Yearly Takeaway 2025

For the 2025 takeaway, I have to juggle a few lessons. For one, I really felt the power of kaizen as I incrementally built my way to a healthier lifestyle and better practices. Concerning artistic blocks, there’s something to be said for lowering standards and shunning perfection. And golly gee, life IS hard and we need to give it our all. This theme kept popping up in shows I watched and tales I was told. But the most potent lesson for 2025 is . . .

Increase Happiness with Positive Reframing

Reframing is based in cognitive behavioral therapy and I’ve found it to be very effective. It does involves a few steps:

• Practice gratitude. Each morning, I seek small things to be thankful for and avoid dwelling on what I lack. Each day, I try to write these down. It’s effective.
• Acknowledge and challenge negative thoughts. Try to catch unhelpful thoughts as they occur and check if the thoughts are legit or unnecessarily pessimistic.
• Perform Self-soothing. Avoid pity parties and self-beatdowns by replacing negative statements with positive affirmations and encouragement. It is important to tame a harsh inner critic.

There’s a few more practices like labeling and reinterpreting events but a generalized take is to step back, assess the thought and respond differently. This has helped improve my mood considerably and I highly recommend it to all.