If The New Year Feels Weird, Listen

Urgency isn’t my word for 2026, and if you’re feeling that too, this episode is for you.

In this very honest, slightly uncomfortable conversation, I’m talking about why 2026 is shaping up to be a maintenance year for me: refining instead of grinding, listening instead of forcing, and honoring the very signals I teach women to notice.

I share what it looks like to build something you love (hello, HBA), hit momentum, and then feel your body quietly tap you on the shoulder asking you to slow down, plus why that isn’t failure, backsliding, or “losing your edge.” It’s actually proof the work is working.

If you’re coming off a year that took everything you had…
If setting big shiny goals feels more exhausting than exciting…
If you’re high-functioning, self-aware, and still weirdly disconnected from what your body needs…

Consider this your permission slip for a maintenance year, and a reminder that sustainable success lives in the bridge between your brain and your body, not in blowing past both.

Happy 2026. Take a breath.

HBA: https://www.mnmfitnessco.com/hba

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the Dokeme Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. Sorry, my chair is like making weird noise there. We should be good now. Um, happy 2026. What's the vibe for 2026? How are y'all feeling? Because this is such a different new year feeling than what I've like historically felt for brand new years. I've usually always like felt that like urgency is like the word that I want to use. Like, we're gonna go forward, we're gonna set all these big goals. And it's not that I'm like anti-goals this year, but like, man, urgency is not what I feel. If anything, I almost feel like the closure, like closing the book of 2025 and like putting it back on the shelf and like standing there, getting ready to pull off the book of 2026. I almost feel like my energy for 2026 is very like contemplative of like, okay, well, what book do I want to read? Well, what book do I actually want to open up this year? And it's it's almost like we're like five days into the month, five days into the year, and I'm still standing there staring at the shelf and being like, hmm, wonder what book I want to grab. And so if that's also you, if you're someone that is like, man, I am just we survived in 2025, and we just want to take a minute. Welcome, you're in a good spot, and I don't know, listen to this whole episode. So my word for 2026 and my perspective on 2026, um, I knew very quickly when people started sharing like the New Year's um resolutions and like goals and what they were gonna focus on for 2026. It's like I knew immediately what my focus was going to be. And the word that kept coming up for me was maintenance. And I actually made a post about this on my Instagram. It has a massive typo, which is very frustrating, but I'm not gonna take it down because the message still stands. Um, but very clearly, like very confidently, do I want to come here and say that 2026 for me, and maybe 2026 for you, maybe you know, this is use this as an invitation. Maybe 2026 um gets to be a maintenance year. And by maintenance year, I mean um a year where you refine your craft. You continue to put in effort towards the things that you've been working on for 2025 and the years before, or I don't know, you figure out why the thing that you've tried to do and you've never been consistent at maybe this is the year you actually figure out what that block is. Um and you know, that's what we're actually doing in um the January sprint that I'm running right now. We're we're uncovering like what is it about the moments that we want to move forward but we don't, we're we're figuring that out. But um, maybe you guys need a maintenance year. And if you're someone that is listening to this, like, man, having a maintenance year feels way more feasible to me right now versus setting a ton of new goals for 2026 when I feel like I'm just like barely recovering from 2025. Yeah, me too. Um, and that kind of ties into what I want to talk about in today's episode. And I will be fully honest with you guys up front that I feel super, super uncomfortable sharing this episode because, and I just kind of had to talk through this um with my coach of like, I feel a little bit of imposter syndrome sharing what I'm about to share. Um, but as I talk through it with her, I kind of realize, like, damn, actually I'm looking at this completely the wrong way. Um, and if anything, this should be shared because um, boy, what a testimony that it is. So if you're not new to the podcast and you've been listening for a while, um, well, since its inception, you have heard me talk about HBA. Um, if you're newer to the podcast, um look in the show notes, click on the link, you'll see what HBA is. Um, but if you're newer, just know that like I spent all of 2025 and really three months of 2024 um in full go mode for HBA, which was um, which is my four-week um group experience. This is my baby. HBA is my baby. I love it, I love it, I love it. Um, and boy did I spend some time, um, a lot of time, more than a year, proving the concept of HBA. And it is just, I'm so like I'm so proud of it. Um, but as we wrapped up 2025, I started to notice um this very real feeling of fatigue. Um, and it's fatigue in the sense that um I've been in one mode for over a year. I've been in a it's like it's it's almost like when you create a new product such as that. Um, and you get it in the hands of hundreds and hundreds of people, and it is all you talk about. It's it's really like, you know, my business is my business is not new, my business is established, but it's almost like starting a whole new business all over again. It requires so much work. It requires so much effort, it requires so much thought, it requires so many late hours, so much sacrifice. And I'm also no stranger to working really hard and pushing for a goal. I mean, I have a corporate background in business-to-business sales. Like, if anything, the grind, the hustle, the hit the goal, like that is like that is my nature. That is in my personality. That is like hardwired into who I am. Like I can just turn that on and go. But as a woman and as someone who has done so much work on my nervous system, turning that on and going is never gonna not come with a cost. And it's interesting because as we were wrapping up 2025, man, I just kept feeling this urge to just be still. I kept feeling this urge to rest. I kept feeling this urge to slow down a little bit and not be um 180 miles per hour, maybe you know, dial it down to like 90 miles per hour, which, you know, is still fucking fast. Um, but I kept feeling this urge, and guys, I'll be honest with you, I have been fighting that urge. I have been fighting that urge, and I have been questioning that urge, and I have been looking at that urge, that desire that I have to um rest, be still, slow down, take space, breathe. Um, I have been looking at that urge as like an example of a failure, to be fully honest with you. And as I was talking to my coach earlier today, I was explaining to her, I said, you know, I feel like I almost feel like me um feeling this nudge to just um, you know, take 30% off of the top. Um, I in some weird way, and I know that this is wrong, but I said to her, I said, in some weird way, I feel like this like discredits what HBA is, because isn't HBA um the thing that allows people to, you know, kind of recognize when these things are coming up and like still be successful anyway. And she just kind of laughed, she chuckled a little bit, and she said, Did you hear what you just said? And I said, Yeah, like I I as I'm saying it, it sounds ridiculous. Um, and we just, you know, on the phone, complete silence. And then I said to her, I said, Oh, wait a minute, I think I understand. The whole point of HBA is to give you the tools and the awareness and the clarity around what you're experiencing and understand where it's coming from and what you need. And she's like, Yeah, exactly. She's like, tell me what you would have done, you know, three years ago. And I was like, Oh, that's you know, so simple. Three years ago, I'd be um blowing past these very clear signs that, hey, Kate, go from 180 miles per hour down to 90. Or, um, hey, Kate, you've been uh uh resting too long, but the idea of hitting a goal feels terrifying. So just like throw it in the trash altogether. She's like, You've like you've proven the concept of HBA. You've committed to it for a year, you've honored your needs, and now your needs are being very clearly communicated to you, and you're gonna honor those too, and you're still successful because of that. And I'm like, wow, it's so easy sometimes to forget that sometimes when we have these like difficult things that we go through, or moments where, you know, if you're someone that is like a high achiever like me, moments where you're just tired and you want to take a minute, it's crazy how much the pattern of, well, you have to earn that minute, or you have to um do all of this work before you get to that minute because everything's gonna fall apart the minute you give yourself that minute, right? And it's simply not the case because truly the me three years ago would be either running so far away from all of this um because I was tired, or ignoring the fact that I was tired and then completely destroying my health. I mean, it's very apparent when we look at 2017 me when I started to really see success in my corporate career. I had my first um six-figure year in earnings and I was 90 pounds heavier than I am, not exercising. I like I could not get control of what was going on in my personal life or in my health. And it's because I was so locked in and I had blown past um all of these cues that my body was giving me um, you know, before before I hit that peak year of like, hey, hey, hey, hey, you're working so hard, you're working so long, like long hours, you're burning yourself out, like you need to slow down, you need to slow down. And I didn't, right? And I can see very clearly what HBA has done for me in this season. And I see it so clearly in what HBA has done for everybody else, too. It's it's crazy when you get in these moments and you start to see um the aftermath of HBA and you start to see what HBA really gives you, which is such a higher level of self-awareness. And I know for some of you guys that like pride yourself on being um super self-aware, I'm gonna challenge that for a second because I was somebody, you know, years ago, I and I still am, but like I am somebody that's always described myself as like, oh, I'm like really, really self-aware. Like I like can understand what's going on with me. But that's only partway true. And I would actually argue for a lot of you guys, and not to like toot my own horn or sound like very assumptive, um, you know, take this for what you what you want, but I would uh assume that a lot of you guys are super self-aware when it comes to um the thoughts that are swirling around um in your brain and and your mind. You you you can identify those for sure. You can explain those um backwards with your eyes shut, um, you know, blindfolded. Like you can do all of that. But when it comes to the self-awareness around what you're experiencing in your body, that's where a lot of you guys lack. And that's actually what HBA does very, very well is it it builds a bridge between all of this stuff that you know to be true, all of these thoughts that you've organized and connected in all of these different ways in your head. It builds a bridge on how those um connect to the body, and it builds a bridge and a pathway of communication that allows your body to start speaking for you as well. And that's exactly the season that I'm in where right now my body, my body is very clearly communicating to me, hey, take a breather, regroup, take a minute, like girl, like you did it. You did really good, like you, you committed, you followed through. Um, and now we need you to just like take a deep breath, drink some freaking water, maybe take a nap, get caught up on sleep, and then get it going again. And my body's very clearly saying that, and it's my brain that wants to um talk me out of that. And that's you know, that is that is the power and the beauty of HBA. And in my opinion, like it's it's interesting that I felt some type of way about sharing that with you guys when in reality, what what better testimonial to HBA, or what better what better testimonial of HBA than that? Like, I mean, how many of you guys could actually say to me, like, oh yeah, no, I'm actually very connected with what my body is telling me, and I'm willing to honor it and I know how to honor it without getting in my head about it. And if I do get in my head about it, I know what needs to be done to kind of tackle those thoughts. That way, that bridge of communication between my brain and my body is still happening. No, what a lot of women struggle with, and 99% of the women that come to me before they did HBA came to me in a place of high self-awareness when it comes to their thoughts, but minimal to no self-awareness when it comes to the signals and the cues and the sensations happening in their body. That's what HBA does. It it bridges the gap between those because it is a two-way street. Um, both of those signals and channels of communication matter so so much when we look at longevity, sustainability, regulation, your health, your mental health, your happiness, like your satisfaction, like it all of it matters so much, like so much. So I I guess what I want to say today is this, like, and I also am sick, so if I sound the way that I sound, it's because of that. Um, but what I really want to say to you today is this if 2026 feels a little bit like a different year for you, or maybe it's a a year where you truly just want to kind of like pause and reflect, and you feel a little bit of pressure from everyone around you to chase or to move the goalpost or to set more goals, I really want to invite you to have your maintenance year as well. Because what I actually think maintenance years can be, if you're feeling that nudge, maintenance years are really the solidification of that bridge of communication between our body and our brain. And the more you are connected to both, truly, the happier and healthier and more successful you will be. It is not one way or the other. You cannot think your way into feeling better, into more success. You cannot outsmart the signals and the sensations that your body will tell you. We hear it all the time. The body keeps the score, the body keeps the motherfucking score. The body keeps the score. Um, but the brain also has influence in that. And that's why that bridge of communic communication, that pathway, um, that channel for both of them to speak and for you to hear very clearly what both of them need matters so, so much. So that is what I wanted to share today. Um, long-winded, uh, slightly nasally way of getting my um message across. I'm super excited for 2026. I hope you guys are too. Um, and I hope, like I said, if you needed an invitation to have a maintenance here, here is your fucking invitation. And if you want to come into HBA and start to build that bridge of communication for yourself, if you're feeling like it's only a one way street right now and that's why you're so all over the place and stuck, come on into HBA. Click on the link in the show notes, or just message me and I will get you in. Um, I have people come into HBA all of the time. So, all right. Happy New Year, guys. Bye.