What I’m Bringing into 2026

Have you set resolutions for the New Year? 

Maybe you have SMART goals? 

While I do think it is important to ask for what we want out of this year, in fact, each day I ask myself how I want to feel so that I experience what I need each day, I also feel like now is an important time to remind everyone not to become too attached to the outcome. 

We can strive and push and still not achieve our goals, and that doesn’t mean that we’ve failed. 

So instead of setting resolutions and holding steadfast to a concrete version of success this year, I’ve chosen a word to represent 2026.

My word is Essence.

This year is not asking me to push harder or reinvent myself. It is inviting me to return to what has always been true beneath the noise. To live from the deepest part of who I already am.

2025 brought me home to myself. 2026 asks me to live in that home.

Choosing Essence did not happen quickly. 

I explored many words. Devotion. Sovereignty. Liberation. Expansion. Expression. 

Each spoke to a part of me, but none of them held the whole truth.

What became clear was this. My year is not about adopting a new identity or striving toward a bigger version of myself. It is about living from the core of who I already am. When the noise fell away, what remained was simple, grounded, and unmistakably true.

Essence.

A word of the year is never just a word. It becomes a lived practice. It shapes how you meet your days, how you say yes, how you say no, and how you care for yourself when life becomes demanding.

For me, Essence shows up everywhere.

In business, it means creating from alignment rather than obligation. If my body contracts, I pause. If it opens, I trust the yes. Offers become simpler and deeper. Marketing becomes more storytelling and presence led. My work feels cleaner, lighter, and more sustainable because it is coming from truth, not effort.

In my personal life, Essence becomes a boundary. It is choosing relationships, rhythms, and conversations that feel honest. It is honouring my desires without guilt. It is staying with myself rather than abandoning my needs to keep the peace.

In my body, Essence means listening. Resting when asked. Moving intuitively. Treating my body as a messenger rather than a machine. Healing deepens when there is partnership rather than pressure.

In leadership, Essence shifts everything. Presence becomes power. Decisions feel clearer. Boundaries are clean. There is less people pleasing and more grounded influence. Clients feel held not by effort, but by steadiness.

This is what a word of the year offers. Not motivation, but orientation. Not striving, but remembering.

If you are considering your own word or phrase for the year ahead, let it be something that softens you rather than demands more of you. Something that feels true in your body. Something that brings you home to yourself again and again.

Because the most powerful way to live, lead, and create is not by becoming more.

It is by embracing your true nature. That’s what allows you to live your extraordinary.