Welcome to 2026. There is such a big energetic shift that comes as we move out of the last weeks of 2025 and into the first weeks of the new year. Full of renewed energy, we start to set goals for the year that reflect what we most want to achieve and make choices about how we want to spend our time.
When it comes to choices, some of us feel more free than others. Perhaps you are truly the author of your own story, living in a world of your own creation. Or perhaps you feel constrained by circumstances beyond your control, unable to choose what you might choose if there were no limiting factors.
Regardless of your circumstances – whether you’re completely free to chart your own course or constrained by mortgages, family obligations, or other responsibilities – there’s one choice we all have: the choice of what story we tell about the life we’re living. This story shapes everything: how we experience life, what opportunities we see, and the degree to which others can help us achieve our dreams.
A tale of two stories
Let me illustrate. One of my clients quit her job in 2024 to travel the world for nearly a year – reconnecting with what she really wanted, giving herself permission to just be. By late 2025, it was time to return to work. She moved back to the US and, needing income, took a sales job at a tech company – the very type of role she’d left a year earlier, knowing it just didn’t fit who she was anymore.
Now, one version of her story for this year could be “I’m selling out. I had this amazing experience, I know what I value and how I want to spend my time, and yet I’m going back into an environment that I fled a year ago. I should be more courageous and take risks to live a life more aligned with my purpose. I’m disappointing myself.”
This story is obviously not empowering. By beating herself up about her choices, she could easily snuff out the very flame she has been kindling for the past year or so.
But what if she could tell a different story?
What if the story, instead, went something like this: “I spent the last year getting a much more clear idea about what motivates me and what I want to dedicate my life to. This year is about building the bridge that lets me step into that new life. To do that, I’m going to find a job I know how to do really well, so that I can rebuild my savings while minimising the amount of energy I direct towards work. That way, I can spend my nights and weekends exploring volunteer opportunities and building a network more aligned with my purpose.”
A Year of Transition. What a better chapter title for 2026 than ‘The Year I Sold Out.”
Finding your story
As we head into 2026, if you are feeling a little aimless or not-in-control-of-your-destiny, perhaps see if you can come up with a chapter title and accompanying story that gives a new, more empowering or inspirational meaning to what this year is about. For me, it’s The Year of Nurturing Green Shoots, both professionally and personally. I am taking more risks than normal, investing more time in my writing and career transitions offerings. Maybe they will pay off, and maybe they won’t. But I’ve given myself permission to spend my time planting and watering a few different seeds, and seeing what takes root.
You don’t have to be a writer to write an empowering story for yourself. Start by acknowledging the constraints and choices you’re facing – they’re real. Then ask yourself the following questions:
- What if I’m exactly where I need to be?
- What do I need most this year, and how are my life choices meeting those needs?
- What if this year isn’t a failure or a compromise, but a strategic step towards something bigger?
- What chapter title and story would honor both where I am and where I’m heading?
If you’re still struggling to find an empowering story, it might also help to explore the limiting beliefs you are holding as true, and ask what story might set you free as well.
The story you tell about your year matters – not because it changes your circumstances, but because it changes how you move through them. The same facts can be a story of selling out or a story of building a bridge. The same year can be about remaining in analysis paralysis or slowing down enough to understand why the paralysis exists in the first place. You get to choose. So as you step into 2026, be kind to yourself, be honest about your constraints, and then ask: what’s the most empowering story I can tell? Your future self will thank you for it.
