We spend a lot of time and money on travelling and making memories to last a lifetime. The only problem is that we end up forgetting most of them.

That’s because while we’re all focused on planning our next adventure, and enjoying the experience once we’re there, the concept of sitting around at home afterwards and reliving it all over again is widely considered to be, well, pretty daggy.

No doubt, the old family slide show is partly to blame for this, but what use are the memories we’ve collected, if we can’t relive them? You don’t pay $10,000 for a car and only drive it once? So is it enough to take a trip, post a few photos on social media and shove the rest of our experiences into the dusty filing cabinet in the back of our minds? We all know how unreliable that system can be.

Of course, memories have a habit of revisiting us, whether we like it or not. It might be the smell of a meal, or a scene in a movie, that brings them back. Or just as likely, you’ll be bored in a work meeting and suddenly you start daydreaming about the time you were lying by a pool in Bali or trekking through the mountains of Nepal. It’s common to do some reminiscing now and then, but it’s hardly ever planned.

So what if you started dedicating a bit of time to revisiting all the holidays you’ve taken and the incredible experiences you’ve had? What if you started thinking of your memories as buried treasures and the act of uncovering them in your brain as a fun little game?

Next time you’re stuck waiting for someone, don’t go reaching for your smart phone and just access the videos in your head instead. Sit there and start asking yourself some easy questions, like “What did we do when we arrived in Vietnam? Where did we stay? What was the nicest meal we ate?”

This should open the photo album we all have in our minds and you’ll be surprised by how much stuff you have filed away in there.