2026: The Gold Standard Year

I’m having a gold standard year in 2026. In late November of last year, I made the trek to a little town in Nova Scotia called New Ross. What’s in New Ross? Well, according to the GPS: nothing. A lake with some million dollar homes on it. A long, dirt road that makes you feel like you’re riding a rollercoaster. And a couple of “no hunting” signs along said dirt road.

But it was in one of those million dollar homes that I met a friend and colleague of mine for a 4-day business planning retreat that left my mouth hanging open feeling a mix of fear and excitement at the outcomes of the retreat. And it made me realize that 2025 was about identifying and declaring new standards for my life. It wasn’t as hard as the internet makes it out to be, but it was difficult to break some patterns and find new ways forward.

Because of that, I’m choosing my word of the year for 2026. It’s gold. As in standard. As in, I’m leaving behind anything that doesn’t meet that standard and focusing on building the life I really want. I’m mostly there now, which is more than most people can say. But there’s a few more things I want to check off the life list. And 2026 is going to be when I do those things.

Building on 2025’s stability, freedom and growth

A friend of mine has a great system for measuring success. It incorporates the reality of setting goals. Where most people think to reach for the moon so they land amongst the stars (a great option for anyone), my friend uses an Olympic-sized system: bronze, silver, and gold.

If you set a goal and don’t reach it, maybe you get a bronze medal that day. Or maybe you didn’t end up feeling exactly as you wanted to feel so it’s a silver kind of moment. I love this approach to setting up our lives, mostly because it removes the sting of pass/fail.

I’ve never been one to think of life as a pass/fail kind of gig, but it doesn’t stop the thoughts creeping in when something is taking longer than you thought. Even when you’re well on your way to reaching a goal, you can trick yourself into thinking it’s a fail. With the Olympic way of thinking about things, you can give a moment or milestone a medal and feel good about having made progress.

Is it a word or a standard?

Other people in my circle like to choose a word to represent their year ahead. I’ve always admired people who can do this. I’ve never chosen a word to guide my year before. But last year, after having a really upsetting situation happen in my business related to finances, I decided to buckle down and focus on building stability, freedom and growth into my business. I decided that every single dollar I earned in 2025 would be divided into three categories: personal, savings and debt. I kept 70% of every dollar I earned after business expenses for myself and I allocated 20% of every dollar to paying off my debt and 10% to a savings account.

By this standard, I’d have plenty of cash to keep my life going, money tackling my debt and money being saved for a rainy day. By the time 2025 ended, I’d paid off my debt (fuck yeah!), saved money and basically did whatever the hell I wanted for the entire year including taking a creative sabbatical, traveling to some of my favourite places and finding new favourite places, doing repairs on my house, supporting local charities with donations and volunteering, and so much more.

Choosing a word that represents evolution in a Gold Standard Year

So in 2026, I’m keeping my stability, freedom and growth plan in place. It worked before so it will work again. Plus, after 52 weeks of doing it, it just feels normal now. But in 2026, I’ve also chosen a word…for the first time, ever! My word for 2026 is GOLD. Not only because I want to raise the standard of my life, but because I want to raise the standard of everything around me.

I chose this word because it’s a natural evolution of where my life has been headed over the last few years: continuous improvement. And I want a guiding word to remind me of where I’m still headed. There’s no end destination in mind, personally or professionally. So by focusing on stability, freedom, growth and now adding gold to the mix, I have a set of ideals to strive toward and make decisions with.

Looking back, looking forward

When I look back at who I was at the start of 2025 and who I became by the end of it, it’s a complete shift in my mindset and thinking that got me to where I am today. Not only did I spent the better part of 2025 not working so I could refocus myself and re-evaluate my direction, I also said yes to as many things as possible without judging them. And a couple of really interesting things happened that contributed to the deep sense of self I now have.

For starters, I learned that not every thought I have is true and I can think critically about my own thoughts in even more detail than I had in the past. By doing this, I was able to break bad habits and patterns of thinking that weren’t serving me. I read two books that I would never have read that actually changed my mind about business and growth and made me set some hella big financial goals for 2026. And I decided that I’m no longer settling for anything that is within my capacity to raise the standard on.

Two books that shifted my thinking in 2025

In October, I ran out of books to read. Shocker. I know. I read over 60 books in 2025, but there were only two books that I will forever sing the praises of. The first is called Blue Ocean Shift. This is a sequel to another book called Blue Ocean Strategy that I read a while back. I didn’t care for Blue Ocean Strategy. The truth is I don’t think I was ready to receive the information about that book.

The sequel sat on my shelf for years. It’s worth noting it’s the only book I have ever owned that just sat unread. I don’t keep a to-be-read pile of books on an ongoing basis. I actually have a rule that I can’t buy any new books until the ones I have are read. And I mostly stick to that rule, except with this book. I moved it on the shelf several times before I ran out officially and figured, why not?

Blue Ocean Shift rocked my thinking in relation to business but also life in general. It offered a way of thinking about how we see ourselves and our work that made me rethink where I was headed. If you’ve followed along on this blog for any length of time now, you know I’ve contemplated several career changes this year, but when I read Blue Ocean Shift, I knew I had to double down on my business. So I did.

Going big or go home, right?

The second book was recommended by Jenna Kutcher. Two things matter about this recommendation. First, I don’t read anything recommended to me. Ever. It’s just a thing I have. A weird thing, sure. But if you recommend a book to me, it will be years later before I read it. Same goes for movies, television shows, and restaurants. I will take your travel destination recommendations though. Always.

Second, I’d heard of the book before but rolled my eyes at the idea of the book. It’s called 10x is Easier than 2x and I just kept thinking it was bro marketing, wondering who wants to do the work of 10xing anything?

Jenna Kutcher said, almost verbatim, the same thing I was thinking when she mentioned the book on her podcast and then proceeded to talk about it and how it’s helping her reimagine her life. I stopped the podcast, immediately downloaded the audiobook and got to listening to it while I drove to Halifax for a photoshoot I had booked for the rebrand of my business. By the time I got home from that trip, I had new photos for my newly redesigned and built website and I had a completely different mindset about 10xing my life and business.

What stays and what’s being added to my gold standard year

These books inspired me because they demonstrated ways to raise the standard of your business. Yes, they are business books, but as someone who finds meaning in everything she reads (even smutty romance novels), I can easily apply the lessons from these books to my everyday life. And truthfully, I’m not one of those people who sees life and work as separate. I don’t strive for work/life balance. I’ve always been able to integrate my life and work well enough that neither feels like a drag. So I’m taking some important lessons that I learned in 2025 into the new year with me.

For starters, I’m keeping my stability, freedom, growth plan. I call it my SFG plan. Every Friday I sit at my desk and look at how much money I made or have for the week and allocate the money according to my plan. For the first time in a long time, I’ve set a money goal in my business. That feels scary, but also inspiring. I’m keeping my reading and journaling practices. I do intend to incorporate more business books this year, and want to start reading outside of the romance genre. I’ve discovered I like mystery novels so I’ll read more of those too.

I’m adding a planner practice to the mix. It’s been years since I’ve used or kept a planner, always looking to streamline my scheduling system in the years before. After years of streamlining my business to the point that I basically didn’t need a calendar to manage my life, I’m ready to dig in and do things intentionally again. I also invested in a Big A## Calendar to plan out my entire year of adventure, vacation, travel, special events and more. I’ve never had a wall calendar before so that’s fun.

More fun, more adventure, more coffee

I’m keeping my travel goals, adding a few places I’ve never been to the list. I plan to return to some of my favourite places including the rocky mountains out west, Newfoundland and I’m planning a trip to Scotland based solely on an Instagram reel I saw of Edinburgh in winter. I was there was I was a kid but remember almost nothing about it. Going as an adult with adult money will be way more fun I’m sure.

I bought a new coffee maker. Sounds like no big deal. But remember that million dollar house retreat I went on in November? The first morning I woke up I had a coffee made in their Nespresso machine. It tasted like money. So I immediately bought one and gave it to myself for a birthday present. I’ve been obsessively trying new coffees and investing in syrups, frothers, nice mugs, and pretty trays to hold all of it to level up my coffee game.

I used to spend $8 on a Starbucks coffee several times a week, sometimes twice a day. This isn’t an expensive investment by that standard and for my gold standard year, I want delicious coffee. It tastes like George Clooney is coming to visit me every time I take a sip.

What’s next for 2026?

These don’t seem like big changes and they aren’t. They are incremental upgrades and practices that I’m adding to my life or keeping in my life because they held things together in a different way for me in 2025. And if I want 2026 to be even better, these things need to come with me and continue to support me. I already had an expensive espresso machine in my house. But it wasn’t at the level I wanted it to be.

Is Nespresso the best on the market? No. But how I felt drinking that Nespresso is how I want to feel every time I drink my coffee. So I made an upgrade. That’s what the gold standard year is all about. It doesn’t have to involve spending money, but I won’t shy away from it if it does.

So while striving for gold and landing at silver or bronze is good for the ego, I want everything I touch to turn to gold this year. I don’t want to say no to myself or deprive myself or worry about how any of it looks. If it makes me happy, I’m doing it. That’s the gold standard actually: saying yes to myself. Building based on my own standards and not someone else’s, not that I did much of that anyway, but this year I’m going even deeper into what I want.

The first week of 2026 is already in the books and it’s off to a great start. I am excited by the realizations and perspectives I’ve gotten over the last twelve months and I can’t want to see how they play into the next twelve.