2024: A Year to Leave or One to Embrace

By Marcus Earle - 01/23/2025

 

I have typically not embraced the New Year as a significant transition point. I enjoy the year in review summaries to reminisce on the prior year events but not found the motivation or purpose in setting goals for the year. Goal setting has always been an ongoing process for me, an ongoing evolution of direction. While friends who create vision boards or thoughtfully create goals for the year have always been impressive to me, it has never inspired me to do so, it just never fit.

While this past year has not generated the motivation to set goals for 2025, it did gain my attention. There have been significant losses, medical issues, and no small amount of anxiety producing situations. As a result, 2024 is one I am looking forward to putting behind me. Yet, here I sit into the first few weeks of January feeling some of the same feelings of last year – overwhelm and discouragement. Perhaps my dismissal of punctuating the New Year is not serving me well, or this is a reminder the idea of simply leaving the past behind is not reasonable.

Although I would dearly love to leave the year behind and move into a glorious new year, the one we call 2025, the first two weeks are not promising indicators. I decided to try something different this year, the art of reflection. For some of you who already practice this skill, congratulations. Reflecting on my losses, I realize I have made new friends and deepened existing friendships. Medical crises have led me to slow and focus on the needs of those I most love. The inability to resolve the anxiety provided an invitation to greater embrace the concept of powerlessness. For someone who is accustomed to accomplishing what he sets his mind to, the latter has proven most helpful in calming my soul.

You may ask how reflection impacts my overwhelm and discouragement? Well, on one hand it certainly has not absolved me of those feelings. On the other hand, I notice the learning over this past year helps me engage life with more patience and understanding, greater self-compassion and compassion for others, and equally important a sense of hope in acknowledging even the most difficult circumstances offer profound opportunity for personal growth and connecting with those around us.

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