Wiring the Leadership Brain for 2026

Wishing you a very happy new year!

Welcome to a new look Knowing Self-Aware Leadership! I’ve decided to have a rebrand and shift from the yellow, black and pink to navy and gold. A new year, a new haircut and a new start seemed to warrant some new colours! I hope you like it.

Join me in the first blog of 2026 as I share my thoughts on starting the year on a positive note with a mindset poised for success.

Looking forward to joining you on your learning journey!

Wiring Your Brain for Positivity

It’s 2026 and the new year has begun in earnest. Time and time waits for no man, but before we’ve really got going, we’re already telling ourselves stories about what this year will be like. Busy. Hard. Uncertain. Our new year’s resolutions will be binned by mid-February. Taxes will be going up. Or of course, we could be taking a glass half full approach. We might be envisioning a year or hope, interesting innovations and possibility.

The stories that we tell ourselves matter – a lot. Our internal voice shape the way we think, behave and ultimately, how others receive, perceive and respond to us.

A few months ago, Daniel Pink shared a post on LinkedIn that stuck with me. It explained something many of us intuitively know but rarely say out loud: complaining, judging and criticising don’t just affect the mood around us, they physically rewire our brains. He said, ‘neurons that fire together wire together’. If we repeatedly focus on what’s wrong, our brains get very good at spotting problems and less good at seeing solutions. Over time, negativity weakens the parts of the brain responsible for focus, emotional regulation and good decision-making. Complaining encourages the brain to strengthen the whiney pathways.

But here’s the important bit. The reverse is also true. Optimism, gratitude and constructive thinking strengthen the very brain functions we need to navigate a complex, fast-moving world. Every thought, conversation and email is quietly shaping how our brains work. We don’t just drift into outcomes. We move towards what we consistently think about. Morag Barrett introduced me to a new phrase – BMW. Nothing to do with cars: ‘bitch, moan and whine’. The more we BMW, the more we BMW. Likewise, if we GTR a bit more (let the ‘good times roll’) the more we GRT!!

Which is where the idea of manifesting comes in.