2025 has been my most transformative year to date. I didn’t realize how much I had grown until I looked at pictures from last year and barely recognized myself. I found myself asking, “That was only a year ago?” It’s hard to believe that so much can change in just one year. Often, we are so caught up in our daily lives that we forget how far we’ve come.
Anyway, these are the 5 main lessons that 2025 has taught me.
1. Inner circle
I was scrolling through Instagram one day when I stumbled upon a reel by Olympic coach Justin Kavanaugh. What he said truly resonated with me.
“The secret to success is only allowing people who want you to win in your corner.”
2025 taught me how to cut people off because it made me realize how important my environment is to my well-being and success.
The wrong environment can kill the right dream.
Energy is contagious. Are the people around you often complaining about their lives? Are they judgy? Are they always trying to bring you down (even without them realizing it) by saying negative comments or mean things? Or in Chinese we call it “泼冷水”- which means “to be a buzzkill.”
These people are energy vampires. They suck all the energy from you and leave you feeling drained, uninspired, and sad.
Who you surround yourself with is so important because
– Jim RohnYou are the average of the five people you are closest with.
So choose wisely.
You don’t need this type of energy for where you are headed next. Stop letting dead weight hold you back.
Which leads me to my next point…
2. Being nice vs Being good
As a chronic people pleaser, this one was HUGE for me.
In the past, I was always so afraid of what people would think of me and strived to appear as nice as possible so that people only had good things to say about me, even if it went against my values or boundaries.
There’s nothing wrong with being a people pleaser, but if it comes to a point where you start to lose yourself and you don’t know what you stand for, it can feel very disorientating.
It wasn’t until my friend sent me a post by Lewis Howes, host of “The School of Greatness”, where he said
“Life got better when I realized I didn’t have to be nice. Nice got me used, stressed out, and disrespected.
I’m not nice. I’m a good person.
You don’t have to be nice to be a good person. Being good means you’re honest, setting boundaries, and you take care of yourself without comprimising your values.
Being nice may give you temporary approval, but it rarely earns you respect or helps you build genuine connections.”
That quote hit me HARD. I began to shift my mentality and everytime I responded to someone, I did my best to be aware if I was responding in a way that felt true to me, or if I was being “nice” just to be liked.
Now I understand. You don’t have to accomodate for everyone. The more you are yourself, the more the right people will come to you.
3. There is no right or wrong, only what works for you
I love learning. My curiosity will always drive me to read books, listen to podcasts, and watch videos about things that I am interested to learn about.
Most of the time, it ends up being about self-help or performance or training related content.
Lately though, I have been feeling very overwhelmed with all these information because it just feels like I’m never doing enough, or doing the wrong things.
Because of that, I never start anything because I’m always so “afraid” of doing things the wrong way.
And then I realized. There is inherently no right or wrong, it’s just about finding what works for me and then fine tuning it.
The reason that there is so much information out there is because every single one of us is different. What works for you may not work for me, and what works for me may not work for you.
As I grow older, I have to walk the fine line of having enough self-belief to trust myself, and at the same time not be too rigid and stuck in my own ways.
I’m still experimenting and haven’t found the perfect combo yet, but I guess that the explosion of information online does not help with this.
Just think about when you were a child, we only knew what we knew, and we didn’t care that much, we just acted from a place of faith, trusting that if we made mistakes, we would learn along the way.
In 2026, I challenge you to be a kid again. Play, experiment, and trust yourself more.
4. Pour that love back into yourself, honey
After being in and out of relationships for the past few years, this is the first year that I have been single. And honestly, this was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I started off the year feeling lonely, insecure, and unsure of myself.
In the past, I would have dove right into a next relationship so I could avoid these uncomfortable feelings.
But this time, I chose to heal. I chose to heal the parts of me that I have been ignoring for years.
Deep-rooted limiting beliefs. What I really thought about love and marriage. My insecurities.
As a result, for the first time in many, many, years- I finally feel free! There’s not a part of me that desperately wishes for a relationship anymore just to escape my problems.
I feel very whole within myself, and this is important, because wholeness attracts wholeness, lack attracts lack. This is the Law of Resonance.
I used to think that a partner would complete you, like two halves coming together. But that is a very wrong concept that has been indoctrinated in us since we were children, with Disney movies and rom-coms: “I will live happily ever after once I find my prince.”
Reality could not be futher from the movies.
I now understand that true relationship is two people who already feel whole and complete within themselves finding each other, and building upon that.
In order to feel that wholeness, you gotta pour that love back into yourself.
5. God is real
After experiencing heartbreak, I searched desperately for something that could help me fill the void of emptiness. And that’s how I stumbled upon my spiritual journey.
I did not grow up religious, but I always believed that there was a higher power. Over the past few years, I lost that belief. I began questioning what was the purpose of it all, tried to take fate into my own hands and what ended up happening was immense amounts of anxiety with feelings of worthlessness.
The journey to go inwards proved to be very challenging, but extremely rewarding.
For me, I found that believing in God or a higher power just made living life a lot easier, because I could have faith and trust that God was in control, and I could just surrender to whatever that was happening.
It’s a process, and there are days where I lose that faith, but ultimately coming back to God has made the journey much more simple, enjoyable, and beautiful.
In 2026, I would love to deepen that faith and get closer to God every day.
Hello, 2026.
2025 has been the most transformative year of my life so far.
I have a deeper understanding of who I am, who I wanna be, and where I wanna go next.
So excited for what’s in store for 2026!
2025 may not have been your year, but it served as the foundation you needed to build upon for 2026.
You got this!
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