Present Joy Is a Practice: On First Principles and Lasting Habits for 2026.

By now, the plates have been cleared, (even if the house still looks like the fallout from 3-day house party....)...the turkey has been carved down to leftovers. The Shark Bay prawns vanished faster than anyone expected. And the Albany rock oysters, well, they were eaten with a little too much enthusiasm. Which, if history and half-remembered health articles are to be believed, explains why someone got a touch flirtier than usual by mid-afternoon...

Champagne corks popped early and often. Negronis were poured generously and confidently, as if no one had plans for the afternoon beyond sitting very still. Non-alcoholic beers were cracked with equal intention and far less regret...

At some point, someone walked into the shower at exactly the wrong moment, because in a full house, privacy stops being a right and becomes more of a loose agreement everyone pretends still exists.

Kids laughed. And I mean proper laughter. The type that is loud, uncontrolled, hallway-echoing that reminds you how alive a house can feel when screens are forgotten and time loosens its grip. Stories were told again. Old jokes resurfaced. Old family conflicts did too. Some softened. Some stayed sharp. And somewhere in the middle of the chaos, between seafood platters, side-eyes, and raised eyebrows, joy kept finding cracks to sneak through.

Some families have now packed up and driven home, cars heavy with presents and emotional residue. Others are still together, navigating the strange intimacy that only appears when multiple generations share the same space for long enough that politeness wears thin and truth starts to show up uninvited.

And now, in the quiet that follows, or perhaps in the quieter rhythm that continues, perspective begins to return.

This is the moment I’m most interested in, not the noise of Christmas itself, but the stillness after it. The space where life re-enters. The place where systems, habits, and first principles quietly take back control from emotion, indulgence, and reaction.

Because if there’s one thing this time of year does well, it exposes reality.

The heat helps too. Western Australian summers have a way of stripping things back. Forty-degree days slow the body whether you like it or not. They force pauses. They invite reflection. They don’t tolerate performance for long.

And in that pause, once the food is eaten, the drinks are finished, the conversations had, what’s real tends to hold its shape. And what was being held together by adrenaline, distraction, or sheer momentum starts to crack.

That’s not failure. That is data to use.

We tend to treat this moment as a time to set goals for the year to come. Outcomes. Targets. Resolutions. What do I want to achieve in 2026?

But I’ve come to believe that’s the wrong frame entirely. Outcomes are seductive. Habits are honest.

Outcomes tell us where we want to be. Habits tell us who we actually are.

This is where first principles matter (If you want to read more about first principles, I have put a quick definition at the end of this article).

Strip everything back and life, like business, like fitness, like relationships, is not built on big moments. It’s built on small, repeated behaviours that compound quietly over time. The systems we live inside. The defaults we return to when motivation fades.

James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) says it simply: "we do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems."

And once you really understand that, it changes how you look at almost everything. Because success, peace, health, love, and meaning are not events. They are environments.

Think about your fitness for a moment. Not your aspirations, your actual habits. The way you move when no one is watching. The foods you reach for when you’re tired. The excuses you make when it’s hot, busy, inconvenient. Your body doesn’t care about your intentions. It responds faithfully to what you do repeatedly.

The same is true in business. Culture is not what’s written on the wall or said at the offsite. It’s the behaviours that get rewarded, tolerated, or ignored every day. Decision-making rhythms. How conflict is handled. Whether people feel safe telling the truth. Whether learning is encouraged or punished.

And it’s true in relationships too. Love isn’t sustained by grand gestures. It’s sustained by presence (where you say "I am here"). Listening ("I see you"). Consistency ("You can rely on me"). Desire ("I want you"). The small habits that accumulate long after the champagne is gone and the disagreements resurface.

This is why first principles matter more than ever as we step into another year.

Because when the noise screams conflict, politically, culturally, relationally, peace doesn’t arrive through outrage or certainty. It arrives through groundedness. Through systems that hold when emotions run hot. Through habits that anchor us when opinions collide.

I have watched families this Christmas wrestle with difference, generational difference, ideological difference, unresolved history. And I’ve also watched moments of unexpected grace emerge. Not because everyone suddenly agreed, but because someone chose a different habit. A pause instead of a reaction. A question instead of a statement. A walk instead of a fight.

Peace is not passive. It’s practiced.

So is hope.

Hope isn’t optimism. It’s not pretending things are fine. Hope is the quiet discipline of continuing to show up well, even when the environment is noisy, fractured, or uncertain.

That’s why I don’t believe the answer to 2026 lies in bigger plans or louder declarations. It lies in better systems.

Systems for; how you start your mornings, how you train your body, think under pressure. Systems for how decisions are made when stakes are high, for how conflict is metabolised rather than avoided.

This applies everywhere.

The executive overwhelmed by workload doesn’t need another productivity hack, she needs a system that protects energy and attention. The chair-person frustrated by disengaged staff doesn’t need more KPIs, he needs a system that makes truth speakable again.

The small business owner trying to scale doesn’t need hustle, he needs habits that decentralise decisions and build trust.

The founder seeking product-market fit doesn’t need certainty, she needs a learning system that turns feedback into insight without ego getting in the way.

Growth amplifies whatever system you already have. If your habits are brittle, scale will expose them. If your systems are sound, scale will reward them.

And this isn’t just professional. It’s deeply personal.

I think about masculinity often (read about it in my recent post on that topic) in this frame. Not as something broken, but as something largely untrained. Strength without discipline becomes volatility. Ambition without restraint becomes burnout. Confidence without humility becomes fragility.

The same is true of leadership. Of parenting. Of relationships. Of friendship.

We don’t need reinvention. We need retraining.

So remember 2026 doesn’t ask you to become someone else. It asks you to become more deliberate about who you already are.

That’s why the end of Christmas and as you reflect on 2025 matters. Because once the family gatherings thin out and the house quiets, your systems reassert themselves. The defaults return. The habits resume.

And that’s not a bad thing, if you’re paying attention.

Because the question now isn’t what do I want to achieve this year? It’s what kind of person do my habits say I’m becoming?

• What do your mornings train you into being?

• What do your evenings reinforce?

• What does your phone usage shape?

• What does your training routine, or lack of one, communicate to your nervous system?

• What behaviours do you tolerate in your business, your relationships, your inner life?

Outcomes will take care of themselves if the habits are right.

This is where I find peace, and, unexpectedly, joy, even amidst disagreement and noise. Not by withdrawing from the world, but by grounding myself in first principles. In systems that hold regardless of opinion cycles. In habits that keep me physically strong, mentally clear, and relationally present. Joy doesn’t arrive as a reward at the end of the work. It shows up in the work, in the quiet satisfaction of doing the right small things, consistently.

Peace is built.

Joy is trained.

So is hope.

And hope, real hope, doesn’t scream. It compounds.

As the year turns, you don’t need to rush. You don’t need to declare anything publicly. You don’t need to solve your whole life.

You need to choose one or two systems worth giving your attention to. One or two habits worth training. One or two first principles worth returning to when everything else gets loud.

Because the future, your future, will not be shaped by the intensity of this moment, but by the quiet faithfulness of what you repeat.

Here’s to a year not driven by noise or reaction, but by clarity. By habits that shape outcomes. By systems that carry you when motivation fades. By a kind of peace, and joy, that doesn’t require agreement, only presence.

And by hope, not as a feeling, but as a practiced way of living.

That’s work worth doing.

TK

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Glossary

First principles (noun)

• Definition: The practice of reducing a problem, system, or decision to its most basic, non-negotiable truths, the things that must be true regardless of trend, tradition, or opinion, and rebuilding from there.

• In plain language: Instead of asking “How is this usually done?” first principles asks, “What actually matters here?” It ignores inherited playbooks and starts from reality.

• Why it matters: Most failure doesn’t come from lack of effort, intelligence, or ambition. It comes from operating inside assumptions that no longer fit the season you’re in. First principles thinking cuts through noise, removes borrowed thinking, and creates clarity when complexity rises. It replaces outcome-chasing with system-building, because outcomes lag, but systems compound.

• How it shows up in life:

  • In fitness: focusing less on aesthetics and more on daily movement, recovery, and consistency.

  • In relationships: prioritising presence (where you say "I am here"). Listening ("I see you"). Consistency ("You can rely on me"). Desire ("I want you"). The small habits that accumulate long after the grand gestures are gone.

  • In business: designing habits of decision-making, learning, and trust instead of chasing growth for its own sake.

  • In leadership: training perception and attention, not just execution.

• What it replaces: Conventional wisdom. Trend-following. Copy-paste strategies. Hustle without coherence.

• Famous practitioners:

  • Sara Blakely (Spanx): rebuilt the fashion problem from the wearer’s lived experience, not industry norms.

  • Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla, X): breaks problems down to physics and constraints rather than accepted cost structures.

• In one sentence: First principles thinking is the discipline of building your life, work, and systems from truth, not tradition.