3 Mindful Lessons From 2025 To Jumpstart The New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year my dear friends! Welcome to our first Taking Stock post of the year! Today, we reflect on our lessons from 2025 to help us jumpstart the New Year!

Are you ready? Let’s get into it! :)

There is Beauty In Humble Beginnings…

How are you feeling about your New Year 2026? The first months of the year can easily come at us with lots of pressure to make all these big changes in our lives… Are you feeling it?

How about we just pause right here, right now… Give yourself a moment to take a deep breath in. And as you exhale imagine all that pressure falling away with it…

Allow yourself the grace, space and time to take things at your own pace this year. 

One of my lessons from 2025 was that there’s beauty in humble, uncertain beginnings. Instead of rushing to do everything, it is okay to take your time in planning out your year. 

Moreover, your process doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s process… It is okay to curate your own process that works best for you. And if it’s not as “loud or glamorous” as everyone else, that is okay. Find what works for you, and lean into it.

Quick Tips:

• Start Small… Pick one thing you are going to do differently this year and commit to doing it consistently for at least 21 days.
• In case you fall off, give yourself grace and start again.
• Once it becomes a habit, commit to doing it for the long term.
• Make time to celebrate your progress on building a new habit.
• You will then have built the inner confidence to start on developing more positive habits in our next step…

Humble, uncertain beginnings often lead to remarkable endings~ M.M 

Sometimes It Pays To Break All The Rules… And Make Your Own! 

Did you know?? According to their local Ge’ez calendar, Ethiopia is in the year 2018! Moreover, the Ethiopian calendar has 13 months… 12 of those months have 30 days each, while the 13^th month (Pagume) has 5 or 6 days, depending on the year. 

Isn’t that so cool? Sometimes we get so tied down by man-made rules about what a New Year is meant to look like… But who makes the rules, really?

We start the year with all these grand resolutions… At the time it seems like a good idea. However, when reflecting on my lessons from 2025 and the past years, I noticed how those same resolutions (if not backed up by meaningful habits) could end up becoming the stumbling blocks…

Have you experienced this? When June comes round for instance, you start feeling discouraged upon realising that some (if not most) of the resolutions have fallen to the wayside. 

So, why not make up your own rules this year? Also, can we replace resolutions with habits/routines?

In my own journey, I’ve noticed that I make more progress when I define the habits and the person I want to become in the course of the year. Then as the year progresses, I work on course-correcting…

Consider asking yourself these questions:

1. Looking back: Reflect on your own lessons from 2025 and ask:

• What did not work for you in 2025? 
• What worked well in the past year?
• And what can you do more of in 2026? 

2. Looking ahead: Who do you want to become in 2026? 

• Take the time to write down in great detail who that person is…
• What habits/routines does that version of you practice on a daily basis?
• How do they deal with challenges?

3. Keep it simple: What are the 3 major goals you want to achieve this year?

• Write your 3 goals down, then break them down into micro-goals with doable action steps
• What changes will you need to make to achieve your 3 goals?
• Define for yourself what success looks like…
• Plan for success: how will you celebrate yourself when you achieve your micro-goals?

P.S. Your process and journey doesn’t need to be perfect… What matters is that it is your own. You get to decide what a good year 2026 looks like and who you want to become in the process. :)

Life is much better when you are having fun! 

Looking back on the lessons from 2025, I couldn’t help noticing that the year had its fair share of challenges and beautiful moments. I am honestly so grateful for all of it.

The painful moments in particular, taught me to really appreciate all the little “unremarkable” moments. 

If you think about it, life is made up of millions upon millions of “unremarkable” moments. However, our brains are often skewed to remember those grand, on-top-of-the-world moments or the heartbreaking, soul-crashing moments…  

And according to Psychologists, our brains have a Negativity Bias. This means that we tend to remember the bad events/experiences more, as a way of ensuring our survival- from an evolution perspective. Unfortunately, this means that we end up missing out on so much of life! 

You could spend 28 days in a month being healthy and safe, but you are more likely to remember the 2-3 days you spent feeling unwell and suffering because of a migraine, for example. 

Thankfully, there is good news! We have the power to master our mind/memories, and replace the bad with good.  

So, what if we changed our mindsets and paid close attention to those “unremarkable” moments this year? And what if we reframed our minds to think of those daily, mundane moments as the best parts of life? Wouldn’t life be more fun then? 

Honestly, I am still learning how to do this… And I’d love to invite you along on this journey as we figure it out together. Are you game?

Quick Tip

• Start a gratitude journal. Record all the things you are grateful for on a daily basis. It could be the smallest or biggest thing.
• Gratitude journaling is one way to strengthen our memory of the good events while adding them to our core memories.
• Remember we are all doing life for the first time, so give yourself grace.

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I hope that this year we will move at our own pace, give ourselves grace and cherish the seemingly ‘unremarkable’ moments in life. Cheers to a wonderful and better 2026!!

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Thank you for reading our first blog post of the year! What lessons from 2025 you taking into this New Year?

I would love to hear from you, feel free to leave a comment with your inputs or questions down below. I’ll be sure to respond! :)

Until the next one….

<< Stay. Inspired. Always. >>