#91 - Your Personal Debrief for 2025!
10 Dec 25
As the year draws to a close, now is the perfect moment to pause, lift your head from the day-to-day noise, and conduct a personal debrief on your 2025 journey. The highs, the lows, the setbacks, the successes...all of it contains insight.
This edition of the Springboard Spotlight! walks you through a structured reflection to help you extract the lessons from this year and set a sharper, more intentional direction for 2026. Your next step forward starts with understanding how far you’ve already come.
What?
This isn’t just about looking back it’s about gaining clarity.
A comprehensive year-end reflection explores:
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What went well: the moments of pride, the breakthroughs, the unexpected wins.
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What didn’t: the frustrations, obstacles, or choices that didn’t land as planned.
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Where you grew: skills strengthened, habits created, challenges navigated.
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Where you stalled: areas that didn’t progress, lingering issues, patterns worth breaking.
It’s a 360° view of your professional and personal year. It's a snapshot of the journey behind you so you can chart the one ahead.
Why?
Most people sprint into a new year without pausing to understand the one they’ve just lived. But reflection is a performance accelerator.
Here’s why it matters:
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Success leaves clues but so do setbacks. Your year holds data that can sharpen your decisions.
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Intent beats momentum. Clarity on what truly matters helps you avoid drifting into a year filled with noise.
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You identify your real priorities. Not the ones others hand you, but the ones that align with your goals, values and energy.
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It resets your mindset. Pride replaces self-criticism. Lessons replace frustration. Purpose replaces overwhelm.
Reflection isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about positioning yourself to win in 2026.
How?
Use these prompts to craft your personal strategy for the year ahead:
1. Celebrate the Wins - List your top achievements. Big or small, they all count. What are you proud of?
2. Name the Frustrations - Where did things fall short? What drained your energy, created friction or blocked progress?
3. Extract the Lessons - What patterns do you see? What did 2025 teach you about your strengths, limits, habits and expectations?
4. Set Your 2026 Focus Areas - Choose no more than three.
Think: career progression, leadership development, wellbeing, relationships, financial growth, or personal projects.
5. Define the First Moves - Ambition is great but action is better.
What are the first small, concrete steps you’ll take in January to build momentum?
6. Protect Your Capacity - As you plan your ambitions, be realistic about your bandwidth. What boundaries, habits, or systems will help you move forward without burning out?
In Summary
2025 was a journey full of growth, challenge, learning, and progress, even if it didn’t always feel like it in the moment. By taking time to reflect with intention, you set yourself up to enter 2026 with clarity, focus, and renewed direction.
Your next chapter is shaped by the lessons you choose to carry forward and the courage to leave the rest behind.
Here’s to stepping into the new year with purpose and momentum!
Have a great week!
Whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you:
- Resources - Reading is an essential component to developing your own authentic leadership style. Check out my resources page for really inspiring books which I have found invaluable within my own leadership journey,
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