Start/Stop 2026 Version

[This is an updated & revised post from 2024.]

I’m a believer in what I choose to think guides my life.  If I choose to embrace anger and resentment, I’ll create the more anger and resentment.  If I choose peaceful thoughts, my life will be more peaceful. If I choose to see the right rather than the wrong, I’ll attract more of the right.  Geneen Roth, writer / teacher, muses in the 09/25/24 Super Soul podcast, ”…people think all the time about what's going wrong. Let's look at what's not going wrong. So I rephrased it because I don't want the word wrong in my energetic space. So I say, I'm going to stop at least three times during the day and think about what's going right. Exponentially, your day gets better” (qtd. in https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/super-soul-special-geneen-roth-conscious-eating/id1264843400?i=1000670613709). As Ms. Roth points out, a mind shift from ‘what’s wrong’ to ‘what’s right’ is  powerful change in perspective.  What could you start; what could you stop?

Here are a few of my starts and implied are the complementary stops.  Do I slip up and lead with negative responses?  Sometimes.  Then, I get back to minding my thoughts and responses so that I put forth what I intend for my life, focus on my priority.  As you read through my list, think about what you could start/stop and why.

• Start making coffee at home rather than spending $ on buying coffee.  According to Matt Sedensky on February 14, 2026, “Years of steadily climbing coffee prices have some in this country of coffee lovers upending their habits by nixing café visits, switching to cheaper brews or foregoing it altogether. Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago (2025), according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%.  That extraordinary rise has brought some to take extraordinary measures. Data from Toast, a payment platform used by more than 150,000 restaurants, found the median price of a regular hot coffee in the U.S. had climbed to $3.61 in December, with wide variation by location. The median price of cold brews was $5.55. Virtually all coffee consumed in the U.S. is imported. Though tariffs affected some imports of coffee in 2025, they ultimately were removed. Climate issues — drought in Vietnam, heavy rain in Indonesia, and hot, dry weather in Brazil — are blamed for reducing yields of coffee crops and driving up global prices. Two-thirds of Americans drink coffee daily, according to the National Coffee Association. For many, it is such an indispensable part of their routine, the soaring price has led to nothing more than grumbling. The coffee association says its surveys show coffee consumption is broadly holding steady despite price hikes. But, squeezed by the cost of everything from rent to beef, others are shaking up their habit. Sharon Cooksey, 55, of Greensboro, North Carolina, was visiting her local Starbucks most weekday mornings for a caramel latte until scaling back last year. First, she switched to brewing Starbucks at home. Then, she discovered Lavazza coffee was about 40% cheaper and switched to it.  ‘I can buy a bag of coffee for $6?”\’ she said to herself. ‘It was like I had just discovered another world. The multiverse opened up to me in the coffee aisle of [the grocery store].’ She has noticed her home-brewed costs tick upward, too, but it’s nothing compared to her café habit. A bag of beans that lasts weeks costs her about the same as one latte. Cooksey misses the social aspect of visiting the café, where baristas greeted her by name. But she’s been surprised to find she actually prefers the way her homemade coffees taste. ‘Twenty cents a cup compared to $7 or $8 a cup,’ she says. ‘The math just makes sense’” (https://apnews.com/article/coffee-inflation-prices-starbucks-1a809b2d3e650d5e92e2c0f5a5f4f85b ).

• Start writing a list of what I’m grateful for at the end of every day.  I keep a Gratitude Journal.  This was a hard shift for me because I’m not naturally a contented person.  Still, when I do this, I recall what is right about my life rather than what is wrong and I am encouraged.

  
  

• Start developing diverse friend groups. Having friends who have a variety of skin colors, who come from many cultures different from my own, who have had varied experiences expands my perspectives.

• Start making my health a precedence. I’ve always worked out and attempted to fuel healthily with food and drink; still, I must remind myself every day that my physical well being is a preference so that I take care of my body.  In turn, my healthy body improves my mental, emotional, and spiritual functioning.

• Start honoring my own word. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.  In other words, I’m being authentic with myself and others. If I say ‘no’, I mean it.

• Start loving myself exactly as I am now, not as I wish I were.  For example, if I have some pounds I want to lose, I love my body now rather than waiting to love it after the pounds come off.

• Start focusing only on today. The past is gone and the future isn’t here; all we have is now.

• Start lifting myself by lifting others.  I had a friend from high school who struggled with Parkinson’s and his wife was challenged by cancer.  This man lifted others by sharing positive encouragement, a funny meme or story, by writing poetry from his heart for specific people.  By lifting others, he was lifted.

•  Start listening to music, dance, take a walk, do something creative rather than watch the news or play violent video games.  What I watch and listen to affects my mood, my thoughts, my attitudes, my responses either positively or negatively.  I pay attention to what I consume. By the way, I don’t watch the news anymore.  Yes, I still know what’s going on, but, it’s no longer in my face 24/7.

•  Start living each day with integrity.  If you haven’t read Dr. Martha Beck’s book, The Way of Integrity, Finding The Path To Your True Self, I highly recommend it. Integrity is a rare virtue these days, so there aren’t currently great models of integrity - I want my life to be a great model.

•  Start learning something every day. I’m a lifelong learner; sometimes I learn something on purpose and sometimes life gives me a lesson I didn’t expect. I learn no matter how something turns out.

•  Start surrounding myself with people who bring out the best, rather than the worst, in me. Negative, downer, argumentative, chaotic people and situations are energy drains. Those are often the “Karens” (or to Gen Z’s “Jessicas”) or “Chads” (or to Gen Z’s “Davids”). I want to be around people who are positive, see the good possibilities and opportunities.

• Start giving to people I want to give to rather than giving out of obligation.  If I get invited to a wedding or graduation for someone so distant that it’s obvious to me that all they want is a gift, I send them a congratulatory note / card and no gift.  In the past when someone didn’t  express thanks or send a ‘thank you’ note, I got mad at them. Misplaced anger because that gesture was my exception, not theirs.  Now, I gift people only when I choose to and if they don’t express gratitude, I let it go.

•  Start expressing what bothers me about what someone else does; set solid boundaries. I can share with them from a place of kindness and help them understand my boundaries.  For example, I have a friend who loves to hunt and, in the past he has sent photos to me of his smiling face/gun in hand and the animals he has killed. While I know he is going to eat what he kills and I am a meat eater myself, it bothered me to see his smiling face over dead animals.  I think differently about this.  I consider how the North American indigenous people would thank the animals they were about to kill for giving up their lives for the hunter’s family / tribe to keep them fed, clothed, provisioned. Smiling over killing a creature for “sport,” is creepy and disrespectful to the creature and to me. When I shared that this bothers me, my hunter-friend stopped sending me photos of his kills while he grinned at their dead bodies.

I could go on, but, I would like to hear are your perspectives: What are some things you could start and some you could stop? Why would starting benefit you? Please share your thoughts, insights, and suggestions by either commenting below this post if you are reading this on social media, or, if you are reading this through your email subscription, please share, by emailing me, at reimaginelife22@gmail.com.

I’m taking a break from posting until 3/14/26.  Thank you for reading and participating in this blog essay; I invite you to subscribe to my blog at www.reimaginelifecoach.com.