What 2025 Taught Me About What Actually Matters

I feel like there's often a quiet pressure at the end of every year to turn your life into a scoreboard.

What did I achieve?

What did I do well?

How much did I improve?

We’re encouraged to compress twelve months of lived experience into a handful of metrics and milestones, as if that’s the most honest way to tell the story. I’ve written those kinds of reviews before. They’re neat, motivating, and yet they often completely miss the point.

This year I felt like I wanted to reflect on it differently, so here we go.

2025 wasn’t a year of breakthroughs, or big outward wins, or dramatic reinvention. If anything, it was a year of slowing down, of undoing, of seeing more clearly what actually matters and what I had been unconsciously inflating in importance for a long time.

If I’m being honest, this wasn’t a year I could summarise with numbers.

And that’s precisely why it mattered.

Starting the Year Lost

At the start of the year, I have to admit, I felt lost.

Not lost in a catastrophic sense, and not unhappy in a way that demanded fixing, but quietly disoriented. The old drivers that had carried me for years — goals, momentum, ambition — weren’t pulling me forward in the same way. I still cared. I still wanted to build and create. But something underneath had shifted, and I could feel the absence of a deeper sense of purpose.

Rather than trying to force clarity through more effort, I chose to stop.

In January, I committed to a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat. Ten days in silence, no phone, no writing, no reading, no distractions of any kind. Just sitting, observing, and learning to stay with experience as it is.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

There was no dramatic insight. No single moment where everything clicked into place. I didn’t walk out with a neatly packaged sense of direction or a list of answers about my life. In many ways, I came out with less certainty than I went in with.

But something far more important happened.

By slowing everything down enough, I could finally see what was real, and what I had been taking far too seriously.

Relationships matter.

How I feel about myself matters.

My body and energy matter.

On the flip side, thoughts matter far less than we think. Work matters, but not in the way I pretend it does. Goals matter, but they are not the centre of my life.

With that said, I’m still driven. I still care about building meaningful things. What changed was the weight I was giving them. I saw clearly how easily they become substitutes for worth, how quickly urgency can masquerade as importance.

One of the most noticeable shifts since that retreat has been subtle rather than dramatic. I reflect more. I write more. I feel less compelled to stay busy simply to feel useful. I’m less interested in proving that I’m moving forward, and more interested in actually being present with the life I’m living.

I still have a lot of personal growth ahead of me. I still want to create, contribute, and build something meaningful. But I no longer feel in a rush to arrive somewhere else before I allow myself to feel okay where I am.

Looking back now, that set the tone for the entire year.

2025 wasn’t about adding more to my life.

It was about learning what could be removed, without anything essential being lost.

Health, Vulnerability, and the Illusion of Invincibility

As I was making progress with my deeper mental work, I injured my lower back, which left me feeling physically vulnerable for the first time.

I train for powerlifting, which means heavy squats, bench press, and deadlifts multiple times per week. Strength has always been a central part of my life, not just physically, but as a way of staying grounded and disciplined. Around the same time, I had also started playing a lot more padel, which may have contributed to the load I was placing on my body.

The injury happened while deadlifting, which is usually my strongest lift.

At first, it didn’t seem that bad. I’ve trained long enough to know the difference between normal discomfort and something more serious, and I assumed this was something I could manage. But weeks passed, then months, and it became clear that this wasn’t going away quickly.

For over four months, I couldn’t deadlift at all. Squatting became more and more difficult, and if I pushed things even slightly too far, I’d pay for it the next day. There were many mornings when getting out of bed was painful, and days when tying my shoes felt like a small ordeal.

If I overdid it in the gym, I would be hobbling around like an old man the following day.

That was when it really landed. I’ve always been physically capable. Strong. Resilient. And suddenly I was negotiating basic movements. The contrast was confronting. It wasn’t just the loss of training — it was the loss of trust in my body to behave the way it always had.

For the first time, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get back to lifting heavy again.

That uncertainty lingered for months, and it changed how I saw myself. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, unsettling one. It was the first real reminder that strength isn’t permanent, and that even consistent training and discipline don’t make you immune to breakdown.

What stood out most wasn’t the pain, but how quickly the mind tries to normalise decline.

I could see how easy it would be, over time, to accept lower capacity as inevitable. To quietly lower standards. To tell myself this was just part of getting older.

I see people my age do this all the time. Back pain, sore knees, low energy — spoken about as facts of life rather than signals. As if age itself is the explanation, rather than a prompt to adjust how we train, recover, and live.

I never want to do that.

Working through the injury brought me back to a good place physically, but the lesson stayed with me. At 37, I’m not invincible, and that’s ok.

It means I need to think longer-term. Train with more self-awareness. Respect recovery as much as effort. Invest more in mobility and injury prevention.

And to be honest, just listen to my body more.

Health isn’t just another area of life to optimise. It’s the foundation everything else stands on. Presence is harder when your body is in pain. Creativity suffers when energy is low. Even ambition becomes fragile when the body can’t support it.

I’m not 20 anymore. But approached in the right way, I can still be strong and fit for decades to come.

That realisation didn’t make me fearful. It made me even more committed.

Committed to staying strong.

Committed to staying mobile.

Committed to treating health not as a phase, but as a lifelong practice.

Looking back, this was one of the most important lessons of the year — not because it limited me, but because it clarified what I’m unwilling to lose.

Italy, Presence, and Finally Going Somewhere I’d Dreamed Of

In May, I went to Italy for the first time.

It was somewhere I’d wanted to visit for as long as I could remember, one of those places that lives in the imagination long before it’s ever experienced. The food, the landscape, the history — it had always felt like a place I would get to one day.

That day finally came.

I spent ten days close to the Amalfi Coast with Helen and her parents, and I fully soaked it all in. It was one of those rare trips where time feels elastic, where mornings stretch out and evenings arrive without being rushed.

What struck me most wasn’t any single moment, but the feeling of being there without needing to turn it into something productive.

There was nothing to optimise. Nothing to extract. Nothing to prove.

I also got to spend some time in Rome, which as a lifelong Gladiator fan with a slight obsession for the Roman Empire, was really special.

I wasn’t there to tick a box or collect an experience. I was there to be present for it all. To take in the sights, enjoy the amazing food and appreciate the culture.

Coming off the back of the first part of the year, and the physical limitations I’d been working through, that mattered more than I realised at the time. Italy became a quiet confirmation of something I’d already started to learn: that life doesn’t need to be rushed in order to be meaningful.

It reminded me of a version of myself that isn’t always in a hurry to move on to the next thing. A version that can stay with what’s good without immediately wondering what comes after.

In many ways, that trip didn’t change anything. And yet, it reinforced everything.

That it’s okay to slow down. That presence isn’t something you arrive at later. That some of the most important moments in life don’t announce themselves, they simply ask you to notice them.

When we left, I didn’t feel like I was coming back with answers or revelations. I just felt fuller. More grounded. More convinced that the direction I’d been moving in — away from urgency, and toward a more deliberate way of living — was the right one.

Looking back now, Italy sits in my memory not as a highlight to point at, but as a reference point. A reminder of how life feels when you’re not trying to get anywhere else.

Returning to Long-Term Projects

After Italy, the year settled into a quieter, more consistent rhythm.

From June through to November, I returned to something I’d been circling for a long time — writing The Poker Athlete book. Not in a dramatic, all-consuming way, but steadily. Showing up. Sitting with it. Letting it take the time it needed.

After 2 years or starting and stopping, I finally finished the first draft.

That may not sound remarkable on the surface, but for me it mattered. This wasn’t reactive work or short-term output. It was the kind of work that doesn’t reward urgency and can’t be rushed without losing its value.

Writing the book has became a form of commitment. Not just to the project itself, but to the version of me that wants to build things slowly and honestly, without needing immediate validation. There were no quick wins attached to it. No external pressure. Just the quiet knowledge that something real was taking shape.

Next year I will work with an editor to get the book published ,which will be a huge milestone.

Around the same time, padel became a bigger part of my life — and Helen’s.

What started as something casual turned into a shared pursuit. We played regularly, got better together, and found a kind of joy in it that felt both physical and connective. It brought play back into the week. Competition without heaviness. Progress without obsession.

That combination — long-form writing and shared physical practice — grounded me in a way I hadn’t fully anticipated.

I could feel myself becoming more relaxed. More present. Less internally rushed. Not because everything was solved, but because I wasn’t fighting the pace of my own life anymore.

That doesn’t mean the pull toward short-term thinking disappeared. The pressure to make money, to solve things quickly, to hustle my way out of discomfort still showed up. It always does. But it no longer ran unnoticed in the background.

I could see it for what it was.

Looking back, this stretch of the year wasn’t about acceleration. It was about rebuilding trust — in my process, in my patience, and in my ability to stay with meaningful work even when it doesn’t immediately pay off.

And that, more than anything, felt like progress.

The Trap I Know Too Well

There’s a pattern I know intimately which I still need to be mindful of.

When pressure builds, especially financial pressure, my instinct is to respond with urgency. To compress time. To solve the immediate problem as quickly as possible. To become busy, productive, and reactive in a way that feels responsible on the surface, but often pulls me away from what actually matters.

I’ve lived this pattern for many years of my life if I’m being honest.

Short-term projects. Quick fixes. More output. Less rest. The feeling of doing something replaces the discomfort of uncertainty. And for a while, it works. The pressure eases. The nervous system calms. The problem appears solved.

But there’s a cost.

Long-term projects get neglected. Writing becomes something I’ll “get back to.” Presence becomes harder to find. What began as a response to pressure quietly becomes a way of living.

This year, that pattern didn’t disappear. But for the first time, it became visible.

I could feel the pull toward urgency — the temptation to sacrifice the book, my body, or the deeper direction of my life in order to feel momentarily safe. I could see how easily busyness masquerades as progress, and how convincing it can be when you’re under pressure.

What changed wasn’t the absence of stress. It was the absence of blindness.

Or should I say, it was greater self-awareness.

I began to notice when decisions were being driven by fear rather than intention. When I was acting to relieve discomfort rather than to build something meaningful. When short-term solutions were quietly eroding long-term goals.

That awareness didn’t magically fix the problem. But it gave me a choice.

And more often than not, I chose to pause instead of panic. To protect the work that mattered most. To trust that not every uncomfortable moment required an immediate solution.

Looking back, this may have been one of the most important shifts of the year. Not because I solved the problem of pressure, but because I stopped letting it sit unnoticed at the centre of my decisions.

Urgency didn’t disappear, but it did stop stopped running the show.

Final Thoughts on 2025

When I look back on this year as a whole, it doesn’t feel defined by any single event or outcome.

There was no dramatic breakthrough. No moment where everything clicked into place. Instead, there was a gradual reorientation — away from urgency and toward something quieter, slower, and more honest.

I learned that my body is not something I can take for granted, no matter how strong or disciplined I’ve been in the past. I was reminded that presence isn’t a state you arrive at once and keep forever, but something you return to again and again. I saw, more clearly than before, how easily pressure can pull me away from long-term work and into short-term fixes — and how much it matters to notice that pull before it dictates my choices.

I also spent a lot of time writing.

This newsletter has become a space where I can think out loud, reflect in public, and share what I’m actually living through rather than what I think I should be presenting. There’s something grounding about that. Something stabilising. It’s not about teaching or performing, but about staying connected — to myself and to the people reading along.

I’ve come to enjoy that more than I expected.

If this year has been about anything, it’s been about learning how I want to live while I’m building — not postponing presence until some future moment when everything feels secure or complete.

I’m far from finished. There are still open questions. Still things to work through. Still uncertainty ahead. But I feel more aligned with myself than I did at the start of the year, and less inclined to rush past that alignment in search of quick relief.

As I move forward, my intention is simple: to keep showing up honestly, to keep taking care of the body that carries me through all of this, and to keep sharing from lived experience rather than abstraction.

I’m looking forward to continuing these reflections — and to seeing where this slower, more deliberate way of moving leads next.

Thank you so much for following along and I look forward to sharing so much more in 2026.

Adam