Finding the Gold in 2025 - Luddy Leadership

Take a moment and think about all the changes you’ve navigated since this time last year. Consider all of the internal shifts at work related to your role like changes in your scope and responsibilities, maybe new company, new domain area, new leadership, new organizational structure, new priorities, new hires, and loss of colleagues and team members due to layoffs or new career opportunities. Now reflect on all of the external factors driving change for you at work like hot competition, market conditions, new technology, war, politics, etc. Finally, layer on the range of personal life changes you’ve experienced this year such as loss of loved ones, dealing with health conditions for yourself and family members, growth in your family, new relationship, marriage, divorce, changes in your partner’s employment, and oh yeah, your kids’ myriad of transitions. Now, breathe in. You did this and survived, if not on your way to thriving. And, it’s no wonder that this time of year most of us desire a much needed break.

A question I ask clients is, “How are you using some of your key transitions to support your continued success?” Transition experiences offer us some of the richest soil for growth and when we allow them to just be “things that happened to us” we miss the gold of what we received. As a client partner once shared, passing up on learning through our experiences “is like leaving money on the table.”

My wish for you this season is that you give yourself the gift of mining some of the gold nuggets of wisdom within your transitions this year. To help you with that, here’s a reflective exercise to support you in learning from your transitions this year.

Find a private space where you will be uninterrupted for 20 minutes
Tools: bring a journal and pen to support deeper reflection. If you don’t have a journal, I’ve created a PDF of this exercise, which you can find here.
Start by taking a moment to shift gears by finding a mindful anchor like your breath or a steady sound near you, and focus on this for a few minutes.
Open your journal and list the key transitions you experienced this year. Go back through the list and place a star next to the ones that most deeply impacted you.( For me this year it was the loss of my father-in-law and brother.)
Taking each of the starred transitions one at a time, write down:

What you learned from this experience (about yourself, this situation, others) that you want to take forward in the future. ( I will take forward how crucial it is to honor others’ different ways of grieving including my own.).
What you learned from this experience that you would adapt in some way for better results in the future. This includes where you may need to let yourself off the hook for something out of your control, such as market conditions, other people’s choices, driving forces in the system around you in your organization or family. ( I will adapt to being more intentional about setting up in-person visits with conditions to support better connections.).
What is one small action you will take to apply your learning in 2026? (I will invite my mother-in-law to join us for an adventure in AZ – where we have a beautiful neutral VRBO space to visit.).

May the transitions of 2025 reveal their gold with clarity and ease, and may those insights strengthen and fuel you in the year ahead!