10 Things Men Need to STOP Doing in 2026 to Have Their Best Year Yet

All right, team, welcome back. Connor Beaton here. And today I'm diving into the 10 things that you as a man need to stop doing today to have your best year yet. All right, 2025. Maybe it felt busy but not fulfilled. Maybe your year felt disciplined but not necessarily directed. Maybe you found yourself working incredibly hard but not winning. If that feels like it was you, then this video is for you. Because 2026 doesn't need more motivation. You've probably consumed by now lots of motivation about 2026 and starting your new years off right and what you should be doing. And I have found that the process of elimination sometimes is the most effective way to create fulfillment, to create direction. So today I'm going to break down the 10 things that, that you as a man can eliminate in 2026. If you are really committed to having your strongest year yet, mentally, physically, relationally, financially, whatever your focus is. And honestly, some of these things, they might sting. That's how you know that they are probably working. My motto is fuck you, love you. I embrace that duality. And it really is a big part of my personality. It's a big part of my mission is, you know, it's working. When it hits and you're like, oh, f you, Connor. Like, that's not what I wanted to hear, but I know it's true. So let's just dive straight in. Number one, stop confusing motion with progress, right? Being busy is not the same as moving forward and making real progress. I see so many of you guys exhausted, burnt out. And it's not because life is hard. It's because you are scattered. Your energy, your effort is going in so many places. You are a shotgun and not a laser beam, right? If your calendar is full, but your life isn't necessarily improving, it's not moving in the direction and the outcomes and the results that you know you are capable of. You don't need more discipline. You. You need more direction. You need to focus in and refine your aim. So in 2026, in order to do this, stop saying yes to things that do not move your life in the direction that you want it to go. Stop filling up your days in a way that avoids the uncomfortable questions, tasks, actions that you know what will produce results and stop hiding behind productivity instead of purpose, AKA drop the busy work. Sometimes I work with men who are incredibly busy, but they are not achieving the outcomes that they want because the outcomes that they actually want, the direction that they want to take their life, is uncomfortable. So you have to be willing to get uncomfortable so ask yourself, you can write this question down and journal about it today, tomorrow, what is the one direction I am committed to, to building towards? And that direction could be financial abundance and freedom. That direction could be the best year of health physically in your life, the best year of relationship in your life. What is the direction that you are trying to move towards? Number two, and this will really support it. And I touched on it. Stop avoiding the hard conversations. Most men do not lack confidence. They lack confrontation skills. Confronting the things in your life that you. You're afraid of, that you're worried about, that you're nervous about. You're worried that somebody will judge you or they. You know, they'll. They'll be upset with you. They'll be disappointed in you. So what ends up happening is you avoid telling your girlfriend, your wife the truth. You avoid setting boundaries at work or at home. You avoid saying no to some commitment that you know will genuinely, genuinely cause strife or conflict or you'll be miserable about. And it's. What does it do? It creates the strife and the conflict. You avoid naming the resentment that has been brewing in the background before it turns into real contempt. So avoidance does not give you peace. This is the great masculine illusion. This is the great wool over your eyes as a man that avoidance somehow will keep peace, bring you peace, provide you with peace, but in fact, it only creates chaos and decay. So in 2026, stop being so damn easygoing. Have some standards, brother. Have some standards at the cost of your, you know, at the cost of maybe disappointing other people. But have some standards and stop being so easygoing because it's costing you your integrity. So peace comes from. From clarity and not silence? Sometimes, yes. You know, buttoning it up, finding silence, going out in nature and finding silence, all of that can bring peace. But oftentimes, in our relationships, in our work, in our mission, in our purpose, it's not about silence. It's about clarity and speaking the truth. So lean into your truth this year. Number three, stop letting dopamine run your damn life. I see you. I know you. I've been there. I've been you. Where just dopamine controlled everything that I did. Right? If you cannot sit still, if you can't lead yourself, for example, if you've gotten this far in the video and you've already checked your emails and you've opened up other tabs and you're doing other things and you're, you know, typing in on, you know, messages and stuff like that, you're met, you're responding to Other people. You are distracted. You are probably allowing dopamine to run your life. You are not immersed in one thing at a time. Time. You're stuck with endless scrolling, with porn, with sugar, with alcohol, with constant stimulation. These do not relax you. They dull you. This is why I make my videos in the way that I do. I probably could hack these videos and chop them up into little bite size and get more and more and more and more views. But what I'm interested in is the man who can sit down and. And listen and process and take in the content that I am delivering to him. To you. I want you to have my content be a practice in focus, in attention, in being able to take in and actually digest what the hell I am saying. So this year, in 2026, stop outsourcing your nervous system to algorithms, to porn, to substances. Boredom is not your enemy. It is the doorway to depth. Boredom is not the enemy. It's the doorway to depth. I practice this myself in my life. I practice this with my son. Sometimes we'll just go out into the. Into the wilderness and we'll just wander for an hour or two and I won't take my cell phone. I won't be listening to music. I won't have a book. We'll literally just go and wander. And it's a practice in being still, being silent, letting yourself be bored. If you grew up in the 80s and early 90s, there was probably plenty of times where you were freaking bored. So a regulated man is a powerful man, A man who is able to focus, a man who is able to stay disciplined, a man who is able to have impulse control is going to dominate the future because there are going to be so many men whose systems are just hijacked by constant dopamine chasing. Number four. Stop treating your body. Stop training your body. Sorry. Like it's separate from your mind. Stop treating and training your body like it's separate from your mind. Your body is not a side project. It's the foundation in psychology. There's something called the elephant and the rider. And it's an analogy for your body and your mind, right? So your body, the unconscious, uh, it's really the vessel for your unconscious brain, your emotions. Uh, your body is the elephant and your mind is the rider. Now, why is this important? Because your mind can dictate where things go. Sometimes the rider does have a good amount of control over the elephant if they have a good relationship. But with that said, when your body, when the elephant gets spooked, is out of control, is Anxious or worried, you know, is constantly thinking that there's a tiger in the grass and it doesn't matter what the rider says because the elephant is so much larger that it will take control. So you have to start to treat your body. Not something as separate from your mind, but something that is integral for the processing in your mind. If you want to be grounded, if you want to have direction, if you want to be a good leader, if you want to have confidence or feel good about yourself, you need to have a healthy, direct relationship with your body. Men usually try and think their way out of problems that require strength or breath or movement or rest or regulation. So in 2026, stop treating your body like it's a machine, like it's just something that's dangling down from the top of your head and ignoring it until you burn out and break down. A weak body makes courage expensive. A strong body makes discipline easier. So practice working out, practice doing some breath work, do some embodiment practices, but really focus. In the last couple years, if you've been listening to my content, you've probably noticed that I've gone through a major focus in, on health, on Fitness at 40, got in the best shape of my life last year, did my vitals, went through a whole bunch of blood work, went through a five month detox program. It was phenomenal, really having a much deeper connection with my body, both emotionally and physically. Physically. Number six, stop trying to be like everybody else. I missed number five. I'm going to come back to number five. Let's actually, let's just do number five. Number five. Stop blaming your past for your present. Stop blaming your past for your present. Just like I just messed up in the past. Your past explains you. It really does it explain. It can explain who, who you are and the decisions that you make and the choices that you make and what you like. But it does not excuse the choices that you continue to choose that you know are not right for you. Yes, your childhood patterns matter. Your childhood does matter. It did have an impact. Yes, your pain is absolutely real. Whatever it is that you went through, we need to acknowledge that. We need to work on that. And at some point healing becomes an act of self leadership and not self analysis. We cannot continue to simply navel gaze your way through life. You cannot continue to simply just analyze and analyze and analyze. At some point you have to lead yourself better. And in 2026, stop waiting to feel healed before acting, before leading. I see men doing this all the time and maybe you have caught, been caught in that pattern, which is you're waiting for yourself to feel perfect about yourself. You're waiting for yourself to, oh, one day I'll really love who I am, and then I'll take action and then I'll launch that product and then, you know, my marriage will work out. No, start acting today. Action is often what heals, especially for men. I'm going to say that again. Action. Action is often what heals, especially for men. And it's the action that you are afraid to take. So that was number five, number six, which I gave away before. Stop trying to be like everybody else. Men who try to be liked and are really trying to get their validation externally are. Are oftentimes respected by no one, including themselves. You were not built to be necessarily neutral about everything. You were built to be principled as a man. And so in 2026, my encouragement for you is to stop softening your truth in order to keep approval. This is something that I'm speaking to myself as well on this one. Stop softening your truth in order to keep approval. We certainly live in this time where if you have a divergent truth from any type of a modern narrative, you know you are going to get attacked. You know you're going to get people. I'm unfollowing you. I can't believe that you would think this. I can't believe that you believe that or whatever it is. So stop apologizing for having standards. Stop softening your truth in order to maintain approval and stop diluting your values as a man to avoid tension. That that tension is actually okay. Strong men or just men in general, the great leaders of the world, they are the ones that create friction. And that friction oftentimes is what creates or at least contributes to respect. Number seven, stop living without a regulated nervous system. I probably should have made this number one, in all honesty, because everything else is kind of predicated on it. But here's my core belief. People who can think critically, who can use discernment and stay grounded during duress during a conflict, they are going to win the future. They are going to win the future because the next few years, as we've already seen in the last couple years, there is going to be. It's going to be marked by more and more reactivity, more and more short tempers, more and more chaos than ever before. And we can see this, you can likely see this early, right? The sort of the order of the world that was established before is breaking down. It's breaking apart the structure and the infrastructure that we used to know is no longer and things are changing. The species, human beings, the world is going through some type of a transition. And we don't need to label what it is or try and analyze that. It's just going through transition. And pretty much everybody can feel that. And if you are somebody who is constantly in a reactive state, anxious or worried, overanalyzing, frantic about what is happening, you are not grounded and you will not be able to lead. So stop letting everyone and every news article hijack your nervous system. Focus on being grounded. Focus on critical thinking, focus on discernment. Focus on being able to stay present to what's happening inside of you. So let the cues inside of your body help you understand when you're getting hijacked and pause. Practice daily breathing techniques to ground your body and your mind. And on a daily basis, practice understanding what is happening inside of you. When you want to move into some really heated debate or you feel yourself shutting down and collapsing and pulling away and not wanting to engage in something hard, start to really understand when you move out of a grounded, calm, regulated, strong nervous system. Because a regulated nervous system is going to be a gift in the future, because so few people already, so few people have it, and so few people moving forward in the future will possess it. So curate it, cultivate it, focus on it daily. Number 8. Stop outsourcing meaning to women, to validation, and maybe even to work, but more specifically to the validation of women. No relationship is going to carry the weight of purpose in your life. When you make your partner your meaning, you become needy, you become insecure. You outsource what you need to insource. Right? You outsource what you need to insource. So a big part of this is in order to find a deeper level of meaning of purpose, of fulfillment in life, we have to start to insource that recognition, that validation in order to develop self worth and confidence. So stop asking the world to validate you, to give you meaning, and start to insource that validation and that recognition for yourself. This is something that I see so many of you guys struggling with. Year after year, week after week, month after month. I will ask a man, he'll have a big accomplishment, a big achievement. Were you able to recognize yourself for that? No, absolutely not. Okay. How are you feeling? Well, I kind of feel like crap that I achieved this, but it feels hollow, it feels empty. Of course it does. You're not able to recognize yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually for the thing that you had been working so hard towards. Right? So meaning Is forged, yes, through responsibility, but it's also forged in being able to recognize effort, being able to recognize and celebrate what you have achieved and accomplished and what you have poured into something. Number nine, there's only two more. Stop doing everything alone. Right? This is why we have the Man Talks alliance. There's over 1100 men in this community from all over the world. But the truth is that independence is really, it's not necessarily isolation. It's just that most men are starving for some type of depth oriented relationship. Most men have these very surface level relationships where they talk about the normal stuff, but the real meaningful aspects of life, their sort of philosophy, their notion of spirituality, being able to contemplate meaning and existence. They don't really have a lot of men to have those types of conversations with. And so they try and go it alone. And men who go alone, they, they genuinely say stay stuck longer. They rationalize their habits, they make excuses for it. There's nobody really holding them accountable. They oftentimes will lose perspective because there's no one challenging you and saying, hey man, you've said that this thing is a big value to you and. But you are completely out of alignment with that value. So what we need, what you likely need in 2026, is to stop trying to go it alone, to really find a place, a community, a group of men, where you can be honest, unapologetically transparent, own your bullshit, get challenged, have other men contribute to your life and point you in the direction where you know you're capable of going. So if you want, check out Demand Talks Alliance. There's details in the, in the description. We open up every three months. Like I said, we've got over 1100 men from around the world in that community. And if you're wanting to kick ass and chew bubblegum this year, and yes, that is a Duke Nukem reference for those who know what Duke Nukem is, then this is the place for you to go. So go check it out. But the truth is that strong men build containers. They build brotherhood, they build mentorship, they build structure, they build accountability. Lone wolves will almost inevitably burn out, but packs will endure. And I really fundamentally believe that the men that are going to go furthest in the next three to five years, especially with the change in our societies, in our communities, in our global community, with the rise in the advent of AGI, I really fundamentally believe that packs of men, that groups of men, are going to go further together. Because the truth is, I know I need your help to go farther. And you Likely know that as well, especially in the way that the world is unfolding. Last but not least, and maybe second most important, to regulate your nervous system. Stop waiting for someday. Someday is arguably one of the most dangerous words in your vocabulary as a man. Someday I'll get in shape. Someday I'll have that conversation. Someday I'll take the risk. Someday I'll travel to that place or I'll talk to that woman, or, you know, I'll build that product. I'll build that side business that I've been thinking about. Fuck someday, okay? Embrace today, because so many men are hedging their lives. They're waiting. Well, maybe I'll get married when X, Y, and Z happens. Well, maybe I'll go on that trip when X, Y, and Z happens. Maybe I'll start planning that thing. Or when X, Y, and Z happens. No, begin today. Right? I. And maybe you've heard me talk about this before. I want to take my family traveling for an entire year around the world. This is just something that I've always wanted to do. Even when I was a teenager, I had this idea and this notion that if I ever had a family, one of the things that I would want to do is as a family unit, as hard and as challenging as I'm sure it will be, is to take my family and travel around the world. And it's just always been a goal of mine. And now that I have two kids, my wife and I are done having kids, I have started to plan very loosely this trip of, you know, going around the world. We're not going to go do it today because my son is, you know, four and a half, and my daughter's not even a year and a half old. But, you know, in four or five years, we are going to go do that trip. And so I'm starting today. I'm starting today. So someday is a story that fear tells you in order for you to stay complicit and comfortable and safe. And what we can start to do is we can begin to work our plan today. And I have this saying, which is, plan your work and work your plan. Right? Plan your work and work your plan. So start to build a plan. What is it that you want to do? Take action on it today. Whether it's starting research or whatever it is, whatever it is that, you know, you want to do this year. Do not wait for next month or the summer in order to start even coordinating it. Take action on it today. So your best year doesn't come by necessarily doing more. It comes from cutting out all of the fat, all of the BS that is weakening you, that is dispersing your energy and your focus as a man. And if you stop even one or two of these patterns that I described this year, your life will look radically different by the end of it. I promise you. And if you want help building structure, building direction, building brotherhood, building emotional strength, having real accountability, that is what I do in my work. So go check out the man talks alliance or find your own brother. It doesn't have to be ours. This isn't a sales pitch for my organization. Go find other men however you want to do that, whatever that looks like for you, whatever community or group of friends it looks like for you, get around other men and start doing really cool shit and holding one another accountable to who you say you want to be as a man. So regardless of where you do your work, do not drift in 2026. Lead yourself through the year. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to share this man it forward with another man that you know would enjoy it. Maybe a man that you're wanting to do this work alongside of. And don't forget to like and subscribe. I know that like 70% of you guys watch my videos all the time, but you're not. You're not subscribed. So subscribe. Hit the bell. Notification to get notified of future videos. And until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.