People like to say the ones who win are the ones with the most resources.
I’ve never been comfortable with that word.
It feels competitive. Binary. Like life is something you dominate or lose. There is nothing in between.
And sitting here in a hospital room after emergency surgery, that word feels especially hollow.
Because when your body decides to stop cooperating, there’s no scoreboard.
No prize for pushing harder.
No medal for holding it together. There’s just one person here.
Breathing. Listening to the beeping machines.
Waiting for the body to do what it needs to do — without any permission. Healing, getting better, recovering.
And it makes you ask different questions.
Not How do I get ahead?
But What does it mean to live well?
Not How do I win this year?
But How do I meet what’s coming without losing myself?
What Strength Looks Like When You’re Not in Control
Strength doesn’t always look like measurable forward momentum.
Sometimes it looks like a mandatory stillness you didn’t choose.
It looks like level 10 pain. Lying in a hospital bed, replaying decisions, seasons, conversations.
Wondering how you got here.
Wondering what you missed.
Wondering what your body has been carrying that your mind kept overriding.
I’ve spent my life teaching strategy.
Helping leaders build businesses that scale.
Helping people think clearly, act decisively, and move forward.
But in moments like this, you realize something humbling:
All the strategy in the world doesn’t help if your mind hasn’t been trained to sit inside uncertainty — to constantly adjust and be okay with not knowing.
Because when control disappears, your mind becomes your anchor…
or it becomes the thing that exhausts you.
Learning to Meet Uncertainty
What I’ve learned is that most of us spend an enormous amount of energy trying to avoid uncertainty.
We plan, decide, optimize, and prepare — all in the hope that if we do enough of the “right” things, we’ll stay in control.
But the truth is, control was never really available to us.
What is available is how we meet what we didn’t choose.
Moving forward successfully isn’t about eliminating uncertainty; rather, it’s about stopping the argument with it. Don’t waste energy asking why this is happening to you. Assume that whatever shows up is part of your designated path, not proof you’re off it.
And from that belief, something powerful happens.
Instead of resisting reality, you respond to it.
Instead of tightening your grip, you stay curious.
Instead of collapsing under uncertainty, you work with it — trusting that what’s unfolding isn’t against you, but inviting something new for you.
That’s where clarity comes from.
Not control — but your relationship to the unknown.
When Uncertainty Becomes the Environment
What’s becoming clear to me is this: we are entering a time where uncertainty isn’t an exception anymore — it’s the environment.
Systems will strain. Some will fail. Structures we once assumed were solid will wobble or disappear altogether.
It may be gentle at times, and it may not be.
But the people who move through it with the least amount of suffering won’t be the ones who predicted it best or controlled it hardest.
They’ll be the ones whose minds — and inner lives — are trained to stay open.
Because uncertainty isn’t just a strategic problem. It’s a spiritual one.
When external systems become unreliable, the internal system matters more.
2026 Will Expose Untrained Minds
Let’s be honest about what we’re walking into.
2026 will be fast, loud, and fragmented.
Old formulas will stop delivering the results they once did.
Careers will continue to reshape themselves.
Markets will twitch, correct, and twitch again.
Certainty will remain optional.
And the people who struggle most won’t be the least capable or the least intelligent.
They’ll be the least resourced internally.
Because when pressure rises, untrained minds tend to turn inward.
They personalize what isn’t personal.
They look for someone or something to blame.
They try to regain a sense of safety by tightening their grip — and that tightening becomes exhausting.
Trained minds respond differently.
They pause, widen their view, and ask better questions — not to escape uncertainty, but to orient themselves inside it.
Embrace Your Relationship With What Is
I’ve watched this pattern repeat itself for years.
Two people face the same disruption — the same market shift, the same unexpected obstacle.
One immediately starts arguing with reality. This shouldn’t be happening. This ruins everything. I can’t believe this is happening to me.
The other grows quiet. Not disengaged. Not detached. But present.
They don’t deny the difficulty or pretend it’s easy. They simply ask, Okay. What’s here now? What is my lesson in this? What is this moment teaching me?
Same facts. Very different relationship to reality. And therefore, very different outcomes.
The key is to learn how to stay in a relationship with what is, instead of fighting it.
How to Train Your Mind
Training the mind is not just about affirmations. And it is certainly not about pretending everything is fine or forcing optimism.
It’s about clean thinking and discipline. Learning to notice when the mind begins to catastrophize — and choosing not to follow it. Don’t fall in the valley of despair.
It’s about separating information from fear, signal from noise, and building the capacity to say, This is uncomfortable — and I’m still here, and I can remain in discomfort for a while.
As I write this, still in the hospital and feeling extremely uncomfortable, I have to come to terms with the fact that this is where I am. There is no fight. Nothing will change how I feel right now — only knowing that I am in recovery, and that it gets better from here.
That capacity isn’t something you’re born with. You have to practice, like any other skill and then you live with it.
Flow, Recovery, and Surrender
Life doesn’t slow down. It doesn’t wait for you to catch your breath or finish processing what just happened.
That might look like a few minutes of writing to clear mental static, movement without distraction, silence before the day begins, prayer, breath, or stillness — not to escape reality, but to keep centering yourself throughout the day.
Flow state begins when resistance drops. Flow isn’t about control, but surrender — a strange cooperation between timing and events.
I had taken this entire week off to take care of my granddaughter. I was already booked out. And yet, a very serious health crisis came on suddenly and a solution unfolded quickly, even though I didn’t know one existed. Even being away in Las Vegas didn’t upset me, because I had been yearning for time away — and strangely, I got it. Not the way I had desired it, but it was here for me.
This is the moment when you stop forcing outcomes and start responding intelligently to what’s unfolding — when your inner state becomes flexible enough to adapt faster than the environment changes.
Staying With Yourself
Most people ask, How do I get through this?
Strategic — and spiritually grounded — minds ask something else:
What matters now? What can I release? What is this moment reorganizing? What am I learning? What’s the message?
Even if you don’t run a business, you still run a life. And life responds differently when you stop managing tasks and start managing attention and energy.
That’s when opportunities appear.
A Moment of Truth
Lying here, this is what feels most true to me: life will interrupt you.
Your body will speak. Plans will change. Years will refuse to follow your timeline.
And none of that means you’re failing. It means you’re alive.
Final Thought
So no, I’m not interested in “winning” this year.
I’m interested in staying available — responding instead of reacting, adapting without abandoning myself, and building an inner life that can hold complexity.
Because when your mind is trained, setbacks don’t define you.
Uncertainty doesn’t scare you.
Pressure doesn’t collapse you.
It refines you.
Your greatest asset has never been your tools, your money, or your reach.
It’s your mind.
Because your mind decides what you notice, what you believe is possible, how you interpret challenges, and whether you contract or enter flow.
So in 2026, don’t just set intentions. Train your mind that has to carry them.
That’s how you meet the year — whatever it brings — without losing yourself.
With clarity and care,
Beate 🤍
Beate Chelette is The Growth Architect & Founder of The Women’s Code, a training company specialized in providing companies an ROI on Balanced Leadership. She has been named one of 50 must-follow women entrepreneurs by the Huffington Post. A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, she bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly-successful global business, and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal.
Beate works with business leaders and supports organizations by developing and providing training the training, tools, and expertise to create and maintain a balanced, equal and inclusive work environment that fosters creativity, employee engagement and corporate growth.
Recent clients include Merck, Women’s Legislative Caucus of California, Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), NFTE, CreativeLive, the Association of Corporate Growth, and TracyLocke.
Beate is the author of the #1 International Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go From Overwhelmed to Awesome” a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.
To book Beate to speak or train please connect here.