🧠 The plot twists are leading you somewhere beautiful.

I have a theory that when you feel pulled toward a bigger, bolder version of life, it’s your future self reaching back to guide you forward.

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- Case Kenny

1. Make this the best year of your life

No pressure. This is about looking back at 2025 and recognizing it for what it may have been: a pivot year. A turning point. A reminder that the most important years of your life aren’t always the happiest ones. They’re the ones that shape you.

There’s an essay I return to often, published in The New Yorker in 2005, titled The Best Year of My Life. In it, Paul Theroux reflects on what he once believed was the worst year he ever lived and why, decades later, he came to see it as the most formative.

At nineteen, Theroux finds out his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. The year that follows is marked by secrecy, fear, and responsibility far beyond his age. He takes low-paying jobs, hides the truth from his family, moves across countries, and tries to survive quietly without guidance or approval. At the time, he feels ashamed, lost, and convinced his life is unraveling. By any reasonable measure, it should have been a ruined year.

But looking back, he realizes that year became his reference point for everything that followed. It taught him how to endure uncertainty, how to make decisions when none feel right, and how to survive without reassurance. What felt like humiliation became resilience. What felt like chaos became foundation. The pain didn’t harden him, it steadied him.

That’s the paradox. The worst year can become the best not because it’s joyful, but because it reveals what you’re capable of when things don’t go according to plan. Growth doesn’t usually look like clarity or motivation. More often, it sounds like: I don’t know how to keep going, but I will anyway.

So as you look back at 2025 and ahead to 2026, maybe the goal isn’t a perfect year. Maybe it’s a meaningful one. A year that stretches you, reveals you, and quietly prepares you for what comes next - even if it doesn’t feel like it while you’re in it.

2. TWO mindsets for the year…

In 2026, ask for the big, unreasonable thing. The universe meets you at your level of audacity.

Be someone who squeezes every last drop out of life and at the end says “I had fun.”

3. One second to calm your nervous system

University of Michigan researchers put people in brain scanners and found something wild: talking to yourself in third person instantly calms you down.

Why? Third-person language shifts your brain from feeling mode to advice mode. Instead of being inside the panic, you're suddenly outside it — talking yourself through it.

University of Michigan found this works in under ONE SECOND. No meditation. No breathing exercises. Just language.

Why does this calm you? You shift from participant to observer. You detach from the spiral. 

Say "I'm freaking out"  and you’re trapped. Say “Sarah's freaking out, but Sarah's handled worse" and you’re grounded. Outside the spiral.

Never bet against someone who’s decided they can do every single thing their anxiety says they can’t.

Some things I’m excited about…

Make this year of “follow through”

My social impact sidekick Brian Ford (we started a nonprofit together!) is leading the 21 Day Year Of Follow Through Challenge! It’s designed to help people start 2026 with good habits and a more optimistic mindset. The program is powerful, highly recommended! Plus he’s donating 100% of the program cost to Project Healthy Minds.

Random thought

First you’re “delusional,” then you’re living the life you always knew was possible.

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My name is Case. I’m passionate about the language of optimism.

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