A good year
What are you grateful for?
Thoughts
*
If you were to sum up 2025 in 1 word, what would it be?
Pause a little, then answer this,
What if it were a complete sentence?
**
It was a good year. Not perfect, because nothing’s perfect. It had its ups and downs.
Good moments and harder ones.
It wasn’t always easy. And the harder times often overshadow the good ones.
Making it more of a challenge to find joy in the positives.
But it wasn’t easy for everyone.
That is…what makes life fair.
Its imperfection across the board.
For me, it was a year of change. In all aspects.
A year of winning.
And a year losing.
A year of exploration.
A year of experimentation.
A year of betting on myself.
And I’m still in that bet.
All in—like I tell everyone I work with.
And I’m not going to fold.
I made some of the best friends this year,
unexpectedly stumbling upon some of the greatest people there are out there.
And then lost some.
I created some memories and really lived through moments I’ll never forget, ones that’ll last me a lifetime.
And worked hard on forgetting others.
See? It all balances out. You just get better at enjoying your highs and smiling through your lows. You give them a little cheeky grin and move forward.
Through.
Because you realise that a loss is never one—unless you decide to give it a meaning.
I’ve been lucky. Blessed.
الحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ
It’s a year I’m grateful for.
***
Thank you for being part of my 2025.
Good morning, and since I won’t be seeing you again before 2026, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
See you next year!
Insights
All on gratitude -
Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others."
Oprah Winfrey
"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."
Willie Nelson
"When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around."
Reflection of the week
Next one you get from me and it’ll be 2026 already. So for the last reflection of 2025, I only have one:
What are you most grateful for this year?
It can be anything -
a moment, an event, a person, a place.
Or a feeling.
A good read
I read this one 6 years ago - and it changed my worldview.
I thought it was all doom and gloom. Thought we were going downhill and everything everywhere was all wrong (all at once, lol). But then, I read Factfulness.
It was a recommended read by Bill Gates during a Goalkeepers event I attended in NYC in parallel to the UNGA back in 2019.
Back then, I was also gifting this book to everyone—that and the forty rules of love like I mentioned in a previous mailer. (there’s a third, and final one, that I gifted a few times also - but I’ll leave that to another edition.
So maybe going into the new year, we need a little bit of positivity. A little bit of hope. That things are much better than we think it is. A change of worldview is helpful.
A hint of gratitude
Our little community is growing! With 2025 coming to a close, I became ranked. #88 Rising in Business. Pretty neat, eh? Tells me we’re doing something right. Still a long way to go, but we’re getting there thanks to you! ♥️
AND, on an even more celebratory note, on:becoming just got it VERY FIRST PAID SUBSCRIBER! I’d like to appreciate Momen on believing in what I’m building and creating and supporting me along the journey. He’s the first, of hopefully, many!
If you’d like to get access to your own
first-hand content and stories I never shared before,
tailored private leadership tools and resources,
dedicated one-on-one time with me,
monthly calls with a nitpicked leadership community of like-minded leaders,
combined intellectual knowledge of this whole community we’re building,
I’d love it if you could support me below—I guarantee you that it’ll be worth it. It could very much be you instead of one of those handsome and beautiful avatars above 😉
*And to help you start 2026 on the right foot, the FIRST 5 FOUNDING SUBSCRIBERS get 2 months of free coaching → that’s 8 hours of deep coaching to get your 2026 into gear and set you up nicely for the rest of the year.
How can I help?
I also happen to coach people. I learned from one of the world’s best, Robert Ellis.
Would you like to have a coaching conversation? Sometimes all it takes is a 90-minute deep conversation to point you in the right direction. Or give you a little nudge. Maybe you just need someone to hear you out. I’m here for you.