As the calendar edges closer to its last page, the season invites a natural reckoning. Amid the celebrations and resolutions, there’s often an unspoken tension: the weight of a lingering challenge that has followed you throughout the year. It sits quietly in the background, a constant companion to your thoughts, shaping your actions and reactions more than you might care to admit.

The question then becomes: what is your greatest challenge right now, and how will you choose to carry it forward?

Too often, we drag our struggles across time zones as if they’re part of our luggage. We nurse them, fret over them, and allow them to claim real estate in our minds long after their purpose has been served. What if we did something different this year? What if, instead of carrying your challenge with you, you acknowledged it – really looked it in the eye – and decided to leave it where it belongs? Not in denial or dismissal but in a deliberate, intentional act of release paired with the clarity of a forward-looking plan.

The art of leaving your struggle behind isn’t about forgetting it or pretending it didn’t matter. It’s about reframing it. The first step is acknowledgment: name your challenge. Be specific. Was it fear? Overwhelm? A professional misstep? A personal disappointment? Articulate it with the kind of precision that stings, not to reopen the wound, but to understand its edges. If your struggle were a tree, acknowledgment would be studying its roots, not to uproot it but to understand what has kept it alive so long.

Once acknowledged, there is power in acceptance. This is not passive resignation. Acceptance is an active choice, one that says, “This was my challenge, and it mattered. But it does not define my story.” By accepting your struggle, you grant it legitimacy without giving it sovereignty. You take ownership of it, rather than letting it own you. This step is both freeing and sobering because it shifts the dynamic. You’re no longer at odds with your challenge; you’re in conversation with it.

Here’s the magic of this approach: when you name and accept your challenge, it loses the power to control your future. From this point, you can step into 2025 with clarity, not weighed down by your struggle but informed by it. Build a plan, not around the worry of “what if this happens again?” but with the confidence of “this is how I will address it and grow.” Your challenge isn’t a defeat; it’s data. It’s the map that tells you where the potholes were and where they might be again.

But to move forward powerfully, you must first release. Releasing isn’t about washing your hands of responsibility; it’s about shedding the constant burden of anxiety and guilt. Think of it as planting your challenge in the soil of this year, leaving it there to nurture future growth. Like a seed, it doesn’t vanish, it transforms. It informs the fruits of your labor, shaping your resilience, adaptability, and wisdom.

A practical way to anchor this process is to write down your challenge – fully, with all its details – and then close the chapter. Whether you burn that piece of paper in a symbolic gesture or tuck it away in a drawer, let it signify the end of a cycle. Carry only the lessons forward, not the weight.

As you step into the next year, imagine yourself lighter, your energy unclouded by the fog of unresolved worry. Your focus sharpens, your intentions clear. Your challenge, once a heavy shadow, becomes a quiet compass, pointing you toward deliberate action. It no longer looms; it empowers.

This is the beauty of leaving your struggle in the year it belongs to: it frees you to meet your next challenges with grace and strength. It allows you to close one chapter so you can write the next with renewed purpose. Life isn’t about erasing what has been hard – it’s about transforming it.

So, ask yourself now, as the year draws to a close: what is my greatest challenge right now? Take the time to answer with honesty. Then, instead of worrying about it into the new year, leave it here. Acknowledge it. Accept it. Commit to addressing it in 2025 with intention and resolve. But let it stay rooted in this year, where it belongs. After all, the next year isn’t for carrying the past; it’s for stepping forward, lighter and wiser, into what’s waiting for you.