Jim’s Take – Episode 161

Setting Up 2026 for Success: Five Categories That Actually Matter

As the year winds down, everyone becomes reflective. Journals come out. Goals get rewritten. Plans feel serious ... until February.

In this final episode of the year, Jim cuts through the seasonal noise and lays out a practical framework for entering 2026 with intention instead of hope. Rather than resolutions or vague goals, this episode introduces a five-category executive checklist designed to surface blind spots, force trade-offs, and create clarity in an increasingly chaotic world.

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Jim walks through five areas that determine whether 2026 becomes a year you control — or one that simply happens to you:

1. Accomplishment - Why pride is the only KPI that actually matters, how avoidance disguises itself as busyness, and why asking “What would my replacement do?” exposes what you’ve been dodging.

2. Fears & Motivations - Why fear is data, how logistics often mask deeper resistance, and how naming the fear you won’t say out loud gives you leverage over it.

3. Priorities - Why you don’t have priorities — you have one priority — and how trade-offs, not ambition, determine execution.

4. Social - Why social capital isn’t optional anymore, how relationships act as relevance insurance, and why opportunities live inside other people’s calendars.

5. Wellness - Why energy is operational readiness, not self-care fluff — and how non-negotiables, recovery plans, and boundaries make execution sustainable.

Throughout the episode, Jim emphasizes intentionality as the filter that cuts through distraction, noise, and overwhelm — especially in a world designed to constantly steal your attention.

• Download the 2026 Executive Checklist (free): jimfrawley.com

• Learn more about The Bellwether Method

• Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, clarity, and adaptation

Key Takeaway:

You don’t need a new year. You need better questions.

Episode Summary:

In episode 160 of Jim’s Take, Jim dismantles the idea of gratitude as a seasonal, soft, feel-good emotion and rebuilds it as a year-round cognitive discipline. Instead of treating gratitude like a holiday prop, he explores how to turn it into a sustainable, repeatable practice that still works in February when it’s cold, gray, and noisy.

Drawing from research (including the work of Richard Boyatzis on the parasympathetic nervous system) and his own cranky mood while recording, Jim reframes gratitude as an interpretation: your brain notices, assigns value, and then you feel it. That insight opens the door to training gratitude instead of waiting for it.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “gratitude season” feels fake and performative
• The problem with gratitude posts that evaporate on January 2nd
• The surprising truth that gratitude is not an emotion, but an interpretation
• How the emotion of gratitude follows cognition, not the other way around
• The rain-and-flowers example (and the urge to smack people who love the rain)
• Understanding the parasympathetic nervous system as the “anti-stress” response
• How reflection on someone who helped you creates that gratitude feeling
• Why our negativity bias makes gratitude intrinsically effortful
• Gratitude as the elimination of judgment and filling in gaps with worst-case assumptions
• Perspective: what you’re taking for granted because you’re used to it
• Presence: putting the book or phone down and actually being with your life
• Why he might lock his phone away for December
• Proof: why real gratitude doesn’t need to be broadcast on social media
• Building a “pause doc” / proof folder of compliments, progress, and wins
• Imposter syndrome, senior roles, and revisiting evidence that you’re capable
• Simple daily questions to build a habit of gratitude
• Why gratitude is a power move: clarity, focus, less reactivity, and more strength

Key Takeaways:

Gratitude is not effortless; it’s a recognition skill that interrupts your default wiring.

You can train gratitude by changing perspective, practicing presence, and capturing proof.

Real gratitude doesn’t need a post – it needs your attention.

Gratitude is not about settling. You can want more and respect the work that got you here.

When you deliberately practice gratitude, you become harder to knock off your game.

Title: Never Enough: The Pressures of Our Environment and the Path Back to Self-Worth | Jim Frawley

Description:

In Jim’s Take Episode 159, executive coach Jim Frawley examines why “enough” never seems to be enough anymore. Today’s social, digital, and economic environments constantly shift expectations—pushing achievement over meaning and visibility over value. Jim offers a direct, practical reframe: trade projection for contribution, performance anxiety for self-assurance, and empathy overload for actionable compassion.

Listeners will learn:

• Why external scorekeeping (titles, metrics, followers) breeds conditional worth
• How to disentangle identity from other people’s moving goalposts
• The difference between confidence and self-assurance, self-importance and self-worth
• Why empathy is often misapplied at work - and how compassion prevents burnout
• A better target than “purpose”: usefulness you can feel and measure
• Two exercises:
• Identity Columns: What defines you? In the next column, write who told you that.
• Participation is greater than Performance: Replace projection with tangible contribution each week.
• How to reduce duplicity, align inner values with outer behavior, and build calm

Why listen:

If you’re a leader or operator in New York / NYC or any fast-moving market, this episode gives you a repeatable approach to rebuild worth from the inside out—without abandoning ambition.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple/Spotify. Watch on YouTube. More resources at jimfrawley.com.