In this end-of-year episode of Breakup Pep Talks, Sarah guides listeners through a powerful reflection ritual to consciously close out 2025 and prepare for 2026 with clarity and self-trust. Using Terri Cole’s framework, she challenges the belief that a hard year is an empty year and teaches how to separate the gold (growth, resilience, lessons) from the crap (patterns, roles, and stories that no longer serve). Instead of defaulting to resolutions, Sarah invites listeners to look honestly at peak experiences, personal strengths, and unconscious patterns that shaped the year. The episode emphasizes making intentional meaning from heartbreak, failure, and struggle—so those experiences become fuel rather than baggage. Listeners are guided to “break up” with 2025 cleanly and step into 2026 focused on how they want to feel, not who they’re trying to fix.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Breakup Pep Talks, and today we are going to be closing out the year with strength and resiliency, and we are going to learn from what worked and what didn't in 2025 so that we can set ourselves up per success for 2026. So here's what I want you to be thinking about this week. I want you to be thinking as we go through this, just because it was hard does not mean it was an empty year. I also want you to be thinking of we are separating the gold from the crap. All right? Those are going to be our big driving thoughts that I want you to take with you as we go through this process. So I learned this process and it's adapted from my mentor Terry Cole, and she loves to look at, she's a licensed psychotherapist and so everything that she does is based in what she has found works as a therapist.
(01:03)
I've been working with her on her team for eight years. I've been able to work very closely with her, learn her processes and really see what makes a big difference for myself. I went through my really big breakup. It was at the end of October, so it went right into the holidays, right into New Year's. When I got to New Year's, I was really honest with myself of I didn't want to go out, I wanted to be single. I wanted to be very intentional of how I was ending that year and going into the next year. And I had also moved into this apartment that I had just fallen in love with. I called it my Parisian walkup because it was just really quirky and it was old and I spent a lot of time making that my cozy landing place. And so I couldn't think of anything better for New Year's Eve than to spend it exactly the way I wanted to in this space that I loved and really reflect over that year that came before.
(02:09)
And what did I want to consciously bring with me into the new year and what did I want to leave behind? So I'm going to be teaching you this system that I learned. And honestly, it paved the way for, I think honestly one of my biggest growth years I'd ever had more travel than I'd ever done. Deeper friendships being seen and loved for who I am on a level that honestly was really unfamiliar for me. And so it was actually kind of uncomfortable. I was being really seen and I wasn't used to it. And honestly, I pushed it away for a little bit. Anyway, I digress. What I did on New Year's Eve going into the new year set me up for huge growth, huge wins, huge successes in the year that came after. So the reason why I wanted to share this process with you is because New Year's resolutions don't work if you are just going to go and set your resolutions of, oh, here's what I want to do for 2026.
(03:19)
I'm here to tell you most resolutions fail by February. And there's a number of reasons why this happens, but I think it's because we all overestimate what we can do in the short term like a week, and we underestimate what we can actually do in a year. And we set these resolutions from this place of what we don't want and what's wrong and what we want to change, and we think we're going to do it all right away. And when we hit that first speed bump, when things become a little monotonous and boring, when it gets a little challenging, we give up. We don't plan for how are we going to move through the hard parts. And I think it's because as humans, we have a really hard time celebrating our wins and recognizing progress even when it's small and our perspective on our own life, it's a bit skewed.
(04:24)
So we can't see how strong we really are and how resilient and we don't plan for when things go off track. And so when we think things get hard or when things get hard or when we fall off track, we think that's a setback. We think, well, that's just not meant for me when instead, if you think about anything that you really wanted in your life, I bet you there were moments of challenge. There were moments where you fell off track and you were able to succeed because you got yourself back on track, right? Because you moved through the hard stuff. And what I find really powerful about this end of year ritual is that it almost forces you to look back at the year of like, yes, there were hard moments, but there were also good moments. And what did I learn and how did I grow?
(05:15)
And wow, look how far I actually came in just a year. What could be possible if I really put my mind to it for the future year? And it also has this powerful effect when we look back at it with this specific process that I learned from my mentor. It has the power for us to start becoming more aware of our unconscious patterns that aren't working. And I really love this quote from Carl Young who was a student of Freud, and I feel like he really brought to light so much of our understanding of how the brain works in a very healthy way. And so young said, and I'm going to paraphrase this, he said, Nope, I'm going to pull up the quote. I wrote it down and I was trying to go from memory, but no, I am going to pull up the quote here. It is.
(06:16)
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will think it's fate. So how often in our life, in your life, I want you to think about this. How often in your life do you feel like it's just fate running the show and that you don't have any power, you don't have any choice? Where does it feel like you are not in control? This isn't really the ritual, just a thought experiment. And what we're going to do in this ritual is we're going to start pulling some of that apart and really questioning it of well, really is that what's happening? Or is this something that's unconscious? Is this an old pattern or an old habit that I just need to update? Alright, so let's get into it. Let's get into the ritual of what I'm going to invite you to do for closing out 2025, breaking up with 2025.
(07:15)
A lot of people on my Instagram feed are, it feels like this time of year, every year everybody's like, oh, it was the worst year ever. And it's, we're tired. We're tired by this point. We think that the New Year's going to be shiny and bright and it's not going to change unless you change something about it. So are you ready to break up with 2025 and we're going to make it a clean breakup, right? None of this, no closure. They didn't really tell me what was going on. We want this to be a thorough breakup where you feel like you can end it cleanly. You're not going to pretend it's all good or all bad. We're going to look at all of it. And to be clear, this is not about toxic positivity where we're going to pretend like everything was fine and we are also not going to relive pain and we are not doing this to beat yourself up.
(08:09)
Really what we're doing is what Carl Young said is that we are making the unconscious conscious, we are just raising our awareness because if we aren't aware, we can't change anything. We grow by choosing to let go of what is dragging us down and choosing what deserves to come with us. Alright, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to start by making some lists. I want you to get some paper, and I like loose leaf paper. I like something that's not in a journal. If you're going to do it in your journal, I'm going to have you rip it out Anyway, just make sure you're able to do that without destroying your journal. So what I want you to do is we're going to make a couple lists. The first list you're going to do is you're going to list out your peak experiences.
(09:07)
So I want you to think back of what were those big moments through the past year, and I'm going to challenge you to start by looking first at the positive. And I'm asking you to do that on purpose because it is really easy for our brains to go to the negative ones first. So challenge your brain and think about what do I have to celebrate from this past year? What were my biggest moments in accomplishments? What had the biggest impact? If you're having trouble remembering these, and it's okay, a lot of people tell me they do go back through your photos in your phone. I bet you took some moments, some pictures of those moments. Go back through your Instagram feed, go through your text chain with your best friend, find those big moments.
(10:01)
So after you go through and you find the big wins or the big accomplishments, then go through and find your peak experiences that were the hardest. It's okay to put your breakup there. If that was a peak experience that really did define the year, it's okay to include that here. I'm going to take you a little bit deeper and I want you to reflect, is there anything you would've done differently? I love that question when I'm looking at my peak experiences because honestly, when I got to the end of the year of all that growth that I had, I looked back on it and I really saw, I was like, oh my gosh, I was in this coaching group of a lot of women. I was really closed off. I was trying to lone wolf it. I was trying to be the lone wolf and a pack full of really strong, powerful women.
(11:05)
And I could really look at, oh, I would've done a lot of things differently. I would've been more open. I would've been more vulnerable. I would've taken the more opportunities to connect. And even though it was a big step for me to put myself in that group of women in the first place, and I'm really proud of that and it was a peak experience and I let myself be loved by them, I think I could have kept going with that. And I think there are lessons I could have learned from healing my relationships with friends, with women. So I learned that by asking myself, even though that was a peak positive experience in my life in so many ways, is there anything I would've done differently? And the answer is yes. And what it has done is it's had this ripple effect of shifting the way that I find friendships with women and the ways that I show up.
(12:04)
And I won't say that I'm perfect far from it, but it's definitely changing and shifting and I can see a difference because I took the time to evaluate what I would do differently. Okay, that's list one. Okay, your second list, I want this to be your brag list. Women especially have a hard time bragging about themselves, but I think we all could be better about it, right? Acknowledging our greatest strengths and how did we use them in 2025? What were you accomplishing in 2025? What are you proud of? So put that all down. And I think what I keep finding, because I've been doing this for several years now, I keep finding a consistent theme for myself is my strength and resiliency ends up on this list of I am so proud of the challenges that I put myself in front of and how I don't always win.
(13:12)
I often fail and I keep getting up, I keep going. So it's not always about getting all the wins, and I am not where I thought I would be in December, 2025, that's for sure. But look how much I learned. Look how many times I failed and I learned and I got back up and I kept going and I can still be proud of, I'm not where I thought I would be at this time, but gosh, I'm so much farther than I was a year ago. I have grown a lot and I've accomplished a lot and I've had hard moments too. But anyway, this is just about your brags, alright?
(14:03)
You might also want to ask yourself what worked better than I thought it would? What am I proud of that maybe no one else sees? Like what am I not celebrating out in the world? What am I not being outward about, but I'm still pretty darn proud of it for myself? And that could be as simple as I got up every day, I showered, took my dog for a walk and I went to work. Sometimes it looks like survival, not always success, and when you are in the thick of it, when you are in the throes of your breakup or your divorce, the fact that you could keep going is success. Alright? So this is really where I want you to start hitting home for yourself. Just because this year was hard and I know it was hard for a lot of you, that does not mean it was empty or devoid of accomplishments.
(15:13)
Okay? So you might start looking for what brought you peace or relief? What new boundaries or skills did you develop? You found your way here to this podcast. What have you been learning? What actually gave you support? How did you show up for yourself? Yourself? How did you show up for yourself? All of that counts. All of that goes here. Okay? So that's the gold, and I set this up. I was having this image, if you remember those old timey miners who went west looking for gold during the gold rush age, and they had those pans, they would take them to the river and they would put the pans in the river and pick up all the silt and the rocks and everything from the riverbank and they would sift it, sift, sift, sift, sift, sift, and all the gunk would fall through that sifter and it would leave the gold.
(16:14)
That's the image of what we're working with here. I want you to identify the gold first, just because this is really important for how your brain works. It's important to acknowledge successes and wins and accomplishments. It's very important for your psychology. That's why we're doing it that way. And now we're going to sift away the crap by being very conscious, very aware of what we want to sift out, what we want to leave behind. Okay? So here's what I want you to start looking for. You're going to make another list. This is your third list. This is what do you want to leave behind in 2025? Okay? So I want you to start thinking about in the different areas of your life, okay? You've got your romantic life, you've got your health, your habits, your family, your friendships, your job, your finances, many other areas of your life. Those are some of the main areas I talk about with people most often. But you can pick anything you want to go in there. And I want you to start looking for what patterns were draining to you in those areas.
(17:45)
What do you feel? What situations or people, experiences do you feel like you've outgrown? Where were you self abandoning or overgiving or over-functioning? The question I love asking myself is what required me to shrink, hustle or abandon myself? When I say hustle, I don't mean you put in the good hard work. I mean kind where it felt like you're always proving yourself where it felt like you were working too hard and people just weren't getting it. You also might ask yourself, what am I tolerating? Tolerating is such a waste of our energy where it's like we're trying to justify like, well, it's not that bad. I can hang in there for a little bit longer. I'll figure it out. Tolerating is a big old energy leak.
(18:52)
And remember as you go through this, this is not about blaming yourself. You made the best decisions you could with who you were at that time. The crap isn't evidence that you failed. It's proof that you were learning. I'm really big with my Peloton app. I love my Peloton app, and I've been listening to one of the running coaches lately, and she has redefined failure, FAIL, first attempt in learning. Then she goes on of like, oh, and then there's sale, second attempt in learning and tail, third attempt in learning. We can fail as many times as we need to because it's about the learning. And that's what this process is, is that you are looking at these areas that seemed like failures and we're going to learn from them. Don't worry that's coming. But first we have to identify what do you want to leave behind? What do you not want to come with you into 2026?
(19:58)
All right, your final list. These are the gems, these are the lessons. So what did 2025 teach you about yourself? Okay, this is so important because we are making meaning from things all the time. We are having circumstances happen and we make them mean something about ourselves. We do it so quickly of my ex broke up with me, therefore I'm unlovable. And that story of nobody's going to love me again, I'm unlovable, he's better off without me. She never really loved me. We make those stories so fast, we're not even aware that it happens. We just adopt them. Like a fish who's swimming in water is going to be like, what's water? It's just the environment that we're in. And so the reason I do this in this order is so that we very intentionally look for the good. So from the year, and then we look at the crap and then we take the crap and we are going to make meaning from it that matters. Your brain's making meaning already, but it's making meaning. Usually that's not helpful to you. So let's be really intentional about this. So we are going to start looking for the lessons. You can just start by making a list of everything you learned in 2025.
(21:38)
So it could be something like, what do you now know that you need? What are you no longer willing to negotiate? Did you learn more about how your body speaks to you? Are you learning more about your nervous system? Or did you learn what boundaries actually are? And not just it's a concept that's out there on Instagram, but what are they really? You could ask yourself, what truth do I know about myself now that I didn't before? And I want you to look at your list of life lessons, and this is really important. I want you to ask, how will this influence me going forward?
(22:31)
And how do these lessons impact how I see myself? So if, like I said, I'm often finding my lessons of resiliency and strength as an ongoing theme of how often I reach out for support. I'm so much better about that now than I used to be. How I'm so willing to keep learning and keep trying. And so the way that I see myself now is I am resilient and strong. I can't tell myself I'm weak anymore. I can't tell myself I can't do it or I'm not capable. That can't even be in my vocabulary. I have too much evidence that I now see of getting up over and over and over again and keep trying and keep learning and keep applying myself. So I am now seeing myself as a resilient, strong person. I also am more willing than I used to be, be out here publicly doing a podcast when honestly I am not the most tech savvy person.
(23:43)
I'm also learning how to teach better, and I am doing it out here in public instead of trying to hide it away privately and only come out when I'm perfect. Nope, I am putting it out here trusting that what I do helps people. Because I think that's one of the hardest things about podcasting is you just speak to a microphone and you hope that it helps you don't always get direct feedback. So that is how I am impacting how I see myself when I do my reflection about these life lessons that I'm learning year to year to year. I also make sure to tie it into my identity. So this is the data. I want you to think about this. You're a scientist and you have just mined the data, and this is proof to remind yourself just how powerful and strong you are. Just like me.
(24:38)
You can't deny you're power anymore. You can't deny what you've done. I know that if you are here listening to this podcast, you are going to have some really powerful lists in front of you when you finish this exercise and you will no longer be able to deny that about yourself. And the reason I do it like this is we want to clear out the old year before we start thinking about what do we want in the new year? We don't want to create our resolutions from a place of pain or wounding. We want to learn the lessons and build on them. We don't want to start 2026 with like, well, I don't want this and I don't want that and I don't want that. It is not fun, attractive energy to be building from that place. We want to clear it out and we want to get to a place where we're like, oh, look how much I've learned and grown.
(25:35)
Wow, what could be possible for 2026? Okay, so here's where I want you to be decisive. As we start to turn towards 2026, I want you to clearly and consciously complete 2025. What are you no longer carrying into the next year? And if we're on a roll with list, you can make a list of this, but I want you to be clear, old identities or old roles or old habits, old stories of like, I missed my chance, or no one's ever going to love me again, or This is just how it is. I'm getting rid of all those stories and I want you to make pick three at minimum, you can have more, but I like three.
(26:28)
And you are going to take your list of what you're releasing and you're officially breaking up with, and you are going to take your list of crap of the stuff that didn't feel good from last year. And I want you to thank them. Thank you for teaching me what I no longer want. Thank you for providing some lessons, even if they were painful that I had to learn. But thank you for being my guide to my teacher. Thank them for whatever they taught you. And now you're going to choose to let them go and you can take the wisdom with you to 2026, but you don't have to take the patterns, the roles, the stories, identities, all of that. I'm going to invite you. You can safely burn them if you have a safe place to do that. If you want to get one of those tin containers from the grocery store and you want to burn them in that you can burn, you can rip it up into teeny tiny pieces and bury it.
(27:35)
You can do it that way. And then I just heard you could also rip it into tiny pieces, put it in a baggy and freeze it so that has the same energy because I know not all of us are in places where we could burn things. So apparently you could freeze it and it has the same thing of no more. I'm cutting my ties with it. All right, so now we are going to claim new energy for 2026. This isn't about trying harder or forcing or hustling. What I want you to do is start thinking about how do I want to feel next year?
(28:21)
And you can go back to those same categories of in my relationships, like family, friends, romance, how do I want to feel at my job? How do I want to feel in my health? How do I want to feel in my home? You can add your own as well, whatever categories work for you. But get really clear what are the driving feeling states that you want in those areas? And you might start thinking about, what do I need to do to cultivate or protect those feelings? I just was teaching some people just yesterday, if what you want is peace, what do you need to do to protect your peace? Right? Does that mean that you need to learn how to redirect your thoughts when you're ruminating how to stop thinking about your ex? Does that mean you need to build in some time in the morning before you check your phone?
(29:31)
Okay, so if peace is one of the feelings that you want, what do I need to do to protect it? And instead of setting resolutions, I like to think about it like mini experiments. So I'm going to do a mini experiment for the month of January of, well, what would happen if I actually do walk 10,000 steps every day? I rarely hit that goal. What would happen if I actually do? Or what would happen if I start my day by meditating for five or 10 minutes instead of scrolling on Instagram? So maybe set some experiments of what would it look like to start to play with how do I cultivate feeling the way I want to feel in 2026? So if you are feeling like that's a lot, I want you to know you can reach out to me. You can reach out to me on Instagram.