Let It Break. Let It Orient. What’s Coming Next
Letting 2025 Close… and Walking into 2026
Before we rush into a new year… I want to pause here for a moment.
2025 asked a lot of people to let go. Not dramatically. Quietly. Gradually. Honestly.
For many, the year didn’t break things apart. It broke them open.
Old ways of pushing stopped working. Effort stopped producing the same return. What once felt responsible began to feel heavy.
If any of that resonates… you’re not behind. You’re not failing.
You may simply be standing at the end of something that’s finished.
This is the moment most people skip.
They hurry past it with goals, resolutions, and forced optimism. But orientation matters more than speed.
Before you aim forward, it helps to arrive.
Here are a few gentle reflections you can sit with:
• What completed itself this year, even if you didn’t choose it?
• What did you carry out of obligation that your body no longer consents to?
• Where did life ask you to slow down… and what happened when you listened?
You don’t need answers right now. Just notice what rises. Journal if that can help bring clarity.
As we step toward 2026, I’m holding a simple orientation for myself and for anyone walking alongside me:
We don’t force direction. We choose it in reverence.
We don’t dominate the path. We listen for how it’s already moving.
We don’t rush clarity. We create the conditions where it can emerge.
Stillness before strategy.
Truth before traction.
Stewardship instead of control.
If you want a single question to carry with you into the new year, let it be this:
“Who would I have to BE in 2026 to lead from alignment not adrenaline?
That question doesn’t demand an answer. It opens a relationship.
There is a lot to step into for those who are ready.
But for now… exhale.
Coming Soon: Sweet Earth Orchard Barn Update
Siding is essentially complete
Framing, electric, plumbing and HVAC have all passed rough-in inspection
Insulation is being installed.
Next up: drywall
Coming Soon: Sweet Earth Orchard Retreats
Coming in 2026, Kathy and I will be offering a small number of retreats and workshops at Sweet Earth Orchard, some together, some separate, designed for leaders who want real clarity, alignment, and space to think.
Before we finalize anything, we want to listen.
If you’re leading a business or a leadership team, your perspective would help us shape these retreats in a way that’s actually useful. No performance, not overbuilt, and not a break from reality (we are everything about being grounded here), but retreat creating resets that translate back into how you lead and work together as a team.
We’ve put together a short survey to understand what leaders truly need when they step away from the day-to-day.
As a thank you, anyone who completes the survey will receive:
Early access to the 2026 retreat calendar
Priority consideration for limited-capacity retreats at Sweet Earth
Your insight genuinely matters here.
Thank you in advance for helping us build this with intention.
Coming Soon: The Sovereign Navigator
I’m putting this out into the universe: in 2026 I’m writing a book.
I have an initial book plan completed and the working title is The Sovereign Navigator
It’s going to be a fable about self-transformation and self-leadership based on journeys that are meaningful to me.
Here’s the description we have so far:
Rowan Hale has built the kind of success others envy. A thriving business. Financial security. Hard-earned respect. But standing in traffic on an ordinary afternoon, phone dead in his hand, he realizes something unsettling: he no longer recognizes the man he’s become.
A turn down an unfamiliar road leads him to a weathered gate and land that seems to be waiting. What begins as an impulsive purchase becomes an initiation—a journey from the life he built through pressure and control to the life that emerges through presence and clarity.
Guided by Shepherd Gray and Thalia Sagewood, two unexpected mentors who teach through the living intelligence of land and seasons, Rowan learns the high-impact secrets to navigating life with clarity, presence, and a calm sense of direction.
The Sovereign Navigator is a fable for founders and leaders at a crossroads. Through Rowan’s transformation across four seasons—from collapse to surrender to sovereignty—readers discover the Sovereign Navigator Creed: 13 principles for moving from external control to inner alignment, from reaction to clarity, from grinding to grace.
This is a story about land that teaches, mentors who orient without force, and the quiet revolution that happens when capable people finally give themselves permission to stop, listen, and come home to themselves.
How you can help: I have the narrative architecture planned out and know the lessons I want to transmit through the book, but I would love to gather even more wisdom from others who have also walked a path of self-transformation and found sovereignty in their lives. If you know of a successful entrepreneur or leader who has also gone on an inner journey, I would be stoked to meet them and hear about their transformation. Please consider connecting us.
Thank you
I’m grateful you’ve been part of my orbit this year, as a client, a reader, a collaborator, or simply a quiet witness.
Wherever 2026 meets you, may it meet you more rested, more reconnected, more grounded and more oriented than before. And please know that if you would like to create more possibility around what that could look like for you, I’m here for a conversation.
Steve