The end of the year does something strange to our perspective.

We gain distance from the days themselves, but not always from the conclusions we drew while living them.

December rolls around and time seems to collapse. We grab an end of year reflection and a full year of lived experience gets reduced to a handful of mental snapshots. 

What stays vivid isn’t the complexity of what we were navigating, but the meaning we assigned to it in the moment.

So when we look back on a year in reflection, three different things often get blended together.

• What happened
• What we felt about what happened
• What we decided it meant about us or our life.

Most reflection practices move easily from the first to the second. Then they jump straight to lessons learned.

And while that can feel insightful, there’s an important step in between that often goes unnamed.

Interpretation.

Interpretation is the story you told yourself while something was happening and how you made sense of events in real time. It’s how your nervous system, personal experience, values, and expectations worked together to create meaning.

When we don’t examine our interpretation, it stays invisible and a few things tend to happen:

The story starts to feel like the event itself.
Emotions at the time start to feel like the truth.
The conclusions you reached in the moment start to feel fixed.

End of year distance doesn’t automatically create clarity. Sometimes, it solidifies a story we formed while under pressure.

This is where “who we are” quietly begins to tighten, because meaning was formed without space to be examined.

The point of reflection isn’t to correct your story or rewrite the past. It’s to notice how we made meaning and to consider whether that meaning still holds.

Good critical reflection helps us say:
This shaped me. And it doesn’t define me.

That distinction creates room. And room is where choice begins.

As you reflect on this year, it’s worth asking not just what happened, but which conclusions you’re still carrying forward unquestioned.

If you want help with that, reach out about my 1:1 Through the Looking Glass Sessions. 

In this one hour session, we work with tarot to understand how you’ve been moving through life, taking a clear look at what’s been shaping you: 

The patterns you’ve outgrown, the ones still pulling the strings, and the part of you that’s been waiting for room to breathe.

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