2025 was transformational for me. Painful in many ways, but I suppose, necessary. It was a year of self-introspection, self-correction, unlearning, and learning. My last reflection post was in 2020 (pandemic blues 🦠), but as I close out my last full year in my 20s, this one feels special.
On Love & Relationships
This year taught me many things about how to love. I learned (and am still learning) how to love myself, how to love others, and how to love with more patience and presence. ❤️
1. How to love better
- It’s important to love yourself first. It’s difficult to love others when your soul feels lost. None of us will ever be fully ready, but we can choose to be open enough to give and receive love.
How you treat, care for, and understand yourself directly shapes how you show up in a relationship. - We are products of our past and our environment, and many times, we perceive reality through old wounds. Self-awareness allows us to respond rather than react.
- A relationship is often a reflection of your insecurities, and ego is usually the biggest barrier to healthy love. When you feel yourself getting defensive, remember that your partner is not the enemy. Respond to understand, not to win.
- Consistency is love’s quiet language. Show up when your partner needs you, no matter how mundane.
- Love is worth the inconvenience. Love is worth the extra time, the small waits, and the longer routes home. As someone who’s a bit too focused on efficiency and logic, I wish my past self understood this more.
- Love is a choice, yes, but it is also a choice rooted in kindness, growth, and compassion. I understood the choice, but I did not always understand the kindness and compassion behind it.
2. Communication and consideration
- Love is communication, but it’s also consideration. If you feel something might hurt or disappoint your partner, choose consideration, even if it was never explicitly said.
- Understand each other’s history, triggers, and wounds. Do not rely on silent expectations or assumptions. Instead, be clear about what you want and what you do not want.
- Deep love is not easy. It comes with disagreements and difficult conversations. It is better to work through conflict than to take shortcuts, because temporary fixes never heal deeper issues.
- Consistent check-ins matter. Even a simple question like “How are you feeling today?” can make a difference.
- People grow & change as life moves forward, and most of the time at different paces. A relationship is not about shaping someone into who you want them to be. It is about moving through change side by side. It may feel uncomfortable at times, but that discomfort is usually a sign of real growth.
3. Loss, grief, and clarity
Losing a relationship brings a deep kind of grief. It feels almost like losing a person forever. You question everything you did. You wonder what you could have done better.
But when you finally detach and see the bigger picture, you begin to understand your faults, their faults, and the things both of you were trying to protect.
It is important to forgive your partner, but also the version of yourself who did not know better. Self-blame keeps you in old chapters. Mistakes are deeply human, and healing begins where self-forgiveness enters.
Healing is non-linear. It comes in waves, often hitting you when you least expect it. As time passes, what remains after a relationship ends is often just the memory of who that person was to you.
“She would’ve loved this.”
“We used to go here.”
“This was our song.”
And it feels very strange at times. Someone who once knew your entire world can suddenly become a stranger. There will always be a part of me that misses what we had, yet I know that every future relationship will be different and special in its own way.
4. Choosing to love better
The best thing you can do after any relationship is to become better. Not only for whoever comes next, but for the people already in your life.
- Show up better for family and friends.
- Love with more presence and less ego.
I know I made mistakes in my past relationship, and I own them. We were both navigating our own histories, needs, and ways of loving. With what I know now, I admit I didn’t show up as the partner I could have been. It taught me lessons I wasn’t ready to learn any other way.
5. A recommendation
I also finished reading How to Love Better by Yung Pueblo which already says a lot since I don’t read much (but I do plan to read more next year 😂).
It touches on almost everything I learned this year. A great read for anyone loving, healing, or learning at any stage.
In the end, this is just a blueprint. Real growth shows up in the moments when your old self would have reacted differently.
On Personal Growth
If On Love & Relationships was about how I show up in relationships, this one is about how I showed up for myself. 💫
This year forced me to look at areas of my life that weren’t moving.
1. When dreams weren’t materializing
There was a stretch where I gave everything I could, yet nothing was moving. Since 2019, my friends and I were building a social app and applying to startup accelerators. We kept getting rejected. Each attempt made me question whether we were solving a real problem or just forcing something that wasn’t truly needed. It also made me wonder if this was still the path meant for me.
The main lesson: effort isn’t always equal to outcomes. You can believe in something so deeply, but if timing and readiness aren’t aligned, you won’t see movement.
This applies not just to startups, but to life in general. You can be doing the right things, just not at the right time. That doesn’t mean you failed. Sometimes timing just isn’t right—yet.
That’s also why comparison is so dangerous. When you measure your journey against someone else’s timeline, you miss the progress you’re already making. Progress is best viewed relative to yourself. Be proud of how far you’ve come.
2. When stagnation hits
Over the past years, I felt like I was stagnating. I wasn’t learning, I wasn’t growing, and I wasn’t excited about my day-to-day life. That constant question started to show up: Is this really it?
The lesson here was recognizing that stagnation is feedback. When your mind and body repeatedly tell you something is off, it’s not laziness; it’s misalignment. And when it starts affecting your relationships, your confidence, and even your ability to love and commit, then it’s no longer something you can ignore.
It’s hard to show up fully when part of you is trying to escape what you’re in. Growth begins when you admit you’re stuck and start moving intentionally.
3. Movement again
I recently landed a new job. It wasn’t planned. I wasn’t actively searching. My last serious job hunt was in 2023, and nothing came of it. I also had an expat role in Europe in 2024 that fell through. So I reached a point where I was ready to take a master’s degree abroad just to reset my life. Went to an MBA fair, took an IELTS exam, asked for recommendation letters, and all.
At that point, I had already spent 6 years in my previous company. Then I found this really good role randomly online, sent my application, went through multiple rounds of interviews, and did my best. Looking back, I needed it more than I realized.
Suddenly, life started moving again. New environment. New people. Plus the freedom to travel and work remotely, which has been one of my dreams for years.
The lesson for me was that you don’t need to have everything figured out before you move. You just take the next step, and sometimes the right doors open afterward. Waiting to feel “ready” or for the right opportunity can keep you stuck. Opportunity follows movement.
And yes, I still want to build a startup of my own. But I no longer pressure myself to make it happen now. I want to build when it feels aligned, not because I’m trying to prove something. That shift alone changed how I view progress.
4. Creating again
I’ve always been passionate about creating and personal finance, and this year was the time I finally acted on it and put them together.
- I released my first ebook on investing— something I never expected to do (and people actually found value in it!).
- I posted my first educational reels— something I kept postponing for years.
- And I’m writing a year-end reflection again after 5 years 😅
The lesson here was simple: execution builds confidence. As a perfectionist, it’s easier said than done, but doing something imperfectly beats planning it endlessly. The things we delay often turn out to be the things that matter most.
Small moves count. They create momentum.
5. Energy > time
This year made me see that time was never really the problem. I had time. What I lacked was energy, and the discipline to protect it.
I noticed that when my energy is low, I default to consumption instead of creation. I end up watching Netflix, scrolling through IG or FB reels (not TikTok as a true millennial), or doing random things that don’t move anything forward.
So the real lesson wasn’t about managing time, but protecting energy. When your energy is aligned, even a little time becomes productive. When energy is drained, even long hours feel wasted.
Your life moves when your energy is directed toward things that matter. Protecting energy is how you get your time back. For me, that means focusing less on what I can’t control, doing the harder or meaningful tasks first, and exercising consistently.
On Friendship & Community
This year, I felt more connected to people, to places, and to myself because I finally put myself in environments where community exists. 🫂
1. Meeting people again
Since I can now work remotely, I traveled more intentionally and joined two nomad events:
- Nomads in Paradise in Siargao
- Nomad Resort Okinawa in Japan, which I joined because I met the founders in Siargao, which is a good example of the network effect at work. It’s also the picture at the top of this post. 🍺
It reminded me of the feeling of joining college orgs. I felt more alive.
There is something special about meeting new people at a stage when everyone has grown up a bit. No history, no bias, no past version of who you were. They meet you at your current state.
Some were ambitious builders & business owners, some were creators and remote workers, while others were simply looking for genuine connections.
The lesson here was that new environments expand you. You learn other people’s stories, culture, and perspective, and in return, you learn more about yourself.
Solo travel is nice, but having a community with you takes it to another level. Shared memories make life feel richer. Meeting people who align with you makes life feel energizing again.
Sometimes you do not need more goals, you just need better company.
2. Making friends in adulthood
I probably met more people this year than I did in the last three combined.
And yes, making friends as an adult is hard.
Your best bet is joining things that create repeated interaction. These are what I tried this year:
- running clubs (let’s go FRC!)
- pickleball groups (thanks Pickle Yard!)
- surf or hobby camps (yay Tides and Tribes batch 3!)
- curated dinners and third spaces (Timeleft is pretty good!)
- workout or wellness classes (Grin Method and Classpass ftw!)
Very quarter-life things, but effective.
I realized that deep friendships do not come from proximity alone, they are built through shared experiences. College and high school friendships last because you went through formative years together with those people.
The adult equivalent comes from experiences that define a season of your life, consistency, and shared challenges or adventures.
3. Maintaining friendships gets harder
As I get older, I see how much effort it takes to maintain friendships. People have work, responsibilities, routines, and their own problems to deal with.
That is why when people carve out time to see you, it matters. When someone checks in, even with a simple message, it means something. And when a friend makes the effort to organize or initiate a get-together, support that friend. They’re not just planning an event, they’re trying to keep the connection alive.
The lesson here was learning to appreciate effort, regardless of its frequency.
4. Accountability is love too
This year, I appreciated friends who called me out rather than cut me out. I recognize that it takes maturity, honesty, and emotional investment.
Someone who is willing to hold you accountable still wants you in their life.
That is a form of love too.
And those friendships are worth keeping.
Looking back, nothing changed overnight. Growth happened slowly— through painful lessons, small decisions, honest reflection, and opportunities I never expected. This year wasn’t about perfection, it was about realignment, even if I’ve used that word a little too often here.
But now I move forward with more clarity and a renewed sense of direction, knowing that whether in love, growth, or friendships, this year was about learning to show up better.
And I hope you do too. 😌
P.S. If you read the whole thing, know that I appreciate you. And if it’s my future self reading this, I hope this guided you back. 🫶
