What is 2026 trying to show you right now? Have you been missing it?

In this mid-year check-in, we’re revisiting the 2026 Universal 1 Year numerology predictions and looking at how these themes are already showing up in real time, in the world around us and in your personal life.

This is not a vague energy update. We’re looking at real-world examples of the themes I predicted at the beginning of the year, plus how to look for those same themes showing up in your own day-to-day life.

Throughout the episode, I’ll guide you through powerful introspective questions to help you notice the signs, shadows, nudges, opportunities, and patterns that may already be working in your life right now.

You’ll learn:

• How the 2026 Universal 1 Year themes are already playing out in the world
• What the light and shadow of this energy can look like in your own life
• Why discomfort, endings, boundaries, and new beginnings may all be part of the same invitation
• Powerful questions to help you understand what 2026 is trying to show you now

And great news, the second half of 2026 is still wide open. Let’s use this energy consciously so you can create the life you want and deserve.

Get Joy's Free "Sign Magnet" 3 Day Mini Course HEREhttps://www.joyfulmedium.com/sign-magnet
Joy's Website: www.joyfulmedium.com
Instagram: @JoyfulMedium
TikTok: @JoyfulMedium
Facebook: @JoyfulMedium
Facebook Group: Joy's Soul Spa
YouTube: Psychic Medium Joy Giovanni 

Episode transcript: If 2026 has felt like a strange mix of fresh starts, lots of pressure, endings, ego, urgency, and almost like something is shifting, but you can't quite fully name it yet, then this episode is for you, because what if those things aren't actually random separate things. What if they're the universal one year themes already playing out in your life? I believe that looking at these themes can help us shift just about anything in our lives, and for me it feels like a little cracking of some kind of cosmic code, and you can crack the code for your own life in this episode. Welcome in, beautiful souls, for another episode of Spirit Speakeasy. Today is our mid year check in on the 2026 Universal One energy. I last week re-released the 11 themes, so that hopefully you have heard those, gone over those, and now we are going to take those 11 themes and energies that we talked about at the beginning of the year, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I have receipts, I have real examples, I have some fresh questions to help you see exactly where these themes and energies are already working in your life right now. At the beginning of the year, we talked about 2026 as the start of a brand new nine year cycle in numerology. We talked about the positive side of these themes when we're working on the higher end of this spectrum of potential new beginnings, courage, leadership, innovation, planting seeds, independence, originality, starting to turn the wheels towards our future, but we also talked about the shadow side of the spectrum of possibility with these themes, those are things like ego and impatience, domination, scattered starts, power grabs, that kind of me first energy of independence and inner focus, it's really the energy of wanting the outcome without participating in the beginning, and we are just about at the halfway point through the year, and if you really look at the world around us, we are seeing both sides of the spectrum for all of these themes, so today we'll look at the breakthroughs and the breakdowns, the opportunities and the warnings, the places where old systems are cracking, and the places where you may be getting nudged towards the next version of your own life, and I'm here to guide you, because I don't want you to miss these powerful nudges happening right now in your own personal life, for you. So, as we move through each theme, I'll give you some direct questions to really ponder and ask yourself, so you can recognize what might be showing up for you, what you might be missing right now, and how to work with this energy more consciously for the second half of 2026 Let's really harness it, because this is not just about asking, were the predictions right so far from the beginning of the year. It's about asking what is 2026 trying to show me, and how can I use this energy to create what I actually want for this next cycle, and the best news is you still have several months of this energy available, and you're fully capable of working with everything that we'll be talking about today. So, we are going to just dive right in with this first theme that we talked about as part of the 11 themes to expect this year, this first theme is new beginnings, fresh starts, and unexpected opportunities. So, with this first theme that we talked about, for this universal one year energy, new beginnings, fresh starts, again unexpected opportunities, this is one of those where we can really see both sides of the coin, or both ends of the spectrum, on the positive side, the light side, we had just, you know, so far this year, Artemis two, and it's kind of this humanity returning to the moon's neighborhood in a way that we've not seen since the Apollo flights, and the crew, you know, if you remember, went around the moon, returned safely to Earth, gave us incredible images of what maybe the next chapter can look like when people who are visionary and have courage and science and these amazing humans all collaborate and come together.
That's a very universal one year energy, it's pioneering, it's forward moving, it's the beginning of a larger story, not just the completion of a story, but I also want to really be honest here about the shadow side of this, because Artemis was not happening in a vacuum, even though that's how it might be remembered in. History, so the mission also really highlighted these huge cracks in the system around our next frontier of space, if you will. There's this kind of new style cold war space race happening between especially the United States and China, for example. Both countries are looking towards that south part of the moon, where the way that that in my research it came out was like water and ice could become incredibly important for future life support or rocket fuel or other missions in a really long term way, so while yes we can celebrate this new frontier of human achievement. We also kind of have to ask, what's this new beginning for? Who gets to make the rules here? Who gets access? Who benefits? What happens when the energy of new frontier gets tangled up with like conquest and control and ownership and winning and this like idea of national ego at those levels, it's really, in one way, you know, an incredible achievement, but we also saw inside some of the instability of that Artemis program, if you were paying attention, what's called the Lunar Gateway, it's been described as a major international collaboration and brought in partners for the US, like Europe and Canada, that were all kind of tied into a similar vision. And then, in early 2026 NASA announced that it would pause this Gateway program in its current form and shift focus towards lunar surface infrastructure, like building on the moon, is supposedly our new focus here in the US. That kind of abrupt change really makes strategic sense, maybe to some people, as like an us-first type of an attitude, but energetically it also shows this whiplash of like the old system of conquering and colonizing, trying to reorganize itself under this new pressure of space exploration. So, while innovation and moving forward and new horizons is really important, you know, we have to identify where we're still carrying forward some of these old ways as a society, and in this episode I'm using a lot of like external societal examples, and then I'll give you questions to ask in your own life. I do have some client examples in this one, but for me it's always fascinating how these themes show up big and in the collective, and another part of this theme that I just want to acknowledge is that there was this messaging as part of the controversy of the Artemis expedition around representation, so for years of this Artemis program they promised that this returning to the moon would be like a more inclusive vision for humanity and Artemis two did have like these major milestones, but then Artemis three, the crew was announced, and there was a controversy around it, which you may have totally missed, because the next crew was again all male, so while Artemis two did have, as far as I understand it, I think one female crew member, the Artemis three now again has very little diversity, which brought up kind of like disappointment and criticism, because there were original promises that were now kind of thrown away. So this is exactly what I mean, excuse me, my goodness, I'm so froggy, I'm still getting my, getting my myself back together here. So, anyway, that's exactly what I mean when I talk about a universal one year. It's not just new beginnings in like a cute fresh start, like spring cleaning kind of a way. Sometimes new beginnings also can expose places where, like, our systems are not actually ready for big leaps towards the future, or where there's this push-pull between old systems and new, and some things to rework or recreate in a better way, so while this is true collectively, like particularly in this example, it's also true for each of us personally in our individual lives and families and worlds, right.
So a new beginning can bring like excitement and momentum and opportunity, and often like a lot of inspiration, but it can also reveal what's unstable or outdated or performative or maybe rushed or ego driven or built on a foundation that needs to be reworked, so for you as you reflect on the first half of 2026 and how this theme of independence and new beginnings and new. Horizons showed up for you. I'm going to float some questions to you. You probably want to save this episode and come back to these questions, but here is the first set of questions. Where did a new beginning open up in my life? Where did I feel excited or inspired or ready for something different so far this year? And where did that new beginning also maybe expose some cracks of old structures or old beliefs for me, because sometimes the opportunity is not just the new thing, the new idea or inspiration or project itself. Sometimes the opportunity is seen clearly what we've outgrown or what can't come with us into the next part of the cycle, so those are just a few questions to consider around this first theme, but I'll be peppering in more questions for you for exploring your own first half of 2026 so that you really can use these themes a little differently, and that's the intention that these questions will help guide you to see where these themes are showing up and where we can shift that energy with our free will choices, and that really leads me right into my second theme, which theme two is independence, self-reliance, individuality, personal freedom, because when new beginnings arrive, the next question is, are we stepping into healthy, like self sovereignty, or are we slipping into that challenge side of the spectrum of that theme, which would be like me first, only me, me not you, that type of energy. So, with this theme, to the second theme we talked about for the universal one year, remember, independence, self-reliance, individuality, like shining your light, stepping into your power, personal freedom. On the light side, or the positive side of the theme, it's really beautiful, right? It's that part of us that says, I can trust myself, I can make my own choices, I don't have to wait for someone else to give me their approval, I can, I can approve of myself, right? I'm allowed to become more of who I really am, and that is really healthy, wonderful independence, that is stepping into our power, our sovereignty, that's the sacred part of a one year energy, and the highest version of this theme, right, but the shadow side of this theme feels like it's everywhere now to me, so independence, when it's in its shadow, can distort into isolation, and self-resilience can kind of distort into, like, I don't know anyone anything, and no one owes me anything, and everyone for themselves, right? Individuality can start to distort into more of like a narcissism, and personal freedom can kind of shift into more of like I should be able to do whatever I want, I don't care who it harms, only me, right? I'm the only one that matters, and everyone else like whatever happens happens, so that's the tough thing about these themes, is while the light, or the most positive version of the theme, is like amazing, the challenge of the theme, or the shadow side of the theme, is they're tough, they're rough, right, and it's one of the loudest shadow themes, this one that I see playing out so far in 2026 We are watching a massive amplification of this me-first energy in our collective societies. It's not the healthy self-trust, it's not the authentic individuality, right? It's not empowered with personal responsibility. I mean, the distorted version, the like me first, me only, my wealth, my power. I'm going to lie to get ahead, my platform, my rules, screw everyone else, kind of an attitude. And one of the most interesting things about 2026 is these eagles are not even hiding anymore, which does really align with this one year potential. So we're seeing, for example, this is this is the world example I have. So buckle up again, no sugar coating.
We're seeing these billionaires and tech leaders positioning themselves almost like self-appointed architects of our future, if you will, they're in space, they're in surveillance, they're in AI, they have government contracts now, they're in our data, they're controlling our media, our labor, our public policy, and in some cases even putting their hands in democracy itself, especially in the US, these are not just abstract potentials, they're things that are really happening, and they're increasingly these powerful few shaping, you know, the world and stepping into this extreme wealth, extreme power, and these folks that I'm thinking of. Which I will name in just a second here. Who seem to believe that their personal vision should override the collective well-being or everyone else's human rights. Even that's not sovereignty, that's domination, that's not personal power, that's power over right. So when we look at people like Elon Musk moving into potentially first trillionaire among us territory with his company SpaceX, that's a very clear representation of the shadow side of a universal one year, it's on one level people may frame his companies or his work as innovation and ambition and visionary leadership, but on another level, we have to ask, like, what does it mean for one individual to hold that much economic power while so many people are struggling to afford basic necessities, housing, food, basic stability, let alone health care, right? That is a number one energy taken to an extreme, he is an extreme representation of like him, first total dominance, you know. I've got all the cookies from the cookie jar and no one else, so it's interesting how much he's, you know, pushed to the forefront in this last several months, and then we look at someone like Peter Thiel, and the broader Palantir world. This is where the shadow side becomes even darker, and again, it's so interesting to me that these are people in the world as singular figures, right, whereas before it might have been like a company as a whole that we see behaving this way. These are like singular individuals, one alone it seems right, even though we know there's teams behind them. So take Palantir, they are in surveillance, military contracts, immigration enforcement, data control, this elite private influence that they have that is shaping our public life, usually from behind the scenes. It has an almost cartoon villain like quality to me, and I have been shocked that more people haven't been more outraged by all of this, except this is not a movie, this is our real life and our real infrastructure, and it's causing real harm. So, when we talk about individuality in a one year, we can't just talk about personal branding and starting a new project and finally claiming our voice. We also have to talk about what happens when individuality is severed from empathy, you know, I have heard Elon Musk say some version of that, you know, empathy is the greatest weakness, that's not the highest expression of the themes of a one year, that's the ego wearing the costume of leadership, and for us personally, we have to be aware that the shadow actually says my freedom matters more than yours, or my vision matters more than your rights, or my success matters more than the health of everyone else, or my position means I don't have to be accountable, because we don't want that shadow side creeping into our individual lives, so for us personally, this theme asks us to look at things like, here's your questions, where in my life am I being called to trust myself more deeply without disconnecting from my humanity, where do I need more independence, but not in a way that's isolating completely, where do I need to stop waiting for permission without becoming careless about my impact of my individuality? Because the healing side of this theme is not I only matter, it's I matter too. So I think we can all hold that energy of mattering ourselves, especially most of you who listen that are sensitive and empaths yourself. That's the difference between the sacred individuality and this like unchecked ego. That's the difference between personal freedom and entitlement.
It's a fine line, and that's also the difference between self trust and like self worship, which would be clearly on the challenge side of the spectrum, and I think that's one of the biggest lessons of the Universal One Year so far. We're being invited to become more of ourselves, but not at the expense of everyone else, in a way that makes us even more self-aware, so that we can take more responsibility and grow more fully, that's the true potential here, and that's what you're fully capable of as you continue through this year. So, let's dive into the next theme. Some of these themes I have kind of chunked together for time, because the examples really coincide. So, we're going to talk about theme three and four together. And those themes really represent leadership, initiative, courage, brave momentum, like stepping forward, and these next two themes in a universal one year, there's a really strong invitation to step forward, to initiate, right, to start something, or to put your energy in a direction to move. It might be to lead, it might be to stop waiting for everyone else to tell you it's time, or to just, you know, decide what am I waiting for anymore. So, on the on the positive side, or the light side, this is really powerful. This is the energy of finally saying I'm going to take responsibility for my life. I'm going to make that call or start that thing. I'm going to stop waiting for my life to begin. I'm going to trust that I have enough courage to take the next step. And personally, this is where many of us may be noticing the places where we're being asked to be braver, not louder, necessarily, right, not more performative, but just a little braver to have a little bit more courage in ourselves to be brave enough to tell the truth, or brave enough to make a change, or brave enough to start over, or brave enough to stop abandoning ourselves and make some boundaries, or even brave enough to lead in our very own lives, instead of waiting to be rescued, or chosen, or approved of, because we don't actually need that, and this year can really highlight that in the most loving and direct ways, so that we can have an opportunity to make a different choice, but collectively the shadow side of this theme has been really glaring, because leadership without humility becomes domination, and initiative without ethics becomes force, and courage without conscience becomes aggression, and brave momentum without wisdom can look like recklessness, which none of those are the direction that we want to be going. Right, we're seeing a lot of people empower mistake control for leadership, and we're seeing government power used aggressively against vulnerable communities, we're seeing attempts to rewrite history, to restrict information, to punish dissent, to expand surveillance or sharing of our information, often without us knowing, to remove rights. As I'm recording this, there's something happening in our US Congress right now that the leverage is, we'll sign this other bill, and we can talk about, you know, alleviating some of these housing problems, and that other bill part of the intricacy allows ultimately for women and certain populations to potentially lose all of our rights to vote, that is terrible. That's removing our rights. That's framing cruelty as strength, right? And we do have to acknowledge others that do rise up in this brave standing up for the collective, like a Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who just got elected in New York, who is really making big, wonderful, exciting changes on behalf of the collective, so that's the contrast, right? And on this shadow side, we're seeing, you know, something that looks like not leadership, it's fear with a microphone or fear mongering, and this is one of the biggest distortions of this one year energy, the belief that being first or loudest or richest or most powerful or most aggressively forceful means that you're in charge or you're the leader, and it doesn't actually, a true leader doesn't lead with a need to like erase other people's humanity in order to feel powerful. A true leader brings people together and hears the challenges of everyone and works together with their community to make real changes that affect real people who are suffering, not who just benefits the 1% right?
A true leader doesn't need to always control the story or silence their opposition or punish people for disagreeing. A true leader doesn't confuse strength and domination. Right, so this is where we get to bring it back to ourselves too, because the collective always is giving us a mirror of what's going on in our world, so for us as individuals, here's your list of questions. The questions to be looking at for these themes three and four are where am I being asked to lead in my own life more honestly, and let me just put a little asterisk here, even if that means just being honest with yourself. It doesn't mean you have to like tell your whole truth to everyone, right, but can you be honest within yourself, even if it means just keeping it to yourself about how you can lead in your life and the truths in your own life. Where am I being asked to take initiative instead of waiting? Where am I being asked to be brave, but act in a way that is from choice and not just reaction, right? Where am I being asked to move forward without bulldozing myself or anyone else? Because there's a forward momentum that doesn't require the bulldozing of other people, and that is the higher expression of this energy, and with the highest expression of this theme, it's not I'm in charge, so everyone follow me. The higher expression is I'm responsible for the energy that I bring, the choices that I make, and the impact that I have. It's sort of a like lead by example vibe. It's the kind of leadership that this year is asking us each as individuals to practice, so let's move right on to themes five and six, which I have combined together in the sake of time. The original episode was over an hour, and I do try to keep these hour under for you guys, so by request from many of you, themes five and six combined are innovation, originality, and sort of the ethics of the future, if you will. So I did combine these, like I said, this pioneering energy for the future, along with originality, becoming more of who you truly are. These are very universal one year themes: new ideas, new tools, new identities, new solutions, new ways of doing things in a positive like that light side of the spectrum. This is really powerful. All of these are really powerful collectively. The clearest example I have for this, that we can all understand or know something about, is AI. It's one of the clearest examples for me. There are genuinely promising uses for AI, especially in things like medicine and science, helping you know some of the technology can help with the way surgeries are done and the invasiveness of surgeries, heart surgeries, for example. There's a lot of wonderful work being done with AI, and even with diagnosis and scans, researchers can predict things like protein structures and identify disease targets or sources, and it really can speed up our drug discovery, if little asterisk, if that's what drug companies want to use it for, right, because it's not just the tool, it's the user of the tool and their intention, but AI has improved medical imaging and support for earlier diagnosis, and even the way we can communicate throughout the world, if we're in a place of sharing, right, and and it moves us all forward in this hope for like true personalized medicine, right? Not what you know, me and a lot of my friends. One of our biggest complaints right now is that a lot of the standards were done on, you know, a male body, right, which for women, and particularly women of a certain age, our bodies are going through all kinds of things, and there is no medical answer for us. AI can help with all of this. So, my point with talking about AI, let me just preempt this next little section. AI is not evil, like most things, it's a spectrum, it's the user and the application of the tool, right, but then the tool itself has the potential for, like, both sides of the spectrum here, as we think about new tools and identities and solutions and new ways of doing things, right.
So the point is something that can be medically, like, really promising, for example, can be ethically really dangerous at the same time, and this is where the shadow side for this example comes in. AI doesn't live in some invisible cloud, like what we're all trying to still figure out with our eye clouds. It has a physical body, this AI, it requires these data centers, which maybe you've heard stirrings about. It requires land and electricity and insane amounts of water and minerals and infrastructure and labor and communities that will absorb the impact of these physical buildings and locations. There are real communities in the United States that are already dealing with that cost. It's not just people saying, oh, I don't like an idea of a data center near me or pollution, which is a problem in and of itself. There have been reports. I couldn't tell you where I saw it, but I watched kind of like a documentary style reporting of residents in Finn. County, Georgia, in the US, that have these like household disruptions directly due to these data centers coming in with, for example, not enough reliable water to like flush their toilet or fill a glass for drinking water or shower or live normally. You see them in the videos turning on their faucets and like drip drops are coming out, so in this county in Georgia, these water problems are directly connected to this massive data center project, and the officials, like, quote unquote, later discovered that the project had about 29 million gallons of water through these unaccounted for connections like they just did all this extra taking water from the community to satisfy the needs of the data center and this was happening also in that area during a drought where the conditions were so bad that the residents were being asked to conserve water so things like that are the shadow side of this type of innovation, when like speed and profit and expansion, and this race to be first are prioritized over actual human beings and our actual real world ecosystem, and the costs that we'll have to bear. We're also seeing AI's shadow through just like the practical things like deep fakes and fake audio and fake images and misinformation and campaigns to confuse us as individuals and communities, and something else that I have a little bit of a beef with, with AI. I do think that there are positive ways to use a lot of these tools, but I also have seen and read stories, kind of expose examples of AI being used as a substitute for, like, therapy, for example, real human support, and some of the answers that our current version of AI gives are really directly harmful to people who are using it in that way, and sometimes companies are using AI in ways that we don't know or are not really disclosed to us in an easy to understand and direct way, so we might be using an AI and getting false information and not realizing that that's what's happening, and companies are firing all the real people, so you know, and again, let me just throw in there, particularly when it comes to things like fact checking AI, you got to really push it, it's not great, it gives a lot of misinformation, and so all these things in different levels and degrees can be like harmful and useful at the same time, and it sounds confident AI, but often it's like making stuff up, so this theme really is just asking us to grow in our relationship with innovation as individuals, as a collective. The positive expression is not rejecting every new tool, right? We have to learn and understand. I think of, like, when I was a kid, and when computers were the thing, and in my generation and in the neighborhood that I lived in, they decided we didn't need to learn computers, so we played like one computer game.
Shout out to all those of you on the Oregon Trail, and I don't know why we said Oregon and not Oregon, but anyway, we didn't need to learn that, and many of us in my generation and from my kind of communities that I grew up in, in particular, we're way behind still, so we need to embrace innovation in some ways, right, and the help that it can produce, but we also need to temper it with wisdom and integrity and discernment and responsibility for our current world and future generations like those ramifications, right? So, for each of us personally, here comes your questions. This theme asks you to ponder things like, where am I being invited to do something differently? And again, this doesn't mean just with technology, but in your own life, where are you being like, where are you aware that an old way of doing it, an old system's not working, and being invited to do something differently. Where am I ready to stop copying an old template? I think of this one a lot. I feel like I add so much into my notes as I'm talking, but where's my true voice, creativity or working, trying to come forward like your own personal way of working, like where is this true essence of you trying to come forward more and more, and you're stifling it. I think of it with some of these YouTube videos I see about like personal branding and things, and they're trying to just give people like a template to plug into, when really what this one energy calls for is the most beautiful type of individuality, this vulnerable expression of our personal story, and that creates this true connection. So, where are you being asked to use more of your true voice or your creativity? Am I moving with integrity, or just moving quickly? Am I using tools to support my intuition and discernment, or am I outsourcing my discernment completely? We're going to get a little bit more into this later, but, like, we're not supposed to be outsourcing our discernment. You need to have your own truth and your own answers, and yes, we can collect information, but outsourcing our decision making is a totally different thing. Are you outsourcing your decision making rather than collecting data and using your wisdom and intuition? Am I creating something that nourishes my life or the lives of others, and or or am I chasing productivity and visibility and convenience at any cost? Because I think we can all evaluate these little things in our lives, right? Because the higher expression of innovation is not just new, it's wise and humane and creative and benefits everyone in the long run, right. Okay, moving right along, I feel like you guys get that one. Seem theme seven is one of my favorite themes in this set for this one year energy. Theme seven is about planting seeds for the future. So, with this next theme, what I want to talk about is this expansion of the idea of planting seeds. Right, so we talked about this very important theme of this universal one year, it's not about having the full harvest, it's about beginnings, it's about choices, day by day, small choices that stack up, consistency, action, it's about the seeds being planted now that might shape, like quite literally the next nine years of your life in the positive, in the light side of the spectrum of this theme. This is where we begin things that will support our future selves. It's where we start healing work, or building new habits, or creating foundation. It's not where we finish the thing, it's where we are putting in our consistency from kind of like a foundational ground up working, right. It's where we invest in that relationship, or that business, or our wellness and health in our body, or mental health, or our home, or community, or spiritual practice, or start putting little bits of effort and time towards your dream that you're not going to fully see the results of yet, that's the key with this planting seeds, and this came up recently in a session with a client. So, this is where I'm going to share a little bit more of a client example.
This client was looking at a possible career change, and it probably wasn't going to be an immediate change; they were kind of locked into some version of a contract for the immediate future, but maybe over the next few years they'd be looking at moving their career in a different way, and during the reading we I looked at their energy and their soul's potential and their strengths and qualities that were already showing up, qualities that they could step more fully into, coming to the surface. That's often how it works for me in a reading, and for this person in particular, these qualities that they had been like really stepping into, and I could even give them examples of where this had started for them, about four ish years back, were beautiful things like leadership and technology skills that they had been building and learning to apply in the real world in their field, and this deeply humanitarian hearted essence of this particular client, and they could validate all of these details, some because it's like things they actually studied and developed, and some because it is really how they feel, and things they know about themselves. Interestingly, they had shared with me this is a client I have worked - I work with, like, annually, ish. They had gotten, like, a different type of reading, with more of, like, an astrological type reading, and they were laughing, because they were, like, they said everything that you say, and I just always think that's really fun, but then as we moved a little bit deeper and a little bit more into like the coaching side of what their need was in this particular session, they shared this very human concern of like not knowing the exact path yet, and this is something I so commonly hear, and I think it's such a perfect example of this theme, because when we're planting seeds, we usually don't get the whole path laid out in front of us in a very clear way. We get breadcrumbs, you guys, if you've been here for any length of time, have heard me talk about this before, we get subtle inspirations, we get a curiosity, a tickle, right, an interest, even if it's like a fleeting interest of, like, oh, I'm kind of curious about that. We get a sometimes like a repeated nudge that we can dismiss or follow. We get kind of a conversation that opens up something in us. We notice maybe a skill that we want to build or a person that we want to kind. Connect with or a class we want to take or a community that we are curious about or want to explore or even a part of ourselves that starts to come alive or maybe come alive again depending how long we've been on this earth and for many of us we will be creating a version of our life or our experience that doesn't exist yet, I know. Brace yourself. So, there's no exact map to follow this, you know. For this client in particular, the potential careers that I saw them stepping into as like a potential business owner were solutions to problems that exist. So, only the problems exist now, not the solutions in the technological application that this client had the potential to bring into the world as part of like how their own mind works, like they can see a problem in their field and this person knows and has the skills to like build the thing to solve it, the tech thing to solve it. So for this person in particular, and for many of us, and many of you here as sensitives, the thing that your soul wants to create or wants you to experience might not yet exist in the form that you can bring it into the world. So, there's no map to follow. A seed doesn't look like the tree that it's becoming, right? It's not like with each idea or curiosity, we get like a quick movie trailer of what that could lead to in our lives. It just doesn't work that way. So, a breadcrumb doesn't show you the whole entire path, but that doesn't mean that it's not real guidance for you.
It's in this client's case, the work was like, not here's the entire future, step by step, guaranteed, which is what many of us secretly want, and some people tell me straight to my face that's what they're looking for. It's more like, here's the potentials, here's what's lighting up in you, here's how it might look in the future if you pursue it, here are the strengths that you already carry, and some that are just coming more to the forefront of your experience. Here are the qualities that are aligned with you. And now, what seeds can you plant? What skills can you build or develop? What relationship can you nurture or seek out? What curiosity can you follow? What are you noticing in the world that feels like you know the answer to, or you want to participate in helping with? That's the next right step that's available to you, and what's the smallest action you can take towards it? Right, that higher expression of a universal one year theme is available to us perfectly with this planting seeds theme, it's not forcing the entire future to reveal itself, because that's just never going to happen. It's not waiting until we have like the perfect plan or all the answers. Yeah, we want to do our due diligence and put our concerted, consistent effort towards something, especially if it's like a skill we need to learn, but you don't start the first day of plumbing school expecting to know how to like build an entire house plumbing from the ground up, that's something that comes over time, right, so you know seeds are planted now in our own lives, and like we're talking about, you know, above in things like public policy and technology and climate and war and surveillance and economics that will affect all of us for years, so you know all of the things that we've been talking about have positive potentials and shadow challenges, and that even comes with planting seeds, right? If immediately, when you get a curiosity or an idea or an inspiration or a thought of, like, yeah, I wonder if I should like take a little class in that, or like learn more about that, and immediately your inner self-talk is like, what are you talking about, like, you can't learn a thing, or you're wasting your time, or you're not going to be good enough at that, or am I going to be wasting my time and not good enough? So it might show up like a question for you, that's you removing your free will from the seeds that are being offered to you to plant, instead of planting the seeds, you're like casting them aside, like no. So when you're saying you're not getting guidance or you don't know what's right for you, are you exploring those things that you're curious about? Because I want you to be in the light or positive side of the spectrum of these themes, especially this one, I mean, especially all of them, truly. But it's, it's available to you, and for you personally, the this theme is asking you to look at some of these type of questions. Okay, here's your list of questions. What am I planting right now? What am I cultivating right now? What am I feeding? What am I giving my time, my attention, my money, my energy, my choices too? Is this some. Thing I actually want to grow, that's a really profound question for me. I know it sounds super simple, but I've, over the years, I've asked myself this question, because I think we're always planting seeds. There's just a different energy behind it in a one year, but you know, am I putting my focus and attention, and whatever my mind power to something I want to grow. I just want to highlight this in a different way.
For some of you, I used to spend a lot of time having mental arguments, meaning there was something that I wasn't happy with, or an email that I got that I needed to respond to, or a conversation happening in my life, and I would litigate both sides of it, and I'd make every argument, and I try to figure it out all in my head, what was I growing with that, what was I putting my time and energy and attention towards, and for me maybe part of that process was coming to understanding about what I, you know, hard choices I need to make, but I could have also taken some of that energy and used it more towards building the things that I did want to grow in the world, so that's the same question for you. Are you putting your time and attention and energy towards what you actually want to grow in your life? Am I planting from fear or urgency or ego or pressure, or am I planting from clarity and devotion and excitement and my own values and my own truth. What small choices can you make right now that your future self will be thankful for? This could even be like I'm going to do meal prep for the week and I'm going to do it in a consistent way for the rest of the year. There's no rules behind this, actually. Am I.. oh, sorry, I lost my place on my list. What breadcrumbs, curiosity, or subtle inspiration have I been dismissing lately? It could be because you don't know the whole path yet, it could be because you just.. I don't know, could be lots of reasons, but are you dismissing what curiosity or subtle inspiration or breadcrumbs or nudges, are you dismissing right now or lately? And what am I ready to stop giving my energy to, because I don't want it to come with me in the next cycle. That's part of this identification. We are sowing seeds in our garden for this next cycle. If there's a crop you don't want to grow any more of, maybe it's drama in your friendships. Whatever it is for you, stop putting your energy there and figure out how to move your energy to the thing you do want. Even if it's like, I have no time for the drama of this friend group, instead I'm going to be busy taking classes or drinking water and doing yoga. Whatever it is for you, I want you to find it, because this is the power of universal one year. We might not be able to control every outcome, but we can become more conscious of what we're beginning, what we're feeding, and what kind of future that we are actively participating in creating. Okay, I'm going to sandwich the next two themes together, and then the next two themes after that, because I'm really trying to come close to an hour for you guys, and you guys know I talk a lot, but these are really important themes, and I think it's going to really, like I said at the top, be like cracking a code in your own personal life. So the next themes I want to combine are themes eight and 10, it kind of just made more sense to do eight and 10, and then we'll do nine and 11. This is grief clearing mixed emotions alongside with redefining relationships and personal boundaries, and this is such an important part of a universal one year, because new beginnings are not always clean and exciting. Sometimes new beginnings come with grief. Sometimes we're excited about who we're becoming, but we also get to grieve who we used to be, or potentials that we're moving away from. Maybe sometimes we know something's right, or the highest choice for us, but it still hurts and still messy sometimes, right? And collectively we're seeing so much grief right now.
What I wanted to say was, sometimes we're aware of like wonderful things in our life or in our world that are just getting started around us, and at the same time we have to hold grief or personal loss, right, and that's where I wanted to step into saying collectively we are seeing a lot of grief right now, grief around war and displacement and instability in our communities and in our countries, really environmental destruction and rights being stripped away, like we talked about, and communities being divided, and people feeling like the ground under them keeps changing, and it's so unstable. This is why I always say spirituality can't bypass reality. Yes, 2026 X is a new cycle, and yes, there are opportunities and wonderful things for us to step into, and yes, there's innovation and new courage available to us, and fresh start energy, and also people are grieving, people are exhausted. Are you exhausted? People are scared, people are watching old systems falling apart with like not really lots of new systems emerging yet, and wondering what's gonna come next, what's gonna replace, and that's the mixed emotions part of this year, and personally for you this might be showing up in relationships or family patterns or your work dynamic or your friendships, or your client relationships, or even your relationship with yourself, or recognizing your own capacity or energy level. So, one year can make it very clear where the old agreements are just no longer working. Sometimes we did something one way for a long time because it served us, or because it felt familiar, and in a one year, it can get really, really highlighted, of like, where this is just not going to work for me anymore, type of an energy. Maybe you used to be, like, for example, an over functioner or the peacekeeper in your family, or maybe used to be the one who always adjusted, or always bent, or always understood, or made it easier for everyone else, and now maybe something in you is saying, like, I can't keep doing it this way, like I'm miserable this way, or I'm there, must be something else for me, and that's where the boundaries come in for these themes. The shadow side is important here too, just like it is with all of these themes. A boundary is not a punishment. It's not like a dramatic exit. A boundary is not, I'm going to do whatever I want, and you just have to deal with it. Healthy boundaries are a part of healthy new beginnings and healthy connections, because they tell the truth about what's sustainable for you and what works for you. So, for you personally, here's your list of questions. This theme asks, what am I grieving, even if I know the change is aligned, or even if I don't have a choice about the change. What old role am I ready to release? Where have I been confusing loyalty with self abandonment. This is a tough boundaries question. Where have I been confusing loyalty with self abandonment? I feel that one, that's that feels old for me. I just was looking at some old photos today, so it's interesting when we step into a new energy, how it's like, wow, that version of me was really confusing some loyalty for some self abandonment. Where do I need clearer boundaries, not as a weapon, but as an act of truth and compassion for myself? What relationship or habit or expectation needs to be renegotiated for this next version of me? And where do I need to let myself feel the mixed emotions instead of rushing to get over it or focus on the positive, right? Because we have to feel, we have to feel to heal, you have to, we get to feel the things, and if we don't, they'll, the themes will just keep rising in ways that we don't usually like, because sometimes the grief is not a sign that you're going backwards. Sometimes the grief is is a clearing or healing that makes room for the new beginning to actually like take root for those seeds to really start growing.
So let's move right along to themes nine and 11, and the combination of the final themes nine and 11 that I want to bring together are things like aligning vision and action, and the shadow side of this, then is impatience and ego and scattered starts, or like self sabotaging starts. This is really where the universal one theme kind of comes all together, because a universal one year brings momentum with part of it, and yeah, it might be a stop-start momentum, but it's even if it's two steps forward and one step back, we gained one step forward, right? There's delays often in a one year, but it's our consistent action. It's like when we get excited to start something new, the universe asks us, are you sure it's sort of that type of energy it can bring, like the urge to begin for some of us, like desire to move or change, even like, like physically, literally move, change locations, or exercise differently, or but for some it brings like resistance to that. The question is, are our actions actually aligned with our vision? Right, are we wanting the outcome without wanting to participate in beginning the thing and doing the thing? Are we just like wanting the prize at the end without walking down the road, right? And like we've been talking about throughout this whole check in, every theme has a shadow side, and this one does too, and it's a powerful shadow. The tricky thing about this shadow is that it can create blind spots for us, even as sensitives, we can be blind to kind of can't see what we can't see, right? We may genuinely believe that we're ready for the next level, or the next step, or the next thing, ready for that relationship, or the job, or ready for the teaching, or ready for the visibility, or ready to create our own platform, or ready for this big breakthrough, but sometimes we haven't actually aligned our actions, our habits, our capacity, our vulnerability, our consistency with the things we say that we want, right? Really, sometimes we have some work to do still, and I'm seeing this over and over and over again with clients this year. I'm not saying it's an.. it's not in my own life, because you know I'm a human too, but I'm seeing this energy of people wanting big results, but they also want guarantees, which are just doesn't really work that way. For example, they might want a relationship, a life partner, but they also don't want to be vulnerable and step into the relationships they might want to develop their spiritual gifts for some clients, but they don't want to put in that consistent dedication and practice and self introspection and work on ourselves continuously that it requires to work in those gifts. Some of my clients have wanted, like, a better job, but somewhere inside they're hoping it just, like, shows up as a little invitation to them and fall in their lap without having to, like, network and apply and learn some new skills and stretch and risk rejection, right? If I apply for this job, am I guaranteed to get it. No, you got to risk the rejection. That's part of it. There's no guarantees in this way, and it's how we learn and grow and expand into more of what we want. I'm thinking also of someone who said they want to start stepping into like leadership and teaching and guiding others, but they don't necessarily want to put in the 10,000 hours of like learning and practice and mentorship and mastery, that's a big shadow side of the energy this year, and I say this with compassion, because I understand it, and I'm there in certain areas in my experience, and we all have places where we want the next version of our life, but we don't want the discomfort of becoming the version of ourselves that can actually hold it, or stepping all the way out of our comfort zone, or risking that failure, or that rejection, or that embarrassment, or whatever it is for you in this specific theme, because we all have the shadow in this theme somewhere and it, it like, even if we've worked the energy and healed it, it'll kind of peek out in other areas out of different closets in our proverbial lives.
So, just know, I'm not, as not a judgment, but that's kind of the tension of this theme. The higher expression of the Universal One Year says, begin, take the step, start the thing, trust the nudge, like move forward with this vision, but the shadow says, "Oh, I want the reward now, I want a guarantee before I take this class that I'm going to be hired as an accountant, I want the title, I want to teach spirituality, oh, but I don't want to like develop and come to mastery of it. I want this new life, but I don't want to be uncomfortable while my old life changes. And collectively we're seeing this too in our communities, big promises with like no grounded follow through. For example, light examples, people in power claiming to protect others while their actions are like actually causing harm in the fine print, and in the reality technology being released faster than the ethics can catch up, and some horrible things have happened as a result, leaders acting as if urgency gives them permission to skip over accountability, this is the shadow of the one year, and it says, like, move fast, dominate, win, be first, control the narrative, worry about the consequences later, but the higher expression of this side of the spectrum of these themes is something very different. It says begin, but begin consciously, intentionally move, but move with integrity and on purpose, lead but lead with humility, and keep doing your work, create but create with responsibility, act but stay connected to your values and keep working on yourself and checking in. With yourself as you take action, so for you personally, here's the questions. The theme is asking you to look at things like, where is my vision asking for greater action steps or real action steps? Where am I secretly wanting a guarantee before I'm willing to fully participate? Where am I asking for the result, but resisting the practice or the vulnerability or the consistency that's required? Where am I rushing because I'm uncomfortable with the unknown? Where is ego trying to push to prove or to perform, and what's the one aligned action I can take now that supports the person I'm becoming, because we don't harness universal one energy by forcing the future, we harness it by choosing consciously, beginning honestly, taking the next aligned step, not forcing the whole path, so as we close out this mid year check in, I want to, I want to remind you, and I want you to remember this. The energy of 2026 is not finished with us yet. We are only halfway through this one year, and there's still time to work with these themes consciously. There's still time to notice the nudge, to plant the seed to make the brave choice to strengthen the boundary to take those aligned steps to really get in touch with what you're wanting to create for your future, and bit by bit start it, and if something in this episode brought a discomfort in you, it doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. There's this Joseph Campbell quote that has been coming into my awareness again and again this year, especially as I rewatched the 11 themes, and I've kind of seen these themes playing out over the year, and this quote's been like nudging me so much that I finally like looked it up and looked up the origin and everything. You might have heard the version that says the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek, but the more accurate quote from Joseph Campbell is the very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you're looking for, and the surrounding ideas in this writing of Campbell's is that where we stumble or where we feel dread or fear or avoidance or resistance, there might be something essential for us to recover.
There, the very place that we're afraid to go, the threshold that feels uncomfortable or unknown or scary might be holding exactly what we've been looking for, and that feels so aligned with the universal one year, because sometimes the nudge is exciting, but sometimes the nudge is the thing we want to keep avoiding, the conversation, the boundary, the honest hard look at ourselves, the skill that we need to diligently build, the dedication that it takes alongside the fear or risk of failure or vulnerability, the pattern that we need to stop repeating, or the new beginning that requires us to leave the familiar. That's all information, that's all guidance from your soul. That's part of how you crack the code of what this universal one year is trying to show you, because this new cycle is not asking you to become someone else, it's asking you to become more honest about who you are and what you want and what you're here to create next, and what you're no longer willing to carry forward for yourself. So take what resonated today and notice what's already showing up and ask yourself, what is one aligned action step I can take right now that supports the future that I actually want to grow into in 2026 and beyond. The second half of 2026 is still totally open, we're not behind, and you're still being invited. Now, the question is, how will you respond? So, let me know how this episode resonated with you, and if you saw some themes bubbling up in your life that you are surprised about, or maybe you realized already. I always love when you guys comment and share and message me about these episodes. Thank you so much for being here. I have so many exciting things planned throughout the summer, and for the rest of the year, and I appreciate each and every one of you in our spirit squad out there who listen and participate here. I know I'm sending you lots of love and positivity and support for these beautiful one year themes. Big hugs, lots of love. Bye for now from inside Spirit Speakeasy