Lessons of 2025
These are the top five concepts that I embraced for personal growth in 2025. Everything wise has already been written and I have done my best to cite the original author.
#1 Remove My Expectations of Others: No one is living by my standards, values, and rules. I heard this in several ways this year. The first time this hit home was this summer, and I shared that on my blog “Hurt Feelings” There are no universal rules around common sense, personal responsibility, respect or kindness. Laws define the minimum standards a society will tolerate which are enforced by the government. Ethics provide a framework for living and interacting with others in a way that promotes civility, fairness, and well-being. These concepts are open to a wide range of interpretation and practice. I have learned to believe that people show you who they are, and that leads me to #2.
#2 Courage to Change. The only person I can change is myself. Change is hard because sometimes our habits and routines feel safer and easier than doing something different. There are a million ways to numb out, escape, distract from, and avoid difficult problems; and sometimes they look like change. Moving, quitting jobs, starting jobs, divorce, new relationships, lavish lifestyles, or the opposite of whatever environment you had before. It all depends on the person, the motivation, and how much you understand your own brain and how it processes and repeats the same patterns. Anne Lamott sums it up well, “you can get the monkey off your back, but the circus stays in town.” Choosing to change is an inside job and takes consistent action, which brings me to #3
#3 Self-Awareness. The prior versions of myself resurface. The 6-year-old, 16-year-old, 23-year-old, 34-year-old, 45-year-old, and 50-year-old versions of me. There are significant stories and experiences that each of these versions hold. These versions show up in my thinking, as an emotional reaction, memory, or behavior pattern. Self-awareness means I can recognize them and then seek to understand the core problem this past version of myself was trying to solve. Chances are something in my brain is going down an old pathway for a specific reason; protection, fear, love, trying to fix. To quote Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” This brings me to #4.
#4. Values. My values are guideposts for me to live in accordance with the standards that keep me honest and responsible for my choices. I can’t apply my values to others (see #1) and expect them to behave as I would. Measuring my words and actions to my core values will expose biases, flaws in my thinking and inform me of my direction in difficult situations. The people, places or things that are not aligned with my core values will eventually be removed from my life one way or another. This brings me to #5.
#5. Everything is Temporary. This is an idea that is both comforting and a bit scary. It’s comforting to know that when life gets hard or literally blows up, like in a Lifequake, that these feelings will not last. The disconcerting part of this “temporary” concept for me this year was that my old beliefs around forever, trust, and love had to be examined and discarded. Franz Kafka says, “everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.” Two things can be true at the same time. Pain and loss also provide an opportunity for redirection and freedom. The love that has returned to me is better than anything I could have imagined.
“The circus remains in town” (Anne Lamott). The illusions are built with bright and shiny things. Deceptions and distractions. Eventually the fun stops being fun and the lies we tell ourselves stop working. My time there was temporary. I will not be going back.
@Reinvention LLC, 2025, All Rights Reserved
