By Colby Kultgen
10 Ideas That Changed My Life in 2025
Read online / Read time: 6 minutes
Well friends, we've officially made it to the end of 2025.
That means it's time for cozy sweaters, eggnog, and deep personal reflection.
I spent a lot of time this week thinking about the ideas that shaped me most this year and, in the spirit of giving, I wanted to share them with you.
Here they are in all their glory (plus a little extra commentary from me).
Enjoy!
1. Choose slow dopamine
This idea seemed to resonate with a lot of people. So much of our enjoyment in life comes down to how our reward system is wired. |
We're all dopamine addicts.
The question is what kind.
Fast dopamine is easy. Scroll, click, swipe. The hit is instant. The crash is guaranteed. And five minutes later, you're back for more.
Slow dopamine is different. It’s the reward you feel after finishing a long book. The pride in cooking a meal from scratch. The glow from a real conversation. It asks more of you, but the reward actually lasts.
Here’s the problem:
Most of us are so hooked on fast dopamine that slow dopamine barely registers anymore.
Silence feels uncomfortable.
Boredom feels painful.
If something isn’t instantly stimulating, we bail.
The solution isn’t to try and go cold turkey.
It's to slowly change where you’re sourcing your dopamine from.
Instead of scrolling before bed, read a chapter.
Instead of background noise on your walk, try silence.
Instead of takeout, cook one meal.
Your brain will resist. It'll tell you this is boring, that you need your phone, that you should quit. That's not failure. That's withdrawal.
Stay with it anyway.
2. You are not your emotions
This is an incredibly powerful reframe. When you stop identifying as your emotions, you can break free of them. |
3. Close your "open loops"
Whenever I felt stressed or overwhelmed in 2025, this is the exercise I did. |
A non-negotiable exercise you should do every month:
Close your “open loops”.
Let me explain.
An open loop is anything that’s quietly pulling at your attention. Something unfinished, unresolved, or unorganized.
It’s the mental equivalent of having 47 tabs open in your brain.
Every time you try to focus, those background processes slow you down.
Open loops can look like:
- Bills you haven’t paid
- Messages you meant to reply to
- Projects you started and didn’t finish
- That one box still sitting unpacked
- A relationship conversation you’ve been avoiding
Each one eats up a little bit of mental bandwidth.
Close enough of them, and your mind finally gets quiet.
Here’s how to do it:
➊ Set a timer for 30 minutes.
➋ Dump every single open loop you can think of onto paper or a doc.
➌ For each one, decide to Do it, Drop it, or Delegate it.
About 80% of what you list can probably be dropped completely. Be ruthless. The remaining 20% should be done or delegated within the next two weeks.
4. Avoid the "Anxious Middle"
I have not stopped thinking about this idea. I believe this is the cause of a lot of modern anxiety. |
This is a trap so many of us fall into.
We work with a YouTube video playing in the background—just distracting enough to keep us from deep focus.
We "relax" on the sofa with our phone in hand—checking emails, skimming notifications, never fully unwinding.
It’s this awful in-between.
Always kind of working.
Always kind of resting.
Never fully doing either.
Life gets better when we stop lingering in that anxious middle.
5. The "body swap" reframe
When things got crazy in 2025, my healthy habits were often the first thing to slip. This is the mindset I'm bringing into 2026 as I make health more of a focus. |
“If you switched bodies with the person you love most for a year, how would you take care of their mind & body knowing you'd be giving it back to them? How would you take care of that person you love the most? Now do that for you.”
Brought to you by...
I struggled with negative self-talk for years.
And I know I'm not alone.
Studies show that nearly 50% of entrepreneurs suffer from anxiety or self-doubt.
So when Joel Bein reached out and showed me his innovative method for disrupting those patterns, I knew I wanted to share it with you.
He’s created a free guide called 5 Steps to End Negative Self-Talk, built around a 10-minute technique for clearing the beliefs that keep you stuck in your head.
You can grab it for free here.
|
6. The Average Tuesday Rule
I truly think this is one of the best ways to approach self-improvement. If your average day is an 8/10, you're doing pretty dang good in life. |
The Average Tuesday Rule:
The quality of your ordinary Tuesday is the best measure of your life satisfaction.
Think about it.
We spend 80% of our lives on these “nothing special” days, yet we obsess over optimizing the other 20%—weekends, vacations, milestones.
We tolerate miserable Tuesdays while dreaming about spectacular Saturdays.
But when your average Tuesday is an 8/10, everything changes:
↳ You stop counting down to Friday.
↳ Small moments start mattering more than big events.
↳ You start enjoying the entire ride, not just the peaks.
Here’s where to start:
➊ Design your ideal ordinary day:
From wake-up to bedtime, craft a realistic blueprint for an 8/10 Tuesday.
➋ Take small steps to close the gap:
- Identify one daily friction point and solve it permanently.
- Add one small joy to your routine and protect it fiercely.
- Subtract one energy leak that consistently drains you.
❸ Keep doing this until your reality matches your ideal.
Because life isn’t made up of mountaintop moments.
It’s made up of average Tuesdays.
7. The "no complaining" rule
Serious question: Is there anything we waste more time and energy on than complaining? |
8. Starting is the hardest part
One of the most effective mindset shifts for me. I no longer worry about doing tasks, I only worry about starting them. |
People often say, "Showing up is half the battle."
But in reality, it's more like 90% of the battle.
If you can consistently show up, you’ve already overcome the biggest hurdle to success.
There are basically two levers you can pull:
1. Make starting easier (duh).
2. Make skipping harder.
To make starting easier, it comes down to lowering the ‘activation energy’ of the task you're trying to do:
- The "next tiny move":
When you're stuck or overwhelmed, ask: What's my next tiny move? Not the whole project. Just the next step.
- Remove friction in advance:
Lay out your gym clothes the night before. Prep your meals on Sunday. Eliminate excuses before they show up.
___
To make skipping harder, you need to make the pain of avoidance so high that going through with your commitment feels like the easier option:
- Commit financially:
Pay for a class, a course, or a coach in advance. Money is the ultimate motivator, use it to your advantage.
- Get an accountability buddy:
Find someone with a similar goal. Check in regularly. You’re less likely to ghost your goals if someone’s expecting you to show up.
Make starting easy.
Make skipping hard.
Do that, and showing up becomes your default setting.
9. How to be consistent with anything
"All-or-nothing" goal setting is a recipe for failure. This is a much better approach. |
The MTO Goal Method:
For any goal (career, business, personal, etc.)
Define three levels of daily success:
• Minimum: The baseline goal you’d be happy achieving on a given day. For a writer, this might be 250 words a day.
• Target: A realistic yet challenging goal that stretches you without being too overwhelming. For example, 750 words a day.
• Outrageous: The dream outcome—the kind of goal that makes you say, “Wow, I can’t believe I did that.” Let’s say it’s 2,000 words a day.
This method works so well because it shifts your mindset from all-or-nothing thinking to celebrating progress at any level.
10. This Kurt Vonnegut quote about envelopes
If you made it this far, reply with one thing you learned from this newsletter in 2025.
(I read and respond to them all!)
