Issue 69: Your Next Chapter Starts Now

ISSUE 69

14 JANUARY 2026 | READ ONLINE

Hi Reader,

If 2025 was brutal, I’m not going to try to silver-line it. Some years simply don’t feel like "growth".

They feel like pressure. Like loss.

Like the floorboards cracking under a life you worked hard to build.

And if that was you, I want to help reframe this for you into something more practical:

2025 may have been a stress test.

Not because the universe is handing out lessons. But because life applies force, and force reveals the true structure of things.

What holds. What bends. What was never stable in the first place.

There’s an old story about this: the oak and the reeds. The oak prides itself on strength. The reeds survive because they bend. It’s where the "bend, not break" idea shows up in the most grounded way.

In my book, Clarity in Chaos, I wrote about resilience as something far more grounded than pushing through:

Resilience wasn’t about gritting my teeth and enduring. It was about standing firm when the ground beneath me shifted. Resilience was about grace under pressure.

That’s the identity shift I care about for you as you go into 2026.

Not "I’m going to have an amazing year".

But: I’m going to become someone who can hold complexity without losing myself.

Because when a hard year strips things down, it also gets brutally honest.

It tells you:

Where you’ve been over-functioning
Where you’ve been tolerating misalignment
Where you’ve been trying to earn belonging through performance
Where your career stopped being yours

And then it leaves you with the real question:

What now?

So, here’s what I want you to know:

2026 doesn’t need you to manifest. It needs you to extract what 2025 taught you, and build from what’s true now.

5 practical moves to turn a hard year into a powerful one

1. Name what 2025 actually destroyed in 3 sentences.

What ended?
What truth did I finally see?
What can’t be unseen now?

This isn’t journaling for journaling’s sake. This is clarity.

2. Turn pain into data by asking.

What did this year show me about my boundaries?
What did it reveal about my values?
What did it expose about the environment I’m in (role, company, identity)?

3. Choose "realistic optimism", not false optimism.

Optimism that works is the kind that faces the mess and takes the next step anyway.

4. Rebuild your identity around purpose by asking yourself.

What do I want my work to stand for in 2026?
What do I want to be known for, in a way that still feels like me?
What kind of leader/professional/person am I becoming because of what I survived?

5. Make 2026 an experiment year by picking one brave move each month.

One conversation you’ve been avoiding
One stretch project
One new network connection
One boundary
One application / pitch / proposal.

Nothing changes if nothing moves. Because the strongest leaders (and the strongest careers) aren’t built in calm seasons.

If 2025 exposed the weak points, then 2026 is your chance to rebuild the structure with intention. Not to become a different person. But to become more of who you actually are.

If you want to grab my book (and the bonus that goes with it), you can click here.

And if you’re at a real crossroads and want support turning what happened in 2025 into a clear 2026 plan (career direction, narrative, bold next steps), here are two paths:

1:1 Coaching
Group Coaching

See you next week,