What if scrolling through our 2025 photos was the best way to take stock of the year?
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The end of the year is always an opportunity to take stock of the year 2025 and set (often quite unrealistic) goals for the coming year. Of course, it’s super motivating to think about everything we’d like to do in 2026, but are we forgetting something? Yes, yes: our goals for 2025.
Because we know it, we all set incredible ambitions for ourselves, and few manage to stick to them.
So, to celebrate this last day of 2025, I propose an exercise from a coach I adore: Mel Robbins.
I started doing this exercise two years ago, and I must say it really works. It’s not magic, just a little introspection of the past year to understand where we are and, above all, to know where we want to go.
The purpose of scrolling through 2025 to take stock of the year
There is a real purpose in scrolling through your photos from 2025: to look back and rethink what we’ve experienced over the past twelve months. Spoiler alert: you’ve forgotten half of it.
The most challenging part of this exercise is, however, essential if we want 2026 to be better than 2025. And we can agree that this is a bit of the point of the story after all. It involves looking at our bad memories.
It’s not easy because we want them to stay in the past and never speak of them again. But on the contrary, owning them and reconsidering them, possibly using them to learn lessons from them, is much more beneficial. Even better, by doing this, we avoid building trauma from past stories that still haunt us because we could never revisit them.
More touching: the good memories. They are also important. First, because we tend to remember the bad ones more, and the good ones remind us that life is beautiful and made up of joyful and simple moments. (Yes, we can be a little cheesy during the holidays.)
How to select your memories?
Most smartphones have a way to select photos from the year. Here’s how I do it, simply. Each month, I favorite about ten or twenty photos (for example, 20 favorite photos for January 2025, then the same for the following months).
At the end of the year, we thus have a real panorama of what we’ve experienced: photos taken in different places, with various people, at very varied moments. Not just the big events, but also more ordinary moments, sometimes forgotten.
This little sorting allows us to represent each month, then the entire year of 2025. It’s a simple and very concrete way to review your year without getting lost in thousands of images, and above all, to realize everything we have actually gone through.
The year’s review
Once you have selected your photos, it’s time to take stock of the year.
Personally, I proceed the same way as when I create a vision board. I make sure to be alone at home, with my apartment tidy, and I create a nice setting with coffee and candles in my living room. In short, I create a pleasant atmosphere to be ready to review and analyze the highlights of the past year.
I like to write when doing personal development exercises: it helps me put my feelings on paper, but of course, you do as you wish.
I take a sheet of paper for each month and review the good and bad memories, thinking back to the people I met or re-encountered.
I revisit the situations I found myself in, but also those that made me sad and that I never want to relive (and I don’t know about you, but 2025 was a year rich in twists and turns for me, ranging from the best decision of my life to the hardest moments of my life).
And then?
This is the “psy” moment of the concept: reflecting on what you’ve experienced, taking a step back, thinking about the mistakes and actions you’re proud of. It’s also the time to make your wishes for 2026. For example, if you notice you haven’t seen some of your loved ones much, now is a good time to organize meetings to see them more often.
Reviewing your bad memories is, again, an opportunity to reflect on what your failures in 2025 have taught you and what you can implement in 2026 to make sure this new year is a success.
You now have all the cards in hand to create your vision board for 2026. We wish you, in addition to very happy holidays, a wonderful 2026, full of reflections and, of course, sweeter than 2025.
Image credit: © unsplash
