My Three Words for 2026: Simplify, Yutori, and Flourish

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I like to start each year by choosing “My Three Words.”

I borrowed this idea from author Chris Brogan. According to Brogan, “The words should point to who you intend to be, what you want to focus on, and how you want to perceive the work of the year ahead.” If you want, you can find his three words for 2025 here.

In this post, I share my three words for 2026 and a simple process for how to choose your own three words for the year.

Each December/January, I do two things.

1. Grade myself on last year’s words.
2. Choose three new words for the year ahead.

Last year, my words were Efficiency, Self-Care, and Growth.

For 2026, my words are Simplify, Yutori, and Flourish.

I share them for three reasons.

• So you can know more about the person you are or might be working with.
• So you can decide whether Apprise’s approach is the right fit for you.
• So you can reflect on your own three words and how they might shape your life and money in the year ahead.

Let us start by looking back.

Looking Back. Efficiency, Self-Care, and Growth

Efficiency. A–

When I chose “Efficiency” for 2025, I was mainly thinking about building better systems and workflows for Apprise.

We made meaningful progress on that front. We added and refined workflows, especially around tax planning and other recurring processes. I also made big improvements to my calendar and scheduling. I became more intentional about how I spend my time and how it aligns with what matters most to me, my clients, my business, and my family.

Early in the year, I took a short self-improvement course offered through a professional organization I belong to. It was not originally on my calendar. The opportunity came up, and I decided to seize it.

That decision turned out to be important.

The course pushed me to look more carefully at how I spend my time. I left the course with a much stronger appreciation for planning my time with purpose.

Since then, I have:

• Started scheduling my days more deliberately so I do not waste time wondering what to do next.
• Built a more consistent routine into my weeks.
• I started color-coding my calendar so I can easily see how much time I spend on different parts of the business.

That shift in mindset had two important ripple effects.

First, it helped me be more proactive with clients, especially around tax planning. Because my calendar and workflows were clearer, I had the capacity to reach out to more clients. As a result, I met with more clients in the fourth quarter of 2025 than in any other quarter since I launched Apprise. That is the kind of “efficiency” that matters to me: better service, not just more activity.

Second, it helped me say no.

I spent part of the year exploring the possibility of acquiring another advisory business. Once I filtered it through Efficiency and Self-Care, I realized it was not a good fit. It would have pulled me away from my core mission and added more stress than I was willing to take on.

Walking away was not easy, but it was the right call.

Overall, I feel good about how I lived this word. An A minus feels fair.

Self-Care. B+ (with room to grow)

Self-care was my second word for 2025.

On the physical side, I expanded my exercise routine and focused on areas of weakness I had not given enough attention. One of those areas has clearly improved over the year. Another has at least stabilized.

I also experimented with journaling and gratitude. I wanted to journal more regularly. In practice, the habit came and went. At times, I wrote consistently. Then I realized I was repeating many of the same expressions of gratitude.

The interesting thing is that even when I stopped writing as often, I kept noticing more things to be grateful for. The formal process faded, but the mindset stuck. The gratitude I feel continues to grow.

Where did I fall short? The biggest gap is mindfulness and breaks.

I am good at starting my day with exercise. I am not as good at building in pauses once the workday begins. Too often, I go from meeting to meeting or task to task without a real break. That is not something I can do forever, even if I love the work.

Part of the reason I chose my 2026 words was to push myself to do better here.

Growth. B to B+

Growth was my third word for 2025.

On the personal side, I grew, especially in the areas tied to Efficiency and Self-Care. I invested in my own learning and made changes that should pay off for years to come.

On the business side, growth was solid by the end of the year, but it was not quite where I had hoped. I would give myself a B to a B+ here. The year finished strongly, and I am heading into 2026 feeling optimistic.

Part of that is intentional. I am building Apprise as a boutique firm, not a large enterprise. I want deeper relationships, not an endless list of clients. Still, there is room to grow our impact, especially with the women facing new beginnings I most want to serve.

Why New Words for 2026

Efficiency, Self-Care, and Growth were good words. They helped me make better decisions in 2025.

As I worked on my 2026 business plan, however, I realized I needed a new lens. I do not just want to do more. I want to do less, better. I want Apprise to keep serving more women facing new beginnings without turning my life into an endless series of back-to-back commitments.

I am also seriously considering adding a junior or associate advisor to the practice in the second half of 2026. If I decide to do that, I want to do it in a way that protects my energy and margin over the long term, not one that stretches me too thin.

All of that led me to three new words for 2026.

Simplify. Yutori. Flourish.

Simplify

Simplify is about subtraction.

It is about making my life and my business less complicated so that what remains can be deeper and more meaningful.

Simplifying content

The first area I want to simplify is my content process.

In recent years, I have written weekly blog posts and recorded separate videos for YouTube and other platforms. I enjoyed making those videos, but they did not have the impact I hoped for and added more work without enough return.

In 2026, I plan to stop recording those separate weekly videos.

In their place, I expect to start a podcast with another advisor. Working with a partner means I will not be solely responsible for everything. We will also have support for production, marketing, and content repurposing.

I hope that, over time, the podcast will reduce my overall workload related to creating and sharing weekly content.

Simplifying operations and delegation

I also plan to keep simplifying Apprise’s internal operations.

In 2025, I made progress on delegation, especially with my son Joshua, who helps in the business. My 2026 plan includes more tasks and processes that he will own. We will continue building workflows around:

• The updated prospect process we used this year.
• The fourth-quarter tax planning outreach that led to more client conversations than any prior year.
• Further buildout of our client service calendar and experience for both new and existing clients.

The lesson from this year is to start that outreach earlier, so the work is spread out more evenly rather than compressed into a short period.

I am also planning to outsource more, particularly around compliance and cybersecurity. In 2025, I began working with an outside compliance consultant. In 2026, I plan to deepen that support so I am not the only one keeping an eye on cybersecurity and related areas. Protecting clients’ personal information is very important to me. Having additional eyes and expertise here both strengthens our defenses and simplifies my role.

Simplifying my role over time

Simplify also shapes how I think about future hiring.

If I hire a junior or associate advisor in the second half of 2026, the goal is not to build an empire. It is to simplify my role and improve the client experience.

My current thinking is that this person would initially focus on smaller or less complex client relationships. Over time, that should:

• Support the thoughtful, personalized attention each household already expects, even as the firm grows.
• Free up more of my time for the deepest planning work, especially complex tax, retirement, and life planning conversations where I add the most value.
• Shape my schedule in a sustainable way, so I can keep doing this work I love while you benefit from a broader team.

There will be short-term complexity when a new advisor joins. I am intentionally waiting until later in the year so our systems are in good shape. I view the short-term challenge as an investment in a simpler, more focused future.

Yutori

My second word for 2026 is Yutori.

A good friend from my life planning cohort introduced me to this Japanese term during a December conversation. As we talked about it, I knew immediately that it had to be one of my words for 2026.

Yutori roughly means ‘margin,’ ‘room,’ or ‘spaciousness.’ You cannot run every minute, dollar, and ounce of energy at 100 percent all the time. You need room to breathe, think, and recover.

For me, Yutori in 2026 means creating more margin in my time, energy, and attention.

Time and hours

On a practical level, I hope that the improvements in efficiency and processes will allow me to slightly reduce my total working hours in 2026, especially outside the typical workday. Over the course of a year, that change will matter.

I already avoid most weekend work. Weekends are for family, friends, time outside, and reading, not for email and planning. Weekday evenings are more challenging. It is easy to walk back into my office after dinner and “just do a little more.”

In 2026, I want to reduce the number of evenings I spend working after dinner.

White space and mindfulness

The bigger change is about white space on my calendar.

There are days when I go from meeting to meeting with no real pause. I do not feel burned out because I genuinely enjoy my work. I love talking with clients and hearing their stories. I love helping them through big decisions. Still, even work you love can wear you down if you never pause.

I already have “white space” in the mornings through my exercise routine, but not much beyond that. So, I am making a few concrete commitments.

• A real lunch every workday. I have already started blocking time for lunch instead of grabbing snacks between calls. When I eat a proper lunch, I snack less and feel better.
• A daily block for mindfulness. This might mean quiet time, meditation, or an afternoon walk. The point is to create at least 30 minutes of space in the middle of the day for my brain to reset.
• Regular days out of the office. Some of those days will be conferences that are already on my calendar. Others will be for travel, family, or friends. My goal is to have days each month where I step away physically and mentally.

Right now, the tightest constraints for me are time and attention. I tend to start and then keep going until I finish. Yutori encourages me to build in breaks on purpose, trusting that I will be more effective and healthier if I do.

By the end of 2026, if I live this word well, I expect to be healthier both physically and mentally. Not because I am unhealthy now, but because a bit more margin will help me show up as my best self more consistently.

Flourish

My third word for 2026 is Flourish.

I chose it for two reasons.

First, it ties directly to Apprise’s mission. My goal is to help women facing new beginnings flourish through life’s big changes: divorce, widowhood, an empty nest, retirement, or a career change. The specifics differ, but the core questions are the same.

• What comes next?
• What do I really want my life to look like?
• How can my money support that life?

Second, Flourish speaks to my own life.

Psychologists sometimes describe flourishing in terms of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (The PERMA Theory of Well-Being). Those ideas resonate with me. Over the years, as I have worked through my own life experiences, I have become more positive and forward-looking. Focusing more on what is ahead rather than what is behind has helped me both personally and professionally.

For me, flourishing looks like:

• Using my Time, Energy, Attention, and Money in ways that align with my values.
• Living out my life plan instead of letting it sit on a shelf.
• Staying engaged with the work I love and with the people who matter most to me.

That is very similar to what I want for my clients.

Flourish for Apprise and for clients

For Apprise as a firm, flourishing means growing the number of women facing new beginnings whom we help, without losing the personal life planning focus that makes our work meaningful. It means serving the right people in the right way.

For an ideal client, flourishing means living out the life plan we build together. It might mean leaving a stressful job that no longer fits. It might mean spending more time with family, starting a new hobby, or traveling more. It might mean allowing themselves to spend on experiences that truly matter, even if that means giving up something else.

One of my favorite examples comes from a client I first worked with on a life plan several years ago.

She reached out to tell me she had taken a leave of absence from a demanding job. She did not know whether she would return or what it might mean for her financial plan. She only knew she could not keep going the way she had been.

We talked and decided to go through the full life planning process. She read my initial life plan and realized her focus was on building the biggest pile of money she could, without asking how much she needed or what the money was really for.

As we worked through her numbers, it became clear that she and her husband were in a strong position. Their plan could handle her leaving this job. They had been living on one salary and saving the rest.

She decided to leave.

Later, she took a part-time job with her favorite baseball team. It was something she had thought about for years but never believed she could actually do. She has now completed two seasons in that role.

During that time, she has faced serious challenges in her personal life, including the loss of a sibling and caregiving responsibilities for her parents. Having a part-time job she enjoys, and that fits her life, has given her a healthy outlet and the flexibility to be more present for her children, her husband, and her parents.

Her life is not perfect. None of ours are. Yet when I talk with her now, she looks and sounds like a different person. The weight she was carrying has lifted. She is living a life that fits who she is and what she values.

I talked more about her story while on this podcast.

That is what flourishing can look like in practice.

How Simplify, Yutori, and Flourish Fit Together

These three words are not separate projects.

• Simplify is about reducing unnecessary complexity with fewer moving parts, clearer workflows, better delegation, and a more focused role for me.
• Yutori is about protecting and expanding the space that simplification creates by building margin into my days, weeks, and months so I can think, rest, and be present.
• Flourish is about what the simplification and margin are for. It is about creating a life and a business that help more people live out what matters most to them.

They will also shape some of the bigger decisions I may make this year, including whether and when I bring a junior advisor on board and how I pace new projects like the podcast.

I hope that, if you work with Apprise, you will feel the impact of these words: more focused content, thoughtful tax and planning outreach, and a firm that continues to grow in ways that align with its mission.

 What Are Your Three Words?

As always, I encourage you to choose your own three words for the year ahead.

They do not have to be perfect. They just need to matter to you. They should be simple enough to remember and broad enough to apply to different parts of your life.

You might choose words that reflect a significant change you are facing. You might choose words that describe how you want to relate to money this year. You might pick words that speak to your health, relationships, work, or sense of purpose.

If you are already a client and would like to talk about your three words and how they might shape your financial plan, we can weave that into our conversations. If we do not work together and you are wondering whether Apprise might be a good fit, you are always welcome to schedule a call.

Either way, I hope Simplify, Yutori, and Flourish give you a small nudge to pause, reflect, and ask.

• What do I really want this year to feel like?
• How do I want my Time, Energy, Attention, and Money to support that?
• And what three words might help guide me there?

Thank you for reading. May you have a happy, healthy, and prosperous year in 2026.

Our practice continues to grow through introductions from our clients and friends. Thank you for your trust.

If you would like to discuss financial topics, including navigating new beginnings, managing your investments, creating a life plan, or saving for retirement, please schedule a call or a Zoom virtual meeting. We will be in touch.

Follow us:

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

Please note: We post information about articles that can help you make better money-related decisions on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

For firm disclosures, see here: https://apprisewealth.com/disclosures/