You might remember the meaning of the character 惊 with this easy mnemonic:
A group of small (小) children sneaks into their friend's house holding little lanterns (忄). They mouth (口) each other to stay quiet and open the lid (亠) of a jar filled with frogs to startle the family.
Using mnemonics to remember the meaning of Chinese characters like has a huge impact on how long to learn Mandarin it takes.