Episode 435:

Hello, and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everybody. Oh, my goodness, I am so happy to be here with you guys. I am so excited for this episode. I have been looking forward to doing it for quite some time, actually. This is going to be an episode on 2026 and the year of the Fire Horse. Now, inside business by design and inside my own business. We are in hardcore planning mode right now. We are in hardcore getting our ducks in a row, getting our shit together, for lack of a better term, for 2026, because that’s what this time is. And you may have been feeling that actually, like, just cosmically, you might have been feeling like beginning of December was maybe a little bit hard for you to get things done. 

It didn’t really feel like the energy was supporting lots of action. You might have felt like cocooning a little bit. And then you may have around maybe the 16th or so 17th century, started to feel that energy ease up a little bit and start to feel like, ooh, I feel like I can move again. Well, now is the time to start laying the groundwork for what’s coming in 2026. Now is that time. So we are hardcore in this inside business by design. I’m loving. I have clients writing to me in our telegram chat that they’re, like, getting their launches ready and they’re starting to already plan and get some of their material ready, which is so exciting for me to see them kind of not frantically taking action, but preparing. 

So when they’re in it in 2026, they actually feel like they can handle it all. In fact, they can take on extra things because they’re not going to be scrambling to make a lot happen. Okay, so I’m super excited about this. We are closing out. 2025 was the year of the Wood Snake. We actually did a whole episode on this and I told you how you can properly close out the Year of the Wood snake in episode four. 33. That was just last week on Monday, I believe it was. So I go into it in detail of the things that you can do to properly close out 2025. And don’t worry, you have until the Chinese New Year. You don’t just have until the end of this actual calendar year. You have till the Chinese New Year rings in on February 17th. 

So this 2025 year, we talk about this in that episode, that it was a year, hopefully that allowed you to see to the heart of what’s going on in your world and in the world around you, what needs to stay, what needs to go. This was like the year everybody’s journal got, like a major workout. We were working through a lot of things and things felt uncertain a lot. Things probably didn’t. Didn’t work the way that they used to. You might have found that you had to change a lot of things or maybe let some things go. And that’s good because that’s sort of what the element of wood is about. It’s like a clearing, it is a turning over. Right? 

So this coming year, so if you want to know more about the Wood Snake year, go back and listen to that episode, because I went into it in depth. This one is going to be dedicated to the year we are going into, the year not just of the horse, but of the fire horse. The horse is at home in the fire element. This is very different energy than wood snake energy. This is a Yang year. So when we think about yin and yang, you know, everybody remember, especially if you grew up in the 90s, everybody had like a tattoo of a yin yang. The yin yang, it represents the masculine and feminine. 

It represents these two sides of that polarity of, like, the universe that one side Yang energy imposes, penetrates, is forward and action oriented, and one side recedes and receives and is more passive in its nature, more introspective versus more outward. So this is an outward year. We have a fire element and then we have a yang animal. So if I had a prediction, I would say that this is the year that for those who are ready. And by ready, I don’t mean that you have everything done. And I mean you’ve had something on your heart. Like you’ve been saying, I’m going to get seen this year. I’m going to make it happen this year. Like, this is going to be my year. 

If you’ve been saying that for a while and you’ve been doing the work, but it hasn’t really come to fruition, meaning you haven’t seen the results for some reason. Something got lost in translation. You had more to figure out than you thought you did, or you held yourself back in the being seen, visibility, branding category. So if you were like, you know, this is the year that I’m going to launch my podcast, and this is the year I’m going to like, really build my brand online. I’m really going to allow myself to be seen if you have said that and not fully followed through. My prediction is that this is the year that it’s going to happen for you as long as you get out of your own way. And this is a year of getting out of your own way. 

So let me break down Horse and Fire and then we’re going to go into some of the elements of it. I’m going to tell you all about this energy that we’re going into and how you can prepare yourself best and what this year is going to look like. Some of the predictions that I have and just ways to look at this year so that you can be fully prepared to ride this horse to the finish line and be the first through it. Right. So before I start, we actually created a guide for you. We’ve been doing so many episodes on the year end. And if you go back to, I believe, three episodes ago, I did one on planning your unstoppable year for 2026. And we had such a great response from that episode. 

And I also, I said in that episode about how in business by design, we had a lot of people who are new to our program join us, thankfully, and they were there for our planning session. And I couldn’t get over how none of them had ever been taught to plan their year before. They hadn’t been taught how to organize themselves and to organize their actions so that they could juggle all the things that entrepreneurs typically have to juggle. And I was appalled by that because all of these people had been in coaching programs. They’ve been experienced entrepreneurs for a while. They’ve been doing this for a while. But it also speaks to why things haven’t worked to the level that they’ve been promised before, because there’s a lot of, like, spraying and praying going on. 

And what that leads to is a lot of dysregulation in your nervous system because you. You always feel like you’re figuring things out. You always feel like you’re behind the eight ball. You always feel like you’re creating on the fly. And when we create on the fly, that’s great when we do it, but to do that takes a lot of energy. And it also usually leads to lackluster results. So more planning helps us get better results because we make better products and we market them. So many people quit selling an offer because they didn’t have time to market it. They think the offer failed, so they launch it. It doesn’t do well. They’re like, oh, that didn’t go well. So then they go create a new one. And it’s like, no, you didn’t really market it. 

You put it together in two weeks, and then you slapped it up online to Your list of 500 people and nobody bought it. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad offer. It means that maybe you didn’t give it the time that it deserved. So what I did was I went. And because of all of this, I went. I went and created a guide. This is a guide to basically planning your unstoppable year. So I went through. I took kind of the best of what were doing in our planning session, just sort of distilled it down into some questions that you can ask yourself, some exercises you could take yourself through so that you can close out 2025. Right. 

And this is both from an alignment and from a strategic standpoint, so that you are really setting yourself up for success and looking at 2026 probably differently than you ever have, unless you’ve really carefully planned your year with a coach or with a mentor before. So if you want that, just DM me the words New Year 2026 on Instagram. I’m @nicolelainoofficial just new year2026 DM me that on Instagram and we’ll send you the details. Or go to nicolelaino.com newyear and we’ll. You can get it right there. Okay, I’m going to move on to the episode now because obviously giving you details about this guide is escaping me a little bit. I’m not doing so well. So let’s get into the episode. This is where I know I can shine. I’m going to talk about something I’m excited about. Okay, let’s go. 

To download your copy of the Unshakeable Year Planning Guide click the link: https://nicolelaino.com/newyear or DM Nicole “New Year 2026” on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nicolelainoofficial/

So horse energy. This is pure Yang movement. So obviously, the animals that represent the years, it’s not a literal translation, but there’s a lot of symbolism in the animal itself. Like an ox is sort of reliable and pushes through and, you know, and then there are some that are not. Like, rats are super prosperous. I wouldn’t think of a rat and be like, I think of abundance, except for maybe that there are millions of them. And I grew up in New York, so I’m used to seeing them a lot. Had one in my apartment once. Don’t recommend it. Story for another time. Anyway, moving on. This year is going to be the year of the horse. 2026 is the year of the horse. We have pure Yang movement. This is a year of freedom. 

If you think about a horse, there is power, horsepower, Right. They even use it to describe how fast a car goes. And the amount of power there is in a car is how many horses. Right. Horsepower. It is independence. It is momentum, vitality, competitiveness, which I think is an interesting one. We don’t necessarily think of horses as being competitive, but they’re racers. And obviously, like when you go into the Chinese symbolism, horses were a very big symbol of strength, of power, and of military might. So winning the horse is really associated with winning, because if you had tamed horses in the ancient times in Asia, and. And you had them on your side in a war and you could be shooting people with arrows while a horse runs very fast, your chances of winning that war were so much greater. 

So this is the symbolism of the horse here. Okay? Unbridled power. Right? Horsepower. Then we have fire. We go from wood, which is about, like, clearing and creativity and space, to fire, visibility, passion, ignition. This is an expressive energy, courage, confrontation, and truth. There’s no tentativeness in a fire horse here. The horse is at home in this fire element. This is going to be, I believe it’s going to feel, probably at first, it might feel a little like, whoa, where did all this come from? And then once you get your bearings, just like if you’ve ever been on a horse and you’ve gotten where they take off unexpectedly, if you didn’t fall off, you were able to right yourself. And then eventually, when you can crouch down and get into your correct position, what do you feel like? 

I remember the first time I cantered on a horse and I really got it up to a gallop, and I felt like I was flying. That’s what this will feel like. If you can sink into the stirrups, hold onto the reins or the mane, crouch down, become one with the animal, and figure out what the rhythm is of this ride. Okay, so the wood that we cleared last year is the fuel that we are going to burn in 2026. So what this year is not. Is. It’s not a year for, like, overthinking. The horse is not an overthinker. It’s not a year for excessive deliberation. It is not a year for, like, you know, this is not a year where your journal is going to get the workout it did in 2025. I think there’s going to be a lot of action. 

The only time you’re going to need it and you will, is when you are think about it from the elements. The fire is burning so much. You may need to clear a little bit. So you may need to clear a little bit. And if you need to clear a little bit, and we’re going to talk a little bit about balancing the elements as well in a moment. But if you need to clear a little bit, then you’re journaling about how you can keep going. It’s clearing the space so that you can keep moving. That’s what I teach Inside Business by Design, our whole deconditioning library. 

I always say to our clients, it’s like you start out in the beginning, you’re tapping and you’re clearing and it feels sticky, which is why they’re in such a good position being in this, where they’ve already started the work that when they hit 2026, they’re going to be very clear already. But that work that we do, that clearing that we do, you know, eventually you just hit a point where it feels like there’s just so much movement there where you don’t have to clear all the old stuff. Now you’re in like maintenance mode. That’s how I see 2026. This is like that maintenance mode. 2025 was the big clean out. You ever do a deep clean of like your fridge or your closet or your house? You don’t deep clean every weekend, but in 2025, we deep cleaned the whole darn house. 

Now we’ve got to maintain it. That’s what 2026 is about. You’re still going to clean the house, there’s still going to be dust bunnies around there’s still going to be dishes to wash, there’s still going to be laundry to do. There’s still going to be tidying up to be done and wiping everything down. But you’re not going to spend, you know, your weekend deep cleaning like you did in 2025. Okay, so this is why that if you’re looking to like sit and deliberate and pore over, what should I do and how should I do it? What should I do and how should I do it? This 2025 was a year that you might have been able to get away with that in 2026. I think that’s going to be a problem. 

It’s going to be a year for embodied decision making for you to feel really trusting of yourself and acting on what you already know you need to do. That’s what I mean. Like, you probably already know. And this is part of what’s in the guide, if you choose to download it, if you already know what you are supposed to be doing. This is the year you’re going to do it. There’s no more thinking about it and you’re gonna let the momentum teach you what’s right or what’s wrong. The action will lead to clarity. And I can already hear my non sacrals, my projectors, my reflectors and manifestors just being like this sounds like a manifesting generator year and granted it certainly does. 

Even as I was writing this and I’m writing all the things down about like you know, what the horse year is about and you know, all the reading I’ve been doing on it, just kind of like, you know, steeping myself in this and I’m like, yeah, sounds like a mani gen. But the difference is there’s a mani gen in alignment and there’s many gen in misalignment. A misaligned many gen will be distracted, will be creating out of lack and fear, not out of trust and not out of belief and not out of purpose. We don’t want that. 

But for all of you non sacrals, I want you to think, as far as I know that a lot of you are probably already thinking, you know, this sounds like a lot of doing and I’m already getting a little anxiety thinking about how fast this is going to be. What if I can’t keep up? Don’t think about as how much you have to do now. If you have the means and you probably do, a lot of people will think they don’t have the means to hire. But I always say that I hired. She’s my right hand woman now. She was a VA off of upwork when I hired her. That’s how I found her, off of upwork. And she has become my indispensable teammate. 

But I hired her way before I had the money or way before I really knew what I was going to give her. I just knew I was overwhelmed and I needed help and I didn’t know how to do that correctly so I just did it. You can hire people probably for a lot less money than you think. You don’t have to hire them for 40 hours a week. I sure as hell didn’t. I hired her. I think she started at like five or six hours a week or something like that. That’s it. And then we built up to what she’s doing now. That’s the level that I’m talking about. So if you are a non sacral, I’m not telling you have to hire, but you should consider it. 

How would it make you feel to hire someone to do the things that you don’t want to do. That probably makes you feel very spacious, which is what we want. We want spaciousness because spaciousness creates. That’s where momentum has space to really go. It’s unimpeded then when there’s space. But the other thing I want to tell my non sacrals is that don’t think about this as a year just of action. Because action doesn’t mean busy. Action just means very deliberate and unflinching and not second guessing yourself and not holding back. This is a year of expression, outward expression. It’s not a year of hustle. I know it can start to feel that way when I start saying things like fire and initiation and momentum. You can have a lot of momentum just by expressing yourself. It does not mean that you are hustling. 

So I wanted to make that very clear. Cause I could almost hear the heartbeats of my non sacral friends in the audience listening to this, just being like, oh my God, I’m getting this. I’m getting emotional already. I’m getting overwhelmed already. Oh my God. That’s not what it is. This is a year about speaking before you’re ready. It’s a year about launching before you feel finished. It’s gonna be a year of more energy out of the mind, being out of the mind and into your body. Body. That’s what it’s about. Making mistakes, being okay with them, but not being stagnant. Movement does not hustle. Movement is self trust. It is not second guessing the actions that you want to take. And it’s taking them with purpose, going all in on them. 

But it doesn’t mean you’re doing endless launches and constantly online and doing all these things. It means that when you show up big, you show up unapologetic. That is what this is about. So this year, momentum is the ruler. And I really encourage you if you don’t have support, if you haven’t invested in mentorship for 2026, and I know a lot of people have been burned. You’ve invested in things, they haven’t gone well. I understand it. Me too. Been there. But there also comes a time where you have to recognize where you’re at. I’ve been there. I have felt like I have not gotten what I’ve paid for. I have felt like I have not gotten what was promised out of programs and masterminds and all these things. And I’ve had some that were wonderful too. 

And sometimes we forget that when we go to invest again, we Remember only the bad times. We remember only the terrible experiences that we don’t want to repeat, rather than thinking about all that we did learn and all that we did accomplish and the ones that did come through for us. Sometimes they don’t deliver on the whole promise that, you know, some of you read a testimonial in on somebody’s sales page and you know, they made $200,000 in eight days using my five day launch formula and we don’t make that and we think that it’s a failure and the program was bs. Now, somebody else’s results might not be yours. What it does is it, you know, testimonials are there to show you that people took it, they got results, it does work in theory. Now, whether it will work for you. 

That is something that I think an education that a lot of entrepreneurs get is we have to figure out what works for us. That’s why I teach by human design, because I don’t want to teach you what works for you, but help you find what works for you. But whatever you decide, this year is going to be a year of momentum. And momentum that breaks. No longer is momentum, then you start over again. And if you’re doing that this year, you might find that has more repercussions this year than it does in other years. That break in your momentum costs you more in 2026 than it did a few years ago. We’re already seeing a lot of things in the industry change. I believe this will be a year of needing to be nimble, needing to be able to pivot quickly and shift things. 

If we find that things are changing and need to be tweaked, it’s going to be a year of. I think it’s going to be very exciting, but it’s going to be important to be plugged into a community and with someone doesn’t have to be me, but plugged into a community, a mentor, a coach, somebody who has their finger on the pulse of what these things are happening, who is actively working in the space and who can be helping to guide you to find your path to success this year so that you’re not sitting there asking yourself the dreaded question, that is rough in any year, but in 2026, in the year of the Fire Horse, if you’re standing clueless, wondering, what am I going to do and how am I going to do it? 

What am I going to do and how am I going to do it? What am I? And Lord knows we all end up in that space at some Point. But if you are caught in that thought process in 2026, you’ll get trampled, and we don’t want that. So make a smart investment. Get some sort of support this year. It will benefit you in the long run, no matter what it is. Okay. As long as it is a solid program with a solid person. So I want to give you a question to kind of round this out. I want to round this out with a question that you can ask yourself to kind of get into the energy of this fire horse here. Because it’s about desire. And then I also want to show you how you can kind of balance this energy. 

If things get a little bit heated, if you get a little worked up, if sometimes it feels like the fire is a bit much, we can balance. The elements can be balanced, which I think is a very interesting sort of way to think about how this all works energetically. So a fire horse year, again, we’re gonna have a bit of a generator manifesting generator theme here. But fire horse years are driven by want, not should desire. The burning fire of desire inside of us is what’s going to fuel us, fuel the year, fuel the actions. So in order to be in alignment with that, in order to be taking action, that’s in alignment with the spirit of the fire horse year, which is want and desire, not obligation. Ask yourself, what do I want more than I want to be safe? 

What do I want? What do I truly desire? It’s gonna be so important to tap into that. And then another question for you, because this is a year, you know, if you think about a horse that is in its power. That is a healthy horse out in the wild. It is proud, it’s bold. They are prey animals, but they don’t present that way in the wild unless they are being hunted. They are running free. They are strong, they are beautiful. So what feels too bold to you? What feels like something that you feel called to, but you might be playing a little bit small with it, you might not really be thinking you can own it. What is the thing? It. Maybe it’s been on your heart, it’s been on your mind, it’s been calling to you for a while. 

But maybe you think, nah, that’s not me. I couldn’t do that. That’s too much. This is the year we all get to be too much. When the universe says, I’m ready for you to be too much, let’s see what you got. So the last thing that I’ll bring up here is if the fire at times feels a little bit much, or you want to ground it in something because the earth grounds the fire. Think about earth elements. Bring them into your home, bring them into your office, into your workspace. Ceramics, stone, clay, like pottery. Things like that. Neutral tones, earthy tones. They will. You don’t want too much of it, but just a piece here and there can really ground it. And if you want to amp up the fire, light a candle, light a fire. It’s wintertime. Play with that. 

I mean, don’t light a bonfire. We want to work with it. We don’t want to overdo anything. Just like we don’t want to overdo the earth elements tampering down the fire element. We also don’t want to stoke the fire too much. That it’s too much for us to handle. But you can play with these, and I think that’s a really fun way to play with the elements. Okay, that’s all I have for you. If you want to get your hands on the New Year’s Guide on how to have your unstoppable year in 2026, all you have to do is DM me the words New Year2026 on Instagram. I’m @nicolelainoofficial. Or go to nicolelaino.com newyear and you can get it right there. All right, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. 

To download your copy of the Unshakeable Year Planning Guide click the link: https://nicolelaino.com/newyear or DM Nicole “New Year 2026” on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nicolelainoofficial/

And remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakeable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakeable with human design. We’ll see you next time.