Every December, the internet fills with highlight reels, smiling photos, achievements, milestones, and “best of the year” posts. And while I genuinely love seeing people celebrate their joy, it also creates a quiet pressure:
If everyone else is winning… what does it mean if you’re not?
So I want to say this out loud:
If 2025 wasn’t your year, you’re not alone.
It wasn’t mine either.
At the beginning of the year, I had a full slate of intentions — business goals, new offerings, momentum I was excited about. And then life, in its messy brilliance, handed me something different.
A family member became ill, and I shifted — not because I had to, but because love doesn’t ask for explanation. I stepped into caretaker mode. I rearranged my time, my energy, my priorities. And while I never questioned that choice, the achiever part of me struggled.
My goals? Most of them didn’t happen.
My plans? Deferred.
My progress? Not at all what I imagined in January.
For a while, I held that as disappointment. As falling short. As “not enough.”
But as the year winds down, here’s what I’ve come to understand:
I accomplished a lot — it just wasn’t what I planned for.
And maybe that’s true for you, too.
We set goals with perfect clarity about who we were, and zero clarity about what the year will ask of us.
The version of you who wrote those January goals had no idea what 2025 would hold — what challenges would arrive, what roles you’d have to shift into, what emotional labor you’d carry quietly.
So here’s the reframe:
Your worth isn’t tied to a checklist.
Your growth isn’t measured by productivity. Success isn’t always the plan you wrote. Sometimes it’s how you survived the plan that fell apart.
Maybe your year didn’t sparkle. Maybe you carried things no one sees. Maybe you didn’t hit your goals because life asked you to be someone different than the person who set them.
And that counts. More than you know.
Before you close the door on 2025 and rush into the next set of goals, it’s worth pausing to look back—not at what didn’t happen, but at what did.
Here are a few questions to help you see your year through a more compassionate lens:
- What did I navigate, support, or hold this year that my January self didn’t know was coming?
- What inner strengths did this year require of me?
- Where did I grow in ways that aren’t captured by goals?
- What can I release before moving into a new chapter?
When we reflect with compassion instead of comparison, a different picture emerges. One where you didn’t fail — you adapted. You cared. You stayed human in the midst of hard things.
A Closing Thought
If 2025 surprised you, if it demanded things you didn’t see coming, if it rearranged your plans or stretched your heart… give yourself some grace.
The year may not have gone the way you hoped, but it might have grown you in the ways you most needed.
And when you’re ready to reimagine what’s next, I’ll be right here walking that path with you.