2026 Wellness Reset: The Practical Ways I am Planning to Feel, Think and Perform My Best in 2026

The start of a New Year doesn’t change your life,  but it does create a psychological pause where intention sharpens, habits reset and a new chapter quietly begins. 

Call it a cliché, but I love all things New Year resets. It’s a chance to rewire, reimagine and recreate. It’s a moment to get back on track, and when our focus on our aspirations and wellbeing often receives the greatest attention. The New Year doesn’t hold any inherent power. But, it does tap into a motivating collective consciousness that sweeps the globe simultaneously.

The idea of what social scientists call a ‘temporal landmark’ first resonated with me when I read Dan Pink’s book, When. It highlights that like humans who navigate landmarks through space; landmarks can also help navigate time. Prominent dates help you navigate your way. So, while the change of a calendar is an arbitrary milestone, it does signal significance to us psychologically for what is described as a ‘fresh start effect’. There is a ‘before’ and ‘after’ motivation - that means you’re not just changing habits, you’re changing chapters. 

While we might be working on individual goals, with the collective motivation, there is a chance to co-create. Many of the habits and systems I love the most today began as a small seed planted by an author, podcaster, YouTuber or blogger. Tiny, yet life-changing ideas.  So, in the spirit of social synchronicity, in this blog, I’m sharing the practical ways I'm resetting in 2026 to feel, think and perform at my best.     

1. Pin your vision first 

If you follow this blog, you’ll know I’m a big fan of starting ideas, personal or professional development, on Pinterest first. Mood-boarding allows me to think like a Creative Director. The multitude of both visual and information-rich content on Pinterest also means that it’s the perfect place to visually build my ‘Second Brain’, a life-changing concept I discovered through Tiago Forte’s book Building a Second Brain.

Seeing the visual representation of my vision for 2026 increases the emotional resonance of the ideas and aspirations, making me more motivated to achieve them. 

As I’ve shared on this blog before, I also create seasonal mood boards to re-ignite my vision with the turn of every new season within the year. 

2. Convert your goals to a vision board 

As neuroscience shows us, our brain can’t easily differentiate between what is real and what is vividly imagined. So, detailed visualisations of desired outcomes become a form of mental rehearsal. A vision board puts those images right in front of you - triggering your reticular activating system. This helps your brain filter the noise and focus on what is most important. 

As I have shared in my earlier blog, Vision boarding reimagined: Where clarity meets creativity, I create my vision board in clearly defined ‘life domain ‘ categories. It’s not just about pretty pictures; it’s an action plan.  

This year, I’ve also focused on elevating my vision board to more complete stories. This means multiple images related to one idea. I first learned about the power of this through neuro-linguistic programming, which promotes focusing on the smallest details of what something looks, feels, sounds, etc, when you achieve it. 

I spent weeks finessing my vision board before setting it as my desktop. From speaking to friends and hearing thought leaders on the topic, I plan to also set it as my phone wallpaper. You can use the settings on an iPhone to customise certain wallpapers for certain times of the day. 

3. Building your ‘Second Brain’  

Not to be confused with Tiago Forte’s concept of a Second Brain, more than ever, I feel most excited about feeding my ‘second brain’. 

Reframing my gut as my ‘second brain’ first resonated with me when I read Jim Kwik’s Limitless. 

Research shows that, in the walls of your digestive system, lies your enteric nervous system. And it is lined with hundreds of millions of neurons, giving new life to the term ‘gut feeling’.

If you're trusting your gut to think for you, then it needs the right fuel. I’ve recently started researching more about the power of feeding the microbiomes in your body with a diverse diet, and the idea of ‘plant points’ is a super simple way to understand this. Many recommend aiming for at least 30 different plant points per week. For me, I’ve also found it helps to gamify the healthy habit. 

Ensuring diverse plant-based priorities in my diet also means eating as colourfully as possible. This links beautifully with the Pinterest boards I have created based solely on healthy food.  

4. Creating an ideal week calendar 

As I’ve long realised, with habits I’ve continued consistently, or easily fall off from, what gets scheduled, gets done. Over the last couple of years, I’ve created an Apple calendar based solely on scheduling my ideal week. Key habits are timed to the finest details, such as what days I’ll prepare meals or buy them for lunch. This is more than a manifestation exercise; it creates intentionality for making your ambitions for your ideal self a reality.  It’s about getting your goals out of your head and your notebooks and into an actionable system. So you can practically see how this can work. 

I’ve found my ideal calendar has made my goals more achievable. I colour-code my diary to show a link back to key life domains, which visually shows me how I actually spend my time.  

To increase the emotional resonance of my diary, this year, I’ve also elevated the titles of the events to link with my goals. For example instead of ‘walk’, the title links to my 10K steps goal. It puts the why into the daily habit. For many of the titles these are also highly aspirational rather than achievable daily. It keeps me focused on how my daily habits compound into my vision. 

5. Set reminders 

For some of the less exciting life admin - the essential things, which could be easily missed - I set a few key reminders on my phone. Not so many that I become desensitised, only what’s really necessary to keep me on track. 

6. Creating chains and archives

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld famously popularised the idea of creating chains for your habits. He had a big calendar on his wall and, with a big red marker, would check off each day that he wrote. The longer the chain, the more he didn’t want to break it. 

This year, I’ve spent more time paying attention to my own chains. Appreciating, for example the episode numbers of my podcast more than ever. Taking a moment to acknowledge that the unbroken chain it represents is already the achievement. It’s the input I control. And in many ways, it’s even more important than any results. 

Tiago Forte, in Building a Second Brain, also highlights his PARA method, which encompasses a simple focus on archiving your completed work. The idea of archiving started as a practical step in my organisational system. Now, like an archivist, I appreciate that each file represents a project completed, something achieved. Each podcast is a spoken diary. Each item in my wardrobe is an archive of my life experience. Each YouTube video is a page in my portfolio. Even if it’s just for a moment, I stop to honour the work I’ve already done. 

To fresh starts 

Resets in your routine aren’t revolutionary on their own, but when layered together with intention, they can form life-changing systems. Momentum isn’t built through elaborate personal development plans or declarations. It’s built through consistency, structure and meaning. See your vision, feed your body and mind mindfully, schedule the life you want, and honour what you’ve already achieved, not just what you're chasing.