If you’re having the best year of your life, this blog isn’t for you. But if you’ve faced losses this year, welcome. I have something to share with you.

When we plan our year, we don’t want to think about “losing.” We’re so wired to win that even considering another outcome feels like bad luck. Add a perfectionist streak to that, and it gets worse. Losing feels like failing.

Here’s my confession: 2025 was one of the hardest years of my life. My physical and mental health took the biggest hit. The struggle came from so many directions that, by the start of 2026, I felt stuck in a long tunnel with no end in sight. Planning didn’t appeal to me at all.

A Vision Board? Really? 🤌🏼

In the middle of this exhaustion, a friend invited me over on January 25th to make Vision Boards together.

If you’re not familiar with this exercise, here’s how it works: You create a collage of images and words that show how you want your year to look. People usually use magazine clippings, watercolors, stickers, or even photos.

It’s a great hands-on activity. But I was skeptical, and honestly, I had good reason to be. I didn’t want to leave my cave either. Still, this friend knows me well. Her home feels like an artistic refuge to me, just like our friendship does. So I said yes.

I don’t know if it was turning 40 or being around the right people in the right place. But that day, my true self just showed up. No pretending. No filters. I let out what was inside me, without judgment or expectations.

The best line I found that day came from Vogue Paris. It was the line that pulled me out of my cave and helped me see my year through a new lens.

I was flipping through the magazine when a headline jumped off the page:

NOW YOU CAN LOSE…

I don’t even remember what came after that. It might have been WEIGHT, and I’m taking it somewhere deeper. 😅 Either way, I cut out that piece and pasted it in the top left corner of my board. That’s the first spot your eyes land on when you read.

In that moment, I felt relief. A weight lifted off my shoulders. I smiled like someone who just found hidden treasure. I was giving myself permission to lose, to let go, to say goodbye to who I used to be. I was giving myself permission to lose:

• Job opportunities.
• Sleep.
• Events.
• Communities I belonged to.
• Savings.
• My handwriting, after wrist surgery.
• Reputation.
• The need to sound like a native speaker in another language (this one, by the way)
• Relationships.
• Interest.
• Collagen.
• Control.

It felt strange. Somehow, my mind saw this as necessary, as if letting go were a portal to somewhere new.

That evening, I finished my board with more words and images. Maybe I’ll write a part two of this post. My friend and I had Bibimbap for dinner and called it a day.

We All Lose

It’s been almost seven months since that day. The change in my body, my personal life, and my work has been huge. 2026 brought a lot of dreams true, some pretty wild ones. But I don’t credit any of the usual things. I credit the mindset of Now I can lose.

Read this like I’m whispering it in your ear: “We all lose.” The difference is some people lose in public, and others lose in private. Behind every relationship, every project, every step forward, there’s a potential loss. Just being human means facing that. But we’re wired to win, to score high, to catch the good winds. We’re not wired for grief, for failure, for the sirens’ call, for losing.

For years, I worked on a TV and radio show that interviewed entrepreneurs. I never heard people talk so openly about their failures, their losses, and what those losses taught them. It was inspiring. Now I can finally say I accept the “No” or the “Not anymore” that life gives me too.

If this speaks to you, try making your own Vision Board for 2027. Let some words “speak to you.” You’ll know it when you see it. And if you’re going through a painful loss right now, I don’t want to minimize it with this post. Some bonds and things can’t be replaced. They hurt, plain and simple. Healing takes time. So wherever it applies to you, here’s one last twist: you can also lose the fear of losing. And in life, that’s completely empowering and freeing.