Reflection and Evaluation

 Marcus Alden Meredith
December 10, 2025



Reflection and Evaluation

Preparing for the Coming New Year




I received an email from Sahil Bloom today. I signed up for his emails when I heard him on Ryan Holiday’s podcast The Daily Stoic and was impressed with what he had to say. His emails (titled The Curiosity Chronicle) have been fairly on point for me lately and today’s was no exception. The email today was titled The Personal Annual Review and had with it a link to get a full PDF that follows his questions he considers important for the process of a full personal annual review of your life. I have done things that were similar in the past and I find them mostly beneficial. Let me explain.

About 15 years ago I found that the usual process of New Year’s Resolutions was just not sufficient. I mean, come on! How many of us have half-heartedly come up with a list of resolutions for the new year only to have them fall apart 2-3 weeks into the month of January? I suspect it’s a large number of us. It’s as if we like very much the idea of making a fresh start but just have never put together the will and drive and perseverance to get them (any of them!) accomplished. When do gyms find themselves inundated with new members? Well it’s the month of January during new year’s time when all the best intentions of the human race seem to be displayed and the inertia of the same race laughs it’s ass off at us 3 weeks hence.  It makes perfect sense when you dive into the psychology of people’s motivations and mental drive to accomplish new things when habit is SO strong in our neural make up. I once had a friend versed in neurobiology tell me that it takes at least 3 weeks of concerted, every single day effort and practice to start to establish a habit. Most of our habits are ones that we are utterly unaware of until they are somehow, someway pointed out to us. But as for un-making a habit, and here’s the kicker, it takes at least 3 months of concerted effort to rewire the brain NOT to do what it had been doing almost automatically before. It is any wonder that most resolutions are dust at the end of the first month of the year? Nope… we have a brain that essentially still operates on a mental/emotional level that is still Paleolithic! This can be demonstrated again by going to an AA meeting and listening to how hard it is for people to stay sober and how much they need the meetings to maintain their sobriety. It is the reinforcement of the group that keeps them going (one more example of the absolute need and drive of human beings in the social domain).

Now, I knew all this when I started getting serious about my own resolutions. But how to overcome the human inertia inherent in our behaviors? I started with the idea that I would write a “personal contract” for the new year. Essentially, I drew up a contract with myself (yes with all the legal jargon) and had it witnessed and signed by me and a friend. The added wrinkle with the friend that was present was that I had also asked them to be and “arbiter” of my personal contract and had them enforce the proscriptions against me if I had violated any of the terms of this “self-contract.” Yeah, in retrospect it might seem a bit extreme, but I was bound and determined for certain aspects of my life to improve and was willing to go to some almost draconian measures to achieve them. The cool thing is that after the first year, I stuck with doing this with myself until I retired! Then, inertia came and sat itself down on my face again and I abandoned the practice… hell! I was retired. Now, starting up my writing in a serious way, I have found that I need to start back in on the honest re-evaluation of my time. In addition, being in my early 60’s and helping facilitate a Stoic Forum, I’ve been hit with the realization of how my days are truly numbered (nothing like your inevitable end to help bring about some motivation). So when Sahil Bloom’s email came today, it was a fortuitous timing to say the least. Some of the questions he includes are one’s like “What did I change my mind on this year?” and then “What did I not do because of fear?” He then gives a link to a PDF that you can download for free which I will link to at the end of this blog. Above all, taking the time to evaluate what you’ve accomplished or not as a kind of end-of-the-year meditation I think is valuable to everyone. It may have been a fantastic, red-letter year for you on the level of one you’ll look back on and go, “That was the best year!” and then again you may feel that this was a complete dumpster fire for 365 days (how many of us remember the year the world broke in 2020!). But it’s the process that I think is the best thing for us and then the honest self-reflection that will be most beneficial. But, in the end, it IS up to you. I hope that you take the time to reflect either with or without Mr. Bloom’s help. And, for all of you out there, here is my wish for a healthy and prosperous New Year for us all.


https://www.sahilbloom.com/annual-review


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