#WorkMomSays 2025 has been exhausting for just about everyone. In this episode, Lori Jo Vest breaks down the challenges workers faced this year—layoffs, inflation, mounting pressure, and nonstop change—and how simple shifts can set you up for a brighter 2026.

From building consistency and boundaries to reflecting on wins and supporting each other, Lori shares honest, actionable strategies for finding resilience when times are tough. 

If you’re looking to reset and recharge for the new year, this episode offers practical advice and encouragement to help you move forward with more confidence and less burnout.

Time-stamped inflection points from the show

00:12 — 2025’s tough realities: burnout, layoffs, and financial stress

02:20 — How consistency (not hustle) leads to real, sustainable change

04:11 — Boundary-setting in the workplace as a buffer against burnout

05:27 — Building business friendships as an essential support network

09:26 — End-of-year reflection ritual: listing your accomplishments to spark optimism

02:01 – “Consistency beats hustle. We all think we’ve got to get up at, you know, 6 a.m. and get moving. And you see the TikTok videos of the guy that’s up at 4 a.m. and he’s out the door by 5:15 and he’s already worked out and, oh my God, just thinking about it makes me tired.”

04:26 – “I watched our team at the agency that I run set some boundaries, and it was fantastic. Not, you know, not asking, ‘Can I have time off,’ but saying, ‘I need this time off,’ or, you know, ‘I need this flexibility,’ and that has helped us alleviate some of that burnout by paying attention to the boundaries that you have power over.”

05:52 – “And that kind of support, you can’t buy that. You have to build it. So make it a point in 2026 to build some relationships, to make three new business friends that you’ve gone out to lunch with four times or something over the course of the year, to really get to know them and add them to your network.”

14:20 – “You’re not behind. You’re exactly where you need to be. Chin up. Keep going. You’ll make mistakes. Grit will get you through. Rest matters.”

00:12
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot. I am going to talk to you tonight about 2025—let’s wrap up this year—and then ways to ease into 2026. Because, let’s be real, we need to talk about 2025 before we can do anything with the future. It has been exhausting. If you’re out of a job, it’s been really difficult in the job market. If you have a job, you’re being expected to do more with less. You may have a coworker that got laid off, and you’re the one left standing, and you are expected to do both of those jobs, or at least take a big portion of that work without more money. Companies are keeping wages low, but prices and inflation are up, so it’s really hard, and things aren’t happening quickly. Matter of fact, they seem to be in a holding pattern.

01:16
There’s mixed news about the economy—in, you know, as of December 2025 when we’re recording this, it’s the 22nd right before Christmas—and a lot of us are really burned out. We’re working hard because, again, there’s job loss all around us, and we see our friends who have been disemployed and are struggling. So we feel burned out. There’s lots of pressure on us at work, there’s pressure on us at home, there’s pressure on us financially. It’s not been great.

01:49
However, there are some things that came out of this year for me personally, and most likely for you too, that you can use as a springboard for next year. One of the things that I learned is consistency beats hustle. We all think we’ve got to get up at, you know, 6 a.m. and get moving. And, you know, you see the TikTok videos of the guy that’s up at 4 a.m. and he’s out the door by 5:15, and he’s already worked out and, oh my God, just thinking about it makes me tired.

02:20
What I learned is that consistency is more important than anything else, and it’s a personal story, but I’ll share it because it’s just evidence of something that I didn’t really realize—with my ADHD personality—could make things so much easier. And that is: just be consistent. Do something three times a week. I hired a weight training coach in 2021—late 2021, I think—and started doing weight training two to three times a week, and eventually got that two or three days a week consistently. And I have lost a significant amount of weight. I haven’t really had to change how I’ve been eating, but I’ve just been showing up for myself for that little half-hour session three times a week, and then I have cardio in there too, but really just not even focusing on results at all; just focusing on showing up and doing it even when it was hard, even when I was so sore and I’m like, “I can’t do this today,” and I just do it anyway. I mean, I may have to take some Aleve when I go to bed at night because I’m sore, but the results are showing up.

03:29
And there was no rushing it. There was no burnout. I didn’t push myself so hard that I hurt myself or got myself into a situation where I didn’t want to do it anymore, because that can happen too. I was just consistent three times a week, and to me, three years later, looking back at that, I’m surprised at myself, because that type of consistent effort over an extended time period isn’t easy. It’s not easy for any of us. Things change. You might have kids, you might be pregnant, you might be retiring, you might be just out of college, and things are just really transient and changing.

04:11
But can you create one consistent habit? And that might be something to put a pin in and hold onto for the 2026 conversation. The other thing that I saw is boundaries are really important. I watched our team at the agency that I run set some boundaries, and it was fantastic. Not, you know, not asking, “Can I have time off?” but saying, “I need this time off,” or, “I need this flexibility,” and that has helped us alleviate some of that burnout by paying attention to the boundaries that you have power over.

04:49
I mean, you might not be able to be, like, super tight—I’m only nine to five, and I’m not going to work on these other kinds of projects. Certainly, you have to be flexible in the office, especially during times like this, but you can say that my weekend is mine. I need my weekend so that I don’t burn out, and so that I can bring my best self to work on Monday. And that is not a bad thing to say. So I learned that in 2025: boundaries are really important. And also, relationships—create some strong relationships with people that are in the business community, whether they’re friends, whether they’re coworkers, people that work in a different department that you don’t really engage with, but maybe you see each other in the kitchen and you’re like, “Hey, we hit it off.”

05:27
People that you meet at events, you know, association events and things like that—pay attention and develop some strong friendships. Because what happens is, if you’re in a business community together and you’re friends, and you talk regularly or go out to lunch regularly, you’re going to be able to support each other. And that kind of support—you can’t buy that. You have to build it. So make it a point in 2026 to build some relationships: to make three new business friends that you’ve gone out to lunch with four times or something over the course of the year, to really get to know them and add them to your network. As you do that consistently over time, you will find that you know so many people in your community that your career will inevitably elevate as a result. It’s just how it works.

06:21
Things that we don’t say out loud, that I want to make obvious on this podcast, because I think we’re all feeling it: it’s December 22, we’re all fried. We’re going to get through the year and hopefully see new things happening in 2026. There’s an opportunity there to do some things differently for ourselves and for people around us. We’re all experiencing money stress, so pay attention to your money. But if you’re feeling stress about it, guess what? So is everybody. You’re not alone, you’re not stupid, you’re not unable to manage it.

07:00
We are currently living in a society that is experiencing inflation, and there are profits coming out of every aspect of life and raising basic costs of living for Americans, for sure—and most of my audience, I know, is American. When you are experiencing anxiety about something that’s coming up and you don’t know why because you’ve prepared for it, you’re ready to go, but you still have that anxiety—know that that’s normal.

07:20
Confidence is not always consistent, and you don’t have to be 100% confident to perform. Just do what you got to do to get through and do the best you can in your office and on your job. If you feel a little anxiety, tell it thank you for sharing, put it aside, and keep moving. Anxiety shouldn’t rule you; you rule the anxiety. Don’t let it get too big. Don’t focus too hard on it, because anxiety is really common in today’s economy, in today’s workplace. It should alleviate; it usually does. These things go in cycles. We’ll get through it.

07:56
But you may want to look at your 2026 goals a little differently, because this year was a burnout year, and we can’t go through that again. You—as an individual—shouldn’t go through that again. So I’m trying to help you not do that.

08:11
I have a thing that I do every year at the end of the year to give me some inspiration and motivation and to affirm to myself that I am working hard, and I am having some success in a lot of different areas—I just don’t often acknowledge it. And so I will sit down with a pen and paper (I think it’s important you do it by hand), and I will write a list of 50 things that I have done over the course of the last year that I think were new, different, fun, positive, helped me move forward in some way or another, or just enjoy life more.

08:40
Some of the accomplishments I would put would be: consistent Peloton, consistent weight training, consistent water, eating lots of vegetables, getting all my health maintenance appointments taken care of, maintaining our employee roster and adding someone new, and doing some really great work for our clients. I mean, you can see how it can add up pretty quickly—a book that you read, an old friend that you reconnected with, a friend that was going through a difficult time that you supported. As you go down this list, you’ll go, “Wow, I really did a lot of cool things this year,” and it helps you start the new year on a really solid and positive, optimistic footing.

09:26
So I would encourage you to do that, and then just tuck it away. At the end of 2026, take a look at it—it’s a completely different list that you’ll write then—but it’s really fun to have the one from the year before to reference when you’re setting your 2026 goals.

09:50
I encourage people to pick a phrase. My phrase for 2025 was “This is my big money year,” and at the beginning of the year, I thought, “Yeah, I’m going to make a lot of money this year.” Well, okay, that didn’t quite work out. We’ve seen what the economy has done. We are in Metro Detroit, so we are being impacted by the tariffs, and I think everybody’s being impacted by things that are happening in financial markets, and it’s just really kind of wild right now. So we’re all feeling a little heavy, and we have worked really hard, and now we have to take some downtime. We have to really look at what we need to do to shore ourselves up during this difficult time, because we don’t know if 2026 will be better or not. We can decide to make it better for ourselves.

10:41
So I would say, pick a phrase that says something that you would like to see in this year. It doesn’t have to be specific; it can be kind of ambiguous, like mine: “This is my big money year.” I thought, “I’m going to make a lot of money.” Well, you know, it didn’t happen. So what happened instead was I learned a lot about money. I did a lot of workshops. I worked with a financial coach. I have a new accountant. I did things in that money space that helped me think bigger about money, understand it better, know when a resource I’m calling on is a good resource versus a not-so-good resource. As a business owner, sometimes the decisions you make with vendors can take you down the wrong path, and when that happens, you gotta back up and start over again. We’ve had to do that a couple of times. It’s not easy, but we’re enjoying it on a lot of levels. So we just keep pushing forward. So, things that we’re doing in 2026 to keep ourselves moving beyond that phrase—like, “This is my big money year,” “Everything always works out for me.”

11:53
A few examples of that mantra would be: “This is my big money year.” Obviously, I’m my biggest cheerleader. “I can do big things.” “I can appear on major stages.” “I can create a school of transformation.” Things that you can visualize, but maybe there’s some flexibility in what it really means. You repeat that to yourself on a regular basis: you put it on a piece of paper, on your whiteboard, maybe on your desktop, maybe on your screensaver on your phone so that you see it consistently and constantly, and it will help you stay focused on making the changes that it requires to actually embody that mantra. And trust me, it works in the most interesting ways. I learned so much about money this year, and that really wasn’t my intention at the beginning of it, but I think it’s what we needed to know in order to reach the next level. So there you have it: it’s my big money year.

12:49
So another question to ask yourself as you go into the new year—and maybe meditate on or write it up and put it somewhere so you can reference it—is: What would make 2026 feel lighter? Is that maybe giving up your nightly hour of doom scrolling, where you’re just scrolling and looking, you’ve seen all your friends’ content, you’ve connected with everybody there, you did that in the first five minutes, and then you kept scrolling for another 50 minutes. Maybe give that up—things that you can let go of. And trust me, I’m the biggest—I have the biggest problem with things like that, with doom scrolling; it’s just my nature. I’m a news junkie and I really have to moderate, and when I don’t, it’s a real energy suck.

13:32
So I am actually committing in 2026 to allowing an hour of quiet time every day, and that might not sound like much, but I am constantly ingesting news, listening to music, watching television, listening to radio talk shows or whatever, but I’ve constantly got something coming in, and so I need to commit to that quiet time because it will slow me down and make the year feel lighter.

14:06
So ask yourself, what would make you feel lighter going into 2026? I’m going to close out with a couple other recommendations and things to remember as we go into another year that could be chaotic. You’re not behind; you’re exactly where you need to be. Chin up. Keep going. You’ll make mistakes. Grit will get you through. Rest matters. If you have a weekend where all you do is just lie around or rot—as they say—in bed or on the sofa, that’s okay, because sometimes that is what you need. Sometimes you need to rest. So let’s make rest something that we elevate and do more of in 2026.

14:49
Work Mom is proud of you, so I will see you in 2026. Please get in touch with me if you are watching this on YouTube—I would love a subscribe. Hit the like button, share my content; I would love to reach a bigger audience with helpful information that helps you play the emotional contact sport of business so you can experience less drama and more success. I have a website at workmomsays.com, where you can get in touch with me. I am also an open networker on LinkedIn, so connect with me there—just let me know in your connection request that you’re a listener. Thanks again for joining me. I’ll see you in the new year.

This podcast is for young professionals who want to learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Order my book!

The post Episode 58 – Still Standing: What 2025 Took, Taught, and Left Behind appeared first on Work Mom Says®.