Have you ever gotten so involved in your own duties that you missed out on a beautiful moment in your life? Then proceeded to kick yourself for missing it?

The other day, there was a gorgeous rainbow;  in fact, a super bright double rainbow that I completely missed to remind me of just that!

Our golden lab puppy barked to go outside and I happened to need some fresh basil to add to a zucchini pizza I was preparing for dinner before my husband and older daughter came home. As I was trimming the basil from our garden, I noticed the sky was gray and the sun was still shining and immediately began looking for rainbows; one of my favorite things in the entire world. I found myself hurrying inside to get the basil washed and chopped that I blanked on checking the other side of the house for the rainbow.

When my husband and daughter arrived home they asked,”Did you see the double rainbow? It was super bright! We saw it on our entire drive home.” I was terribly bummed to have missed it!  

This gave me pause to ask myself:

How many double rainbows have I missed?  Double rainbows meaning – any of the beautiful moments in life, like my younger daughter wanting to tell me about something that happened at school and my being too busy to stop what I was doing to be present and listen.

What can we do to make sure we don’t miss out on these moments? 

Here are a few thoughts I had:

1. Recognize a double rainbow moment. If you have to ask yourself if it falls into that category, it probably is one.
2. Give yourself permission to pause and notice it.
3. Savor the moment for at least 3-5 minutes. This includes allowing yourself to really feel the emotion of that moment.  Open and close your eyes and use your sight to capture every aspect (including all 5 senses) of this moment; like you’re taking a mental picture for future enjoyment.   Although this can be challenging in that whatever we’re doing may seem more important, fast forward briefly to when you’ll be 80 years old and imagine reminiscing back on your cherished memories.  Would this be one you’d potentially add to your collection?
4. Be grateful for the moment and this opportunity to be fully present with it.
5. If you happen to miss one, like I did, DON’T beat yourself up about it.  DO use this as a prompt to be hyper-aware of what next moment you can catch.  How much more will you be able to enjoy it?

After all, isn’t this what life’s really all about? Creating and cherishing these small but meaningful and often magical moments in our day? Someday, when we’re on our deathbed, what moments do you want to relive?  Will they involve the seemingly urgent items on your “to do” list or perhaps a look, a smile, a snapshot of nature – events we tend to take for granted like the sunrise/sunset each and every day or the stars in the night sky.