Now what? Reflections on the year’s end.
"The world is grand, awfully big and astonishingly beautiful, frequently thrilling.” - Dorothy Kilgallen*
As the year draws to a close, a natural introspection begins to surface. How did it go? Did I meet my goals—or even set them? How are my relationships? My career? When I zoom out, am I still becoming who I hoped to be?
All good questions. We learn by reflecting on our experience and these pauses are important.
But most of us don’t stop. We say we’re too busy, too behind, too responsible for too many things. In a world that rewards speed, productivity, and visible output, it’s easy to unconsciously prioritize short-term achievement and delay the deeper work of long-term growth.
But if we do pause to reflect, what do we do with the answers to those questions. How do those insights from our reflections become outcomes in our lives?
That’s the real work: transforming insight into practice—into habits, skills, and mindsets that shape how we live and lead.
I love my job because I get to see this kind of real change happening in people all the time.
From a boss with a short fuse and quick temper to being described by his staff as a warm, calm and joyful presence.
From a team entrenched in conflict, gossip and cliques to forgiveness, compassion for one another and commitments to a renewed culture.
This is not easy work. It’s gutsy. This kind of healing is months and sometimes years of playing the long game of reflecting + learning + practicing + growing + reflecting again. It’s doing enough inner work that your team can feel it, your partner notices it, and your community is shaped by it.
This is how change happens—not all at once, but through small, steady integrations. Not in grand gestures, but in the daily work of aligning who you are with how you live and lead.
This year’s end, let the questions and their answers couple with courage. The courage to keep going, to create actions and commitments, and keep doing the work that makes your life—and our world—more beautiful and thrilling.
*In 1936, Kilgallen and two other New York newspaper reporters (Herbert Roslyn Ekins of the New York World-Telegram and Leo Kieran of The New York Times) competed in a race to travel around the world, using only means of transportation available to the general public. She was the only woman to compete in the contest and came in second. She described the race in her book Girl Around The World, which is credited as the story idea for the 1937 movie Fly-Away Baby starring Glenda Farrell as a character partly inspired by Kilgallen.
Image by Natalie Parham