What if scrolling through our 2025 photos was the best way to reflect on the year?
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The end of the year is always an opportunity to take stock of the year 2025 and set (most often 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, 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 see where we are and, most importantly, 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 revisit and rethink what we’ve experienced in 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 anyway. It involves looking at your bad memories.
This isn’t easy, as 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 we can draw from, is much more beneficial. Even better, by doing this, we risk not building traumas on past stories that still haunt us because we never could revisit them.
More touching: the good memories. They too are important. First, because we tend to remember the bad ones more, and the good ones remind us that life is beautiful and made of joyful, simple moments. (Yes, we can be a bit cheesy during the holidays.)
How to select your memories?
On almost every smartphone, there’s a way to select photos from the year. Here’s how I do it, quite simply. Each month, I add about ten or twenty photos to favorites (for example, 20 favorite photos for January 2025, then the same for the following months).
At the end of the year, you end up with a real panorama of what you’ve experienced: photos taken in different places, with several people, at very varied moments. Not just the big events, but also more ordinary moments, sometimes forgotten.
This little sorting allows you to represent each month, and 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 become aware of everything you’ve truly gone through.
The year in review
Once you’ve made your selection of photos, it’s time to take stock of the year.
Personally, I proceed the same way I do when making a vision board. I make sure to be alone at home, with my apartment nicely organized, and I create a lovely setting with coffee and candles in my living room. In short, I create a pleasant atmosphere to be ready to revisit and analyze the highlights of the year that has just passed.
I like to write when I do personal development exercises: it helps me put my feelings down on paper, but of course, you do as you wish.
I take a piece of paper for each month and outline the good and bad memories, reflecting on the people I’ve met or reconnected with.
I revisit the situations I found myself in, but also those that made me sad and that I never want to experience again (and I don’t know about you, but 2025 was a year rich in twists and turns for me, going 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 meet-ups to see them more often.
Revisiting your bad memories is, once again, an opportunity to reflect on what your failures of 2025 have taught you and what you can put in place in 2026 to ensure that 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 year 2026, full of reflections and, of course, sweeter than 2025.
Cover image: © unsplash
