I Was Proud of This

Happy New Year, my friends. I hope you actually had a break. Not the kind where you’re still half checking emails, but the kind where your head goes quiet for a bit, and you remember what it feels like to just be.

My feed has been full of the usual January energy. New goals. Fresh starts. Big plans. Push harder this year.

I understand the impulse. I’m not anti-effort. I don’t wait around for motivation or permission. When I decide something matters, I show up for it. I set my own standards, and I hold myself to them, even when no one is watching.

But there’s a difference between being responsible for your life and treating yourself like a machine.

This year, I didn’t feel like making promises to a future version of me. I wanted to look honestly at the one I just lived through. Not what I achieved, but what it actually took out of me to do it.

That’s what this week became about.

And it’s why what happened next mattered more than any resolution I could have written down.

When I looked back at last year, I didn’t just look at what went well.

I looked at what it took to get there.

How tired I was by the end of the day? How often I skipped things that mattered to me? How much of my attention went to work and worry instead of people and health? How much money went out without me really noticing? How little space there was to just breathe?

Some of the things I’m proud of came with a cost I never stopped to count.

And that’s what we usually skip in January.

We make new plans without really looking at the old ones. We talk about goals, not about what those goals quietly did to us.

If you don’t look at that, you just build the next year on the same strain.

Most people treat the end of a year like a memory.
I treated it like evidence.

Before you decide who you want to be in 2026, this is a way to see who 2025 actually asked you to be.

Set a timer for 20 minutes. This is not journaling. It’s a reckoning.

1. Pull out your calendar and bank statements from 2025.
Don’t rely on memory. Look at what you actually did and what you actually spent.

2. Write six headings on a page.
Financial
Spiritual
Educational
Professional
Relationships
Health and wellness

Under each one, answer one blunt question:
“Did this area of my life get better or worse this year?”

Just write one sentence for each.

3. For every area that got worse, write what you were trading it for.
More work. Less sleep. Avoidance. Stress. Busyness. Numbing. Be honest.

4. Pick the one trade you don’t want to make again in 2026.
That is your real New Year’s decision.

Not a goal. A refusal.

That’s how you stop the same year from repeating itself.

You don’t need more goals yet.
You need a clearer picture of what last year really took from you.

That’s what this gives you.

A few days ago, I shared a short book about my weight loss and health journey, and the identity shift that made it possible.

Not the routines or the rules, but the internal changes that had to happen for me to stop cycling and start moving forward. I’m mentioning it here for anyone new, or anyone who wants to understand the deeper work behind sustainable change.

I’ve been writing these pieces in the quiet, between school runs, work, and late-night thinking, but I’ve started sharing more of the journey in real time too. The reflections, the systems, the messier parts of reinvention that never make it into the newsletter.

If you want to follow along, you’ll find me here:

LinkedIn
Instagram
Website: orgesameli.com

Come say hi. It’s less about followers, more about finding the others who are doing the invisible work too.

If something in this email made you pause, think, or feel seen, send it to a friend who’s been quietly trying to make a change, too.
You never know what might land at the right moment. Link here.