End Your Year with Intent

Welcome to 2025’s last edition of Intent: where I’ll share one final thought to end your year:

Happy Tuesday!
If you don’t know this already, this is VERY important: New Year’s Eve & New Year’s Day are my two FAVORITE days in the whole year. Why?

First New Year’s Eve:

It is a very special feeling to tie off loose ends from the year.
To finish with gratitude, to take time off, to spend time with family, friends, and loved ones. It’s a special feeling to reflect back and think about all the amazing things this year consisted off. I’m always in awe thinking through the million things that happened in the last 12 months. How time flies! How I always think: “wow - I can’t believe I did ALL of that this year.”

Then New Year’s Day:

The time for fresh beginnings. The start of something new. The beginning of possibility. To set new goals, have new ideas, and work towards someone or something. A better version of yourself.

The best part?
The entire WORLD celebrates these two holidays. These two special feelings connect us all on a deeper level. It’s not silod off to one country to the next or one religion to another.

A little bit about my own year in review:

• Moved back to California

• Got a very exciting promotion at work to lead a team of 6 awesome engineers

• Finished my first sprint Triathalon

• Completed my 5th half-marathon

• Attended 6 conferences/career events

• Attempted and failed at running a business

• Attended 4 weddings

• And most importantly, grew my newsletter to 6,100 people!! all thanks to you!

Themes for the Year

So of course, the type-A me always has set new years resolution, has set different goals for different categories and went on to achieve most of them over the years.

However, 2 years ago, a friend inspired me to have themes for the year. One word or a phrase that would inspire the rest of it. He often coined it at the end of a year, but I decided to be a bit more intentional about it and define it at the beginning.

This is in case i ever felt lost, confused, and didn’t know where to go.

My theme for 2025

In 2025, my phrase was ‘slow down to speed up’. and boyyyyyy did it go fast. SO fast.

It was such a good theme to help guide me during busy times. and I learned a lot. One of those things being: it’s easy for me to “go-go-go” but I need to equally prioritize rest and recovery to be able to go after my goals.

As I get older, the slow-down, reflection-time becomes more and more important. It’s what allows me to be my best self and perform my best work. I need to continue to prioritize rest and relaxation.

That being said, here’s what I’m focused on over the next week:

• sleep

• lowering my cortisol (stress) levels through yoga, long nature walks, massages, etc

• waking up without an alarm

• not checking my phone 1000x/day

• spending time reflecting, thinking about what matters to me

• quality time with my friends, family, my boyfriend

• doing things for pure enjoyment: reading a comic book, going to a holiday markets, traveling to a new country.

Would love to hear about some of the things you’re up to this break!

p.s.
I was initially going to write about all the tips/tricks/tools etc to help plan your year and go-go-go. But looking back & reflecting on my theme, I want you to all to take this very special time at the end of the year to sloowwwwww down. As much as you can. If not for you, for me :)

We have all the time to talk about work next year. See you then!

With love,
Radhika

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