We begin in a familiar place. December aisles glare with lights, carts collide, tempers shorten, and a quiet grief hums beneath the music. We feel it in our bodies and our brains. The strain of commercial Christmas, the conflicts at tables and borders, the unspoken pressure to buy, prove, and outperform. Somewhere along the way, we organized much of our Western culture around a vicious and exhausting race, an employ-or-be-employed sprint to be richer than others, faster than others, louder than others.
We called it success. We wrapped it in the language of the American Dream. And we paid a steep price, forgetting that we are fearfully and wonderfully made!
When Profit Becomes the Point, People Become Optional
We mistook prosperity for accumulation at any cost. More hours, more debt, more stuff, more distance from one another. Collaboration was quietly sacrificed on the altar of competition. Those with less money were cut off, not only from opportunity, but from dignity. Conflicts, economic, political, cultural, kept killing good people and left us neurologically unequipped to support those who fell behind. Stress rose. Cortisol flooded our systems. Our collective brains learned fear faster than hope.
We can see it in real life. Families argue over spending instead of sharing presence. Workplaces reward burnout while calling it commitment. Communities fragmented by scarcity thinking, where helping another feels like losing ground. These patterns are not moral failures. They are learned neural habits.
And habits can change!
The Brain Is Not the Enemy, It’s the Doorway
Neuroscience now offers remarkable possibilities to fix this long-standing problem of profits over people. Our brains are plastic, relational, and deeply shaped by environment and emotion. Boredom is not reality, it’s a habit shaped by repeated choices. Stress literally shrinks the brain, while encouragement changes brain chemistry and circuitry by raising serotonin and rewiring us for delight. Plasticity allows daily renewal, keeping us younger and smarter as we practice new ways of being.
This is not abstract theory. Environment counts. A healthy, comfortable, visually pleasing setting helps us transform problems into solutions. Music changes brainwave speeds and moods, certain rhythms enhance productivity and cooperation. Anger, fear, and frustration are fueled by cortisol, while wellbeing is extended by serotonin, the brain’s aha chemistry of insight and connection.
When we vent, we believe relief will follow. Instead, we carve new neural pathways for more misery. When we remain cynical, creativity shuts down, innovation collapses, and cortisol rises individually and collectively. When poor tone enters communication, stress multiplies and we begin running on far fewer cylinders than needed for wellbeing.
Why Competition Failed Us and How Collaboration Can Heal Us
Our brains did not evolve for endless rivalry. They evolved for shared problem-solving. Yet lectures dominate learning even though teaching as we learn helps retention far more. Diversity efforts often fail because passive listening activates a deficit model, not lived integration. Old ruts stored in the basal ganglia keep repeating yesterday’s answers, while working memory, small but powerful, enables change when we use it to solve real problems together.
Multiple intelligences exist in all of us. All eight can be developed daily, proving IQ is fluid, not fixed. Women’s and men’s brains differ biologically and intellectually in ways few optimize, leaving enormous prosperity untapped. When collaboration is replaced by competition, these differences become fault lines instead of force multipliers.
Mind-guiding, or mutual mentoring where all teach and all learn, awakens creativity and invention. Speaking a person’s name with respect and value sparks shared awareness. Encouragement alters chemistry. Meta-messages, or those subtle jabs pretending kindness, destroy relationships through mismatched meaning. Smart skills that integrate hard and soft capacities allow us to solve complex or pressing problems with the brain in mind, not against it.
A Dynamic New Pathway for 2026
The future does not require grand revolutions. It requires brain-friendly strategies that act as a bulwark between ruts and rejuvenation. Each small shift matters. Each day offers the best possible moment to take a first step toward prioritizing humanity within us all.
We can choose environments that soothe and stimulate. We can hook difficult facts onto what we already know and learn faster. We can outsource memory into lists and habits to free focus for creativity. We can address problems by proposing solutions, creating new neural pathways that see possibilities instead of dead ends. We can activate brainwaves that enhance sleep and peak performance instead of restlessness.
Most of all, we can choose people over profit, again and again, until our brains learn a new normal.
What If Today Changed Everything?
What if today led us in a new direction of dynamite possibilities for wellbeing and wonder for all?
What if boredom loosened its grip because curiosity became habitual?
What if collaboration replaced scarcity, and prosperity expanded because unused intelligences finally mattered?
What if encouragement became currency, lowering cortisol and raising collective intelligence?
What if brain plasticity, not burnout, defined our work and community?
These are not fluff or fantasies. They’re evidence-based possibilities waiting for us to practice. One at a time. When we animate brain-friendly strategies daily, one habit, one conversation, one environment at a time, we reclaim what commercialism and conflict stole from our treasure chests, our capacity for grace, cooperation, and shared flourishing.
The leap forward is not louder striving, or converting others to what we want them to be. It is wiser wiring. And it begins now, within us, as fearfully and wonderfully made humans! That’s my New Year’s Hope with Love! Count me in!