Every new year comes with pressure to improve, optimize, and reinvent ourselves. But growth doesn’t always come from adding more. Often, it comes from choosing what we no longer want to carry. Resolutions don’t stick, so I decided: rather than making a bunch of resolutions I wouldn’t keep, I found 20 Things I’m leaving in 2025.
As 2026 unfolds, this can be a year focused less on perfection and more on kindness, clarity, and steady personal betterment. Letting go is part of that work. Are you ready?
Here are 20 things worth leaving behind.
1. Being unkind to yourself
The voice you use with yourself matters. Practice the same patience and grace you offer others.
2. Assuming the worst in people
Not every mistake is intentional. Choosing generosity in interpretation changes how we connect.
3. Measuring your worth by productivity
You have value even on days when very little gets done.
4. Comparing your life to curated versions of others
You are seeing highlights, not full stories. Comparison distorts reality.
5. Holding onto guilt that no longer serves a purpose
Learning is useful. Self-punishment is not.
6. Letting anger become your default response
Anger has a place, but it doesn’t need to define how you move through the world.
7. Expecting perfection from yourself or others
Progress is healthier and more sustainable than perfection.
8. Staying silent just to keep the peace
Your voice matters, even when using it feels uncomfortable.
9. Treating rest as something you have to earn
Rest is a necessity, not a reward.
10. Carrying other people’s expectations as your own
Not every “should” belongs to you.
11. Believing it’s too late to change
As long as you’re still here, growth is possible.
12. Harsh judgments that leave no room for growth
People can be wrong and still be learning. That includes you.
13. Consuming outrage without intention
Caring deeply doesn’t require constant anger or overwhelm.
14. Confusing kindness with weakness
Kindness takes strength. It often costs more than cruelty.
15. Staying in situations that consistently drain you
Protecting your peace is not selfish.
16. The need to always be right
Openness to new information is a sign of maturity.
17. Avoiding hard conversations out of fear
Honest dialogue is uncomfortable, but it’s where change happens.
18. Waiting for motivation before taking small steps
Action often creates motivation, not the other way around.
19. Believing you have to do everything alone
Connection is not a burden. Let people support you.
20. Forgetting that kindness includes yourself
How you treat yourself, day after day, shapes everything else.
Leaving things behind doesn’t mean erasing the past. It means choosing what still serves you and what no longer does.
If 2026 can be a year of clearer boundaries, softer edges, and more compassion, for ourselves and for others, that’s not wishful thinking. It’s meaningful progress.
And it’s something worth choosing.
