The Year Was 2016...

After the holidays, the first trend of 2026 emerged: the year 2016.

This week started with the “2026 is the new 2016” trend on Instagram and Tiktok. “2026 is the new 2016” celebrating what’s been dubbed a return to the ‘best year ever’. I shared a post too, thinking it would be a simple throwback. But while scrolling through photos from that year, I realized how quietly pivotal 2016 was in my own life. Beyond the pop culture moments, what’s really resonating right now is how much simpler the world felt then. Less optimized. Less performative. Less noisy.

This week’s Wellness Rewind is about that pull. Not nostalgia, but the desire for forward motion that feels clean, grounded, and real again.

If you’ve opened Instagram or Tiktok these last couple of weeks, you’ve seen it. 2026 is the new 2016 trend.

Old photos with the old IG or VSCO filters. Grainy videos. Throwbacks to 2016. Captions like “take me back,” “the year was 2016,” or “when life felt lighter.” A collective scroll backward.

I shared a post too. At first, it felt like participating in a trend. But while scrolling through photos from that year, something landed differently. 2016 wasn’t just another year. Quietly, it was pivotal in my own life.

On the surface, 2016 is easy to remember for its cultural moments. Beyoncé released Lemonade. Taylor Swift debuted her bleached hair at Coachella and reshaped her public image. 1989 won album of the year. Rae Sremmurd’s Black Beatles fueled the Mannequin Challenge. Drake and The Chainsmokers dominated the radio. Vine was still alive, chaotic, and creatively unpolished before disappearing in early 2017.

It was loud. Maximalist. Expressive. Unfiltered.

But the reason this year is resurfacing now goes deeper than pop culture or aesthetics. 2016 represented the last moment before everything accelerated. Before performance replaced presence. Before optimization became a personality trait. Before life, online and offline, started to feel constantly measured. Before we began to overshare on social media.

That’s what people are responding to.

At first glance, this trend looks like nostalgia. A decade has passed. That’s normal. But it isn’t really about missing 2016. It’s about what came after.

The last five years scrambled our sense of time, progress, and momentum. The pandemic didn’t just pause plans. It stalled identity. Careers froze mid-sentence. Bodies shifted under stress. Social lives flattened. Ambition got confusing. We were told to slow down, then speed up, then optimize rest, then monetize everything again.

A lot of people never fully restarted. They just hovered.

So when people look back at 2016, they aren’t longing for youth or old filters. They’re responding to continuity. A time when effort felt linear. When progress stacked. When the internet felt less performative and life felt less surveilled by metrics.

2016 wasn’t perfect. But it felt like movement.

And that’s why this trend matters right now. Because 2026 is shaping up to be the first year that doesn’t feel like recovery, repair, or reaction. There’s a noticeable shift happening. People aren’t rebranding themselves. They aren’t announcing dramatic resets. They aren’t burning everything down to start over. For me personally, I’ve regressed unintentionally from oversharing every single aspect of my life to sharing a small curated 10 percent of it. While my social media is public, my personal life isn’t. I’m not the only one that feels like that too.

They’re continuing.

They’re keeping the routines that work. Strengthening the bodies they already live in. Deepening careers instead of pivoting out of panic. Cleaning up finances instead of fantasizing about escape. Editing identity rather than reinventing it.

That’s not boring. That’s mature.

This year feels different because we’re finally moving forward from the stalled growth that started in 2020. Not rushing. Not forcing. Just advancing. Quietly. With more discernment and less noise.

The irony is that the same people posting “2016 energy” content aren’t actually trying to go backward. And I’m one of them. We’re trying to move forward without the chaos that followed.

They want simplicity without naivety. Ambition without exhaustion. Discipline without spectacle. And that’s the real signal.

This year isn’t asking for transformation. It’s asking for refinement. Not “who do I want to become?” but “what am I already building that deserves more consistency?” Not a reset. A continuation.

If 2016 was about discovering who you were, 2026 is about committing to who you already are. This isn’t stagnation. It’s compound growth.

While pulling photos for my 2016 post, I expected nostalgia. And, although it did, what I didn’t expect was clarity. That version of me wasn’t more disciplined or more put together. But she moved with less friction. Decisions felt simpler. Progress felt loud. I wasn’t constantly auditing myself or questioning every next step. I was simply just living. In my last year of my 20’s, and like most 20 year olds, I thought I had life figured out.

And I realized that what I miss isn’t that time. It’s that way of moving.

Somewhere between then and now, “growth” became synonymous with constant adjustment. Tweaking routines. Optimizing systems. Adding more inputs in the name of improvement.

The relief came from recognizing that I don’t need a new version of myself. I need to trust the foundation that’s already there. The one that I unintentionally knew I was laying out in 2016.

Sometimes the most meaningful reset is choosing continuation over correction.

Looking Back Without Getting Stuck There

Take ten to fifteen minutes today and reflect on 2016 or a year from your past that mattered more than you realized at the time.

Not to romanticize it. To study it.

Now ask yourself: what elements of that season are worth carrying forward, not recreating?

Growth isn’t about going backward. It’s about integrating what worked before the noise set in.

January doesn’t need a reset, it needs steadiness. ARMRA supports gut health, immune resilience, and skin barrier function at the cellular level, helping your body stay regulated instead of reactive. One daily scoop strengthens your foundation so continuation feels easier not forced. Because sustainable energy comes from being supported, not depleted. Get 15% off your first order with code WELLNESSBUM at armra.com

These aren’t tools for becoming someone new. They’re tools for protecting clarity, and some of them are from 2016 that we’re still loving.

📘 Books:

📓 Journaling: The Bullet Journal Method (early-stage, pre-mainstream) In 2016, bullet journaling was still niche and utilitarian. It lived on Tumblr, YouTube, and productivity blogs. No pastel spreads, no aesthetic pressure. It was about clarity, task migration, and thinking on paper. Function over form. Moleskine dotted notebooks were a favorite of mine for bullet journaling.

📺 Watching: Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011, peaked 2016) on Netflix. Sushi master's obsessive kaizen pursuit shows relentless self-improvement and mastery; still cited in productivity circles for humility and daily refinement vibes.

📱Apps: Headspace. Guided meditation sessions for beginners focusing on stress, sleep, and focus; topped 2016 lists for its structured 10-minute daily programs and accessibility.

🌀 Fitness Recovery: Theragun G1 by Therabody pioneered handheld percussive therapy at 40 hits/second; evolved into a $5B empire with app integration, ubiquitous in pro athlete recovery and home self-care.

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The pull toward 2016 isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about remembering what forward motion felt like before everything became optimized, performative, and loud.

2026 doesn’t need reinvention. It needs discernment.

See you next Sunday!

Valerie

P.S. Was this issue a vibe? Forward it to someone who could use this.