3 Reasons to Save Your Life’s Stories
Ardith Stephanson
4 min read
Imagine how rich we would be if we collected a dollar every time we commented: “time sure flies,” or “that week flew by fast.”
It’s true that life passes by quickly. As we get wrapped up in everyday life, it’s not always easy to look back and appreciate all that happened in the last week, month or year. That’s what makes it important to have a “memory bank,” to reminisce and protect those moments.
Here are 3 reasons why it’s important to save your life’s stories.
1. Capture Big Events
This is the most obvious reason for saving stories, photos and mementos. When a big event happens, we want to remember all the details: who attended your wedding, or what time your baby arrived in the world.
Occasions like weddings, births, graduations, retirements, anniversaries, birthdays and more, all provide the opportunity to save details of the big day.
Even for those celebrations, capturing the story of the event can involve more than just collecting photographs and the guest list. Those life-changing experiences are worth taking the time to tell a fuller story.
With a platform like memoryKPR, it’s easy to assemble a digital memory book and allow others to collaborate. Even those who can’t be part of the big day can contribute to the story.
Create a “story” on memoryKPR and then upload files like videos, photos, audio recordings, documents such as written messages and more. Invite others to contribute by sending an email. When you’re done, share the final story across multiple platforms, including social media, email or by sending a website link (url) to the story.
You’ll get a more complete memory of the special day, with the perspectives of others added to the moments you cherish.
2. Remember the Little Moments In Between
Our lives are about so much more than those big occasions.
After the wedding day comes a marriage that’s built on daily moments spent together. After the baby is born, there are milestones and everyday events like a smile in the morning that are also special to remember.
Those little moments add up to a lifetime, and it’s important to capture those too.
When you look back at the last month, how much of it do you remember? By spending some time capturing your day-to-day life, you can look back and treasure what might seem mundane.
Take a photo of the first time you baked bread, a short video of the driveway visit you had with the neighbours, or a recipe that was the favourite dish your grandmother cooked. Compile those into a story for a month and you’ll learn to appreciate that the little things are actually the big things.
You can use memoryKPR for this type of reminiscing, too, since most file types are accepted: pictures (of your loaf of bread), videos (of time spent with friends), documents (the recipe in grandma’s handwriting), and more.
3. Practice Gratitude
Being grateful is one of the side benefits of building and keeping stories using videos, photos, special emails and documents, and inviting others to share their memories with you.
By putting in a little effort to create a story, it’s easy to look back on the special events that make up our lives. They’re not all big occasions, but when they are, it’s fun to reminisce. And it’s worth taking time to look back on the not-so-big times in between, in those moments that make up the bigger part of our lives.
Studies have even examined the connection between positive feelings and what’s called autobiographical memory, which are memories dealing with your own life.
Here’s an example.
Two recent studies looked at the connection between recalling happy memories and positive feelings. Participants suffered an acute stressor that was followed by recollection of either positive or neutral autobiographical memories.
In both studies, recalling positive memories – but not neutral ones – resulted in lessening of stress, measured by a dampened stress response and reduced negative emotion. Researchers also found that brain activity associated with reward and positivity was engaged during positive reminiscence.
The conclusion? Memory recall, in this case in the face of stress, created positive emotions that had a restorative and even protective result.
It’s important to be grateful for all we have, and memoryKPR makes it easy to practice gratitude. By taking a bit of time to put together some stories, you’ll get the positive feelings that come with reminiscing, and be grateful for those special times, big or small.
Epilogue
It doesn’t take a researcher to know that it feels good to look back on the special moments in life. Even in times of loss, building the story of a loved one can be a powerful way to remember him or her.
With an easy tool like memoryKPR, it’s possible to collect the stories of our lives, whether that’s a big wedding day or a week of vacation.
You might not get as wealthy as collecting a dollar every time it feels like life is passing you by, but by realizing that your life is rich with stories worth saving, you’ll feel like a millionaire.
Ardith Stephanson is a freelance writer and journalist who shares some of her own stories at theardizan.com