Don’t look back in anger

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2024 is drawing to a close, so I wanted to hit you with one final newsletter before the chaos of 2025 kicks off.

It’s that time of year where our brains will almost automatically look back on the past year.

What went right, what went wrong.

What we accomplished, what we failed to follow through on.

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to overindex on the “what went wrong” part, and feel all sorts of negative emotions around those things.

We might look back with guilt at something we did or didn’t do. As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, I’m somebody who has the most amount of “Catholic guilt” even though I’m not religious.

I stumbled across a story a few months back that I’m still thinking about. Allegedly, there’s no word in the Tibetan language that directly translates to “guilt.” The closest possible translation is something closer to “intelligent regret.”

I don’t speak Tibetan and I haven’t been able to track down a Tibetan speaker to confirm this, but I think it’s a beautiful sentiment that can help us as we move into 2025.

Guilt can be corrosive and unproductive. But as Dan Pink points out in his book The Power of Regret, looking backward with the right kind of regret about things that happened or didn’t happen can actually be powerful and transformative for our future selves.

So, rather than trying to live a life of “no ragrets” (the opposite of intelligence)…

We can apply regret intelligently to how 2024 went.

So, in honor of the band Oasis reuniting for the coming year, don’t look back in anger (still an all-time jam, by the way).

Instead…let’s look back with curiosity.

Look back with curiosity, not judgment.

Take some time today, and look back on your year with curiosity, not judgment.

Did you accomplish the things they wanted to accomplish? Great! I bet you learned something.

Did your life go off the rails and you spent most of the year just trying to stay afloat! Great! I bet you learned something! Did you start and stop and bail on a goal repeatedly? Great! I bet you learned something!

Write these things down. Notice the emotions you feel as you look back. Write down what you learned, and how that can inform future decisions or choices you make.

Maybe you learned that you hate running, or that going Keto was an absolute failure, or that becoming a first-time parent really messed with your life entirely, or that we can’t stick to a morning routine.

These are all things that happened. Now, we must decide what sort of emotion to apply to those things.

Remember, the past isn’t set in stone, and some of these setbacks or failures might be the very lesson you needed to learn for Future You. They might be the catalyst for your next step forward.

Remember, it’s NOT “I screwed up/failed, therefore I’m a lost cause…”

It’s, “I screwed up/failed, and learned this lesson I can apply towards 2025.”