· 2 min read · Harshala Rani
Before this year ends
No offense, but the year ends whether you’re ready or not—so reflect anyway.
Before this year ends, applaud yourself for surviving everything this year presented you with.
Before this year ends, realise how much you have grown.
Before this year ends, reflect and correct the mistakes you made.
Before this year ends, decide your goal for the next.
Before this year ends, thank the people who made it better.
Before this year ends, apologise to that person you might have hurt.
December has this quiet urgency to it. It doesn’t shout, it doesn’t pressure—but it makes time feel real. Suddenly, procrastination feels embarrassing. Things you kept pushing all year somehow start happening now.
You finally take that trip with your friends, even if it’s rushed and imperfect. You meet people you kept postponing plans with. You say things you were scared to say. December doesn’t wait for the “right time”,it reminds you that the year is ending anyway.
Last year, I made a vision board and stuck it near my table. I had a few goals on it, and like everyone else on the internet, I was told that if I kept looking at it and manifested it hard enough, I would definitely achieve them.
I’ve always had a habit of writing down my goals for the upcoming year in my diary, so I thought “Okay, this year let’s try something different”.
Now when I look at that vision board, I see goals I couldn’t achieve. Most of them weren’t even in my control. And for a while, that felt like failure.
But what I didn’t expect was this—while I was chasing what I had planned, the hunger to grow didn’t leave me. It kept me moving. And in that process, I ended up achieving things that were never on that board in the first place.
Life is unpredictable like that. Things don’t always go your way, no matter how badly you want them to. Sometimes, life simply comes in the way.
And this year made me realise that forcing things doesn’t always work but adapting does.
I learned to adjust to changes I didn’t see coming. I learned to let go of timelines. I learned that growth doesn’t always look like ticking boxes—it often looks like showing up, again and again, even when the plan falls apart.
As this year ends, I’m not clinging to what didn’t happen. I’m choosing to acknowledge what did.
The lessons, the resilience, the people, the quiet wins that didn’t make it to any vision board.
Before this year ends, I just want to say this—to myself and maybe to you too: you did the best you could with what you had. And sometimes, that is more than enough.