Looking Back to Leap Forward

Personal mind map designed with ChatGPT by the author

I always get reflective around this time of year. I don’t really look at the new year and plan out “goals”. I tend to think about areas of my life I want to make improvements in, and what those improvements might be. More specifically, it’s more about what I want more of in my life than “improvements”. I find myself looking back over the year, sometimes further back than that, and questioning what actually mattered. What stayed with me. What didn’t.

The end of the year is like the changing of seasons for me. The transition from one to the other comes with little traditions I repeat each year. A tradition I’m revisiting this year for the transition of years in the personal mind map.

The Mind Map I Stopped Updating

As I was thinking about what to write this week, I remembered something I used to do every December. For a few years in a row, I created a simple mind map titled Looking Ahead. It was visual and loose enough that it didn’t feel like planning. Just a way to think about the different parts of my life without turning them into goals or tasks.

Career. Love. Health. Creativity. Community. Spirit.

Nothing fancy. Just a snapshot of what felt important at the time.

Curious, I went looking for the last one I’d made.

It turned out to be from 2011!

Author’s original mind map from 2011.

Seeing that date threw off my sense of time more than I expected. 2011 feels like a lifetime ago. Different job. Different assumptions. A very different version of me. I honestly couldn’t believe I hadn’t updated it since then.

I opened the file and started reading.

Some of what I found made me smile.

“Create art just for fun.”

“Be more spontaneous.”

“Spend more time with family to strengthen those bonds.”

These ideas still felt familiar as I look towards 2026. I’ve done many of these things over the years, but now I’m seeing them as recurring core values: creativity, spontaneity, relationships.

Then there were also a few lines that stayed with me longer than the others.

•••

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

“Find a communal way of expressing my belief in a universal connection.”

“Determine if I should go back to solo entrepreneurship.”

That last one is always part of my daydreaming. I’ve done it full-time, in times of job crisis, and as a side venture while employed.

I wrote that in 2011, and yet it’s a question I’ve asked myself in some form almost every year since. Sometimes directly. Sometimes in the background. Even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it, it was there. This idea of being 100% in charge - of my income, my time, my energy, my passions and creativity.

What struck me wasn’t that I hadn’t answered the question. It was that the question itself hadn’t gone away.

Looking at the map now, I can see that some things I wanted back then have happened. Others never did. And some, I’m still circling around more than a decade later.

What’s different is not the themes, but the way I understand them.

In 2011, “solo entrepreneurship” felt charged with urgency and identity. It was about freedom. About doing things my way. About creating what I wanted for a paycheck and going after what I thought was the better path for my career. I wasn't sure what that was at the time, and my career held strong and productive even thought I didn’t go solo. Now, when I feel that pull, it doesn’t carry the same pressure. It shows up more as a daydream of “what if”, not “I have to for success and happiness.”

Same words. A very different weight.

That’s what surprised me most about this old mind map. Not how much has changed, but how much hasn’t. The desire for creativity. The pull toward work that feels meaningful instead of performative. The need for connection that isn’t transactional.

I don’t read the map and think I should have figured this out by now.

I read it and think, of course these things are still here.

Some questions don’t get answered once and set aside. They change as we change.

Finding that map made me want to recreate the practice this year. Not to plan the future or map out the next decade, but to see what still shows up when I don’t rush past it. Not as commitments. Just as signals.

It also made me wonder how many of us have something similar tucked away. An old journal. A note on a hard drive. A half-formed idea about the life we thought we might live. Not as a reminder of what didn’t happen, but as a record of what’s always mattered.

Looking back at that 2011 map, I see a younger version of myself trying to live intentionally. Trying to make room for creativity. Trying to stay connected to something larger than work.

Not much has changed.

What has changed is how I relate to the uncertainty around those questions. I’m less interested in forcing clarity. Paying attention feels like enough work for now.

If you’re finding yourself looking backward more than forward right now, that’s not unusual. I invite you to create your own mind map exploring what matters to you. You can download a template to get started here.