Reflecting on 2025

Reflection is a powerful tool that often gets overlooked in the rush of daily tasks and deadlines. Yet, taking time to look back on experiences, both good and bad, can reveal valuable lessons that shape future actions. I want to share my personal journey of reflection and how I intend to turn those insights into meaningful changes that will help me grow and succeed this year.

We start every new year with a list of resolutions (at least I did, and I still do). Before I compiled my list of resolutions for 2026, I reflected on how my 2025 resolutions worked. Did they work? Did I stop them halfway? What was successful, and what wasn't?

Taking it slow with work

My 2025 resolutions were to slow down, eat healthy food, workout regularly and get back to reading. I did slow down a lot. I cut down working back to back because it was taking a toll on my physical health. As a professional makeup artist, I'm used to working at odd hours (doing a bridal dressing at 1am, working at tv commercials that go beyond 24 hours of shooting, etc...), but in 2025, I took only 1 midnight dressing per month, and declined working with advertising agencies that would generally have more than one 12-hour call sheet per day. Cutting off work also means cutting off income, but I don't believe it's a good income if it takes a toll on your health. Reducing the workload gave me time to rest, rewind and energise myself, and I noticed that my productivity was going up as well. I think this was the most successful resolution of 2025.

Eating healthy food

Eating healthy food... with this I also meant home-cooked meals. It doesn't mean what you're eating outside is always unhealthy, but when you make food at home, you know it's clean, made with fresh ingredients, and is so much more budget-friendly compared to eating from out.

Back in 2024, my entire bank statement was made out of UberEats payments. So when I sat down and did my personal accounting, I realised that I spent way too much on eating out or ordering in. The main reason for this was my busy schedule in 2024 too. I had very little time to cook or meal prep, or even to think about food. But last year I managed to cook whenever I was at home. My only failure was meal prepping. Either I was too tired to meal-prep or didn't have enough groceries to make multiple batches at once (because I didn't plan my groceries that well). I also had last minute bookings that I took (despite trying to cut back on work, I took a few last minute work since I needed the money for my basic bills). This unscheduled work disrupted the flow of my routine, and I ended up just ordering in after a long day of work.

This year, I'm hoping to plan my groceries better. I'm thinking of making menus for 3-4 days (doing a menu for the whole week is not practical for me as my schedules change all the time). There will be less food wastage this way too (I hope!). For this week's recipe (I plan to share a weekly recipe with you), I have this wonderfully easy mixed greens salad (more like a mallum in Sri Lanka) that is rich in nutrients and tastes so good!

Gotukola & Wing-bean salad

Ingredients:

1 cup Wing-beans (Dambala in Sinhala) thinly sliced (Pick light green, slightly softer wing-beans as they will taste better)

1/2 cup chopped Gotukola (I buy pre-chopped Gotukola from the supermarket. Saves so much time!)

1 small tomato chopped

1 small onion chopped

lemon juice (to taste)

salt (to taste)

Method:

Mix everything well and serve fresh. Yes, you can eat wing-beans raw. They have a peppery taste that compliments the citrusy flavours of the tomato and lemon juice. You can also add desiccated fresh coconut to make it very Sri Lankan, but I like to keep this salad fresh, because I generally eat this with some mashed potatoes and baked chicken.

Getting back to reading

I was also successful at reading. I reduced a lot of screen-time and finished reading 31 books (plus around 5 halfway read books). Since the prices of books have gone up like crazy in Sri Lanka, I opted for second-hand books and swapping books with my friends (I bought about 15 second-hand books last year, and I will continue to buy second-hand books this year). I was also thinking of getting a Kindle, only because it's cheaper to read some of the new releases on Kindle than buying the print, or else I have to wait for a very long time to find them in a second-hand sale (possibly not even end up finding it). I don't like reading off a screen, but I'll settle to save money and time for new releases with a Kindle. Let me know your thoughts on this!

Settling with a hair colour

I coloured my hair more than 10 times last year, and I'm surprised I still have hair on my head! I wasn't happy with the undertones of my hair (because of multiple layers of dye). Thankfully, I managed to go to one of my favourite hairstylists again when I visited London last year, and she managed to remove the reddish undertone I hated so much. Since then I coloured my hair thrice in the same ashy undertone (I used 4.1 for my roots and 5.11 for the body), but I decided to give my hair a total break from colouring in 2026. I'm quite happy with my current hair colour, which is actually very similar to my natural hair colour. So I stopped colouring my roots in November. Now my greys are out, and I'm starting to like them. I think I will not dye my roots again.

Adding a workout/10k steps per day

Even though I worked out more than the previous year, I couldn't do it every day. So this year, I will try a softer approach for this. I'm going to add only 3 days of strength training per week, and try to get 10k steps on other days. I even bought a walking pad during the Christmas sale in 2025, and used it this year on days I couldn't go outside for my daily walk.

Another way to make sure you stick to your plan is to have a system. So I've dedicated a specific time every day for either strength training or 10k steps (usually around 6pm-7:30pm). I've noticed that I manage to stick to it when I have a schedule.

Tips to successfully carry on your resolutions:

A few things I learned after reflecting on how my resolutions went are as below:

• Choose a few resolutions (keep it to a maximum of 3 or 4).

• Instead of just writing them down as a list, assign a time to do each one. If it's a long-term one, assign a time period per day, per week, monthly, etc...

  • i.e. My daily workouts are assigned for 6pm-7:30pm

  • I don't have any screen-time before i go to sleep, and I've assigned 10:00pm to10:30/11:00pm for reading.

  • Sundays are allocated for laundry before 11am.

• Stay true to yourself, and don't give up if you missed a couple of times. You don't have to wait till next Monday, next month or even next year to restart. Keep trying every day.

Do you have any resolutions you're working on these days? Let me know!

Hope you have a great week!

Neth x