#57: Your 2025 Wrapped: A Simple, Fun Way to Reflect on Your Year

Download the guide: CREATE YOUR "MY 2025 WRAPPED here

It’s that time of year…

The time when Spotify and Apple Music tell you which songs you’ve played on repeat all year.

But it got me thinking—what if we could create a wrap-up of everything we’ve lived this year?
Not just the music and the podcasts, but the full picture.

I’m talking about the version of you who navigated joy, mess, growth, fatigue, love, doubt, laughter… all of it.

Most of us skip this part. We speed into the next year without honoring the one we just lived.

But I think you deserve a pause. A mirror. A moment to say:
“Look at me. I made it through.”

And this is so much easier to do than you think.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through how to create your 2025 Wrapped, including:

• Clever ways to “research” your year (yes, scrolling your camera roll totally counts)
• The reflection questions I use myself to rediscover what mattered
• A magical AI prompt that turns your answers into a poetic recap of your year (tears optional but very real)

✨And yes—there’s a free guide to make it even easier (copy/paste easy!).
👉 Download the guide: CREATE YOUR "MY 2025 WRAPPED here

3 KEY TAKE AWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE

• What you forget often holds clues to what mattered most.
• Looking back can bring more clarity than planning ahead.
• You’re allowed to grieve what was hard and still celebrate what was good.

Download the guide and get ready to reminisce.
This is the kind of fun that actually leaves you feeling clearer, lighter, and more grounded.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE START DREAMING AGAIN GUIDE

Check out all my coaching and course offerings - Coachcarlene.com

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Transcript

Speaker 3: 0:01

You're never too busy, too tired, too old, or too anything to pursue your dreams. Welcome to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast, where you'll learn how to move all those never ending distractions aside and chase your dreams with confidence.

0:22

Hello. Hello my friend. Welcome back to the Distracted Dreamer podcast. I'm your host Carlene, and I'm really happy that you're here today because we have a fun episode today. So stay with me, because you know what I, when I sat down to record this podcast. I literally had to triple check the calendar because there is no dang way that we are only one month away from 2026. Like, I really don't wanna get into the whole, where did the time go? Cliche, but like, where did the time go? Which is why this episode is so timely. So I was waiting for Spotify to come out with my Spotify wrapped for 2025. If you're not on Spotify, um, it gives you all the highlights of your soundtracks for the year. It tells you the number of minutes that you were listening. It equates those number of minutes to the number of days it gives you your top songs, genres, your favorite artist, your favorite podcast, all of it. And I was thinking mine was gonna look really wonky this year because I listened to quite a bit of lullabies and kids songs with my grandbaby during playtime and nap time. And you know what it, it did skew my usual listening patterns and. When I saw the results, it reminded me of all those sweet cuddle times and playing with her and seeing that smile and listening to her coup, and it made me think, you know what, we all need reminders of all those precious moments from the past year. So it got me thinking. What if we all did a wrap of our year? And I don't, I don't just mean the music part, but everything that we did this year, and not even everything that we did, but how we changed and how we grew, um, capture everything from our travels to our struggles, to our accomplishments. Big or small, doesn't matter to our health, our relationships. I'm talking. All of it, because I don't know about you, but sometimes a whole year goes by and I barely pause to absorb it all. And yet there are clues in our days in the photos that we took or the habits that we built. What about the books that we read and even the stuff that didn't go well, and if we slow down long enough to pay attention, we can get this beautiful mirror of who we became this year. And I think that's really cool. So in this episode, I'm gonna guide you through what will be called. My 2025 wrapped and you're going to create your own, my 2025 wrapped with some eye-opening questions. I'm gonna give you a few tips for finding those memories, even those from 10 or 11 months ago, and. One really cool bonus is I'm gonna give you a prompt that you can feed to AI so it reflects your year back to you like a mirror. This is so, so cool, and, and yes, I put all of this in a simple guide for you and you can grab it at the link in the show notes below. Or you can go to coach carlene.com/wrapped. That's WRA double PED, coach carlene.com/wrapped. Now, of course, I did this for my year because I can't. Ask you to do this if I don't do it myself. And I had to test the prompts and everything, and it honestly, it felt like a hug from the universe, I have to tell you. And it reminded me of all that I have to be grateful for. And it also reminded me that I can get through some tough stuff, and it's so easy to forget the things that we did and the people who were here for us this year. And it's really, really easy to just gloss over the fact that somehow we grow through all of it and we become more of ourselves. So I love doing these kinds of episodes with you where they're just for fun, but it gives us so much insight. So I'm gonna show you how to create your year in review or your My 2025 wrapped now, if you're like me, you may be thinking, I can't remember what I did yesterday, let alone nine months ago. So the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna research your year or rediscover your year. And I promise this is way more fun than researching that paper that you wrote in high school. Let's talk about how to gather the memories and the moments that may have gotten lost in the blur. Here are some ways that you can find to uncover those memories. First, scroll your camera roll. Look at the photos from every month, and you're gonna be surprised what you forgot. I was going through mine and I'm like. Oh my gosh, I don't even remember that I went there. Oh my gosh. I didn't even remember I was with this person. So go through photos. The next thing that you can try is open up your calendar or your planner. Look at the flow of your year. You wanna even look at the appointments, even the boring ones, like your doctor's appointments or the appointments where you had to take your car in for service. Maybe there's a funny story behind that, that you forgot. What patterns do you see? Who did you meet with? What events did you attend? And then another place you can look. Is you can check your favorite apps. Some of'em have yearend summaries built in. So like Goodreads, if you like to read, use your Goodreads app, it, it tallies it up for you, and um, what about your fitness apps? I go to Pure borrow a lot and. They have an app and it tells me all of the challenges that I participated in and completed over the year. And so that was really cool to go back and look at that. Or maybe you have a meditation app or maybe you have Spotify so you can go back and see, what your listening habits were for the year or anything else that you used regularly for journaling or budgeting, anything at all. Also scroll your notes app or your voice memos. Or your drafts folder, because the stuff that we've half started, it sometimes holds a lot of clues too. And as you're going through this stuff, just jot down some bullet points of what you uncover. And then what you're gonna do is you are going to use that list of bullet points for part two, or you can leave some of that stuff open, like leave your camera roll open. So as you're answering these questions, you can be scrolling through it. Now we're moving on to part two. So you have uncovered your 2025 by looking through all of the photos and the calendars and the planners and the apps. Now what you're gonna do is you're gonna get really quiet and you're gonna answer a few questions. There's six questions, so I'm gonna run through these with you. And the first question you wanna ask yourself is, what were the highlights of the year? And I'm not talking about just achievements, but moments. What about the surprises? What about that one unexpected sunny afternoon that something happened? Uh, what about a dinner with a friend? Or maybe you had a quiet win for me. Becoming a grandma was the highlight of my ear. But what surprised me most was how deeply I was moved by watching my daughter become a mom. I didn't see that coming. Like I knew I was gonna be excited to be a grandma, but I had no idea how beautiful it was going to be to watch my daughter become a mom, and her and I, we entered this new mom to mom phase. Now that just adds a whole new level of connection and dimension to our relationship. So that was the highlight of my year that I uncovered. And you can put more than one highlight in there. When I was answering that question, I put everything in there. I put all my travels, I put all my wins from my business, I put everything in there. You can't overshare. Whatever you find included in your highlights, if it was a highlight. Okay. All right. Question number two is what were the challenges? You know, the parts that stretched you, the parts where you stepped outside your comfort zone, or maybe the parts that disappointed you, or I'm sure there were parts that brought up some hard feelings too. Now. We're not trying to dwell on bad stuff, but we have to honor it because hard seasons, they often reveal so much about what we value. This year I burned out more than once with this podcast with my energy and with healing relationships, not necessarily with the person, but healing that relationship for myself to accept. To lean in and let others be who they are, even if it isn't what I need from them. That was a big piece of my ear, or navigating this weird place of parenting, but not parenting my grown girls because, you know, they are grown and embracing that adult to adult connection. I'm, I'm slowly learning to simply listen and be there, but those were some of the challenges that I faced this year and. I learned a lot from it. So include those challenges, include those struggles. The third question you wanna ask yourself is, what did you learn about yourself? Maybe you're gonna discover that you love to travel alone, or maybe you're gonna discover that you do not thrive with a packed calendar, and maybe you learn that you're braver than you thought you were. Or maybe you learned that you need to have some more fun in your life, whatever it is, just claim it. I learned that I want simple, I want convenience, I want ease, and I want joy, and I learned that rest is a non-negotiable for me. I also learned that I miss my creative hobbies like piano. And reading. And I also learned that that book that I wanna write, it might actually be about parenting. Like who knew that? But that is what I uncovered. Okay, the fourth question you can ask yourself is, what do I want to stop doing in 2026? For me. I want to stop saying yes when I really want to and need to say no. I also wanna stop doubting myself, and I also want to stop having these big crash days where I have no energy and I can't do anything. I am just stuck. I, I want those to stop. The fifth question to answer is, what do I want to continue doing? Well, for me, I wanna continue prioritizing the girl time with my daughters. I want to continue getting enough rest. I want to continue nurturing friendships. Oh, and I do wanna continue traveling and definitely working out and taking care of myself. So that's what I wanna continue doing. And then the last question is, what do you wanna start? For me, I wanna start writing that dang book. I'm gonna start writing that dang book in 2026. I wanna launch my community dream studio, and I want to start playing the piano again. So those last three questions are, what do I wanna stop doing in 2026? What do I wanna continue doing in 2026, and what do I want to start? Here is the great thing about answering these questions. If you're an over sharer. Is that a word? Overshare. If you tend to overshare, this is your happy place because when you give more texture or details and talk about something that you felt or what you were thinking in that moment, the more powerful your reflection is gonna be. So treat this like a letter to your future self, and you might be really surprised what surfaces. Now these questions are in the guide that you can grab in the show notes below. Again, that link is at coach carlene.com/wrapped. Okay. Now this is the third and final step, and this is the fun part here, is once you've answered your reflection questions, I created a special prompt that you can copy and paste into chat GPT. What's gonna happen is it's going to take your responses and reflect back a short, beautiful narrative of your year, even the hard stuff. So don't be afraid of this. It's actually very beautiful. It's like a mirror and it's a message to you from you. Here's how it works. You answer the questions just like we did, then you're going to paste them into the AI prompt that I've written for you. And then the AI writes back your year in a poetic, loving, observational tone. It's beautiful. And again, the secret is the more detail you give, the more magical that mirror becomes. And when I tested it with my own reflections, I did tear up a bit because it really did move me because I felt seen. And I want that for you too. I want. You to see you. So this isn't about AI seeing you. This is about you seeing you and you seeing your year, and you seeing what you accomplished and you seeing what you've grown into. After you've reflected on your year and AI responds to that first prompt that you just gave it, the next step is to tune into what's calling you forward into the next year. And you're gonna do that by pasting the second AI prompt and to chat GPT that I'm gonna give you. It's also in the guide, and that prompt is gonna help you identify one to three key themes. Insights or emerging desires that feel most important as you step into 2026. Now, both prompts with step-by-step instructions are included in the free guide that you can click on in the show notes. So here's my gentle challenge to you. Don't let the year end without witnessing yourself. That's what this is about. This isn't about somebody else seeing you. This is about you seeing you. And I promise what you see is gonna be beautiful. And you know you don't need to do a full blown review. Like you don't have to have every little detail in there. Like whatever comes up as you are looking through photos and calendars and planners and apps and everything, just let whatever reveals itself, let that be enough, and then just answer the six questions, notice the patterns, and celebrate what was good. And it's okay. You can grieve what was hard. And then you get to listen for that quiet wisdom that you have gained for next year because you know what? You've lived a whole year and even if it didn't look how you expected, I promise you, you grew, you made choices, you held it together, and you tried. So let your my 2025 wrapped show you who you became, and if it feels good, share it with a friend and please send me a text at the Send Carlina text link in the show notes to let me know what surprised you about your 2025 or something you would've otherwise forgotten or you didn't realize. Okay, that's it. That's our fun episode for today. So go grab your guide, sit down with your camera, roll look at your apps, and do this for yourself. You deserve to be seen. And thank you again for being here with me today. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend and I'll be here to welcome you back to another conversation next week. Bye for now.

Carlene: 17:05

Oh, and one more thing. This is the legal language. You know, the stuff that the lawyers put together, and they say that I need to read this to you. So here we go. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I'm not a licensed therapist. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professionals. Got it? Good. I will see you in the next episode.