Ever Growing Ever Changing

As we move into 2025, most of us are busy reviewing what we accomplished last year and making new goals or resolutions for the year ahead. We move thoughtfully through an infinite list of expected accomplishments: a house, a car, a husband, a new job, weight loss, etc. If you are like most people, a successful year is based on a list of those achievements that you can count or somehow quantify, and that are usually tangible.

But is that all there is to it? Is it automatically a bad year when the list of achievements is short because there were simply so many personal and other challenges to overcome? Would the year be considered wasted?

Unpopular opinion: no. These days I’m learning to use a different metric for evaluating my years.  Don’t get me wrong: I still write a list of goals at the beginning of the year that I hope to accomplish. They usually include travel, spiritual, financial, and relationship goals, among others. Nonetheless, increasingly I am judging my years based on personal growth, that is, not simply what I did, but who I became. Why? Because I have finally come to accept that life is indeed a journey. Some years you will reach an important milestone on your path. Yet some years are simply for resting and recovering the strength to continue the journey. And some years are simply to decipher the right path to take. All the stages are, nonetheless, crucial.

In 2024, I achieved some important things, but I also missed some key health and fitness and travel goals. I didn’t lose 20 pounds. In fact, I gained 12! Furthermore, I made it to one country out of the four I had planned. Yet I remain proud because, among others, I:

1. Unlocked a higher level of faith in God in 2024 and mostly released my inherent urge to control everything. It has been incredibly liberating;
2. Cultivated a more grateful mindset and learnt how to fully appreciate the things, people, experiences, and opportunities in my life rather than wasting my energy on what I lack;
3. Learnt to live fully in the present, conscious of how transient life is. The Japanese concept of Ichigo Ichie resonated with me last year and I began to fully appreciate just how unique every single moment in time is; and
4. Became more mindful of the connection between humans and nature, how the latter heals us, and how many of our actions, my actions, based on consumerism, greed, and FOMO are destroying the very thing meant to protect us.

What were your greatest lessons in 2024?