My #1 Lesson From 2025 – Contentment, Questions, My Favourite Obituary, Quote, Stoicism

As I completed my review of 2025, one word sprang to mind: contentment.

If I boiled that down to a single lesson, it would be to continually ask myself and answer this question:

Who and what matters most to you and how do you align your daily actions with those things?

But that’s not how the review began.

I started the reflection process on the plane to Canberra using my own Year In Review template (you can download it here for free >>).

As I began to type, I was wishing I’d done more, regretting the activity or goals I’d missed, the practices I’d carefully diarised but hadn’t kept.

I was thinking about all the progress I could have made and still needed to make in the future to get from where I was and where “I want to be”. (I’ve included my reflection notes below.)

But by the end of the reflection I realised that, even with all of the work that is still to be done, I am content.

Did I hit every goal? Hell no.

Is there more to do? Absolutely.

But the myth of perfect (or done) is exactly that. And my context will certainly shift and change, so I’ll need to keep evolving.

While it sounds simple, it’s not easy to keep our actions aligned with what truly matters. But I feel like I’ve done a reasonable job of that this year through the ups and downs.

With my sense of contentment comes the feeling of having/being/doing “enough”.

There are a few things that spring to mind on those topics that I wanted to share.

An obituary

I love this obituary that Kurt Vonnegut wrote for The New Yorker in May of 2005 about Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 and nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature:

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Continuing to ask myself different questions next year

• What if I flip the paradigm and focus on what I do have rather than what I don’t?
• What if the starting point for seeing someone is to recognise them as whole rather than needing to be fixed?
• If I fully trusted myself, how would I choose to act here?
• What won’t change? How can I double down on that?
• How can I create a feedback loop to help me monitor progress?

A quote

A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought – they must be earned.

Naval Ravikant

I would also add that, to me, all the truly important things in life are never-ending practices.

Stoicism

Memento mori is a concept in Stoicism to remind us that we may leave this life at any moment. The question then is are you ready?

I have a made a Stoic practice of reflecting on death. When I get on a plane, I ask myself a few questions:

If this tin can in the sky goes down:

• Do the people I love know I love them?
• Am I content with what I have done in the past?
• Am I happy in what I am doing in the present?

The same three questions can apply at any time. And today, the answer to all three questions is yes.

I feel incredibly fortunate.

And that feels like cause for contentment.

2025 Review Notes