something 80 years before?

Well, they're not remembering the event 80 years before.

They're remembering the last time they recalled it.

So that event was stored at the time with a great emotional impact.

So whenever we have a big emotional impact, whether really good or really, like, painful, we store it with great vivid detail.

You know, the smell, the situation, everything.

We store it with great detail and we can recall it really quickly.

And there's a reason for this.

You know, it protects us.

You know, you don't need.

You don't drink the same alcohol that made you really, really poorly at the age of 15 ever again, because you smell it and that's it.

No, can't touch it.

So it's the same reason my nan stored that memory of those boxes with great, vivid detail.

And every time she'd retell it, she would retell it with passion and real emotion.

And I loved hearing that story.

And she told me several times when I was going out there about that story and about the way they had a dial that was upside down and things like that.

She wasn't remembering the event, and it probably wasn't even much like the event anymore.

But with all the movies she's watched, all the different things she watched and the things, it's.

It's a combination.

It's like a hybrid version of what did happen then.

Some of it is true.

Some of it is mixed with movies and mixed with other things.

Some of it, like, probably even made up completely and.

But we all do that.

Right back to the conversation with my sister and the argument two hours later.

You did say that.

You didn't say that.

I know I said that.

We're so convinced that our memory is perfect that we argue, well, guess what?

Your memory is not perfect.

You're not remembering the event.

You're not.

You haven't got this recorder in your mind of what was said, how it was said, the tone of it, everything.

You just haven't.

But it's not exact.

And this.

Just realizing this stops us arguing, makes us realize that our memories are flawed.

You, me, everybody, Nobody can remember everything perfectly.

Lawyers know this.

Lawyers deliberately.

I can't believe I'm telling you that secret, but they will deliberately plant words and create scenarios in your mind on the testimony stand, you know.

Now, let me Put it to you.

Mrs.

So and so, did you really see the person?

Was he five foot or six foot?

Well, I think he was six foot.

Are you sure?

Are you sure he wasn't five foot?

And of course, at that moment, you're then creating a five foot person in your mind to check whether or not that's real or not.

Isn't that interesting?

So stop arguing that I know what you said.

I remember it well.

It was like this.

I'm telling you I can remember.

I'm telling you I was there.

Well, you might have been there and you might have 97% correct, but nobody will have it 100% correct.

And they've tested this with lawyers and police officers and forensic scientists and everything.

And all the way through all these people, nobody can recall the same situation exactly the same way.

Nobody.

So if you want a little more peace in life, stop arguing.

Stop arguing that you can remember that you're right.

Maybe they're right.

And maybe your recollection of the event is wrong.

Maybe you're mixing yours with a movie or something like that.

It doesn't feel like it.

Because what you can see in your head is, you know, a high definition, brilliant version of like what we said with the rabbit.

You know, we, we have this illusion that we can, we can recall everything perfectly and we can't.

It just simply doesn't work like that.

And here's the thing.

You know this podcast about stillness in the storms, about having a little more calmness when everything's going on around us.

Well, the reason why I share this is because if you realize how your body works and you realize how things are going in the way of recalling your memory, we stop arguing.

We start having compassion for the other person and understanding.

We stop this, I'm right, you're wrong.

And we realize that, hey, we're both beautifully flawed and beautifully perfect at the same time.

There's no flaws and there's no perfection.

It just is what it is.

And we just stop arguing.

There becomes a softness to our conversations with people.

We no longer feel the need to have to prove that we're right and they're wrong.

So like I said at the beginning of the podcast, I will teach you something.

I will show you something that would totally blow your mind when it comes to memory and things like that.

But it'll also soften you and stop you arguing with your family.

I no longer argue with my sister very much.

I no longer argue with family very much that I'm right and they're wrong.

It still creeps up.

It still happens sometimes.

Sometimes they gotta remind me sometimes like you're arguing.

Yeah.

My daughter come in one day and I let it rip about three years ago.

And she stood there and she took it.

Oh, I just went off and she said, oh, that's very Zen like of you, isn't it?

Oh, she knew I was working on it.

She knew I was working on it.

And I can't even remember what it's about now.

It was like totally not even that important.

But I take my, you know, open my heart to her.

She stood there and took it and she held that mirror up to me that I needed at that moment.

She was perfect.

So deep thank you to Kemba, deep thank you to my sister and deep thank you to Claire for being there when I needed her most.

And don't forget, if you, if you're listening to this on anchor, press the recording.

If you're not on anchor, head over to my website or go over to Facebook and just type Stephen Webb, Inner peace.

Inner peace guy or something and find me and send me a voice or send me a little email or something, emailtevenweb.com and I will read it out.

That's the other thing I can do.

Take care, guys.

I love you and thank you for spending this time with me.

Really appreciate it.

I'm trying to get a new podcast out every week at the moment.

Please can you share?

Spread it around.

Leave a review.

That'd be amazing.

If you're listening on an iPad or an iPhone, leave a review and that would be incredible.

Incredible.

You're awesome.

Everybody have an amazing week.

See you around.

Bye.