Celebrate the Present and Design the Future

As the year comes to a close, the festive season invites us to reflect on our achievements and challenges. Celebrating victories, whether big or small, is essential to cultivating gratitude. It is at this time that we gather with friends and family to reminisce about good times, practice gratitude by giving and receiving, and even write about the positive things that happened during the year that is ending. We have the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves within the family, which tends to be left until the end of the year.

We live so much in the past and the future that sometimes we get carried away by the date marked on the calendar and we don't even realize that to be with family we don't need to wait for Christmas, that to celebrate and have hope, we don't need to wait for the New Year, but if we are going to wait, let it be a grand wait and one that is lived with dedication, because that is how planning our future will be even more enjoyable.

And how can we do this? To plan a new year with more intention, self-knowledge is essential. Reflecting on our values and desires helps us to define resolutions that are more aligned with who we really are. How about starting with a reflection journal or meditation sessions to connect with our true goals? Have you tried it yet? If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend it. Start with journaling, let your thoughts take over the movements of your hand with the pen, and see what appears on the page. It’s very revealing.

But this is just one of the ways we have to look at and plan for the future, in this case your year 2025. There are several tools you can use, and the ones I'm going to give you are very simple, intuitive and easy to apply in your day-to-day life. They are:

1. Regular Reflection: Taking time to reflect on the past year, noting what went well and what could have been better. This practice, if maintained daily, brings us a lot of awareness about how we react to events in our lives and how we can somehow improve, whether they are positive or negative.

   
   

2. Feedback: Ask friends, family or colleagues for their opinions on areas that we can improve. Sometimes, an outside perspective helps us identify areas that we have not noticed. This practice can be somewhat uncomfortable, because what we are really asking for is for people to criticize us, something that Human Beings are averse to. However, when we start this practice, we realize how powerful this constructive criticism is for our growth, and most of the time, for redefining our identity.

   
   

3. Self-assessment: Using tools such as questionnaires or diaries to assess our skills and behaviors. This self-assessment is partly linked to Journaling, because it is something that can appear during writing, since it is a more reflective moment of the day, and as I said above, it is one of the most powerful and mental self-care practices that we can have with ourselves.

   
   

4. Goal Setting: Set specific and achievable goals for each area you want to improve. Without goals, life feels meaningless, because goals are our brain's way of recognizing that we are in survival mode, and we can only survive if we achieve a certain goal. Hence the importance of goal setting.

   
   

5. Continuous Learning: Invest in training, workshops or readings that help us grow in these areas. This is the basis for mental growth. What we listen to greatly defines the person we are, because when we listen, our brain is receiving certain information. Depending on the information we let into our mind, so will our way of thinking. Give your mind the fuel that you know will make you grow.

   
   

With these practices, we can plan and execute with a clear vision of what we want to improve and with a concrete plan for our personal growth in the new year ahead. So, celebrate the person you are and work on the person you want to be.