Dear Courageous Pals,

You did it! You made it all the way through 2025 and you’re standing on the cusp of 2026. 🥳🎊🥂 Well done for every moment you’ve had to face up to with courage this year, and every moment that felt ease-ful. And every moment that was both at the same time! May your new year bring opportunities for courage in all the right ways for you.

What is a year but a 365-day long learning cycle? Stephen Sondheim answered that question a little differently with the song Seasons of Love…but if even a single one of you starts humming it at this point you’re receiving a lifetime Courage Pie ban 💪🥧🙅🏻‍♀️ (My college roommate once left it on a loop on her laptop for. Three. Hours!!! And if you’ve never heard that song before, congratulations, you will never be able to get the tune out of your head, while simultaneously never remembering the right numbers for the chorus. Enjoy!)

The learning cycle has four parts: Experience (my roommate leaving Seasons of Love on for ages), reflect (wow, after the fifth time, that song is really grating), conclude (I do not enjoy sitting here listening to this), experiment (maybe I should ask her to leave her laptop unlocked, or turn off the music before she leaves the room, in case she gets distracted and doesn’t come back for a long time - instead of just sitting here resenting these extremely earnest Broadway singers with excellent diction.)

You can apply the learning cycle to a single phenomenon in your day, as I’ve done above, or you can use it to look at bigger changes over your year: what’s the biggest thing that’s happened to you this year? It doesn’t have to be all that dramatic, but maybe it’s leading to dramatic shifts in you. What’s that thing making you think, or wonder? What’s your “so what?” moment; why does this matter to you? And now, what are you going to do about it? Again, doesn’t have to be dramatic - what are you going to try? And once you do make a plan and try it out…the cycle starts all over again! You have new experiences, new reflections, new conclusions, and so on. The important thing is to learn to reflect and conclude in order to fine-tune your experiments to get closer to what you want each time. And what you want can change over time, so this is a lifelong skill.

Science behind the Slice

Here’s a simple overview of psychologist David Kolb’s learning cycle model with a diagram. This author takes a slightly different view in Behind and Beyond Kolb’s Learning Cycle (paywall), introducing ideas around resistance to learning and resistance to change - something we also covered in last month’s session and newsletter. Another great piece of research (also paywalled) focuses on how to develop a personal learning contract using four questions corresponding to the cycle:

1. What is my purpose?

2. How will I measure my success?

3. What actions will I take?

4. What have I learned?

A Year of Pie

We’ve made twelve whole slices of pie together, courageous pals! Here’s a look back over all the topics we covered this year. You can catch up on all the topics in the newsletter archives.

If Courage Pie has been of value to you over the past year feel free to hit reply and tell me what you’ve learned!

Coming up in 2026…

Courage Pie: to Go is the brand-new walking edition of Courage Pie! Still free, now in a new lunchtime slot on the second Wednesday of every month. Find out more and sign up here. If the timing or location doesn’t work for you, don’t worry, I’ll still be sending out monthly themes and reflection prompts you can use to do your own guided walk - preferably with a courageous pal who you can do some co-reflecting with as you perambulate.

Want a specific topic covered at some point in 2026? Something niggling at you that you’d like some guided reflection on? Reply and let me know what it is!

There’s still time to sign up for my in-person workshop co-hosted with Solas Yoga here in Edinburgh at OMH Therapies. Kick off 2026 with guided visualisations, journaling, and gentle movement to get you moving in the right direction for the year ahead. Join us!

And a reminder as we enter into new-year-intentions season that I also take one-on-one coaching clients if you’re looking for a more focused support path. More about my approach and offers.

It’s been such a joy getting to know you and being part of your courageous journeys over the past year. Here’s to a joyful and encouraging 2026!

Very best,

Caitlin