Forgetfulness can be quite an annoying trait to possess sometimes. I mean how many times a day can you lose your glasses only to find them sitting on your head? Let's not even bring up misplacing your keys or, worse, your phone.
Needless to say, being forgetful can certainly feel like a curse, but research actually says otherwise! You heard that right. Research has found that forgetful people have an advantage in life over everyone else in three distinct ways.
Scott A. Small, MD, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia University, analyzed an abundance of research regarding brain function and memory and found there is an active mechanism within the brain that clears out unnecessary pieces of information so that the important things can be retained for long-term storage.
Essentially, holding on to every memory and little detail takes up a lot of brain space. So forgetting things that aren't necessarily important, like what you ate for breakfast yesterday or the color of your friend's shoes, helps you remember the things that actually do matter.
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"An analogy I like to give is to imagine that I went to your house and asked: Why aren't you a hoarder? Why don't you just store everything?" neuroscientist Charan Ranganath said. "If we didn't forget anything, we'd be hoarding memories, and you'd never be able to find what you want when you want it."
A study from 2017 found that recalling a memory can often alter or change it so that the brain can cope with new information. When your brain needs to take in new information regarding a specific memory, your brain weakens the memory connections while strengthening new additional connections so you can better remember the new information.
This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, according to The Conversation. If people during hunter-gatherer times realized that a safe place such as a water hole was suddenly dangerous, their brains would need to update the memory of the water hole to label it as unsafe, or their lives could be threatened.
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In 1998, researchers found that forgetting helps people get through the pains of their everyday lives, and it's done on quite a regular basis. If you are interested in letting go of negative memories to improve happiness, Psychology Today recommends trying to keep a list of every annoyance or insult that comes your way in one day and then see how many you actually remember one week later.
"We forget the ordinary irritations, insults, small failures, misstatements, and rejections, and that allows us to live our lives more happily and productively," Robert N. Kraft, Ph.D. wrote. "Forgetting keeps us positive."
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There you have it: People who are more forgetful are also just happier because of their positive attitudes. While it may seem like a hindrance to be forgetful, it can be more useful to remember all of its advantages. I mean, wouldn't you rather be living life to the fullest while having no idea what the name of your first-grade teacher is? Now, just be sure to remember that being forgetful is a good thing...
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Sahlah Syeda is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.