Travel can provide us with a wealth of benefits. Perhaps the most important – and most intangible – are the memories. They are what stay with you and remind you that your life has been worth living.

One of the most important trips of my life was over twenty years ago now, when I had the opportunity to travel abroad to Spain for a week in a trip organized by my high school. At the time, it was a huge investment, more than my parents could afford, and so I had to work part-time and save in order to make it happen.

Interestingly, all these years later, I remember the significance of being able to go more than most of the trip itself. I’m left with just scattered recollections of the experience.

It may seem that what you happen to recall from the trip of a lifetime is purely a matter of chance. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Proactively, there are things you can do before, during, and after a trip to make it more memorable.

If you’re going to invest significant money in a luxury trip, why not also invest a little time and effort to make it unforgettable?

This is what I do now to make sure the memories endure:

Stray out of comfort

Luxury travel is often regarded as tantamount to comfort. In fact, much of the advertising around luxury travel emphasizes the extent and specific details of the comforts provided.

However, it turns out that it’s best not to get too comfortable.

While well-earned relaxation and indulgence are worthwhile to pursue, you want to be sure to balance these with experiences that push you just outside your comfort zone. It’s that sweet spot where you’re challenging yourself and the challenges meet your skills that you’re most likely to enter into a flow state, the optimal state of experience. That exultant sense of meeting a challenge is also most likely to trigger your memories. It’s a heightened state of awareness that can leave a lasting imprint not to mention positive recollections. So plan your trips accordingly.

Remember: too much comfort just leads to lethargy, dullness, and forgetting.

Explore somewhere new

One reason my memories of my high school trip are so cloudy is that, just a few years after when I was in college, I had the chance to study abroad, and I spent more time in Spain. Now all these years later, though I remember, for example, being in the Prado Museum, I don’t remember if that was part of my high school or college experience.

One way to make sure your memories are distinctive is to purposefully seek out new places to experience. Not only will the novelty itself be striking and more likely to generate new memories, but it will be less likely for your memories to get all jumbled together.

For example, thus far in my life, I’ve only been to Paris once, so all my memories of Paris are tied to that trip. If I ever return, I will be sure to visit sections of the city I didn’t get a chance to see last time, so that my memories are vivid and unique.

Be present to the stimulation of all five of your senses

If you really want to ingrain a particular experience into your memory, be sure to intentionally, proactively pay attention to as many of your senses as you can and make a conscious note of what you’re seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching.

This is something to do in the moment, to give your memory multiple pathways to recollection. Think of it as a mini-meditation moment in which you open your awareness to the feeling of that specific place in time.

One reason my high school trip is somewhat of a blur is that mentally I was caught up in a lot of typical high school relationship drama. Looking back, I wish I had spent more time focused on the here and now of being in Spain.

Go beyond digital

At the time of my high school trip, the “digital era” was still relatively new. I shudder to think what that trip could have been like if I went with my current iPhone – I might not remember anything at all!

While there are certain advantages of carrying our advanced electronic devices with us when we travel, it is also incumbent on us these days to make sure we put them away for most of our travel time, especially if we want trips that are not only memorable but worth remembering.

After all, your experience of the screen is the same no matter where in the world you are. But you experience of a trip is your one-and-only opportunity to experience a particular place at a particular time. Savor it. Cherish it. Make it uniquely yours.

Take home a keepsake

If we want a memory to last a lifetime, we must keep on remembering it.

We make the memory stronger by recalling it again and again, ideally with spaced repetition. One way to facilitate and enhance this after-trip recollection process is to bring home a keepsake, ideally a physical object that won’t get buried away somewhere in a closet.

The best keepsakes are those that you will see and use on a somewhat-regular basis, such that each time you interact with the object it triggers memories of your trip.

On that Spain trip, I bought a woven bag at an open-air market that I then used multiple times upon my return home. And even today, some of my most vivid memories of the trip are associated with that bag. Unfortunately, the bag got lost just a few years later among the shuffle of moving and life transitions, and sadly too many memories went with it.