Julie Turpin PurposeFULL Leadership Newsletter - Remix in '26

This will be a year of change. A remix, if you will.

As I wrote last summer on the announcement of Brown & Brown’s acquisition of Accession Risk Management Group, seasons like this bring a mix of excitement, questions and very real uncertainty. Change impacts differently depending on your current position, what you’ve experienced and what you value.

While this moment is specific to our organization, you may experience a remix in 2026 as well. And in times of change, our instinct is often to tighten our grip on control. It’s why New Year’s resolutions focus on setting goals, making plans and trying to engineer outcomes.

But control is often a false sense of safety. The only thing we truly control is how we show up: our mindset, our presence and our openness to what’s unfolding.

Last year, my theme Thrive in ’25 was about resilience — building daily habits that supported growth, taking leaps even when fear was present and being more intentional about where we committed our time and energy.

Remix in ’26 is born of a resilience that evolves through deeper trust, presence and a willingness to listen to your intuition as the world changes around you. As everything around us shifts, what are you doing to “remix” your life?

For me, the answer is leaning into intuition even more.

How to practice intentional intuition

Everyone has access to intuition. To you, it may be a “hunch” or “gut feeling.” For me, intuition manifests as “hits.” Sometimes it’s a thought that arrives fully formed. Sometimes it’s a feeling I can’t immediately explain. I notice something and quietly file it away. But like public speaking or discipline, it’s a skill that needs to be intentionally practiced.

When external forces grow louder — our attention pulled outward into emails, meetings, conversations, and comparisons — our intuition has to compete for airtime. That’s exactly when it becomes most useful.

Over time, I’ve found that practicing intuition comes down to three simple things:

1. Be present. Intuition is gentle. It’s a quiet feeling. Call that person. Say something differently. Pause here. Sometimes it’s as simple as noticing the billboard you’ve driven past for weeks, but suddenly connecting to it exactly when its message is what you need to receive. Nothing changed about the billboard, but your awareness shifted.

Meditation helps me practice the art of being present and open to those moments. I woke up feeling overwhelmed the Saturday before Christmas this year, with everything that needed to be done and a heaviness I couldn’t shake. Instead of pushing through it, I made a conscious decision to get centered and focus only on what felt good and joyful that day. I reminded myself to be in the flow that day — and something shifted. I still had a full list of to-dos, but one thing led to the next, and the timing worked out effortlessly.

2. Recognize it. Recognizing intuition is a practice that you get better at over time. Sometimes intuition comes through as a thought that feels different from the rest because it’s accompanied by an inner knowing.

One way to strengthen recognition is to ask better questions of yourself and then get quiet. I’ll ask myself: What do I need to know about this meeting or situation? Does this feel right? I close my eyes and take a breath. Your body is a powerful guide, and when you slow down enough to notice where signals live in your body — how does a yes feel compared to a no? — it becomes easier to tell the difference between noise and intuition.

3. Surrender to it. Surrender means being willing to follow an intuition hit even when your ego resists, or the intuition feels uncomfortable. Discomfort leads to growth, and our intuition pushes us in that direction as well. It’s only when you surrender and act that you see the result. This is a blueprint for building trust in yourself and your intuition. Over time, it will stop feeling random and start feeling reliable.

Over 20 years ago, I received a significant promotion. I was expected to give a straightforward acceptance speech at a formal dinner — stand up, say thank you, keep it polished and move on — but at that moment, I got an intuition hit. Instead of a canned speech, I felt compelled to thank people individually, by name, for their contributions to my growth.

It felt vulnerable. It wasn’t the “normal” thing to do. But I surrendered, and as the room grew quiet and people felt my genuine gratitude, relationships shifted in ways that I couldn’t have planned. People still talk to me about that moment when I relied on my intuition and pivoted, because it was impactful for them.

How will you respond to change this year?

Remix in ’26 is less about change itself and more about how we respond to it. Whether change shows up in your career or your personal life this year, I encourage you to shift the work inward. In 2026, let’s listen to our intuition, trust it, and lead with adaptability over control.

PurposeFULL Leadership
by Julie Turpin, Chief People Officer

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