At any age, people want to achieve and maintain a good overall quality of life.  For seniors, reminiscence is a great way to achieve insight and improve their personal quality of life.  Reminiscence is a process of remembering prior life events.  The goal of reminiscence is to help seniors retrieve positive events, feelings, and happy memories.  The end result creates more self-esteem, a more pliable mood state, improved coping skills, and improved social skills.  Helping seniors recall the positives from their past will aid them in their feelings and coping skills towards any current life challenges.  The main purpose is to rekindle their personal purposes which will also help restore self-confidence.
When I was in graduate school, I conducted reminiscence groups at an assisted living facility.  For my first group, I had 4 people attend.  My topic for that first group was "Summertime Vacations" and I asked people to come to the group with a story of a past summertime vacation and something from that vacation, a picture, something they purchased, etc.  Even though these individuals lived in the same building, they didn't know each other.  As I started facilitating the conversation about vacations, people started talking and laughing and saying "I traveled there too, did you go see that ...."  I enjoyed listening to everyone talk and as the group ended and people left, they stood around and kept talking and made a new friend.  My group size began to grow each time as people were enjoying themselves and were talking about it in the dining room and telling others they should come.  I set the date, gave the topic and they provided the conversation and their own props, which somtimes including a photograph, a song, a baked good, an outfit, etc.  I did this group for 4 months and ended my time there with a "Family Traditions" reminiscence group with a group of 28 participants.
I encourage everyone to take the time to reminiscence with your loved one or any older adult.  People love to talk about things that made them happy or excited them, plus you might gain a little history knowledge along the way.