What Actually Came Up with Clients in January, 2026:
Performance Reviews, Leadership Stress, Entrepreneur Momentum, and Why Everyone Wants Peace and Flow Right Now
If I had to summarize January based on what walked into my coaching sessions, it would be this:
People want to do meaningful work and feel good while doing it.
And many are quietly wondering if those two things can actually coexist.
Over the past month, I worked with executives navigating review season, leaders carrying exhaustion into a “fresh start,” and entrepreneurs who felt clear on their plans but stalled when it came time to move.
Across one-on-one sessions and workshops, the same question kept surfacing in different forms:
Can I be successful without feeling constantly on edge?
Can I grow without burning myself out?
What follows isn’t theory.
It’s a snapshot of what clients were actively working through in real time this month.
In Sessions: Performance Reviews Were Triggering Identity Fear, Not Just Performance Stress
Several clients came into sessions this month focused on upcoming or recent performance reviews.
What we worked on wasn’t just how to prepare or respond.
It was the internal spiral happening underneath.
In sessions, this showed up as:
Replaying conversations long after they ended
Trying to predict how they were being perceived
Feeling like one piece of feedback might define their future
Performance reviews rarely feel neutral when your sense of safety is tied to how you’re evaluated.
The review itself was often just the surface issue.
Underneath was fear about stability, value, and what comes next.
If reviews feel bigger than they “should,” it’s usually because they’re touching something deeper than performance.
In Sessions: Leaders Were Not Unmotivated. They Were Carrying Too Much
A common opening line from leaders this month was some version of:
“I don’t know why I’m so tired already.”
What became clear quickly was this:
January didn’t start fresh. It started stacked.
Many leaders were still carrying:
End-of-year pressure
Team emotional labor
Decision fatigue
Uncertainty about the year ahead
A lack of motivation is often a sign of depleted capacity, not a character flaw.
In sessions, we focused on recalibrating expectations and separating true disengagement from exhaustion that hasn’t been acknowledged yet.
Most people didn’t need a push.
They needed permission to stop pushing for a moment.
In Sessions: Entrepreneurs Had Clarity and Still Felt Stuck Moving Forward
Entrepreneurs and business owners came in with plans they genuinely believed in.
They knew what they wanted to do.
They just weren’t doing it yet.
What we worked on wasn’t time management or discipline.
It was the internal resistance that shows up when action creates visibility, risk, or identity change.
Clarity doesn’t automatically create readiness.
For many entrepreneurs, the hesitation wasn’t confusion.
It was fear of getting it wrong publicly, outgrowing old versions of themselves, or committing to a direction that felt irreversible.
Execution is rarely just strategic. It’s emotional.
Across Sessions: The Current Moment Is Adding Background Stress People Can’t Ignore
This came up across roles and industries.
People don’t want to disengage from what’s happening in the U.S. right now.
But constant exposure is creating low-grade stress that bleeds into work, relationships, and decision making.
In sessions, we worked on:
Setting information boundaries
Reducing nervous system overload
Separating what clients can influence from what they can’t
Being informed doesn’t require being flooded.
This wasn’t about avoidance.
It was about protecting focus and energy.
In Workshops This Month: People Wanted Peace as Much as Success
Because I facilitated multiple vision board workshops this month, I saw this pattern at scale.
People weren’t saying they wanted more achievement.
They were naming how they wanted life to feel while achieving.
What came up again and again:
Peace without losing ambition
Flow instead of constant force
Success that feels sustainable
Most people aren’t trying to escape work. They’re trying to escape how work feels.
That distinction matters.
If You’re Reading This and Seeing Yourself in More Than One Section
Many clients come in thinking they have one problem to solve.
In reality, they’re navigating several overlapping pressures at once.
If you’re reading this and thinking:
“That’s me.”
Or, “That’s me in three different ways.”
You’re not alone in that experience.
This is the work I do with clients every day: helping them understand what’s underneath the pressure so they can move forward without abandoning themselves in the process.
If you’re seeing yourself in multiple sections of this post, that’s usually a sign something wants attention. A clarity call is a focused conversation where we unpack what’s driving the pressure, get clear on what’s actually needed right now, and decide whether coaching support makes sense. Either way, you’ll walk away with clarity instead of more noise. Set up a call here.
