Not Another Year-End Review
Confessions of a Coach Who's Still Learning
“We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.” —John Dewey
“Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.” —Confucius
Face Down in the Arena (Again)
A messy—but honest—look at 2024
Ah, December and “dead week”! Time for the yearly tsunami of "authentic" social posts about transformative journeys, profound awakenings, and life-changing insights blah blah blah.
I don’t have any of that for you. What I do have is questions, and being messy and human. My hope is that this makes space for you too.
As a coach I try to practice what I preach (ahem, it’s easier to preach than practice, just sayin’), so as I’ve been inviting my clients to pause and reflect, it’s only fair I should do the same. And yup, just like them, my own reflections revealed some unexpected patterns, hidden strengths, and uncomfortable truths.
This is my story of 2024—a year of falls and rises, kindness and harshness, panic and hope. And of dancing between doing and being, vulnerability and guardedness, holding on and letting go.
Maybe somewhere in my reflection, you'll find a mirror for your own journey, or at least a question that helps you frame your own story of 2024. After all, the best reflections don't just help us make sense of where we've been—they help us choose where we're going.
1. Work
(The work I do in the world that supports my life as a whole).
1.1 Where I was, where I travelled, where I am now.
I started 2024 in rather a panic. (And as I detest social media, no, I didn’t take to it with posts about “leaning into uncertainty.” Bleh.) There was a big slow down in my business pipeline and I was extremely worried. No-one was telling me no, but no-one was telling me yes either. Everything seemed to be in a holding pattern. Other coaches were reporting the same, so I knew it wasn’t a me thing per se, but that didn’t help with the worry.
So I took a leap of faith and asked a mentor for help with something. I fully expected a no, but was surprised with a yes. I asked her why she had said yes to my request, “Because I’ve seen you show up, Sue,” she replied. “I see how you use adversity to grow yourself, and that’s something I’m happy to support.” Her kind words, at a time of deep worry, meant so much to me, and gave me renewed hope.
It was kindness, not toughness, that turned 2024 around. It’s not a new lesson, but an affirmation of one. What the past year has really underscored for me is that kindness goes much further than toughness. Kindness to others, kindness to self: that is how we help others tap into their strengths; that is how we tap into our own.
(And yes, I know “kindness over toughness” sounds like one of those clichéd inspirational memes that I am constitutionally incapable of making. But sometimes clichés are clichés because they’re true.)
1.2 Three things I am most proud of
I added a new service line to my work, onboarding, and have been having a blast with it. When people are starting something new, they are at their most receptive. The seeds people plant in the first 90 days determine the garden they have later. Helping them plant, and nurture, those seeds, is very rewarding!
Releasing On the Road to Jericho. Writing a book, honestly, is easy. Getting it out into the world? Now that is another game entirely! I haven’t mastered this game yet, not by a long shot. But I am learning a ton in the process.
Collaborating with another coach friend to design and develop a one-day “courageous manager” workshop (to support developing more intervenors like Margaret.) Could I do this solo? Of course! But it’s much more fun (and effective) to do it as a collaboration. We’ll be testing it in early 2025. Watch this space!
2. Life
(Me and my outer world: the things that I do, the people I am with, that support me, personally, to thrive.)
2.1 Where I was, where I travelled, where I am now.
My various roles in life continued their shape-shifting dance: middle-school mom to high-school mom; 19 years of marriage (20 next year); sister, daughter, friend. Some things have changed, some have stayed the same. I am renegotiating some relationships that are long overdue for a change; reconnecting, deepening and growing others; and developing new ones. “Relationships are the real work of work,” says one of my mentors, Ann Farrell. And of life, I might add.
My various and interconnected roles—mother, wife, family member, friend—all continue to healthily challenge someone who has a long history of being more comfortable with “doing” than “being”. Through it all it is my son and husband who continue to teach me to “be” more and “do” less.
2.2 Three things I am most proud of
Reconnecting with someone I hadn’t spoken with for 25+ years. There was history, and hurt, but it was time. That’s one less rock in each of our backpacks.
Standing firm on something that would keep our son safe, at the risk of incurring a family member’s wrath. Sometimes, no matter how kindly you try to set a boundary, it will backfire. I’m proud of the care my husband and I brought to a challenging conversation.
The communities I am part of and help to sustain and grow: the adaptive ski community my husband and I volunteer with; the annual family camp we co-lead for our faith community. What we give is our time and our talents. What we receive is joy, purpose, connection, light and hope. I think we’re getting the better end of the deal.
3. Self
(Me and my inner world. My relationship with myself. My mindset, health and well-being, growth and development.)
3.1 Where I was, where I travelled, where I am now.
The pattern of your falls reveals the pattern of your growth.
The journey of self-discovery often begins with a fall. One of the gifts of the mess of 2017 that keeps on giving is Brene Brown’s Rising Strong work. I stumbled and fell multiple times in 2024. I have been face down in the the arena, my “face…marred by dust and sweat and blood”1, and tears, lots of tears. (Brene Brown talks about being “face down in the arena” which, let's be honest, is a much more poetic way of saying “I f-ed up”.)
What Rising Strong taught me wasn’t just about getting back up—it was about understanding the pattern of our falls. We were warned in Rising Strong, that not only would we fall again, but that we would repeatedly fall, and that we would find there was a recurring theme in our falls—that we would keep stumbling over the same things, because it is our very strengths that create our greatest challenges. We were also told that once we knew how to rise, we would no longer fear falling, and so would be able to dare even more greatly.
I fell and rose and fell and rose a few times in 2024. All of the falls sucked. They were painful and hurt. A lot. Just because you know how to rise, doesn’t mean falling doesn’t still hurt. It does. Each fall taught me something more about myself and others and getting back up. I’d still prefer not to fall in the first place, but, you know—gravity—it’s one of the laws of physics.
A few weeks after one particularly painful fall, that briefly had me back in that awful conference room in 2017, reliving one of the worst days of my life, I told one of my dearest friends “I’m still totally perseverating on this, so you know.” She had just remarked how in awe she was of my speed and my ability to process really tough emotional shit and rise. “Oh, so you are human and mortal,” she laughed with me. Indeed!
Perhaps the deepest lesson of 2024 is awareness of, and hopefully a little more grace for, our innate capacity for self-rationalization and self-justification. We all want to think well of ourselves. We all want to think we are doing the right thing, the good and noble thing. It is jarring in the extreme, and activates all our innate threat and defense mechanisms, when we are brought face-to-face with the uncomfortable truth of just how much this propensity can blind us.
Self-awareness is not for the faint of heart. Owning all of who one is—in my case my compassion and my arrogance, my kindness and my meanness, my sensitivity and my thoughtlessness, to name a few—is deeply uncomfortable work.
But it is also ultimately liberating work.
“People are developed the same way gold is mined. Several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn’t go into the mine looking for dirt—one goes in looking for the gold.” ― Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie’s words have been with me throughout the year. When you own your own dirt, you no longer have to prove yourself to anyone. You can dispense with all that exhausting self-rationalization and self-justification. You can make a full apology without needing to defend, explain and justify. You know dirt is simply the price you pay for gold…and you claim more of your gold when you own your dirt.
3.2 Three things I am most proud of
Continually seeking the (dynamic!) balance point between pivoting and persevering; introspection and taking action; vulnerable authenticity and mindful guardedness.
Grit, determination and commitment are laudable traits; but taken too far and I’m just being pig-headedly stubborn. Flexibility, changing my mind and approach, and knowing when to quit are laudable traits too; but taken too far and I’m just creating churn and chaos as I chase the next “shiny object”.
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates is claimed to have said at his trial. But the overexamined life is not worth living either. Yes, introspection, self-reflection and critical thinking matters; but getting stuck in rumination isn’t helpful either. Yes, we need to take risks and take action in the world, but without some critical self-awareness, we can be reckless in our behaviour and dismissive of our impact on others.
There’s a delicate art to “just being ourselves” and using it as an excuse for poor behaviour. Vulnerable openness and guardedness are not opposites, I’ve come to realize. When I just say what I’m thinking and feeling, without any filtering, I can come across as pretty intimidating, arrogant and harsh. Yet when I am too intensely filtered and self-critical, guardnessness comes across as prickly defensiveness. Too much guardedness and I risk losing and isolating myself, missing opportunities for genuine connection; too much unfiltered vulnerability and I risk alienating or overwhelming others.
What makes me proud isn't mastering some mythical perfect balance across these dimensions (I haven’t! Has anyone?), rather I’m proud of my growing willingness to embrace these contradictions and dance in the moment with them. To keep asking myself the questions about how I’m doing, learning from both the times I stay too long or leave too soon; the times I am too quick to speak and the times I am too slow; the times I am too introspective and the times I move forward too quickly.
2024: A messy tapesty, replete with loose threads and dropped stitches
So there it is—my decidedly unpolished year in review. No carefully curated highlights reel, no 'living my best life' hashtags, just the messy, beautiful, sometimes painful truth of being human.
Looking back at 2024, I see a tapestry woven from threads of professional growth, deepening relationships, and personal evolution. The pattern isn't perfect—there are loose threads and uneven and dropped stitches—but that's what makes it real, what makes it mine.
The only pronouncement I can make about 2025 is that I’ll still be me, just hopefully a smidgen wiser from taking the time to reflect on 2024. I carry these reflections not as finished wisdom but as living questions, knowing that growth happens not in finding final answers or a set “truth” (which can so easily sour to dogma) but in staying curious about what each new challenge might teach me.
Life happens. Sh*t happens. We are given the threads. What tapestry we choose to weave from those threads? That’s entirely up to us. It’s the one of the few certain freedoms we have in a world that challenges us every day in the real, raw, sometimes ridiculous adventure of becoming more fully ourselves.
“The best teachers aren't the ones with perfect balance. They're the ones who let you see them wobble." — Sue Mann
The one small practice that sustained me the most in 2024
The equanimity prayer and a gratitude practice also support me tremendously.
My three most popular posts of 2024
The Prologue of On the Road to Jericho: A Novel
From Teddy’s Rooseveldt’s “man in the arena” section of his 1910 “Citizenship in a Republic speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, and as popularized by Brene Brown in Daring Greatly.
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