Introducing The 2025/26 Annual Reflection Guide
Coming into Deeper Relationship with Yourself
The TLDR: Happy holidays! I’m excited to share that the eight edition of my Annual Reflection Guide is now live.
The eight-step process is designed to help you look back on where you’ve been, see where you are now, and step into 2026 with more clarity. This year’s edition features new exercises, guided meditations, a future self visualization, AI prompts, and a curated playlist to accompany you on the journey.
It’s free. My holiday gift to you.
A decade ago, just after I got sober, I began an annual practice of reviewing my life and reflecting on my year. It started as a creative impulse. I had no grand vision or plan. All I had was a journal and a few hours to look back and set intentions for the new year.
The following holiday season, some friends asked if I would share my process with them. At the time it wasn’t exactly a process, but they inspired me to codify it into a structured framework. A few years later, I published a Medium post with the detailed process, and then in 2020 I created my first interactive guide in Notion.
Since then, the various editions have been downloaded over 50,000 times in more than 80 countries. Every year I hear from people who say it shifted something for them. Quit a job. Left a relationship. Started a company. Took a sabbatical. Changed their sense of self. That’s why I keep refining it.
The guide is better than ever (in my opinion, but you tell me), with one big change I want to point out. I’ve decided to no longer call it The Ultimate Annual Review. It’s now the Annual Reflection. A review asks what worked and what didn’t. It judges and evaluates. Whereas a reflection creates space to notice what actually transpired and what’s here now. I want this to feel spacious and expansive, not like a performance evaluation of your life.
My aim has always been to create a space for you to connect with yourself and life exactly as it is. No performing or judging. Just being with what happened, what’s here, and what’s emerging.
Here’s the process:
Map your memories and milestones
Capture lessons and learnings
Assess where you stand across key life dimensions
Conduct your annual edit
Visualize your future self
Identify your core values
Set intentions and quarterly goals
Write a letter to your future self
Each step builds on the last, designed to move you from reflection to intention to action.
This Year’s Theme
Each year I choose a theme for the guide, a lens to look through while reflecting. This year it’s relationality—the idea that everything is connected and exists in relationship.
For most of my life, I moved through the world as if I was separate from it. My ego led me to believe I was an individual actor making choices, controlling outcomes, and getting what I wanted. I treated my life like a project to manage rather than a relationship to tend. I acted this way for nearly four decades, and I still do at times.
Through working with a Zen teacher this year, I’ve come to appreciate that our lives are entirely made up of relationships. With yourself. With others. With your environment. With the seasons. With time itself. We’re not as separate as we think. We change moment to moment based on what we’re in relationship with.
Enter into a difficult conversation and your chest tightens. Walk into a room full of laughter and your mood lifts. Step outside after work and your body softens. Sit with one question you’ve been avoiding and suddenly see a way forward. You’re always in relationship with something, whether you realize it or not. This orientation is reshaping how I experience life.
My invitation is to look at your life through the lens of relationality as you move through the reflection. What happens when you pay attention to what’s here, in your environment and inside you? What do you notice? Thoughts. Sensations. Emotions. Memories. What shifts?
This Reflection Guide is an opportunity to come into deeper relationship with yourself. With who you’ve been, who you are now, and who you’re becoming.
What’s New This Year
Every year I refine the guide based on the feedback I receive and what I’m learning from my coaching clients.
Here’s what’s new:
Two formats. The guide is now available in both Notion and Google Docs. In the past I only offered Notion, but there was a lot of demand for Google Docs last year, so I created one. Notion has the full experience with audio and interactive features. Google Docs is streamlined for those who prefer it.
AI prompts. I added AI prompts to support the process. There’s a voice-to-text prompt if you prefer to talk through your answers rather than type them. And at the end of each step, there’s also a stage-specific prompt to surface insights you might have missed, new questions to consider, and exercises to go deeper.
Meditations & Visualization. Each step opens with a “Pause for Presence” recorded by me to help you drop in and settle your nervous system before beginning. The guide also features a 20-minute visualization to help you meet your future self at the end of 2026.
Goals are back. Last year the theme was enoughness, so it deliberately had no goals. Many of you asked me to bring them back. And over this year, I’ve come to recognize that both being and doing are essential. So I’ve added a simple quarterly goals framework. I now see goals as something you’re in relationship with that evolves as the year unfolds.
An expanded Spotify playlist. Every time I sit down to journal and write, music is playing. The right song can unlock a memory, shift your mood, or help you stay with a difficult question a little longer. The Downshift playlist is seven hours of neoclassical, ambient, and shamanic tracks to accompany your reflection. Get it here.
I hope this reflection becomes a living record of your year. Something you return to over time to see the arc of your life, the patterns and the growth, and the moments that shaped you.
Take your time with it. Trust what emerges.
If any questions or feedback comes up along the way, or you want to share what surfaced, I’d love to hear from you. Reach out at s@schlaf.co.
Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season.