A Year of Learning and Growth

An end of year reflection

Introduction: closing out 2024

I started the year with a blog that reflected on the notion of New Year’s Resolutions and how I was never really a person who did them. The times I had, they barely lasted a week, and never past the end of January.

This being my 45th year of existence, and deciding it might be time to both want to set resolutions and also to keep them, I decided that rather than just a checklist of ambitious goals—that I would commit to embracing two ideas: learning by doing and growing by embracing challenges with curiosity and patience.

I wanted to try to find something that I could try and learn through what I was doing each day. I also wanted to be patient with myself, and not give up at the first snag, difficulty or setback to my own learning, growing and changing.

Now the year is over, I wanted to write another blog, and do something I’ve never been able to before: celebrate my progress on my New Year’s Resolutions. I will also try to describe how intertwined my goals became as the year progressed.

Revisiting my 2024 Goals

In my blog to start the year, my goals revolved around learning to exercise, building resilience, and creating consistent habits. But they weren’t limited to fitness. I wanted to cultivate curiosity, challenge myself, and lean into the discomfort that accompanies growth. Fitness was a key focus area, but it wasn’t the only goal. My aspirations included writing more, learning new IT skills, becoming more resilient, building sustainable habits, and improving my mental and physical well-being.

Looking back, building positive habits around exercise supported other forms of growth and the adoption of other goals as the year progressed. It supported my resilience, helped me develop gratitude, and willingness to try new things. I learned as the year continued that I was becoming more grateful for the small steps and progress along the way both inside and outside the gym. I constantly found things that I wasn’t very good at, and in these moments I told myself I was learning and that I could improve incrementally over time. This way of thinking increased as I applied it, and these thoughts began happening just as much to my life away from working out, where I was also able to begin tackling new challenges with more patience, resilience and focus.

Photo by Sabrina Bachmann on Unsplash

A Series of Small Steps

The process of growth this year was far from linear or perfect, sometimes it felt disconnected, as lived experience it could be undulating, even with moments of going backwards. When aggregated together it was much more consistent than I’ve ever been before, but still have enormous blindspots and room for improvement. I have known for a while that I lack the ability to think of myself as an old person, set long term goals or plan far ahead. So I focused on my strength, dealing with the immediate and starting with small daily tasks to achieve. I wanted to build these small tasks into positive habits - but none of us can ever be sure this will happen. Most of my thinking was the simple focus on just showing up. Over time, those small daily steps add up to much bigger things, but I still remain focused on what I am doing each day.

Of course, there were many challenges to doing this as the year went on. The main one I want to call out is that I often didn’t like what I was doing, and the more I did things, it didn’t necessarily make me like it more. I think I thought that as the year progressed I would begin to enjoy it, and maybe even find it fun - but that never really happened.

That is not to say there weren’t days where I looked forward to going to gym and seeing people, and I occasionally enjoyed certain exercises or completing a certain number of reps or hitting a goal. Most days when I got home from the gym and had a shower, I felt achievement and contentment afterwards. When I was learning to exercise, learning about yoga practice, when I won an F45 challenge, and when I reached certain goals, like reaching 200 classes during the year - I felt some joy and pride. But while I am doing the hard work of exercising - I don’t enjoy it, and mostly I still hate doing it, even though I know it is ultimately good for me to do it.

The Power of Thoughts

This year taught me a lot of things here are a few:

1. I can ignore negative thoughts and forgive myself for having them.

2. I didn’t think I was a competitive person, but sometimes I can use healthy competition with myself and others in ways that will help me get through certain activities and stages.

3. Some of my anxiety, sleep and digestive issues weren’t forever conditions, and were actually closely linked to my diet, lack of exercise and self-care.

4. Making time for yourself isn’t selfish, it’s about your survival. You need to build resilience, and use experiences to know and connect to what matters. Doing that as often as you can, when you can matters.

5. I don’t actually always hate it when people give me compliments.

Challenges

The year was not without challenges and struggles. Travelling to and from Australia made building some routines hard. While I had some success at work and collected my Masters in Education, there were times when I struggled with missing my family at home and felt out of sync, out of control and not only not moving forwards, but moving backwards.

My eating habits were hard for me to work on, my portion control, eating and drinking too much on holidays and at celebration events during the year impacted my progress, and shows that from a consistency perspective I still have areas to improve.

During the year when other life factors came into sharper focus, my motivation waned, and I questioned my progress or the value of what I was doing. Each time these setbacks and thoughts happened I would feel bad, because I had imagined that as time went on, that these thoughts would go away or lessen over time. But I learned to ignore the negative self-talk, and embrace that I might always have these thoughts and just keep going anyway.

Exercise became a form of stress relief and a space for not existing entirely in my own thoughts and emotions. It shifted my perspective on what it means to change and grow. I got better at focusing on taking actions and continuing to do things, rather than thinking my way through to the answer or waiting for perfect situations before I would start. This mindset shift wasn’t just confined to fitness, it became a way of thinking that changed how I approached learning, work, and even my relationships with people.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Linking to Learning Theories

As someone who says that they “loves learning”, I reflected on the idea that learning should always be fun. The notion that learning is driven purely by a person’s strengths or passions can oversimplify the complex nature of personal growth and progress. While enjoyable moments can spark curiosity, genuine learning often demands perseverance through challenges that are far from fun. "No pain, no gain" is a gym cliche, but it does attempt to capture the reality that meaningful progress often involves discomfort and effort.

That people should “love” things they are learning risks leading people to avoid challenges and ignore the importance of the persistence and grit necessary to tackle tasks that are worthwhile but inherently unenjoyable. The concepts of disequilibrium and accommodation (Piaget, 1952) highlight that cognitive growth and improvements often arise from confronting and resolving challenging or uncomfortable situations. By skimming over this reality, the "fun learning" narrative risks setting unrealistic expectations, ultimately undermining the perseverance required for genuine achievement.

The concept of "desirable difficulties" (Bjork, 1994), refers to the idea that challenges that make learning harder initially can enhance long-term retention and mastery. This theory underscores the idea that not all learning experiences are fun or easy, yet the struggle itself is a critical component of effective learning. These theories also allow space for the idea that sometimes a learning journey goes backwards, and up, down and around before it goes forward in ways that are progress.

The concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygiotsky, 1978) also supports this view by emphasising that learning occurs most effectively when tasks are just beyond the learner’s current abilities, requiring effort to overcome challenges, with some persistence and support required to bridge the gaps. This theory also supports the idea that having people around who know how to do it, and who are further ahead in their learning can help you close some of these gaps faster.

Conclusion: Building into next year

As I move into 2025, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the foundation this year has provided. I’m excited to continue life as it is, but can also see myself thinking of some more specific goals and some new ones. I might try some new things, and continue pushing myself in meaningful ways. Whether it’s experimenting with new fitness related activities, learning new skills and building on the ones I’ve learned this year I’m not sure.

An extension of my resolution this year was about consistency, being able to apply this to my eating and drinking - and applying it to exercising when I am in Australia and on holidays is an example of what I am thinking. Simply continuing with the habits I’m forming would mean a lot to me without trying to do anything extreme.

I’ve met some amazing people this year and been supported by a lot of people during 2024 who have been more consistent for a lot longer, and I’ve drawn inspiration from them. I’m excited about continuing to show up in 2025, as well as trying to encourage and support others to do the same. I want to keep learning and keep growing.

This year has reminded me that growth is less about reaching a finish line and more about embracing the process. It’s about curiosity, patience, and a willingness to learn - ideas and values I hope to carry into every aspect of my life for as long as it continues.

I wrote a second blog that looks more closely at the data from my InBody scans in 2024. If you want to read that you can click here.

Photo by Brett Patzke on Unsplash

Reference List

1. Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe & A. P. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp. 185–205). MIT Press.

2. Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children (M. Cook, Trans.). International Universities Press.

3. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Harvard University Press.