Third Quarter, 2026: What's the Score?

A Community Check-In, Because Nobody Should Be Grading Their Own Year Alone

By Rachel Y. Hill, DNP, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, AHN-BC, HWNC-BC

We're deep into the third quarter of 2026.

If this year were a game, we'd be past the anxious first-quarter jitters, past the settling-in of the second, and standing right in the stretch where the outcome actually starts to take shape.

Third quarter is where games get decided.

It's not the desperate scramble of the fourth, and it's not the fresh-legs optimism of the first.

It's the part where you look at the scoreboard, look at how your team is actually playing, and make honest adjustments before time runs out to make them.

So: what's the score?

I don't mean that as a performance review.

I mean it the way a good coach means it at the half—not "Did you win?" but:

Where do things actually stand, and what needs to change before the clock runs out?

I want this post to be a huddle, not a scoreboard flex.

Let's actually look at it together.

The Year So Far, Honestly

I'll go first, because it's not fair to ask a community to be honest about their score if I'm not willing to show mine.

My year started with resolutions, the way most years do.

It moved into a season of music—a ukulele, singing bowls, tuning forks, more curiosity about sound than I expected to have.

Then it hit what I can only describe as a full offensive collapse.

A health and wellness empire I'd been building for a decade finally got real resources behind it, and within about a year and a half, it fell apart in ways that cost me more than money.

I retreated.

I went into what I've been calling a cocoon—not stillness, but a total internal rebuild.

And somewhere in that retreat, I found my way back to gratitude.

Back to people who'd been part of the dream for a season and came back around.

And eventually, back to a name for what I'd been avoiding calling by name:

Permission to reset.

Not a Comeback Story. Not a Loss Either.

If I'm scoring my own year at the third-quarter mark, it doesn't look like a blowout in either direction.

It looks like a team that took some hard hits in the second quarter, called a timeout, made real adjustments, and is walking back onto the field a little wiser about what actually works.

Not a comeback story yet.

Not a loss either.

Just an honest midgame assessment.

Which is exactly what a third quarter is supposed to produce.

My Team, My Metaphor: The Chiefs

I should admit something before I go any further:

This whole framing isn't neutral for me.

I was born and raised in Kansas, and the Chiefs have been my team for as long as I can call myself a fan of anything.

Technically, they still play in Kansas City, Missouri—but that's changing.

The team announced a move to a new domed stadium across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas, expected to open by 2031.

My team is coming home to my state.

I'm not going to pretend that doesn't mean something to me.

And if you've followed the Chiefs at all these last several years, you already know they're basically a living illustration of everything I've been saying about third quarters and scoreboards.

They went to the Super Bowl and won.

They went again the next year and lost.

They missed it entirely the year after that.

Then they went back-to-back—won it twice in a row, something almost no team in the league's history has managed.

And then they went again and lost.

Won.

Lost.

Missed it.

Won twice.

Lost.

That's not a straight line to greatness.

That's a genuine roller coaster, played out in front of the entire country, year after year, with absolutely nowhere to hide from the result.

What It Means to Keep Playing the Next Play

That's what makes Patrick Mahomes such an interesting case study in finishing strong, at least to me.

His career is not a private thing.

Every injury he takes gets replayed, dissected, and turned into a referendum on whether he's declining.

Every loss gets treated less like a single game and more like evidence for whichever narrative the public had already decided to run with.

He doesn't get to have an off year quietly.

He doesn't get to work through a hard stretch outside of a stadium full of people—and a country full of opinions—watching him do it.

So how do you get out there and finish strong when the world is betting on you to fail?

I think about that question a lot.

And not just about Mahomes.

How do you finish strong when it isn't the world doing the betting, but you?

When your own doubt is the loudest voice in the room, louder than any commentator's?

I don't think the answer is pretending the doubt isn't there.

His or ours.

I think it's closer to what the Chiefs have actually done across all those seasons:

You don't get to control whether this particular quarter goes your way.

You only get to control whether you show up for the next play the same way you showed up for the first one.

Doubt and all.

You Don't Have to Negotiate With the Crowd

Mahomes has thrown interceptions in must-win moments in full view of a hundred million people.

He's also thrown game-winning touchdowns in that exact same spotlight.

Both were possible because he kept playing the next play instead of negotiating with the crowd about whether he deserved to.

We're still in the third quarter heading toward the fourth.

And there's always overtime if it comes to that.

That's true of a football game.

I think it's true of a year, and a career, and a life, too.

We can still change the outcome.

We can still change the world.

Why the Sports Metaphor, and Why Now?

I didn't pick this framing randomly.

September is a strange, quietly significant month on the calendar.

Close enough to the year's end that the outcome is starting to feel real.

Far enough from it that there's still time to change the ending.

A lot of people either coast through this stretch on autopilot, waiting for January to force a reckoning, or they spiral into premature panic about everything they haven't done yet.

Neither response actually helps.

A Check-In Is Not a Verdict

A third-quarter check-in does something different.

It's not a verdict.

It's a tactical pause.

Real teams don't wait until the final two minutes to figure out their strategy isn't working.

They adjust the moment the data tells them something needs to change, while there's still enough game left for the adjustment to matter.

That's the spirit I want this post to have.

Not:

"How did you do?"

But:

"What do you know now that you didn't know in January, and what are you going to do with the time you've got left?"

What's Actually on the Scoreboard?

Before I open this up to the community, here's what I'm sitting with myself—and what I'd invite you to sit with too.

What's actually on the scoreboard, separate from what you hoped would be there?

Not the plan you made in January.

The real, current state of things.

Your health.

Your relationships.

Your work.

Your sense of purpose.

Scoreboards don't lie, even when we'd prefer they did.

Where Did the Game Plan Need to Change?

And did you let it?

Nobody's January strategy survives contact with a real year untouched.

The question isn't whether your plan changed.

It's whether you noticed it needed to.

And whether you had the flexibility to actually adjust instead of stubbornly running the same broken play into the fourth quarter.

Who's Still on Your Team?

And who came off the bench when you needed them?

This year taught me that the roster matters as much as the plan.

Some people were only ever meant to play a few possessions.

Others showed up exactly when the game got hard.

Both are worth naming with gratitude instead of resentment.

Are You Playing the Fourth Quarter—or Just Running Out the Clock?

What would it look like to play the fourth quarter on purpose instead of just running out the clock?

There's a real difference between finishing a year and actually playing it all the way through.

One is passive.

The other still has intention in it, right up until the final whistle.

Your Turn: What's Your Score?

This is where I want to hand the ball to you.

Because a community check-in isn't a community check-in if it's just me talking.

I'd genuinely love for you to sit with, in whatever amount of detail feels right:

• Where do you feel like you're winning this year? Even quietly. Even in ways nobody else would notice from the stands.
• Where did the season take a hit you didn't see coming? How did you adjust—or are you still figuring out the adjustment?
• What's one thing you want true by the final whistle of 2026 that's still genuinely within reach if you go after it now?

Your Score Doesn't Need an Audience

You don't have to shout your score into the void to make it real.

Write it down in a journal.

Say it out loud to a colleague or a trusted friend over coffee—someone who'll actually listen instead of just waiting for their turn to talk about their own season.

Nobody's obligated to have a highlight reel of a year.

And some of the most honest, useful third-quarter scores are the messy ones.

The ones that admit the second quarter was rough.

The roster changed.

The game plan got torn up and redrawn.

That's not a losing season.

That's just what a real season, played by real people, actually looks like from the inside.

It's just usually easier to say that out loud to one person you trust than to a crowd.

There's Still Time on the Clock

Third quarter isn't for pretending the score is better than it is.

It's for looking at it honestly.

Adjusting what needs adjusting.

And playing the rest of the year like it still matters.

Because it does.

Life is really just a series of games like this, one leading into the next.

The regular-season grind.

Then the playoffs.

And eventually, if you keep showing up for the next play, your own version of the Super Bowl.

You don't get there by skipping the third quarter.

You get there by playing it honestly.

A Few Questions to Sit With

• If you had to give your 2026 an honest halftime report right now, what would it say?
• What adjustment have you been avoiding making, even though some part of you already knows it's needed?
• Who's still standing on your bench, ready to be called in for the fourth quarter?

--Dr. Rachel