Isn’t it nice that each year wraps up with the holiday season?

After twelve months of deadlines, decisions, pressure, and problem-solving, the year closes with warmth, food, music, and gatherings. It feels almost intentional. A natural pause. A moment to breathe. A moment to look back before we look forward again, wondering what the next year might bring.

So before we rush into resolutions and predictions for 2026, we want to take a moment to sit with 2025.

It was, by all accounts, an eventful year.

AI took a huge leap forward. What used to feel like a cool party trick quietly became part of everyday life. We now use it to find medical advice, summarize long research papers, generate gift ideas, and yes, even check this post for mistakes. For some, that’s exciting. For others, it’s unsettling. For most of us, it’s a bit of both. And it reminds us that the pace of change is only getting faster.

Internet culture continued its strange evolution. Labubu became more popular than ever and bell-bottom jeans made a comeback, reminding us that progress isn’t always rational, nor predictable.

And most importantly, many of us experienced our own little milestones. Maybe you earned a promotion, learned a new skill, or finally completed that project you had been putting off.

The year‑end season invites us to reflect on how far we have come, both as individuals and as a collective. And what better way to commemorate our progress than to celebrate our mistakes?

“Celebrate our mistakes?”

Yes, our mistakes! We know it sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you think about it. If it weren’t for our mistakes, would we really have come this far? They are some of the most underrated gifts we can receive from life. And yet, we often spend our lives avoiding them. We minimize them, hide them, justify them, or pretend they never happened.

It’s as if we see ourselves as a blank canvas. Achievements become the brushstrokes that prove our worth, while mistakes are the smudges that ruin the painting. Too many smudges, and we start to worry that something is wrong with us. So when memories of past mistakes resurface, we feel shame, frustration, and regret. We forget that it’s thanks to those mistakes that we matured into the people we are today.

This is completely understandable. Most of the time, when we think of growth, we think of a steady, upward trajectory. Rarely do we imagine mistakes being a part of the picture. But that idea misses the reality of how growth actually happens.

And this misunderstanding bleeds into the way society treats mistakes.

In Japan, for instance, promotions are usually based on a point system. Like many countries, the person with the highest score gets promoted. The difference lies in how those points are counted. In other countries, you start at zero and earn points every time you succeed. In Japan, you also start at zero, but points are deducted every time you make a mistake. Zero, is literally the highest possible score you can get. This is known as genten hoshiki (減点方式), a system where the goal is not to gain points, but to avoid losing them.

This explains why our aversion to failure runs so deep. It is not just psychological, it is cultural. We are taught from an early age that mistakes carry lasting consequences, while success quickly becomes what is expected of us.

Over time, this trains us to play it safe. We hesitate to try new ideas, not because we lack ambition, but because the cost of being wrong feels higher than the reward of doing things better. And this is where the real problem begins.

There is a Japanese phrase that captures this perfectly:

It sounds paradoxical, but after everything we’ve talked about, it makes sense. A life spent avoiding mistakes is also a life spent avoiding growth. To fail at life, in this sense, is not about making bad choices. It’s about reaching the end only to realize that you never pushed yourself far enough to discover where your limits were.

This is why failure, uncomfortable as it is, matters so much.

When things go right, we usually move on without questioning anything. This makes success a pretty poor teacher. It tells us that something worked, without explaining why, how, or where it might break next time. Failure, on the other hand, is painfully precise. It reveals our assumptions, blind spots, and destructive habits. It gives us feedback we cannot ignore.

This is where wisdom actually comes from.

It does not come when things go smoothly; it comes when things go wrong. After all, those moments are the ones that teach us the most valuable lessons about life. Without those lessons, a person can be competent, knowledgeable, and even brilliant. But never truly wise.

So as we close out 2025, we want to ask a different set of questions: What setbacks did you encounter this year? How many times were you forced to rethink your assumptions? When did you find yourself stuck? Those moments didn’t pull us down. They shaped us for the better.

And that’s exactly why, alongside our wins, we’re doing something a little unusual this year. We’re going to celebrate our mistakes. Not in a self‑deprecating way, but as proof that we dared to try, failed, and emerged stronger for it.

So hold them up high. Count them. Thank them.

And with everything they have taught us, let us step into 2026 a little wiser than before.