A Review of the Year

Where do you even begin when you’re asked to summarize a year?

Boiling down twelve months of effort, growth, setbacks, prayers, and quiet victories into something meaningful can feel overwhelming. But experience has taught me that the best way to move through overwhelm is simply to begin, one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time.

So this is me beginning.

Ready: Focus on the Gain Before the Gap

Ever heard the saying that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year? I’ve found that to be true, but only if we’re keeping score correctly.

By the time we reach the end of the year, we’ve often forgotten that many of the things we now take for granted are the very things we once wished for, prayed for, or worked tirelessly toward. Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation, our tendency to quickly adjust to improvements in our lives until they feel normal, expected, or even invisible. What once felt like a prize slowly loses its shine, and our eyes drift toward the next conquest.

This cycle may feel inevitable, but it often comes at a cost: our joy, our contentment, and our peace. That’s why it’s imperative that we pause between our optimization loops to reflect, evaluate, and give thanks for how far we’ve come. If you’re only measuring yourself against an idealized future version, you’ll lose sight of the very real growth that has already happened.

Before rushing into resolutions, try sitting with these questions first:

What have I accomplished this year?
When did I keep going, even when it was hard?
What relationships have I developed or deepened?
Who have I loved well, not perfectly, but well?
What used to be hard that feels easier now?

Taking time to reflect on how far we’ve come helps us approach our new year not from a place of lack, but from a posture of confidence and gratitude.

Set: Create Foundational and Aspirational Goals

After we’ve taken time to appreciate all the work that it took to get us to the end of this year in one piece, let’s set ourselves up for success for this next trip around the sun.

You know how some days you feel ready to solve the world’s problems, and then other days you can’t even muster the energy to tackle a load of laundry? This fluctuation has a lot to do with our current condition.

When we set New Year's resolutions, we’re typically operating from an ambitious, hopeful peak condition. But by mid-January, the workloads pile up, the winter blues set in, and your couch starts to look a little lonely. The problem isn’t merely a lack of discipline, but that our goals were likely set by a fully refreshed version of ourselves dreaming in ideal conditions. Once real life floods back in, that 10,000-step goal can start to feel downright ludicrous when our energy is already stretched thin.

One of the biggest shifts I made this past year was creating a sliding scale for my goals, leaving space between what was foundational and what was aspirational. This approach turned out to be both kind and intrinsically motivating. When perfection was no longer my baseline, I stopped quitting on myself. Progress became sustainable. Creating margin in our goals accommodates the natural rhythms of life, leaving room for enduring growth.

Examples of Enduring Growth Goals:

Spiritual

Foundational: Read 1 Verse
Aspirational: Set aside 20 min to study God’s Word

Mental

Foundational: Take 4 centering breaths
Aspirational: Invest 20 minutes in quiet meditation

Physical

Foundational: Enjoy a healthy breakfast + log 6K steps
Aspirational: Eat only real, minimally processed foods + log 10K steps

Go: Designing a Supportive Environment

Let’s recap. First, we celebrated the progress we made this past year, building confidence and unlocking gratitude. Next, we created foundational goals to keep us healthy and whole on hard days, alongside aspirational goals to stretch our capacity and inspire growth.

Finally, we must fortify our resolve by intentionally designing our environment for success. Whenever I’m building a new habit, I revisit James Clear’s four laws of behavior change. For behaviors we want to adopt, we need to make them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. For behaviors we want to reduce or eliminate, we do the opposite: make them invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying. Designing an environment isn’t about control or rigidity, but about removing unnecessary friction so our best intentions have room to thrive.

I’m naturally tidy, mostly because I keep a low inventory of things to manage. Still, this year I want to develop greater consistency in my housekeeping and cleaning routines. I’ve tried detailed cleaning checklists and dedicated Saturdays to cleaning sprees, but consistency never quite stuck. This month, I decided to design an environment to make daily upkeep more sustainable.

But first, I took inventory of what was already working. Despite a full calendar and competing demands, the rhythm of my home had held, quiet proof of growth worth celebrating and easy to miss. Then, I set a foundational goal of cleaning for 10 minutes each day at 4 pm, with an aspirational goal of 30 minutes, which was small enough to keep me consistent, even on low-energy days. Finally, I designed my environment to support the habit:

Obvious: Set a daily 4:00 pm alarm
Attractive: Pair cleaning with a fun audiobook or podcast
Easy: Keep only essentials in one portable bin, set a 10-minute timer, and pre-decide tomorrow’s task at the end of each session
Satisfying: Reset the space, check the habit off, and enjoy the visual calm of a home that’s been intentionally cared for

Who You’re Becoming

Designing my environment to support my goal of creating a clean, tidy, warm, and welcoming home reinforces my identity as an exceptional steward. For me, the goal isn’t a dust-free bookshelf, it’s the confidence to host a last-minute dinner or impromptu coffee to someone who needs a friend. This habit quite literally helps me cultivate a home marked by hospitality and love. When you look at your list of goals, what do they reveal about your priorities? What’s at the heart of it?

When the excitement of achievement fades, and it always does, what remains is who you’ve become. So as you set goals this year, choose ones that shape you in deep, meaningful ways. Goals that form your character, strengthen your love for others, and draw you closer to the life God is calling you into.

Slow growth may not always be flashy, but it endures—and in the end, that’s what bears the most fruit.

Faith Encouragement:

Galatians 6:9: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Dallas Willard: The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it’s who you are becoming.
Sullivan/Hardy: Most people live in the gap because they are measuring themselves against an ideal they haven’t reached instead of acknowledging the progress they’ve already made.

Ready, Set, Go: Designing a Year of Enduring Growth

The Cost of Success: The Balance of Pursuit and Surrender