Before you can move forward, you have to get unstuck a bit. Part of being stuck is worrying. Some people are really really good at it. Oh I’m sorry I’m raising my hand. Check out the how can I stop worrying episode.

Sometimes life can get you really stuck. Circumstances can be such that you really just wanna give up. I feel you. And mental health is a delicate subject. If you’ve ever thought of truly giving up, check out depression and throwing away the container.

You may be stuck because you think everything you’re doing is failing or you lament all of your failures as 100% your responsibility. If that’s the case, then the reverse is also true. You are also 100% responsible for your successes. Perhaps it’s time to start taking responsibility for those. That’s such an odd sentence isn’t it? If it feels weird to say that out loud then you’ll benefit from the episode taking responsibility for the good in your life.

Sometimes being stuck isn’t necessarily running into a wall, but rather being at a place with lack of direction. And that can manifest as feeling like you don’t have the energy or desire to do something or you literally don’t know what to do. I created a simple and very effective way to find your way back and in the process get something as a gift to yourself. If you’ve ever lost your way, check out the episode called UPS, my secret for avoiding depression being more productive.

If you want to grow in 2026 you may have to learn. You may find that there are things you know quite well in fact, so well you take it for granted. And in doing so that can make it both a challenge to learn and a challenge to teach. If you adopt a beginner mindset in which you are completely open to learning, it makes it a very enjoyable experience to learn new skills and it’ll make you an excellent teacher. Check out the beginner mindset makes you a better teacher.

On a related note—a lot of people equate success with productivity. After all if you’re being productive, it means you feel good about what you’re doing and you’re producing something that at the bare minimum makes you happy and is aligned with you and hopefully it’s also profitable. It may surprise you that this is one of the times in your life in which selfishness is a really good thing. If you tailor your productivity selfishly to what really makes you happy you’ll end up with a really good product and maybe surprised at how many other people enjoy the benefits of this specificity. Check out why selfish productivity may be the best productivity.

We tend to present our success as milestones, but we forget we built those milestones layer by layer. If your goal is to do a certain thing, but you ignore the steps to get there you’re making it much more difficult for yourself than it should be. Everything we do in life is layer by layer. It’s iterative. You can learn a great lesson about this by listening to live your life iteratively

Part of moving forward in 2026 is probably gaining some control. If you don’t have any control over your environment or yourself, nothing is going to happen. Every so often I ask myself a question that drives me crazy until I answer it… and that driving myself crazy usually ends up with me manifesting an entire book after much research and experimentation. This time it manifested itself in the form of an app that runs on both your phone and your browser. Check out what I figured out in the episode I think I found the perfect question.

We are bombarded with social media and we tend to compare our successes to others. How can we not when everything from LinkedIn to Instagram shows us just how happy and successful everyone else is. But the energy you put in to showing off is energy you’re not putting into improving. Check out the silence of success and after it, you may not be putting more effort into being successful, but your effort will be more effectively applied to what’s best for you.

All work and no play as they say. I actually started this podcast because I needed to learn what balance was in life. It was a comment from a psychologist I was visiting with my very young kids because of the turmoil of what was happening in the household related to the divorce. I wanted to make sure they were OK. “But what are you doing for you,” she asked. That comment truly sent me on the path to find out what life was made of and how to have balance.  If you go into 2026 thinking you are going to work yourself to death and make something happen, you need to consider feeding more to your brain and your soul than just work. The problem is that people who tend to be high achievers don’t wanna just stare at a wall or trash TV to relax they need to be equally engaged. If you’re one of these special people then check out engagement fiction for your type a brain.

Subscribe to this podcast. It’s free, and only ten minutes. Spotify, iTunes Youtube and my mailing list.

Get invited to my invite-only productivity app. The app is AMAZING. it’s a solid todo list with fantastic features you can use on your phone and your desktop.

Hire me to do a seminar at your company. My seminars are two hours or half day, draw from 10 books and 300 episodes of knowledge. Like getting a teacher that comes with his own library. I also have patent-pending behavior mapping software.

Hire me to be your coach. A 15 min call will see if we are a fit. It’s free, no obligation and we will only engage if you decide to call me back.

Until the end of the year, you can join CheckMark and have the app on both your phone and desktop, for free. It’s a daily todo ap that’s super simple to use but also has:

Go to:

https://alchemyfor.life/checkmark/join.cfm

Use code Mark8

Ends on January 15th or until the limited codes run out!

Definitely a good thing to do in 2026 for success.