It was just yesterday when I came across a video of an influencer talking about how fast the year has gone and we only have about 3 more months till 2025. For a moment, my heart started to sink from the realization that 2024 is ending. There was one big question up my mind: “What have I done or achieved for this whole year?”

My thought floodgate just opened, and a big wave of thoughts hit me. I found myself thinking over all the time I wasted this year and blaming myself for not doing things enough. I mourned over the things that I could have done earlier this year like joining clubs, going hiking, traveling and many more. “Did I just wasted yet another year?”, I asked myself. Soon, I was in the unforgivable rabbit-hole of self-blaming thoughts. As seconds passed, my mood began to get lower.

I took a moment to reorganize my thoughts, and I found that I have not been totally fair to myself. A lot happened this year. I graduated with my masters, got myself two jobs, volunteered, took sign language classes and travelled to countries I have never been to. I even did things that I had never done before by myself. It turns out, my year was not wasted like I thought.

As cliché as it is, we as humans tend to have a tunnel vision of bad things and always ignore the good. We should always remember that there are always two sides to a coin in life. Looking at the other side is part of thinking dialectically. Furthermore, checking for facts and evidence could really help us to have a more objective point of view on things. Had I not asked myself what I did and started listing things out, I would not have known that I had done a lot this year. Lastly, I feel that it is also very important for us to validate and acknowledge our accomplishments. It is very easy to downplay and brush them off as insignificant, and this is where inquisitively checking for facts and evidences could help us determine if they are really insignificant.