A reflective start to the year (2025 edition)
A reflective start to the year (2025 edition)
Well, it’s almost time to shake off my holiday energy and get back into my routine of being in TB Wellbeing and back at Deakin University to continue my PhD. It feels extra hard this year! As a summer-loving human I’m feeling very torn with all this lovely sunshine and warmth in Melbourne at the moment. As a creature of habit, I’ve returned to my regular writing place on a Sunday with a strongly reflective mindset. When I went back to look at what I’d written last year for my first blog of the year (and then the three previous years before that) I was amused, and yet not at all surprised, to find that it’s a very normal / usual experience for me to be super reflective at this point in the year.
In keeping with my habitual ‘do-list’ for the summer holidays I’ve worked through my annual reflective practice that I have been doing for what is now a whole decade! I am a big fan of taking the time and space to retrospectively review and reflect on what the last 12 months has taught me, how I have grown as a human on this crazy earth. Taking a minute to notice the habits I have inadvertently picked up (that maybe I’d like to put back down) and exploring new habits that I’d like to make room for. I worked through a reflective practice; a core values review and a considered intention setting for the upcoming 12 months. For those of you who haven’t heard from me about this before it’s something that I’ve refined over the last nine years that has resulted in a very personalised practice (I love me a ritual) that goes something like this:
- Review of my core values (see previous blogs HERE and HERE)
- Selection of my ‘word’ for 2025 (this year, it’s ‘constance’ – which is a feminine noun meaning ‘steadfastness’)
- Unravel your Year Workbook (click HERE for link)
- Annual intention setting (goals) for 2025
When we set aside time to reflect on our own experiences, we allow ourselves the space to grow. If we want to be and feel different, we need to do different, but in my experience, this needs to be something we do in a considered manner – it is rarely successful when we leave it to chance.
In amongst my reflecting and exploring this year I have spent a lot of time cultivating and developing my yoga practice which is an ideal spot to develop constancy. It’s given me space to be present with my body, to really tune into what I am able to notice (without judgement) happening just beneath my skin. And to try to separate from the very busy thoughts that are a great reminder of what it is to be human!
All this got me thinking about this quote from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits), “new goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results” and how it connects to this idea of constancy. It’s these steadfast practices that become habits, which in turn help us to create or curate a different lifestyle, or way(s) of being. It’s a personal thing these practices. I need something like yoga to remind me that there is no perfection involved…only a daily practice with whatever my whole nervous system has capacity for in that moment-to-moment experience. And it’s often challenging. Even when we’re not navigating periods of mental ill-health or trauma responses, to develop these new practices but that is what growth looks like, it is what healing looks like. And for me it’s what being steadfast is all about.
If you have decided that 2025 is the year that you start therapy, or if you’d like someone to help you reflect and support you with your intentions, we have a team of therapists at Thea Baker Wellbeing and we have IMMEDIATE availability – please reach out to us at: hello@theabaker.com.au / 03 9077 8194.