#YourCareer : New Year Predictions: 5 Tips To Re-frame Doubts About 2026. Question: How Do you See Your Job/Career in 2026?
It’s been a rough year for the American workforce with a crowded job market, layoff anxiety and a drooping economy. After such a challenging 2025, Doubt can make it difficult to think positively about 2026. If you’re like most people, your future predictions are based on Doubts from the past, not the truth about what lies ahead. When making New Year predictions, the mind is hardwired to jump to automatic negative conclusions. The ensuing worry and anxiety can take an unnecessary toll on our mental and physical health.
The New Year Predictions We Make Against Ourselves
A recent JobHire.AI survey of 2,000 respondents shows how discouraged, frustrated and uncertain the American workforce feels about their job prospects for 2026. A notable 41% describe their 2025 as depressing, 62% as exhausting and 54% are very worried about their job prospects in the upcoming year.
Three in four worry they might get laid off, and 24% are sure it will happen. Another recent study shows that 75% of workers are “job hugging” through 2027. When leaders and team members feel stuck, unable to move forward, they need to look at the stories they’re telling themselves about their own lives and their future careers.
“We all live in stories. But stories are not facts—they’re the narratives we create based on our past experiences and the voices in our heads,” according to Lior Arussy in his book, Dare to Author: Take Charge of the Narrative of Your Life.
The stories we craft in our heads about the future are based on the past, not what can be possible in the New Year. The narratives are usually composed of Doubts that overestimate future threats and underestimate our ability to handle them. And that mindset can make or break personal happiness and career success.
Doubts are exaggerated made-up stories streaming through our minds that we latch onto as fact—worries, anxieties and ruminations that interrupt our enjoyment of the present moment. They magnify a concern with the worst-case scenario and play the distorted picture over in our minds. We end up stressing over a magnification of the problem (a made-up story)—not the real problem.
If you’re like most people, your Doubt jumps to conclusions without evidence. “I probably won’t reach the deadline,” or “I’m afraid I’ll flop in the job interview” or “I bet I’ll get laid off next year.” You automatically believe the story that has the potential to undercut your capabilities as you move forward.
How many times has Doubt jumped in and said, “You’re not going anywhere with this” or “Nobody wants to hear your ideas” or “You’re an impostor.” While these judgments are likely untrue, one thing is certain: you’re not alone.
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Many great leaders allude to eviscerating Doubt that makes them feel like a fraud. Even Maya Angelou, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century spoke of how the Doubting voice haunted her, “Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.’”
1. Take Notice Of Doubt About New Year Predictions.
When a made-up, Doubting story circles in your mind like a school of sharks, observe it with curiosity, much like you would inspect a blemish on your hand. I spoke with Jon Gordon, author of 7 Commitments of a Great Team and consultant to numerous CEOs, NFL, NBA and MLB teams.
He coaches the teams to take notice of Doubt the minute it comes in their minds and then take notes on it with a piece of paper or your phone. This self-distancing gives you a more objective view of Doubt and preempts it from seizing control of your career with its inaccurate story and revises the inaccurate story in your mind.
2. Talk Back To Doubt About New Year Predictions.
The science of self-talk has shown time and again that how we speak to ourselves can either foster or impede our careers. Negative self-talk can lead to anxiety and depression, and positive self-talk mitigates dysfunctional mental states.
If you’re like most people, when Doubt speaks to you, you don’t talk back. Gordon teaches people to talk to themselves, instead of listening to themselves. He gives examples of self-affirmations–facts to say to yourself when feelings of Doubt are clouding them. Words of encouragement such as “I’m strong and capable” or “I can overcome this challenge” act as “cognitive expanders,” giving you a more objective picture of yourself than the emotionally-subjective view that clouds the truth.
Or instead of focusing on Doubt, you can use past recall to say something like, “Bryan, you can do this. You’ve overcome bigger obstacles before.” A body of research shows that optimistic self-talk enables you to scale the career ladder faster and farther than pessimism.
3. Estimate The Odds If New Year Predictions Are Stacked Against You.
Gordon recommends that when the odds are stacked against you, ask yourself what are the actual odds. Estimate the odds. Then remind yourself that the odds aren’t zero and there’s still possibilities. He advises that you then look at successful people who overcame the odds that were stacked against them, asserting that if they can do it, so can you.
4. Use ‘Story Editing’ With Your New Year Predictions.
Arussy told me that the critical factor determining failure or success lies in the story people craft around their experiences. He adds that many people are unable to face challenges because they’re not able to edit and convert their past experiences into future-ready strengths.
“Story editing” is a form of self-talk that creates a self-distanced versus a self-immersed story, keeps you from reverting into that negative loop over and over again and helps you overcome the egocentric impulses of the negative prediction. Self- distancing revises Doubt’s negative story, just as you would revise a written report.
After you edit the story, it’s no longer the only story circling in your head. Story editing takes you out of the negative subjective role and catapults you into the narrator—the objective, bird’s-eye perspective of an outside observer as if it’s happening to someone else.
5. Don’t Base Your New Year Predictions On What Others Believe
It’s important to remember that your colleagues, family and friends have a negativity bias, too, and they could make comments that unwittingly plant Doubt in your head. In a story for Forbes.com, I interviewed Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five.
He told me that growing up in Gary, Indiana, he and his brothers rehearsed all the time in the house, and the neighbors would yell, “Shut up making all that noise. Ya’ll ain’t going nowhere.” As you consider your future, avoid relying on the predictions of others, listen to yourself and base your New Year predictions on positive facts, not biased negative feelings.
Forbes.com | December 3, 2025 | Bryan Robinson, Ph.D.,
