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START HERE
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Welcome to the 2025/26 Annual Reflection Guide. I’m so glad you’ve taken the time and space to reflect on your life.
Each year I choose a theme for the guide, a lens to look through while reflecting. This year it's relationality—the idea that everything is connected and exists in relationship.
Our lives are entirely made up of relationships. With yourself. With others. With your environment. With the seasons. With time itself. We're not as separate as we think. We change moment to moment based on what we're in relationship with.
Enter into a difficult conversation and your chest tightens. Walk into a room full of laughter and your mood lifts. Step outside after work and your body softens. Sit with one question you've been avoiding and suddenly see a way forward. You're always in relationship with something, whether you realize it or not.
My invitation is to look at your life through this lens as you move through the reflection. What happens when you pay attention to what's here, in your environment and inside you? What do you notice? Thoughts. Sensations. Emotions. Memories. What shifts?
This is a space to connect with yourself and life exactly as it is. No performing. No judging. Just being with what happened, what's here, and what's unfolding.
Take your time with it. Trust what emerges.
If anything comes up along the way, or you want to share what surfaced, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out at [email protected].
Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season. Let’s begin.
Steve
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<aside> <img src="/icons/music_green.svg" alt="/icons/music_green.svg" width="40px" /> The Downshift playlist on Spotify is a collection of classical and ambient pieces to accompany your reflection. Let it inspire you and hold space for what emerges as you move through this process.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/link_green.svg" alt="/icons/link_green.svg" width="40px" /> Listen to the playlist on Spotify
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“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”
―William Hutchison Murray
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$\color{#2c5b52}\rule{340px}{2px}$This guide has evolved over eight years, shaped by the seasons of my life and the people I've been in relationship with along the way.
I'm grateful to: