Celebrate Your 2025 Wins: A Midlife Reflection on Gratitude and Self-Trust
PODCAST · EPISODE № 011
Listen to the full episode:
Before you start setting your 2026 goals, there’s one thing you must do first — celebrate what you’ve already lived, learned, and created.
In this heartfelt final episode of 2025, Dr. Oksana Skidan invites midlife women to pause the rush toward “what’s next” and look back with gratitude and clarity. Through stories, gentle reflection, and real neuroscience, she explains why acknowledging your progress isn’t indulgent — it’s essential for self-trust and future success.
Discover the power of your “Done List” — twenty-five achievements from 2025, big or small, that remind you how much you’ve already become. Learn how handwriting rewires the brain for deeper confidence and emotional awareness, and how conscious reflection activates your inner strength and calm.
This episode is your invitation to step away from pressure and into presence — to remember that every conversation, decision, and quiet act of resilience this year has shaped who you are.
🧭 In This Episode:
• How to recognize your 2025 achievements with self-compassion
• Why writing by hand boosts confidence and memory
• The truth about midlife momentum and celebrating progress
• How reflection fuels motivation, not just nostalgia
• A simple year-end ritual to do with your family
Published on Medium: How to Enjoy the Holidays Without the Pressure
A Midlife Woman’s Guide to Presence, Joy, and Letting Go of Perfection
Useful Resources:
Subscribe to The Create Letter: https://oksanaskidan.com/newsletter
Explore The Midlife Method™: https://oksanaskidan.com/midlife-method
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/
Follow on Instagram @oksana_skidan_dr: https://www.instagram.com/oksana_skidan_dr
Transcript:
Oksana Skidan (00:00)
Well, congratulations! The busiest days of the year are officially behind us. The wrapping paper has settled, the dishes are done, and hopefully, you've had a chance to exhale — even just a little. I hope your Christmas was full of fun, good food, and the kind of moments that remind you why we do all of this in the first place. I also hope that you had a little bit of time to yourself — when you were just enjoying the holidays as much as everyone else around you.
And now, here we are — in that quiet but still magical space between Christmas and the New Year. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year. Everything slows down just a little. The lights are still glowing, but the rush has faded. It's as if time gives us a small pause — a breath before the next chapter begins.
For me, the end of the year has always been bittersweet. It feels a little like saying goodbye to a dear friend you'll never see again. Each year holds its own story — its fun, its lessons, its losses. And when it ends, there's always that mix of gratitude and melancholy — at least for me. And maybe that’s my Ukrainian part taking over during this period.
Yet this space — these few days before the calendar turns — holds something else, something very sacred. Because while everyone else is already talking about goals, plans, and new beginnings, I want to invite you to do something different today.
Let’s not rush ahead just yet. Instead, let’s pause to honor what’s behind us. Let’s look back — not through the lens of what’s next, but through the lens of what was. What you did. What you learned. What you became. What you achieved. Because before we step into 2026, we need to give 2025 a proper goodbye.
You know, it’s interesting — we, as women, especially in midlife, are incredibly skilled at moving forward. We fix, we plan, we organize, we care, we hold everything together. We make things happen — for our families, our work, our homes, and everyone around us. But pausing — taking time — that’s something we were never really taught to do.
Somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that stopping means losing momentum — that looking back means falling behind. So even now, just days after Christmas, our minds are already racing ahead to 2026: new goals, new plans, new beginnings. And of course, social media is helping us with that — maybe even pushing us a bit too hard.
But here’s what I want to remind you of today: planning only has meaning when it grows out of something real. What’s the point of setting new intentions if we haven’t yet acknowledged what we’ve already lived? Our lessons, our growth, our strengths, our resilience — that’s the ground your future actually stands on.
When we skip celebration, we don’t just skip joy — we skip integration.
We miss the chance to recognize how much we've already done — how much we've already become. So today, I want to talk not about the to-do list of future plans and goals, but about the done lists — everything we've achieved, completed, and lived through in 2025.
As you enjoy these last few days of the year, start asking yourself: What did I achieve, do, or complete this year? Think of your 2025 as a collection of moments — some quiet, some loud, some big, and some known only to you, yet perhaps the most powerful and important of all.
Maybe it’s the mornings that began with calm, even if only a few. The conversations that grounded you. The decisions no one noticed — but that quietly changed everything for you.
And of course, the loud ones — the celebrations, the fun, the milestones, the brave steps you took, even when fear was right there beside you. Together, these moments tell the story of your year. And that story deserves to be honored.
And if, as you listen, your first reaction is, “There weren’t that many moments… my year wasn’t special… I didn’t achieve that much,” it’s okay. That’s exactly why this reflection matters.
This step activates the Reticular Activating System — the part of your brain that filters information and directs your attention. Think of it as your internal Google search. Once you tell it what to look for — your achievements, your moments of strength, your joy — it begins to find them everywhere.
So once you’ve gathered a few memories, take a piece of paper. Yes, paper — not your phone. And write down, ready? 25 achievements from 2025.
Don’t overthink it. Don’t edit yourself. Just write. Allow yourself to see it on paper. Because what you’ll begin to notice is this — the good things are already there. They’ve just been buried under the noise of what didn’t happen.
Because that’s what we do — we remember the misses and overlook the wins, treating our successes as expected or required.
Now look through your calendar, your notes, your folders, even your text messages. Every image, every reminder, every small trace is a clue — not of what you still need to do, but of what already went right. It already happened.
And remember — an achievement doesn’t have to be impressive. Here are a few examples you absolutely should include:
Maybe you finally took that walk for yourself.
Maybe you said no without guilt.
Maybe you laughed more than you expected.
Maybe you made it through something you once believed you couldn’t.
And when you see these moments written down, something will shift. You realize that 2025 wasn’t just a year you survived — it was a year you actively lived. A year you shaped. A year you created.
And that’s why I want you to write it by hand — not on your phone, not on your laptop, with a pen. Because when your hand moves across paper, something slows down. Your thoughts settle. Your body catches up to your mind.
There is research behind this — that handwriting strengthens memory and emotional awareness. It helps your brain connect thinking with feeling.
But you don’t need a study to know that. You’ll feel it the moment you start writing. And if you do have colored pens — don’t limit yourself, go for it!
Remember, typing records what happened, but writing helps you remember who you were when it happened.
So as you make your list, let the ink move freely. Let the memories return. Let the paper hold the story of your amazing 2025.
This isn’t just reflection — it’s acknowledgment. And acknowledgment is where self-trust begins.
And don’t be surprised if you end up with more than twenty-five. Don’t stop yourself. Write them all out. Every single one deserves to be seen. Every single one deserves for you to be proud of.
This year, I’m starting a new tradition — something simple, real, and easy to do right from our phones. I did it for the past few years just by myself, but this year I’m inviting my family.
My husband, my son, and I will each choose one favorite photo from every month of 2025 — just twelve moments, one for each chapter of the year.
We scroll through our phones laughing, remembering, sometimes surprised by what we had completely forgotten — the places we went, the small victories, the unexpected smiles. And somehow, those photos — the ones that captured nothing special at the time — become the most meaningful as months pass.
It reminds me of when my son was little. We used to listen to a children’s radio show, and every time a child had a birthday, the host would give them three small tasks before saying, “Now you can turn one year older.”
And I keep thinking about that. As adults, with our busy and demanding lives, we need something like this — a pause, a moment that holds us accountable for not rushing forward until we’ve properly reflected on what took place in 2025, celebrated it, and shared it with the people we love.
Because when you take time to notice what you’ve done, you remind your brain that you are capable. That’s how self-trust grows — not through goals, but through recognition.
Each achievement you write down, every memory you honor, every smile you relive tells your mind: Yes, I can — because I did.
It’s not just reflection — it’s evidence.
Proof of your resilience, your creativity, your quiet persistence through all the seasons of the year.
And that’s what celebration really is — it’s fuel. You can’t create your next year on an empty tank. So before you plan your 2026 goals, fill yourself with this acknowledgment first.
And here’s something interesting. We get so used to focusing on the next goal that we often don’t even give our brains a chance to realize we’ve already achieved it.
About a month ago, I got a new car. I wouldn’t say it was a lifelong dream, but it was definitely one of those “I wish” visions I had carried for a while. And this year — it happened.
Here’s the funny part. As I was sitting in that car, reflecting on the year, a thought crossed my mind: “Well, I guess the new car will be next year’s achievement.”
Thanks to my years of inner-awareness work, I caught myself immediately — a new car for next year, while I was literally sitting in it! That moment reminded me how quickly achievements unfold, sometimes so fast and unexpectedly that our minds don’t update in real time.
I actually call it manually updating your brain. It’s the practice of consciously saying, I did this.
And that’s another reason why this achievements list matters so much — to make sure your brain is fully on board with your reality.
So let the end of this year become the foundation for the next one. Because the truth is — you don’t need a brand-new you for 2026.
You already have everything you need. You just need to remember who you’ve become and move forward from there.
So as you step into these last quiet — or loud — days of the year, take a breath and look around. You made it through another chapter, one that held lessons, laughter, surprises, and strengths you didn’t even know you had.
There’s no rush to start over. The new year will come, as it always does. But this moment, right here, in between, is where gratitude lives.
Let yourself feel proud.
Let yourself rest.
Let the noise of plans fade for just a while — so you can hear what this year is still trying to tell you.
And when the clock turns and the calendar changes, you’ll move forward lighter — not because you did more, but because you finally saw how much you’ve already done.
Thank you for spending this year with me, for growing alongside me, for choosing to be present in your own story.
Here’s to a 2026 filled with confidence, joy, and the kind of peace that comes from knowing yourself deeply.
But before anything else — remember, 2025 and all your achievements are still here, waiting for you to fully recognize them.
With ease, clarity, and presence — Happy New Year!