2025, A Journey of Lessons and Reflections

This year, if I had to name it, would be called Just See, Just Try — a whisper I kept returning to, a small encouragement I offered myself every time I stood at the edge of something new. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t heroic. It was gentle. A soft nudge toward possibility.

At the start of the year, I didn’t know that this whisper would become a philosophy — a way of moving through opportunity without fear of the outcome. Just see. If it’s for you, the story is already written. Just try. If it isn’t, you’ve gathered something worth carrying forward. Either way, you win.

And somewhere between January and now, I became different.What shifted most wasn’t my accomplishments — though there were many. It was my confidence.

Confidence in my abilities.Confidence in my future.Confidence in the version of myself I’ve always known was there, but can now see clearly.

The Lesson That Refused to Leave Me Alone

Slowing down. Not because of incapability or lack of ambition, but because slowness is a discipline. A strategy. A gift. With ADHD, it’s easy to confuse speed with success — to forget that pacing is not punishment but protection. But this year, intentional slowness carried me further than urgency ever has. The Goldman Sachs program taught me that. Structured weeks, steady commitments, a rhythm I couldn’t outrun even if I wanted to. It forced me to build a life, not a sprint. Bit by bit. Day by day. No more all-or-nothing. And that pacing — that discipline of consistency — helped me build Millennial Eclectic Therapy® in a way that speed alone never could.

What I Outgrew

Doubt.

Or more specifically: the belief that failure meant something about me.

This year, I learned that not getting something simply means… I didn’t get it. It doesn’t mean stop. It doesn’t mean I’m unqualified. It doesn’t mean rewrite the entire narrative. It means try again with more information. I also challenged the belief that I couldn’t balance school and work.I did both — well — and not because I became superhuman, but because I became intentional.

The Hardest Moment, the Biggest Mirror

During the Goldman Sachs program, when someone challenged me publicly, something inside me cracked open. It hit an old insecurity I thought I had buried, and for a moment, I felt small again.

I could’ve quit.I could’ve let shame escort me out of the room.But I stayed.I stayed because I deserved to be there. And advocating for myself — aloud, publicly, and fully — changed the trajectory of who I allow myself to be in rooms now.

Growth isn’t always quiet. Sometimes it’s the moment you decide to stop shrinking.

Scenes of Becoming

There are snapshots from this year that feel like anchors — moments that encapsulated my growth:

• Walking alone in Spain, wandering streets I’d never seen, proving that independence isn’t about capability but about choosing yourself.

• Getting a tattoo alone, marking my skin with something I did just for me.

• Standing in Costa Rica, speaking to Black women about mental health — a version of my career I didn’t know was waiting for me.

• Running a 5K, training for weeks, choosing a goal simply because I wanted it, and finishing something I had once believed wasn’t for me.

All of these moments whispered back to me: See? You can do it. You’ve always been able to. You just had to try.

What I Created

I built courses for Millennial Eclectic Therapy®.

From not knowing how to use Canvato editing my own videosto presenting on AI at the VCA conference.

Creation requires courage. And this year, I kept choosing courage.

I even had someone call me a visionary.I wasn’t expecting that. But it fit. It felt like a name for the version of myself I’ve been quietly growing into.

What I’m Carrying Forward

I’m taking intentional pacing with me.Sustainability as a strategy, not an afterthought.

Just because I can grind doesn’t mean I should. My future is long. My purpose is long. My work deserves to be paced, not punished.

And I refuse to carry self-doubt with me anymore.I’ve proven too much to myself to entertain it.

Who I’m Becoming

I’m calling forward the me who is:

Confident. Assured.Empowered. Stable. Powerful.

These truths are non-negotiable. They are the ground I stand on now.

A Quiet Promise to Myself

I promise to continue trying.Trying gently. Trying bravely.Trying without fear of the outcome.Trying simply because it’s who I am now. I promise to honor my pace.To choose sustainability.To trust the plan, the preparation, and the patience. And I promise to never again make myself small in rooms I worked hard to walk into.

A Closing Meditation & Invitation

May we enter the new year with steadiness.May we trust the timing we used to resent.May we choose to see ourselves clearly, especially when the world doesn’t know how.May we prepare, may we practice, may we pace ourselves — and may success meet us exactly where we are.

And to you reading this:

May you remember that confidence is a muscle.May you remember that patience is a strategy.May you remember that preparation is a gift to your future self.May you remember that nothing you try is wasted — ever.

Where you start is not where you end.And the end is not here yet.

So as we step into a new year, consider this your invitation:

Just see. Just try. And trust that the story is already unfolding in your favor.

<3 Ashley