How to create and remember happy moments

Prompted by recently reading Meik Wiking’s book, “The art of making memories. How to create and remember happy moments”, I decided to better document my life.

Later in my life, I’ll thank myself for this.

Even now, when looking back through old photos from my childhood, I’m reliving these moments. We also have quite an extensive video archive of celebrations from when I was growing up, and watching them always brings up so many memories.

So how can we better remember?

Probably the most personal thing to do is keeping a journal with your thoughts. It can be as detailed as you want, it doesn’t necessarily have to be full of your secrets, unless, of course, you want to.

Personally, I started with this about a year ago, in a digital format. I had days when I didn’t have the time to reach my laptop, or completely forgot, but it’s still amazing going back to some days from my past and reading the notes.

A journal is a great thing to have even while traveling. While the photos can capture the visual information, a journal can contain what you were feeling and thinking. The best part is that writing in your journal can be done at the end of the day when the memory is still fresh such that it doesn't interfere with the moment.

What should you write about?

How did you feel? What are your plans for the day? No matter how bored you are, or how uneventful a day may be, try to write at least a few words, until you turn it into a habit. It will soon come to you naturally.

The low hanging fruit. Your phone.

You carry it with you almost constantly, so why not use it for good? You don’t need the latest model, you don’t need a mirrorless camera or a DSLR. I promise, your phone will do just fine. Use it take photos.

And don’t just prioritise highlights. We not only need to remember the memorable and once in a life time events, but also the mundane things. Going to a park. A movie. Going out for an ice cream. Capture everyday moments, too. Even though the mundane might feel boring right now, in a few decades, these photos will most definitely feel like special moments.

And when you’re on a trip and want to take pics. Take them. Take a bunch of them.

But then, after taking it out of your system, enjoy the moment. Breathe it in.

Create showcases

Make some short videos, only for you, that you can rewatch later. You don’t need to post them on social media, but you can make cute reels for yourself and your gallery.

Apple has live photos, which sometimes captures amazing build-ups to a photo.

Google Photos had a feature that is creating GIFs from similar photos from a day.

If you don’t want to use these apps, create the GIFs and videos yourself.

Curating your media collection

Now that you have a solid base, it’s time to actually start going through your memories.

Choose a cloud provider, and curate your collection. I’ve been guilty of using five different ones, having photos all over the place, and a lot of duplicates.

While it’s been a pain to migrate all of them on a single account, (I’m looking at you, Google Photos), having them all in a huge album makes it so much easier to get through my photos and videos.

There are tons of guides out there on how to migrate from different services. Some might export the photos without the metadata (the details about when the photo was taken, which is quite important), so make sure you pay attention before deleting them from the old provider. If any needs manual input for the time adjust, just copy it from the old one.

Print photos, highlights

That’s how we used to have them not too long ago.

Sometimes, having a physical photo feels much more authentic than watching it on a screen. Some even prefer it that way. So choose the photos you like and hang them on the walls in your house. Or create an album that you can go through from time to time.

If before we were stuck with whatever embarrassing, weird photos our parents would’ve taken on a film camera, now we have a lot of digital photos that we can choose from and print our highlights.

Now that the technical side is set, how do we actually create moments that we remember better?

Try removing your electronics for one night.

Spend the evening with a partner, friend or family, play a board game, or just talk.

I’ll make a full list for a Digital Detox, (if you want to check it out, make sure to subscribe) but here are some highlights:

Turn off all notifications. Start by trying the Do Not Disturb feature on your phone. Start removing notifications for anything not important: all the apps trying to grab your attention. No, you don’t need notifications from amazon telling you there’s a sale.

Remove apps. If you’re using social media and other attention grabbers on your phone, delete them from your home screen. Leave them in the app drawer, to add some friction next time you want to use them.

Even better, use the search function and type down the name of the app you want to open - sometimes, you won’t even want to go through this.

Use the greyscale/black and white mode - it will make your phone less enticing.

Being without our phones or without electricity can make us pay attention. With no phones and no TV, there are fewer sirens luring us in and grabbing our focus and we are more in control of where we place our attention.

At the end of the game or discussion, you’ll notice it was enjoyed much better when all of your focus was on it.

In conclusion…

In an era of impatience and instant gratification, one way to make things more memorable is to delay your arrival. If you have the time (not when you’re rushing to catch a train!), consider taking the long route. If you have spent five hours hiking to the peak, it makes the experience greater than if you took the fifteen minute cable car up there. For some trips, it may also make sense to take a train instead of a plane. You will get there slower, but you may have a much more enjoyable journey. Trains are the tantra of travel!

The book has a great revelation at some point: “happiness is often found when three views align: who we feel we are, who we want to be and who we really are, and when we manage to become who we know we can be, that is where we find happiness”. I love this quote.

Remember: one day your life will flash before your eyes - make sure it’s worth watching.