Lessons For 2025

2024 brought us many obstacles, achievements, and lessons. Here are 5 lessons that you should take forward to make 2025 your year.

1. Become a Planner

   My number one thing this year will be to plan. Whether that’s in my personal or professional life, planning will allow me to be so much more assured of what I am doing and why. I used to do this well in school but need to take ownership of my schedule again and live by the planner I have. It will help with stress and having things committed on paper. Planning will then inform the rest of my lessons.

   
   

2. Move More

   Movement. Whether it’s your body or your mind, it needs to be fed with activity. The key is finding something you will enjoy that is convenient too. I used to play team sports and then dropped it because of work. But I suffered as a result. Going forward, I am committing to moving my body, whether that’s joining a sport, or going to the gym. Whether it’s getting 10,000 steps or taking the stairs instead of the lift, it’s all activity that fuels your brain so the rest of your lessons can be fulfilled.

   
   

3. Be Consistent

   I love writing blogs, but every year I decline gradually, usually in autumn as I get busy with day-to-day life. This is where planning in lesson 1 comes in: I want to plan blogs a month in advance so I have a proper schedule and consistent structure. This will help me to keep interest as well as share things on my mind that could help others. 2025 will see more blogs - looking at my stats, I wrote 44 blogs in 2024, compared to 35 blogs in 2023. I have been increasing year after year as I have more to share and build on.

   
   

   This applies to anything - being consistent is showing up and working hard when it doesn’t count. Small steps every day will make progress over time.

   
   

4. Pick Up Hobbies

   I get wrapped up in work and forget to keep things up like blogging. It means I miss out on hobbies I have enjoyed such as dance and debate. I want to make sure that I remain open-minded and take on a hobby to spend my time doing something new and exciting. There are lots of activities I haven’t tried and now seems a better time than ever to do so. This can be something like knitting, or learning a language with a friend. Anything that is fun and distracts your brain from the stresses of daily life.

   
   

5. Be Intentional With Your Time

   We’re all guilty of procrastinating in every area of life. In fact, as I write this, my unpacked suitcase is staring at me. When things get on top of me, I procrastinate with lesser tasks that still need to be done. In 2025, I want to be managing my time intentionally so I spend it doing what I want or need to do, guilt-free. I struggled to have a work-life balance last year and it did impact me. This is why at the end of the year, it’s important to reflect on what you have done, what you have achieved, and what can be learnt to inform the year ahead.

   
   

6. (BONUS): Practice Kindness With Yourself

   As I get older, it only becomes more clear. There will always be people who disagree with you or criticise you or underestimate you. In 2024, I received record hate comments for my reels on elections, relating to my intelligence, political opinions, weight, appearance, and more. Social media can be very damaging. I don’t take it personally because I know it comes with the risk of running a public account, but for people to think it acceptable to send such comments confuses me. In a world where people are only too quick to type hate comments, be your own biggest supporter. I find myself quick to criticise my performance or doubt my abilities. It is of course important to be realistic, but believing in yourself and being kind to yourself is part of you being able to do the things you do.

   
   

   Lesson 6 of kindness is also about failure. You can’t always plan everything, or stop procrastinating forever. It’s inevitable that you will have to deal with the unpredictable, whether that’s sacrificing hobbies for a work deadline or breaking a New Year’s diet. I’m planning my January reset for Monday 6th January (as I was away for the New Year) but I’m human and may trip up. It’s about understanding that it’s ok to do so, and how you react and recover is more important than the setback.

Your Turn

Those are my top lessons for 2025. Look back at 2024. What did you achieve? What did you not achieve? What made it a good year, and what would have made it even better?

Use the answers to inform your 2025 goals. And remember to use the SMART structure! For example;

“I want to do more blogging” - this is vague and general!

“ I want to do one- two blogs a week. One will be on news and one will be opinion-based. I will release them on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In order to do this, I will plan my blogs by creating a schedule one month in advance, with flexibility for emergency political news. - this one is much more useful for you to track and actually achieve.

Your goals should be like this - setting out your plan of HOW you can achieve it. Whether it’s work goals, fitness goals, or personal goals - the start of the year is a chance for you to reassess what you want and how to get it.

Happy New Year to all our Little I readers!

Author presenting lessons to secondary pupils, similar to the lessons here

*Header image is of the author on an activist engagement, all rights reserved 

#2025 #happynewyear #littlei #newyearslessons #newyearnewme