2025.
What a year!
Although it opened our eyes to the good, the difficult, and everything in between, many of us ended it stretched thin or just tired of pushing through. And when a year shakes us like that, the next one often arrives with a firm message: shift how you stand so life can shift with you.
I think 2026 will push us all to a new posture, a way of orienting ourselves to expanded possibilities and aligned choices. A posture that calls for eyes wide open, a steady heart, and energy pointed in what feels right to us.
I wish it were as simple to live as it is to write. Because at its core, this invitation asks for something difficult, it asks for a different relationship with ourselves. And that relationship, the only one in our control really, is the one that shapes everything else.
To help me lean into the mindful, heartful living I aspire to (and that 2026 will require), I always return to three North African energies that shape much of my research and the work I decided to do at Maktoub Studio. Here they are:
NIYA: the clarity to choose well
Niya is often translated as “intention,” but it’s deeper than that, and I have shared on that before. In simple terms, Niya is the capacity to direct our energy instead of scattering it.
And I really think that we owe it to ourselves, in 2026, not to dilute our intentions. Working on Niya will help clear the fog so our “yes” feels truly aligned and our “no” feels clean. It’s the internal compass that says:
This is where I’m going.
This is why it matters to me.
This is how I’ll get there.
HIMMA: the fire that keeps us moving
In a nutshell, Himma is the energy behind the effort. It is built on Niya but it requires the capacity or skill to feed the fire that allows us to follow through with our plans.
Think of Himma,
a Sufi term for spiritual devotion,
as devotion to your goals wrapped in
practical, everyday discipline.
Like a fire, you tend it slowly and consistently, until it burns with a steady flame you can rely on. In a year of possibility as 2026 is set to be, Himma will be the force that carries us from vision to action, without burning out.
BARAKA: the blessing that softens the path
I’m leaving this one for last, even though it underlies the other two. To me Baraka is a feeling, that I am supported in ways I cannot see or measure.
Every time I write the word Baraka, I smile and feel it in my body. It’s like a deep feeling of trust, the sense of being lifted just enough when you’re doing the right things for you. It’s the small synchronicities: meeting someone who opens a door you thought was closed, stumbling onto unexpected opportunities, it’s feeling ease return just when you were close to giving up, or even when a person, a job or situation exits your life.
And no, I don’t think it is luck! It’s the blessing that flows when we give openly and receive openly. It’s what happens when intention and effort align with our truth.
Hold that close in 2026 and trust that the right things will arrive, exactly when they’re meant to.
Together, Niya, Himma, and Baraka create
an inner ecosystem that starts shifting things.
Life stops feeling reactive, and more designed, more chosen.
That’s is the energy I’ll build my year around and the energy I want for you too!
Thank you for being part of this community and for supporting Maktoub Studio as it grows. I am excited to continue sharing thoughts and my creations to help, whoever comes across them, show up to their own journeys in meaningful ways.
If you'd like to start weaving these energies into your daily rhythm, Maktoub in Motion Workbook, is a powerful guide to help nurture clarity and more purposeful awareness and openness to blessings. It was one of my very first writings in Maktoub Studio and from it emerged the e-book Flow: Life with Baraka, Niya and Himma.
May 2026 be the year our intention sharpens, our fire strengthens, and our blessings multiply.
With love,
Ratiba
