Rethinking Wellbeing

What Actually Works in 2026

For a long time, I assumed that if I just found the right tools, the right practices, the right mix of support, things would finally settle. Like many people, I tried a lot. Coaching. Therapy. Mindfulness. Movement. Nervous system work. Periods of deep rest, followed by periods of pushing myself to do better. Each thing helped, to a point. But none of it quite stuck in the way I was hoping it would. What I’ve come to realise is that the problem was never effort, commitment, or even self-awareness. It was the way wellbeing itself was being framed.

Something fundamental has shifted in the last few years, not just in the wellness industry, but in how people are actually living. And the old models are no longer holding.

We’re asking the wrong question

For a long time, the dominant question in wellbeing has been: What should people be doing for their health? Morning routines. Supplement stacks. Protocols. Optimisation. Another habit to add, another practice to maintain. The assumption has been that people don’t have enough information, or that they’re not trying hard enough.
What I see now, again and again, is something very different. People aren’t lacking information. They’re drowning in it. They’re not unmotivated. They’re maxed out. Functioning, often impressively so. Holding jobs, families, responsibilities. Doing all the things they’re supposed to be doing. But they’re running on fumes in a way that doesn’t always show on the outside. Until it does.

The more useful question is no longer what should you add? It’s how do we restore what’s been quietly depleted?

Why the wellness model isn’t working anymore

Traditional wellness carved us up into parts. Mind. Body. Spirit. Nutrition. Fitness. Mental health. Each one gets its own app, its own expert, its own set of benchmarks.
But anyone who’s tried to work on themselves knows this doesn’t match reality. You can’t meditation-app your way out of chronic stress if your nervous system never downshifts. You can’t biohack sleep when your body’s been running on cortisol for months. You can’t think your way into better emotional regulation when you’re isolated and unsupported.

What I’m seeing more and more are people who wouldn’t meet any clinical threshold for being unwell, but who also wouldn’t describe themselves as well. They’re in this middle space, functional but fragile. And traditional wellness doesn’t have good answers for them.

The four systems that actually matter

After working with enough people and programmes, I’ve come to see wellbeing less as a set of habits and more as four interconnected systems that need basic support to function. You don’t need all four optimised. You just need none of them completely compromised.

Mental capacity

This isn’t about positive thinking or mindset. It’s about whether your brain actually works when you need it to. Can you focus? Can you make decisions without spiralling? Can you turn your mind off when the workday’s over?
When people describe mental wellbeing struggles, they talk about fog, decision paralysis, racing thoughts, and an inability to be present. This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a cognitive load problem.

Physical resilience

This isn’t about fitness. It’s about whether your body has energy, can recover, and can respond proportionately to stress. Sleep quality, metabolic health, movement capacity, immune resilience all sit here. When a body is overridden for too long, through stress, restriction, or constant pressure, it stops cooperating. Exhaustion, pain, insomnia, and hormonal disruption are signals, not failures.

Emotional bandwidth

Emotional wellbeing is about capacity, not constant processing. Can you feel things without being overwhelmed? Respond instead of react? Stay grounded when things get hard?
When this system is under strain, people often look fine externally but feel tight, irritable, numb, or disconnected inside. This is what happens when pressure has nowhere to go.

Social regulation

Humans regulate through connection. Tone of voice. Presence. Shared rhythm. When social support is missing, stress compounds. This is why self-care in isolation often fails. Regulation does not happen in a vacuum.

Why optimisation is making things worse

The push to optimise everything has created instability. Tracking, pushing, refining, without first restoring capacity. A nervous system under stress cannot integrate change. A depleted body cannot sustain habits. Regulation must come before optimisation.

Environment does the heavy lifting

Context shapes behaviour faster than willpower ever will. Quiet environments reduce cognitive load. Rhythm reduces decision fatigue. Community creates accountability without shame. This is why retreats and small groups work so well.

What this actually looks like

True wellbeing looks ordinary: Sleeping most nights. Thinking clearly when it matters. Recovering faster after stress. Feeling steadier in relationships. Making decisions from capacity, not depletion.

The shift

Wellbeing is no longer about fixing yourself in pieces. It is a systems issue. A capacity issue. A regulation issue. When mental, physical, emotional and social systems are supported together, people do not just feel better. They function better.