As December draws to a close, I’m taking a moment to bid farewell to 2024—a year filled with inner discoveries, skill growth, and transformative mindset shifts. I’m excited to share these experiences with you, hoping they’ll inspire, resonate, or perhaps spark a lightbulb moment or a thoughtful question.
Grab a cup of coffee or tea and let’s chat. It’s going to be a long one.
Years no longer mean a lot to me
I used to be regimented with yearly planning, setting goals, creating vision boards and mapping out the “perfect year.” While the end of the year is a celebration for many, for me, it was always accompanied by anxiety. Sitting down to review the year meant facing disappointment; yet another year where I wasn’t were I was supposed to be.
But in 2024, something changed.
Am I now brimming with excitement, proud of everything I’ve achieved, and ready to conquer the next year? Honestly, no.
Instead, I’ve become year-agnostic. The numbers on the calendar do not mean anything to me. Which is liberating.
It didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of three significant mindset shifts:
1. Reviewing how I set my goals
I no longer set yearly goals. If I’m honest with myself, my goals have often been overly ambitious, unrealistic given my life circumstances, and a source of unnecessary pressure.
Now, I work with a five-year vision for my life and break it down into quarterly goals. The vision is clear and unwavering, but the goals remain flexible and adaptable. This approach has allowed me to stay focused on the big picture while adjusting for the realities of life.
I’ve created a detailed presentation and workbook to guide this process. If this resonates with you, feel free to reply to my email with your request—I’d be happy to share them.
January 1st, 2025, is now just a day that follows December 31st, 2024. It’s no longer the “starting line” for a sprint to change my life.
2. Learning to be patient
Whenever I’d ask myself why I hadn’t achieved my ambitious goals, the answer was always the ve built over the years.
The real problem? I wasn’t being patient. I wanted everything to happen fast, but big, sustainable success takes time. You can’t get 9 women pregnant and expect a baby in a month.
This year, I’ve consciously enlarged my time horizon. I’ve allowed myself more flexibility and space to make poised, non-rushed decisions. Building solid foundations takes time—and while internalizing this truth hasn’t been easy, I remind myself constantly to wait.
While working on my patience, I had to ask the question why I was rushed. After a long and hoest reflection I realized it was because I didn’t want people to see me as a failure. Which leads me to my third mindset shift.
3. Success is internal before it is external – Be careful who you compare yourself to
This reflection shattered many of my limiting beliefs but wasn’t easy—it required me to lower my ego.
When we make statements like “I don’t want people to believe…,” “I want people to think I am…,” or “I want to show people that…,” we’re often talking about just 3-5 specific individuals. Be honest with yourself—name them.
When I did, I was shocked. These were people who had belittled me or doubted me at some point in my life.
When someone belittles you, they’re just saying words. How you choose to take those words is up to you. The truth is, you only feel belittled if you let yourself feel that way, and it’s usually because:
- I thought they had achieved what I wanted and did it the way I wanted and therefore their opinion was valid—but that wasn’t true.
- They presented objective data to show why I wasn’t fit for my goals—but that wasn’t true either.
Realizing this helped me diminish the power of others’ opinions over me, but it wasn’t enough to build a strong belief in myself. Here’s what did:
Realizing that none of this actually matters and this is just a game.
2024 has been a year of spiritual growth for me. I realized at the beginning of year that my understanding of my Creator and His book was shallow. Diving deeper into my faith has brought me confidence, clarity, and peace.
It taught me that success should be achieved internally before it manifests externally. In other words, never tie your inner psychological balance to external goals. They are two different entities that require different approaches.
As a result, I began to see life as a series of mini finite games within infinite games. With this broader perspective, the opinions of others, the failures, and even the wins don’t hold as much weight. It’s about enjoying the process (the game) itself.
This doesn’t mean that I avoid feedback. I now seek constructive feedback more than before because I’ve learned how to detach outer success and inner success.
This mindset shift has been liberating. And while I could write much more about this, I’ll save it for a future newsletter. Let me know if this is a topic you would like me to share more about.
I would like to finish by sharing quick lessons on some area of my life.
Health:
- This year, I’ve been learning the delicate balance of when to rest and when to push myself. Negotiating with myself about workouts got so frustrating that I came up with my whip or hug framework—you can check it out [here].
- Mastering the habit of working out and improving my fitness day by day has had the biggest impact on my daily life. It’s not just about the physical benefits, it’s about the discipline, the energy, and the clarity it brings to everything else I do.
Career/Business:
- I’ve discovered I can be the queen of consistency but not the queen of rewarding myself for it. Despite showing up and putting in the work, I wasn’t seeing results for a long time, and that can be tough. I hit a plateau, which for me, felt a lot like burnout.
From my experience, burnout doesn’t come from working hard. It comes from working hard for a long time without seeing results. When those results are far out in the future (as they often are when you’re building something meaningful), you need to find other ways to keep yourself motivated. Lately, I’ve been exploring ways to reward myself for the effort rather than just the outcomes and it’s made a huge difference.
- On a brighter note, I’ve embraced my leadership and management role better this year. I’ve been actively learning and working on the skills needed to be a good leader, and I’ve completely let go of the idea that leadership and management are just “natural” or easy.
They’re not. They’re rooted in principles from behavioral psychology. If I had to sum up what it takes to be a good manager or leader, it would come down to three things: Emotional intelligence – Quick feedback loops – Self management. And all these are skills you can build.
Other learnings:
- If something takes 2 minutes, do it right away.
Procrastinating on small tasks only makes them pile up and weigh you down.
- Express your feelings and appreciation more to people.
It’s easy to assume others know how we feel, but saying it out loud makes a bigger impact than you think.
- End-of-day reviews are so important.
Taking a few minutes to reflect on what went well (or didn’t) helps me stay on track and feel more accomplished.
- Running long distances is a mental battle more than a physical one.
Building mental endurance doesn’t just help with running—it transfers to every other part of life, from work to relationships.
- Be sincere, but don’t take yourself too seriously.
Going through life lighthearted doesn’t mean you’re not working hard; it’s just a different way of doing it. Life is a game, and no one enjoys playing with someone who’s too serious—it’s not fun. All you have to do is stay sincere and avoid cheating.
I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring my brain while reading these words. As we step into a new year, I’d love to hear about your own learnings from the past year.
Happy New Year 🙂
Imane
