There's nothing that compares to it. And I know that you've all experienced regret. From the things that you didn't say the times he didn't spend. The things he could have done better. The more mindful you could have been. More love you could have given. Welcome to You First, a Journey to Self podcast, where we empower women to rediscover their true, authentic selves and regain personal power. If you are ready for a major shift, you've come to the right place.
I am your host, Maria Fuentes, an expert in women's emotional mastery and self discovery. With a degree in psychology and nearly two decades of experience, I am passionate about addressing the challenges women face most. Self love, healthy relationships, and emotional awareness. I've had the privilege of coaching so many incredible women and witnessing their transformation through the methods we'll discuss on this podcast.
This show is your weekly space to shift your perspective, find inspiration within and heal in ways that feel true to you. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into this week's episode. I love my beautiful muses and welcome back to another week's episode. I'm going to keep this one light and short, um, because I, I truly want you guys to come back to this because it's something I think we need to be more mindful of. Right? We, we don't want to live a life that we are regretful of.
We don't want to live in a way that we will have feelings of regret daily or often. Because regret is a way of thinking, right? It's a bunch of mixed emotions, but it makes us overanalyze what we could've done, what we should've done. And it keeps us stuck in those emotions of sadness, disappointment, remorse. And shame. And so. As I'm recording this, I'm not ready to talk about the whole story because it was very traumatic for me, but.
If you've been following me on social media or you listened to my last episode. My cat would missing dusty, went missing for about a week and I got devastating call from a neighbor and he was found and I went to go see him. And so I got some closure. He did pass away. So I did get some closure. Which I don't know that that. Helped. Right. I don't know. What's worse, like not knowing or actually seeing him, but in some way I do at least now know that he's in heaven.
And that he's at least not suffering or in, in trouble or starving or anything like that. So it broke my heart and it's devastated me so much here. The last couple of days. But what I've realized. In this, all these emotions, I felt a lot of regret, right. I replayed the last three days that I had with him, especially with the 24 hours right before. And. I've held.
I held a lot of, I feel a lot of regret and the shame that I wasn't the best cat mom, or should have done this, or I should've done that. How can I have protected him better? All he had was me. And how can I let this happen? There's been so much heavy emotions and thoughts of. Come across my mind. And. I very mindful of them because I know that my mind is going to want to keep me safe. It's going to think of all the worst case scenarios. I know my thoughts aren't me and they're not true.
And so I'm very mindful of them. So I started really analyzing and breaking apart. Like, why am I feeling this way? And obviously pain is always here to teach us. And even though this is really fresh for me, And really raw right now. I think one of the biggest lessons for me right now, and I want to share this with you so that you can start living an unreadable life, as well as that. How can you live today? And do the things today that you want to do so that you don't have regret later.
Alright, living in a way that feels unreadable. Because at the end of our lives, I think at anytime that anyone passes or there's loss or there's. Death. We realize that life can be so fleeting. And so if you're going to regret something you do now in a week from now a month from now a year from now, Imagine if we could just have more mindfulness and more presence. In our moments, being more present in each moment. So that we don't regret the things that we should have done later.
And so I want to dive into first the things that we usually tend to regret a lot in life. And some of the things is the things we say to other people or the things that we never said. It's a time that we didn't spend with somebody, right? It's a, oh, I should've gone to coffee with a. If I would've known that was my last conversation with them. I would've taken the time. We sometimes regret what worrying so much about what other people think? Well, I would've started that business.
I would've started that YouTube channel. I would have done this. I would have done that. I would have taken that leap, but I cared too much about what other people thought. Right. These are things that are heavy in us and we regret we're like, oh, why did I spend so much time doing that? Sometimes it's the relationships that we stay in for too long. And we're like, why. W why did I waste so much of my time? I knew it in my gut. Intuitively that this wasn't the right relationship.
Why did I stay there? We regret. Saying something out of anger and hurting somebody's feelings. Right. We regret those words, because words can be taken back. We regret, not starting sooner. We think, oh my gosh, summer's here. If I would've started working out six months ago, I would. That'd be in better shape. If I would have ate healthier if I would've done this, or if I would have done that. And regret also ties into it starts to tie into who we think we are. Right?
So if we do enough things that you start regretting, we start thinking I'm just not good at this. I'm not good at this life things I'm not good at this. This, I'm not a good person. Like how can I keep doing things that I regret? And we stay stuck in a loop. And if we stay stuck in those emotions of sadness, disappointment and shame and guilt and remorse. It keeps us stuck. The, we don't, we never take action because we say, well, what's the point. All I know is regret. Right?
We start conditioning ourselves. It becomes a pattern and that's what patterns are, is that we start believing that, right? Our self beliefs, it starts to become well, I'm not good at this. So let me not even try. I'll just regret it anyways. And so the regret just becomes mundane. It becomes normal. And so as I sat with all these feelings and all these emotions and why it's here to teach me something. And so far, what I know for a fact is that. Dusty wasn't in my life for a coincidence.
He was, he brought so much joy and so much love to me for so many years. And I want to honor that and I want, I don't want his death to be in, in Bain. Right. I don't want it to be in vain that, that he died and I'm feeling all this pain. For no reason there has to be something. I truly believe that any time. We go through really dark times. There's so much about herself, so we should learn. And understand. And so I said, what can I start doing today to start living a life?
That's an regrettable. And one of the things I'm going to start doing is asking myself. Anytime I do anything of importance. Right. And I don't mean like every little thing that you do, but if, if it's important to you, if it's. Part of your top three, four things that you think about every single day, which is usually like the close relationships to your family, your work. Your child, your pets, whatever it is. If it's part of those important things to you ask yourself.
When you interact with any of those people or those things? Ask yourself. Am I taking actions in my future? Self will regret. Our future selves. Isn't this version that we are creating. It's. It's already part of us. And I truly believe it's just a journey to get back to our true. The authentic self to the inner muse of us.
Like, I, I used to think that it's like a, it was a journey that there was an end point and one day I'm going to become the best version of myself and know like I, now I know that the future version of me is just me, but. The true me the most authentic me. I meet with all my experiences, but the captain open-heart me with, with the vision and the me that God put on this earth to be. And so I'm going to start asking myself this question is like, well, the future me regret this.
And if the answer is, yes, I'm going to do the opposite because I don't want to live a life that I regret. I want to do things that I'm going to regret later on. And that's going to require for me to take a moment, right. To do things a little slower. I'm. I like to do things really quick. Sometimes I like to just bypass things and get to the, the thing faster and do things faster because I think I'm being efficient. And so I think this is going to bring a lot more mindfulness into my life.
A lot more. Present. Newness. I don't know that that's an actual word, but I'm going to be more present. And that's another thing I'm going to do. So the second thing I came up with is I'm going to ask myself and my being truly present with what I'm doing, or am I just half asking it because of other emotions? Because like I said, I just realized that I do that sometimes I'm so busy during the day I work a lot and I'm. Constantly shuffling different things because I'm doing different things.
I'm doing. My coaching, I'm creating a program. I'm working. With a strategist that's helping me really develop. How I want to help women. And plus I work in commercial insurance and so I'm constantly just doing so much and sometimes I'm so stressed out. And this was part of like what I did with dusty. I was like, so stressed out that I didn't have enough time sometimes to just sit with him and cuddle and I would just like, get his food really quickly. And I wasn't, I wasn't present.
Very rare times that actually in the last couple of months that I sit with him and actually enjoyed, just loving on him and caring for him. And now I don't have that opportunity to do that anymore. So when you're with your children, when you're with your friends, when you're with your lover, your partner, your best friend, whoever it is that you truly love, like after listening to this, I want you to ask yourself, am I being truly present here? And if I'm not will future me regret this.
I think the two go hand-in-hand so beautifully. Like life is really fleeting. We ha we have to do better as a human sometimes just to be more present. There's always going to be things like there's never going to be a perfect time. There's never going to be these five, 10 minutes, hour or two hours that. We have nothing on our minds where we can finally relax and we can finally be present.
I it's a choice and sure I've had moments where I'm present a lot, but I can say that I live that way every single day with that much mindfulness. And so another thing that the last thing I'm going to do is at the end of the day, I'm going to ask myself. Am I proud of what I did today. Am I proud of how I interacted with others in my proud of how I loved on people. Am I proud of. How I responded to things.
And this is where compassion and empathy and unprofessionalism is going to come in because I'm going to be okay. Saying yes or maybe not. Maybe. No, I maybe I'm not proud of myself. I didn't. I should've done this and then I can correct it right there. And then, or I can do better the next day. Because again, life is a journey, right? As long as we're always thriving to grow and be better and evolve. That's. Evolution. We feel our best when we are constantly growing.
When we're doing something, not when we're chasing something. Really listened to this a couple of times, you know, whenever you feel like life is getting crazy and life is getting busy. And the last thing you have is 10, 15 minutes to listen to a podcast that helps you kind of just remember what's important. That's exactly what I want you to come listen to this it's those times where we think like, I'm too busy. I have too much. I want you to come back to this.
Because I know that the pain that I felt and I'm feeling and the pain than any of you, that's listening, that he's gone through a heartbreak or that's gone through death and then their family or the loss of a pet. You know, That, that deep pain there's nothing like it. There's nothing that compares to it. And I know that you've all experienced regret. From the things that you didn't say the times he didn't spend. The things he could have done better. The more mindful you could have been.
More love you could have given. And so I really urge you. To take a moment now. And ask yourself today, just right now, as you're listening to this. What can I do better today? And then go back and ask yourself those three things. What future me regret it. Am I truly being present or am I just half passing it because of other emotions, like stress. And anxiety and overwhelm. And then at the end of the day, ask yourself, am I proud of what I did today?
And this will help you just cultivate an unreadable life. Because we all deserve it. We all deserve to not stay stuck in the emotions of sadness and disappointment. And guilt and shame and remorse. And that toxic pattern that we get stuck in when we're feeling all those things, we, we deserve better. And I want to thank you guys for listening every week. And for reaching out to me on Instagram. I love the work I do.
And I know that when I'm, when I'm go through things and gosh, I've gone through a lot of things and 34 years, I've gone through a lot. But I know that none of it's been in vain. Because I get to help others through my pain. So, thank you again. And I love you all. Please come back and listen to this and share it with somebody that you think might need it as well. As we come to the close of this episode, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude and admiration for you.
Taking the time to show up for yourself is an act of self love. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit. And also, if you love this episode, please rate and review us. When you do, screenshot your review and email it to us for a special gift. Our Rediscover Yourself Worksheet. This worksheet includes exercises to help you uncover your authentic self, and assess the areas of your life that are misaligned with the true you.
Email it to info at maria fuentes dot net. Also stay connected with us on social media for updates and more inspiration. You can find all this information in the show notes. Again, thank you for being here and I cannot wait to continue this journey together.