If you talk to just about anyone, they’ll most likely agree that 2016 has been an awful year. I can’t remember the last time my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds have had the same collective theme: 2016 sucked.

However, there is a theory behind the overall awfulness of this year. It lies in Numerology.

Numerology has Universal Years and Personal Years.

A Universal Year is basically what a person is going through all year long. A Universal Year means that everyone will feel the energy related to a particular number during the entire year.

So, to calculate the Universal Year, you add the numbers of the year together. For 2016, it would be two plus zero plus one plus six, which equals nine.

So what is the significance of the nine?

A Universal Year of nine is about endings, completions, transformations, letting go and loss.

Additionally, this year was all about thinking back on and wrapping up what was started in the last one Universal Year, which was in 2008. A one Universal Year is the start of a cycle and signifies new beginnings.

I am sure all of us experienced loss, transformation, completion and letting go during this past year. I know I did.

And, if you think back on many of the current events that happened this year, there was a lot of loss – think about all of the crazy celebrity deaths that happened, like the loss of Prince and David Bowie.

There were many celebrity break-ups and divorces (Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom’s divorce became finalized just this month).

Politics was super intense, not just in terms of what was going on all over the world, but if we step back on our own soil, we had one of the most contentious, hostile and angering election cycles that I can personally remember and that many of the older generations can remember (I figure my opinion alone wouldn’t hold that much water considering I am a bit younger and haven’t experienced a ton of election cycles).

But, there is good news. While 2016 was pretty much a terrible year (peppered with some good times), next year is a 1 Universal Year which means we will be in the beginning of a new cycle. Things will be moving forward.

We will feel things fall into place, and we will feel a renewed sense of focus. Think of it as a new chapter for all of us – one that is about achievements, independence, being an individual and stepping into our own personal creative talents.

So hang on everyone. We only have five more days of this, and then it’s full speed ahead to a brand new year – one that we can bank on being better than this last one.