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- #114: Closing out 2025
#114: Closing out 2025
Alex Joshi
December 14, 2025
Hello and welcome to the final edition of 2025.
Last Sunday, Lando Norris won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship. Elated doesn’t come close to how it felt watching it unfold. Seeing someone realise a life’s ambition is a rare privilege, especially when you’ve followed the journey for years. I hope many of you have achieved big goals this year.
I didn’t. For the first time in almost 20 years of setting goals on January 1st, I chose not to set any in 2025. I took a different way of approaching the year, and life more broadly. This edition is a reflection on what that gave me.
A caveat: there’s nothing revolutionary here. Much of it will already exist somewhere in your life. My hope is simply that it offers some food for thought, however small, ahead of a new year.
With over forty flights completed so far, there have been many plane thoughts—enough to fill two full notebooks. I’ve been re-reading them over the past few mornings, and I’m grateful for this habit. Looking back on what you achieved matters. Looking back on how you felt is just as valuable, or even more so.
Daily journaling has become one of the most valuable tools in my life, and I cannot recommend it enough as a self-development tool. In an age where AI can parse all this information and provide excellent insight, an unfiltered record of your inner world becomes even more valuable.
No goals?
It’s been a year since I published #96: Going to therapy, which is where this story begins.
After the most turbulent year of my life, I ended 2024 emotionally depleted. Sitting in Abu Dhabi on Dec 31st, I decided that instead of setting ambitious, specific goals, 2025 would be about one thing: feeling good in myself.
Feel good I do, and I feel extremely proud of myself what I have achieved this year, which is actually a whole new philosophy on life. It only emerged because I allowed myself the time and space for it to form.
Talking to Nicole yesterday, I made the comment that it’s strange not starting the year with big goals, and starting Jan at a slower pace. To some degree, I feel like I’m not doing the best I could be by not having a list; that I’m not working hard enough. But at the same time I wouldn’t have seen and fully appreciated some of the things I have already this month if I wasn’t running at this slower speed. I use the word running even though it doesn’t feel like it, because I have already done four flights in the first two weeks of the year.
It’s funny how as you age and gain life experience, things you’ve been told in the past start to make so much more sense. Whilst some are extreme and on the opposite side of the scale to me on this, I do get the comments about slowing down and having a more relaxed life. There has been a lack of balance, and to some degree the wrong priorities, even though at the time I wasn’t really aware of it. Life has flown by in recent years, and whilst I’ve experienced so much, I have also missed out on a lot.
So what did I actually do?
Letting go - One reason for not setting goals is that there is typically a bias towards more; more action, more success, more. I recognised last year that removing impediments to what you want is perhaps even more critical, and I’ve focused on letting go of thoughts, feelings, people, and possessions. This has led to more abundance than I could have imagined.
New experiences - In a quest to live life more fully, I have tried many new things this year. A huge perk of my life is that I continually travel to new places, but this year I became more intentional with it. Before each trip, I made a point of identifying a couple of new experiences - small or large - to step into unfamiliar territory more deliberately.
Prioritising myself - This remains a work in progress, as it is a fundamentally different way of navigating my life. I’ve begun considering my needs and wants before defaulting to others’, and allowing myself to act on them without justification. That has required unlearning old patterns.
My birthday was great. It’s strange to say, but it feels like the first time I’ve truly celebrated my birthday. Taking the morning for myself, having that gym session outside, going for a swim when I should have been leaving to get an Uber, was me prioritising myself properly. I spent no time thinking about work until I was in the room at the event, and once I did my speech and what I had to do I took them up on the suggestion and left instead of staying until the end like I usually would, giving me that unexpected couple of hours to go to the beach for sunset. The dinner with..
... A great day with a bit of everything. The next day was my first full day off this year, very well spent. An expensive day for sure, but why do I work so hard if not to enjoy my life to the full?
Rest and recovery - We all know its importance, but it's easier said than practised. I’ve really prioritised this, for example in my approach to booking flights by changing the weighting between prioritising sleep versus maximising time on the ground. The benefits have been tangible, mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Back in LDN after a great business trip this week, and taking the morning for myself. It’s nice to be in this position now, where I recognised I worked extremely hard, did long hours and gave up my own personal time to work, and now I’m taking some time back recover.
Romanticising life - I’ve made a concerted effort to appreciate the little things more. I look out for them in the routine, pausing, noticing, photographing, and writing them down. I’ve reflected on them more, creating a positive feedback loop.
The sky outside as I fly back to London is on fire. It is the most beautiful and vivid sunset I have ever seen from a plane, and I am in awe. The winter book talks about the importance of doing things that make you feel awe, and I have really felt this over the last few days.
On the way home last week, I saw a sight I have never witnessed before. A private jet flew just under my plane, coming in from the side. It was so close that I got a sense of the speed of a plane in a way I never have before. Just a few minutes later, another plane came out from under us at a diagonal trajectory, again so close that I could see the livery, and again at an incredible speed. It was utterly amazing.
What made the experience special was that I was able to see the whole thing unfold from afar because I was fully present, simply looking out of the window. I was flying in the afternoon from Madrid in business, so I’d had a relaxed morning, a peaceful airport experience, and then a calm flight. All the conditions came together to allow me to quietly look out of the window and witness that sight.
As I landed, I thought about how simple life can be, and how light I feel now. It’s such a difference.
Spending money differently - Growing up with a scarcity mindset and having long prioritised saving and investing for a better tomorrow, I consciously increased spending on small, everyday quality-of-life improvements. Money doesn’t buy happiness and that view hasn’t changed, but it can meaningfully enhance it, and it has.
Addressing the uncomfortable - I initiated more difficult and uncomfortable conversations than ever before. Relationships have benefited greatly and deepened, and my sense of self-worth has grown, too. Part of this came from recognising the importance of hard conversations; part came from having the mental space to notice when they were needed.
Yesterday’s message wasn’t enjoyable to write, but it was important to do, and I’m proud of myself. I respected myself and I stood up for me. I set boundaries and I was okay with walking away from something that wasn’t healthy for me. I’ve felt down this weekend about the situation as well as the wider implications, but I’ve grown a lot and this action has allowed me to prove that to myself.
Understanding myself - This is the thread that ties everything together. Being better rested, calmer, and more present has allowed me to understand myself more clearly. Few pursuits compound as reliably as self-understanding, and I believe it's one of the most important pursuits we can undertake daily. The benefits accrue not just to ourselves, but to everyone we build and maintain relationships with.
Will I repeat this in 2026?
No. Whilst this approach was very successful, I will revert to goal-setting.
This was another transformative year in my personal development, but a priority for 2026 is action, which naturally takes me back to goal-setting. I’ll be anchoring around three core themes, each with a central goal set on January 1st.
Finally, thank you for giving me some of your most valuable resource, your attention. I hope Plane Thoughts has offered something useful in return. If it has, I’d love to hear your reflections. Hit reply and share them with me.
Wishing you a thoughtful close to 2025,
— AJ
On my bedside table:
The most impactful books I read in 2025:
📖 : Maybe you should talk to someone by Lori Gottleib
📖 : What happened to you? by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
📖 : The book you wish your parents had read by Philippa Perry
💬 Quote: “Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.” - James Baldwin
Comments, questions, disagreements? Hit reply to reach out to me directly.
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