The Rearview Mirror Has a Job

There is a reason cars have windshields that are much larger than their rearview mirrors.

Most of our attention belongs on what is ahead. Yet the mirror is still there for a reason.

Life works much the same way.

We are often encouraged to move forward, leave the past behind and focus on what comes next. There is wisdom in that. Living permanently in yesterday can keep us from fully engaging with today. Yet refusing to look backward carries its own risk. Without reflection, we can miss the patterns, choices, successes and mistakes that explain how we arrived where we are.

The past does not have to become our destination to remain useful information.

That distinction sits at the heart of Jobert E. Abueva’s approach to intentional reflection. A global marketer, writer and author of The Janice Plan: A No Resolutions Path to Begin Your Year with Intention, Jobert encourages people to pause at meaningful thresholds, look honestly at what came before and use those lessons to make more intentional decisions about what comes next.

As he put it during our conversation: “To answer where do I go next, you really have to appreciate and acknowledge the past.”

The rearview mirror has a job.

Why This Topic Matters

Reflection can be easy to misunderstand.

For some people, looking backward sounds like dwelling. Why revisit mistakes, disappointments or moments we would rather forget? For others, reflection becomes nostalgia, an opportunity to replay better times without necessarily learning anything from them.

Neither is what Jobert is advocating.

His approach treats the past almost like evidence.

We accumulate experiences, decisions, relationships, accomplishments, disappointments and habits. Over time, they leave clues. Those clues can help us understand why certain things keep happening, what has been working, what needs to change and what deserves to continue.

Jobert describes our lives as a culmination of everything from birth to the present moment. We cannot erase the past simply because some parts are uncomfortable. We can, however, decide what relationship we have with it.

That makes reflection less about returning to yesterday and more about gathering useful information for tomorrow.

Look Back for Information, Not Residence

One of the most important distinctions in healthy reflection is knowing why you are looking back.

The objective is not to move back in.

Jobert uses the Roman god Janus as the foundation for his framework. Janus, associated with beginnings, endings and transitions, is traditionally depicted with two faces: one looking backward and another looking forward.

That image stayed with Jobert from the time he encountered it as a child. Eventually, it became a framework for how he thought about transitions in his own life.

Those transitions are what he calls thresholds.

A new year can be a threshold, but so can retirement, starting a career, changing a relationship, becoming a parent or entering another significant chapter of life. Each gives us an opportunity to pause and ask a question that often gets skipped in our eagerness to move forward:

What just happened?

That question matters because “What do I do next?” becomes much more useful when we understand what brought us here.

The rearview mirror provides context. It was never designed to become the road.

Your Life Leaves Clues

Reflection can feel abstract until we give ourselves something concrete to examine.

Jobert suggests approaching the past almost like an archaeological dig.

Think about the artefacts your life has produced. Calendars. Journals. Photographs. Social media posts. Emails. Accomplishments. Difficult periods. Projects you started. Commitments you kept. Commitments you abandoned.

Individually, they may seem like isolated moments. Viewed together, they can reveal patterns.

Jobert noticed, for example, that essays he shared generated conversations he genuinely enjoyed. Looking at that pattern helped him recognize how much writing mattered to him and encouraged him to do more of it.

Patterns can reveal uncomfortable information too.

Perhaps you repeatedly overcommit. Maybe certain environments consistently drain you. Perhaps the same conflict keeps appearing in different relationships. Maybe something you describe as important receives almost none of your time.

Patterns do not make decisions for us.

They make it harder to pretend we do not see what is happening.

That is one of reflection’s most valuable functions. It converts scattered experiences into information we can actually use.

The Difficult Parts Still Have Something to Teach

Jobert’s own life gave him a powerful reason to understand this.

During a demanding period of his international marketing career, he travelled extensively while helping build the global success of Clairol Herbal Essences. The work was exciting, but the pace eventually caught up with him.

He described overeating, overdrinking, lack of sleep and working constantly. Eventually, while in Hong Kong, he reached a morning when he could not get himself out of bed.

Looking back forced him to confront something he had not fully recognized while living through it: the warning signs had been there.

That experience eventually helped him reassess his work, reconnect with writing and return to his marketing career with a clearer understanding of his limitations.

The point is not that every painful experience secretly becomes positive.

Some things hurt. Some choices have consequences. Some chapters deserve to end.

Reflection gives us the opportunity to ask a different question: What can this experience teach me now?

Jobert offers a simple exercise he calls “the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Identify what went well. Acknowledge what did not. Then confront the thing that may be hardest to face.

Interestingly, those categories can change as we examine them.

Something initially labelled “bad” may reveal resilience, a useful response or a lesson we want to carry forward. Something that looked successful may reveal a cost we no longer want to pay.

Reflection allows us to see the fuller story.

Reflection Needs Boundaries

There is still a legitimate danger in looking backward too long.

A rearview mirror becomes dangerous when we stare into it instead of occasionally checking it.

Jobert handles this by giving reflection boundaries. In his own annual practice, he dedicates December 26 to what he calls “ponder the past.” Rather than allowing reflection to become endless, he intentionally creates time for it.

The exact date is less important than the principle.

Time-boxing reflection can prevent it from becoming rumination. Give yourself an hour, an afternoon or a day. Examine what happened. Write things down. Look for patterns. Identify what deserves celebration, what requires attention and what can finally be put down.

Then move.

Reflection does not have to produce a perfect understanding of everything that happened. Jobert acknowledges that additional memories and insights may surface later. They can be added when they do.

The goal is not to complete an exhaustive investigation of your life.

It is to know enough about where you have been to make your next decisions with greater awareness.

Lessons for Living Audaciously

We often associate audacity with visible action.

Quit the job. Start the company. Write the book. Make the leap.

Sometimes audacity is quieter.

It can be sitting alone with your own history and refusing to look away from what it is trying to teach you.

Jobert described facing the past from different perspectives as one of the most audacious things we can do. That makes sense because honest reflection requires something that dramatic action sometimes allows us to avoid: truth.

What worked?

What didn't?

What am I repeating?

What can I let go of?

What did this season of my life try to teach me?

The answers do not necessarily require us to blow up our lives. Sometimes they lead to smaller adjustments: a healthier relationship with work, more time for family, renewed attention to an abandoned interest, clearer boundaries or a decision to stop repeating a familiar behaviour.

Moving forward intentionally does not mean starting over.

As Jobert beautifully explained during our conversation, we are already growing and moving. We bring our experiences with us. The challenge is deciding whether we carry them unconsciously or learn from them deliberately.

So look back.

Not forever. Not to punish yourself. Not to romanticize what used to be.

Look back long enough to understand.

Then turn your attention forward and drive.

To hear the full conversation with Jobert E. Abueva and explore more of his perspective on reflection, thresholds and intentional living, listen to The Audacious Living Podcast. Subscribe to the show, follow the podcast and share this insight with someone who may be standing at a threshold of their own.