2025: looking back to move forward
I’ve never set aside time to reflect on the year that’s concluded. As someone who is always looking ahead, it feels futile to spend time looking back. I blame the movie Racing Stripes — for over a decade, ‘don’t look back, leave it all on the track’ has ruled my decision making.
However, this year marked a change for me. Having spent more time than usual writing and journalling, I started to mull over things more deeply. Gaining a clearer idea of things I did and didn’t want for myself.
With more frequent mini reflections, my appreciation for decisions I’ve made and things I’ve done has grown. So this is an ode to the year I’ve had, for all its ups and downs and how it has shaped my future vision.
specificity being the set up for failure
I am not typically a person to start off my year with rigid resolutions. Honestly, I never seem to see them through and it’s gotten to a point of feeling like I’m setting myself up to fail by being too specific.
Sure, part of that is to do with poor self-discipline, but having an all-or-nothing attitude definitely doesn’t help either.
So rather than continuing to focus on specific or trend based goals, I decided to pivot towards things that shaped the way I wanted to live my life, rather than what I wanted to achieve.
consistency, my biggest blind spot
The clearest place this theme showed up, was in my consistency. I am the sort of person that will follow impulses that derail consistency, from moving countries, to quitting stable jobs.
I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, but it does often steer me away from larger hopes and dreams I have for myself.
I am quick to plan new routines and schedules. I’ll make them pretty and even stick to them for a few weeks. After that? You can forget they ever existed. I have more fun making the lists or planning the week than actually executing it.
Seeing inconsistency as my main enemy of progress, I decided to make it my focus for the year
making progress without pressure
This year, I finally read Ikigai, a book that’s been on my to-read list for quite some time. I felt directionless and on a path of self-discovery, so stumbling across this book came at a perfect time.
From all the valuable lessons and takeaways in the book, the one that really resonated with me was to be 1% better every day. The idea being that you focus on making tiny, manageable changes every day, rather than shooting for a large, overwhelming transformation all at once — something I am horribly guilty of.
Now this wasn’t my way of finding an excuse to be lazy, but it did really help pull me out of ruts when I just needed a do nothing day. Throughout the day, I asked myself ‘am I being 1% better?’. If the answer was no, I just had to find something that took me above the imaginary threshold. Sometimes that was reading 10 pages of my book and sometimes it was doing a facemask and having a bubble bath.
Over time, I found that it helped me develop a newfound kindness for myself and actually improved my productivity. The mindset itself also allowed me to slow down more. Again, instead of throwing myself at big changes hard and fast, I adopted them more intentionally and slowly.
Of course, there were still days where I rotted on the sofa and my idea of 1% was to walk to the ice cream shop and buy myself a milkshake. I just didn’t beat myself up about it.
evolving and adapting
Resolutions can be a hard thing to stick with when life is full of twists and turns. For me, they often change and develop throughout the year, becoming more situational. This can sometimes feel like failure.
The first half of 2025 was filled with tangible consistency. I was flying through books, I was training diligently for my 10k, I was showing up every week for ballet. I felt accomplished.
Then it really started to nosedive over summer. After completing my 10k and ballet show at the end of June, it was finally time to slow down for a break. Except I didn’t seem to speed back up again. It took me a month before I even thought about going for another run, and I definitely didn’t do any classes or stretching for ballet.
I had lost my drive and it was starting to feel like another failed year of resolutions.
progress through a different lens
With the summer being nice and slow, but not particularly exciting, me and my partner started to reevaluate our life in The Netherlands.
We adopted our dog, and focus shifted to making sure he settled and trained. We even started to look at buying a house. But after reaching my limit with my job, I decided to finally leave it, upending our plans once more.
With all the changes to our priorities, finances, and routine it felt like my consistency had tanked.
It wasn’t until the end of the year, when a few things were said to me by different people, that I started to realise I was just being tunnel-visioned. I was only validating consistency in respect to exercising, when exercising wasn’t the actual goal.
Consistency where I wasn’t looking
A helpful perspective came from a close friend. When catching up and asking her about her goals for the year, she had shared a crazy busy schedule, involving a lot of moving parts. She decided to mentally split her year into two parts and treat them separately.
Her casual tone just made something click in my brain. I had faced a lot of shifts over summer, making the second half of the year feel completely different to the first half. So, I decided to do the same and separated them.
In doing so, it brought to my awareness the progress we had made with Bandit. In just 4 months, he was a completely different dog to when we had first gotten him. Even our friends and strangers who had witnessed the journey from start to present, were praising his growth.
Then I thought about the changes I had made for myself.
Over the summer, I had gotten a sudden notion that I wasn’t being a good listener. Was I asking enough questions? Checking in regularly? Could my friends tell that I cared about what they were saying to me?
It started with a friend who I catch up with weekly. They were really grateful for some of the thought provoking questions I was asking. Then it came up again at dinner with a friend’s family, where I was praised for my curious and insightful questions. And then it continued to be recognised.
Where there was a definitive switch in the pace and structure of my life, I was still making progress on goals I was unintentionally making. I wanted to be a better listener, I wanted my dog to be well trained, and I was hearing from other people that they were seeing the changes.
My consistency hadn’t disappeared, it had just taken on a different shape.
unapologetic impulsivity
One of those shapes was an airplane. I can confidently say that this year, I was at the very least consistent in booking holidays. We all know the saying ‘catch flights, not feelings’ and while usually about a toxic ex, for me it was my toxic bank account.
Key reasons we had for leaving Canada were 1) travel more, and 2) spend more time with family. This year, we managed to knock two birds off with one stone — a few times over.
We started the year with an impulsive plan to fly to Munich to celebrate my partner’s birthday, which had inadvertently set the tone for the year. We then went on a run of European birthday trips. From Rome to Istanbul to Lisbon, it was a year of celebrating birthdays with flair, alright.
Despite the financial strain, it was clear to us that these trips embodied exactly why we had moved closer to home.
Maybe not quite the consistency I imagined, but not one I complained about either.
the value of experiences
Everyone loves going on holiday, that’s nothing unique to us. But having missed out on many family trips and milestones while living in Canada, being able to easily join in on celebrations again this year felt truly special for us.
For that reason, I found that it shifted my relationship with money. I stopped stressing over the pennies and pounds and instead focused on the shared experiences — within reason of course. I significantly cut down on my frivolous and trivial spending, instead putting it towards experiences. I stopped worrying so much about my savings taking a hit and realised that that’s exactly what it’s there for.
Where I can usually find flaws in my impulsive spending (still without regret), none of my trips this year felt that way. Instead, they filled a cup that was almost empty for years.
In this sense, my consistent impulsivity felt like a blessing in disguise.
defining my own measures of success
Overall, I feel like I succeeded this year. I not only stayed true to my goal of being more consistent, but I also gained new perspectives on what that actually looked like. Through that, my attitude towards other aspects of my life also improved.
Sometimes it can take external recognition or comment in passing to really see it. That hasn’t suddenly made me reliant on external validation as a measure of success (though it sure is nice). It has instead taught me to redefine what success means for me.
This year, my success manifested as running not one, but two 10k’s as someone who has barely run a 5k before. It was joining a ballet school and performing in my first show. It was travelling to 8 different countries. It was leaving a job that made me deeply unhappy. It was finally getting a dog. It was changing my relationship with money. It was spending more time with family. It was spending more time being creative.
My heart is full from all of the successes I have had this year, both big and small. Here’s to a bigger and better year!