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Last week I was driving home from the College of New Jersey, my alma mater, and if you're from the New Jersey area, You know that the drive down the turnpike this time of year is all about the trees. They're the whole show. I've done that drive so many times, and every fall I genuinely look forward to it. This time, though, I looked up and I realized most of the leaves were already on the ground. I missed it. And I didn't even notice that I was missing it until it was over.

So today we're talking about what it means to live life in the rearview mirror, why so many of us only recognize the good parts once they're behind us, and what we can do about it starting this week. 

Vanessa: You're listening to the Free To Be Mindful podcast, the space for high-achieving women who give their best to everyone and are ready to keep some of it for themselves. I'm Vanessa, licensed therapist, speaker, and mom coach. I know what it takes to build a life you're proud of without losing yourself in the process.

Each week, we get honest about ambition, identity, and the parts of ourselves that we quietly set aside. Here we [00:01:00] go.

Hello, and welcome to episode 325 of the Free to Be Mindful podcast. I hope that you're feeling good, looking good, and doing better in this world than you were yesterday.

So fall is my favorite season, and this year I barely got to enjoy it. A big part of that is because I've been building something that I'm really excited about. I'll be telling you more about it next week.

The other part is that fall is planning season for me. When you own a business or more than one, October and November are when we map out the following year. So I've been living with one foot in 2026 and the other foot already in 2027. And when we're standing in the middle like that, it's pretty hard to be fully present anywhere.

We did go pumpkin picking though this year on one of the coldest days of the fall, of course. I'll share something with you. I don't really go for the pumpkins, I just go for the apple cider donuts. It was a good day, and I'm glad that we went.

But what I really missed this year were my walks. In [00:02:00] past years, walking outside was the thing that kept my head up, sometimes quite literally. And this year my head has been down in my laptop, in my phone, in my planning documents, and I didn't even realize how I missed being outdoors until I was in the car watching the last of the leaves go by.

Here's the part that made me laugh at myself a little. The conference I was driving home from was all about the whole woman, how we can be successful in business and as whole people at the same time. Every speaker that day touched on being present, giving ourselves a break, and putting things down instead of carrying them all at once, and that's really what my Mindful Living framework is all about and what I teach.

And I left that room, got in my car, and immediately caught myself doing the exact same thing that we'd spent the whole day talking about. So I figured if it's happening to me, the person who teaches it and lives it, it's probably happening to a lot of us.

Living life in the rear view [00:03:00] mirror is when we only recognize a good moment once it's already behind us. We look at the photos from the trip and we think, "That was a great trip." We see

our kids' old videos and realize how little they were. And we notice the trees once the leaves are already on the ground. 

And it doesn't mean that we're doing anything wrong. It usually means that we're just really busy, that we're responsible, and that we're pretty good at getting a lot of things done.

And for high-achieving women especially, our eyes are trained to look at what's next.

Positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar has a name for this. He calls it the arrival fallacy, the belief that once we get to the next goal, the next milestone, the next finished project, that's when we finally start to feel good. But then once we get there, that feeling doesn't nearly last as long as we expected, and so we just set the next goal. When we live that way, though, the present moment keeps getting treated like a hallway that we're just rushing [00:04:00] through on the way to get to somewhere better, and then we forget that most of our life actually happens in that hallway.

There's a psychologist by the name of Fred Bryant who has spent years studying something that he calls savoring, and he describes three ways that we savor the good things in our life. We can savor by looking forward to something, while it's happening, and we can savor by remembering it afterwards.

And most of us who are busy and have full lives are really good at the first one and the last one. We look forward to the vacation for months, and we look back at the picture for years, but it's that middle that we skip, the actual moment.

In Spanish, we have a word for savor, saborear, and it comes from the same root as sabroso, which means tasty. And sabrosura, which in Dominican and Caribbean Spanish has this feeling of enjoying life with gusto, con gusto.

And I love that the word savoring [00:05:00] is tied to taste because I think food is the easiest way to understand this. Think about the difference between a drive-through and a really nice dinner out. At the drive-through, the whole goal is speed. We order, we pay, we're eating in the car while we're driving to the next thing, and 10 minutes later we can barely remember what we ate. It just got the job done.

I'll share with you that last month we went to a beautiful restaurant in our area to celebrate my dad and my son's birthday because they fall in the same week. And we went during lunchtime instead of dinnertime, which was a whole different vibe. Nobody rushed us. We took our time looking at the menu. We ordered a drink, and the food came out slowly, one course at a time. And we just sat there laughing and sharing stories and talking with the family. And it wasn't just about filling our bellies, but it was also about filling our hearts, too.

And notice, it's the same basic activity, eating a meal. And two completely different experiences. The difference is whether we let ourselves actually taste [00:06:00] it.

So much of our life right now is drive-thru living, and a lot of what we're missing isn't missing at all. It's right here on the plate. We're just eating too fast to taste it.

 One of the pillars of my mindful living framework is allowance, and the way that I describe it is letting go of the should to make space for the good. 

Vanessa: And one of the biggest shoulds we carry as high achievers is what I call the "I'll enjoy it when."

I'll enjoy the weekend when the laundry's done. I'll enjoy the holidays when everything's bought and wrapped. I'll take a walk when the project is finished. And since the list actually never ends, the enjoying keeps getting pushed to the next week, the next week, and the next. And our kids are watching. When they see us rush through every moment to get to the next thing, they learn that that's what grown-ups do.

So here's the practice for allowance. This week, catch yourself the next time you say, "I'll enjoy it when..." dot, dot, dot. The next time you say that [00:07:00] in your head, and ask what would happen if you allowed yourself to enjoy it now, even with the list still unfinished. The list will still be there, but the moment won't always be.

Another piece of this is something I like to think of as the last time lens. We almost never know when something is happening for the last time. The last time our child asks to be carried. The last time they want us to sit with them at bedtime. The last walk before it gets too cold. And sometimes even the last embrace with a loved one.

We don't get a warning. And thinking about that shouldn't make us anxious, but it is a reminder that an ordinary day in front of us might be the one that we end up missing one day.

The second pillar I wanna bring in is intentionality, and its principle is that a life by design beats a life by default.

Living in the rear view mirror is what happens by default. If [00:08:00] we leave noticing up to chance, then chance usually loses to our inbox. So the practice here is to pick one moment each day ahead of time that we're truly going to fully notice. And maybe it's a first sip of coffee before anyone else is up. Maybe it's the drive to pickup or five minutes in the parking lot before we walk into work. We decide in the morning, and when that moment comes, we then put the phone down, and we pay attention to it.

And when we catch something good while it's happening, say it out loud, "This is a good moment." Say it to your partner, say it to your kids, or say it to nobody at all. It sounds simple, and it works because it is so simple, and because it moves the savoring from the later to the right now.

This past Sunday, the clocks fell back And many of us got an extra hour of something, maybe of sleep, maybe of something else. But I'm curious, did we even notice it, or did it disappear into the laundry, the emails, and the Sunday scaries like every other hour on a Sunday?[00:09:00]

So here's my challenge to you for the next week. Take back that hour, even if it's spread out into little pieces. Even if it's spread out into minutes at a time. Use it to notice something. For me, it's going to be to try to get outside for a walk before every last leaf is truly gone.

So let's take a moment with a few questions. And if you're driving, keep your eyes on the road, but let these questions swim around in your mind.

What's one thing in this season of your life you'd be sad to realize that you missed? What's an "I'll enjoy it when..." that's been running your calendar lately? And what's one moment this week you're going to decide on ahead of time and let yourself fully taste, savor, and enjoy?

This is the work that I live and breathe, and it's the work that I love to teach. And if you're part of an organization, a school, a company, or a woman's group that's running on go mode and could [00:10:00] use a conversation about leading and living life more intentionally, I'd love to come in and speak. You can find all the details below at freetobemindful.com/speaking.

The leaves on that drive home were mostly gone, but there were still a few hanging on, and I'm glad that I caught those. So let's catch what's still here this week and share this with a friend, because it may be a great reminder for them as well. Let's catch it all before it ends up in the rearview mirror.

Thank you so much for joining in, and if you'd like, feel free to leave a review. It helps listeners find this show, and I would truly appreciate it. And as always, remember, in a world where you are free to be anything, you're always free to be mindful. Catch you next time. 

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