My 3 Biggest Mistakes in 2025

So if I could go back and talk to myself at the start of the year, I would say I didn’t make obvious mistakes in 2025. I made the kind of mistakes smart people make. The kind that look productive, the kind that feel responsible, the kind that quietly cost you years. That’s what makes them dangerous. Because when something looks like failure, you correct it quickly. When something looks like success, you protect it. And that’s exactly what happened to me.

Looking back at 2025, I didn’t fail. I hit milestones. I stayed busy. I did the work. But when the year ended, I realized something uncomfortable. I had optimized for the wrong signals. Mistake number one was believing that a major milestone would change how life feels.

One of my biggest goals for years was giving a TEDx talk in 2025. It finally happened. I stepped off that stage expecting something to shift internally. Relief, arrival, a sense that pressure would lift. It didn’t. Instead, I felt normal, and then unsettled. I questioned whether it was good enough. I asked other people what they thought instead of trusting my own judgment.

And when I finally watched the recording weeks later, the truth was obvious. The TEDx talk was good. The expectation was wrong. Milestones don’t change who you are. They reveal who you already were while working toward them. The growth happened before the stage. The confidence was built during the preparation, not delivered by the moment. That was mistake number one.

Assigning emotional payoff to an outcome instead of the process that created it. Mistake number two was overestimating how much external validation would carry me. When something matters deeply to you, it’s easy to assume it will land the same way for everyone else. After the TEDx talk, life moved on. My family was supportive, but to them, it was just me doing my work. No pause, no big reaction. At first, that felt disappointing, and then it became clarifying. Other people don’t experience your milestones through your nervous system.

They experience them through their own lives. That doesn’t make your achievement smaller. It means celebrating is something you have to choose deliberately. I learned that lesson earlier in my career, too, when I earned promotion and tenure. I remember putting my bag in the trunk of my car and thinking, this is a big moment. And then driving home like any other day. And that’s when it finally sank in. External validation is inconsistent.

Internal acknowledgment is not optional. If you don’t mark your own progress, no one will do it reliably for you. Mistake number three was postponing something essential because it was inconvenient. After my TEDx talk toward the end of August, I finally went through with a colonoscopy. I had been rescheduling for a long time, not because I didn’t know how it mattered, but because the prep is uncomfortable, easy to delay, easy to justify postponing. Like a lot of people, I told myself, I will do it later, when things slow down, when it would be a better time. Here’s the reality: you don’t know what’s happening inside your body until you check.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:03:49]:

Avoidance doesn’t reduce risk. It just delays clarity. I went through the prep. I waited. And then I sat there waiting for the doctor to show up. After the colonoscopy, when he finally said, everything looks good. See you in 10 years, I felt relief. Real relief.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:04:09]:

And it hit me how backward my thinking had been. I had treated this colonoscopy as something to avoid because it was inconvenient, when in reality it was one of the most important decisions I made all year. That moment reframed 2025 for me. We’re disciplined about work, about deadlines, about performance. But we are careless with our health. We delay checkups, we reschedule appointments. We treat prevention like it’s optional because it doesn’t feel urgent until it is. One of my biggest wins of 2025 was not on stage.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:04:48]:

It was walking off that appointment knowing I had taken care of something that actually matters. So if I could go back and talk to myself at the start of the year, I would say don’t expect milestones to carry emotional weight for you. Don’t wait for other people to validate what you worked hard for. And don’t put your health on the back burner because it’s inconvenient. Make the appointment, do the prep, take care of the boring, responsible things. That relief afterward is worth it. Big goals are worth pursuing, but they are not meant to rescue you. Real success includes your body, not just your calendar.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:05:30]:

And clarity doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from addressing what you have been postponing. If your life looks good on paper, pause and look closer. That’s where the most expensive mistakes hide. If you’re curious about my 2025 recap video, check out the previous video and stay tuned for the next episode. I’m your host, Dr. Christiane, and I can’t wait to connect more.