This Is Not About Goals, Gratitude, or Wins

This being the final newsletter of 2025, I wanted to make it special. So, naturally, I asked ChatGPT what it should be about. The suggestions I got back were fairly predictable: gratitude, lessons learned, looking ahead, celebrating milestones. And I have to admit, reading that AI slop made me cringe.

Gratitude? It’s not that I’m not grateful—I truly am, deeply, for many things. Lessons learned? There are always plenty of those lying around. Looking ahead? I do that constantly, probably more than I should. Celebrating milestones? Yes, there were a few, and they were, indeed, celebrated quietly, in the moments when they actually mattered. 

So, what, then, should I be talking about?

When I look back at what I’ve written this year, one thing stands out. What kept returning wasn’t gratitude lists or big, neatly packaged realizations. It was tension. Subtle shifts. The space between what looks good on paper and what actually feels right in real life. Again and again, my writing circled back to the same themes: pausing instead of rushing; questioning goals instead of automatically setting new ones; noticing discomfort instead of immediately trying to fix it; and choosing smaller, quieter changes over dramatic resets.

What kept repeating—in my writing and in my work with clients—was the importance of slowing down, taking a step back and creating space. Space to observe your life from a distance, almost as if you were watching someone else’s story unfold, and asking yourself whether the direction makes sense for you.

This is exactly the work I do with my clients. Helping them create enough distance to be able to see the signal more clearly. To step out of constant motion and into awareness. One client once told me, “Diana helps me clear the noise.” And that stayed with me, because noise is often the biggest obstacle we face. We are constantly encouraged to move forward—to rush, take action, achieve, grow, develop. All words that push us into high speed. And don’t get me wrong, I admire that drive. I love ambition. I love movement. But many times, if we want to move forward in a way that actually feels aligned—driven by something internal rather than external—we need space. Space to hear our own voice instead of reacting to everything around us. In other words, stillness before movement. Pause before action. Awareness before execution. 

We rarely give ourselves that space. We stay busy, productive and in motion, assuming clarity will appear along the way. But clarity often comes after we stop.

There’s a simple metaphor I keep coming back to. Think about a hamster running in a wheel. Research on rodents suggests that they don’t recognize certain internal signals, such as thirst, while they’re actively running. Awareness comes after they stop. While they’re in constant motion, they’re simply reacting. Only when movement pauses does awareness return.

The same applies to us, humans. We need to intentionally pause and ask ourselves difficult but honest questions: Where am I heading? Where do I want to be heading? Do these directions align, or is there a growing misalignment I’ve been ignoring?

So what I’m wishing for you as this year comes to a close is not a better plan or a more impressive set of goals. It’s the ability to create space, from time to time, to step back and observe your life as if it were someone else’s. To ask yourself, without judgment, whether you’re happy with the direction it’s taking.

Because only when we pause and take a step back do we gain the clarity needed to move forward in a way that feels intentional, grounded and deeply fulfilling.

Wishing you all happy holidays!