I have to be honest with you. This year has not started exactly how I planned.
I came back from Budapest over the new year really unwell. Then my dog got sick. And the beautifully mapped Q1 I had prepared failed to launch as planned.
But it was actually the reminder I needed.
Business is a marathon, not a sprint. Life will happen. Plans will change. And if your goals only work when everything goes perfectly, they are not going to last.
So whether you are setting goals for the first time this year or, like me, things have already not gone to plan, I want to share three things I think you need to do first. Because without these, you are likely setting yourself up for another year of stop-start momentum, quiet frustration, and goals that fade out by March.
1. Look at what drains your energy
We talk a lot about time management, but energy management is the thing that actually matters. When energy is leaking everywhere, it is really hard to get back from that place. You know the feeling. Looking forward to Friday. Dreading Monday.
Get a piece of paper and brainstorm honestly. What tasks exhaust you? Where are you carrying decision fatigue? What low-leverage work do you do because it has to get done, even though you dread it? What emotionally drains you that you have just accepted as part of the job?
I sat down with a client this week and we worked out her hourly rate. What she actually pays herself, how many hours she works, and what she is genuinely worth to the business. Then we looked at the tasks she was doing that were nowhere near that value. And we started asking what could be hired, what could be outsourced, what could simply stop.
It might sound indulgent to say that if you hate cooking, hire a chef. But the time you spend doing something you despise could be spent resting, being present with your family, or working on something that actually moves the business forward. The question is not whether you can do a task. It is whether you should be the one doing it.
So ask yourself: what do I need to stop? What do I delegate? What do I outsource? And what do I actively protect?
Sometimes the temptation is to set bigger, better goals because you know there is more potential there. But sometimes what you actually need is fewer drains, not more goals.
2. Anchor your goals in identity, not just intention
We are all capable of setting good intentions. Intentions are easy. What is harder, and what actually works, is building goals around identity.
Instead of "I want to train at the gym five times a week", the shift is "I am someone who trains at the gym five times a week."
It sounds subtle but it changes everything. Identity guides your daily decisions. It removes the negotiation. I actually sent my husband a WhatsApp this week that said here are all the reasons I have to not go to the gym today... I need to record a video, I have client calls to prep for, I'm hungry, it's raining. When you find yourself negotiating with yourself about the things that matter to you, that is usually a signal that the identity piece has not clicked yet.
Think about people you know who do Ironmans or adventure races. That is their identity. It is why they can get up at 5am to train. They are not motivating themselves every morning. They are just being the person they have decided they are.
In business, this looks like: I am someone who reviews my numbers every week. I am someone who protects time for deep work. I am someone who builds systems rather than just reacting to everything.
Spend some time looking at your goals and asking what identity shifts they require. Because the goal itself is not really the goal. Becoming the kind of person who consistently does the work is the goal.
3. Let go of what you are still carrying
This one is important, and I think it is the most overlooked part of goal setting.
Unprocessed failure sabotages future goals. I use this analogy sometimes; do you remember the old plasma TVs? If you left them on pause for too long, the image would burn into the screen. A faint ghost of it would stay in the background even when something else was playing.
Sometimes we set new goals with the ghost image of past failures still burned into our thinking. And it quietly shapes everything. We hold back. We hedge. We do not fully commit because somewhere underneath it, we are still carrying the last time it did not work out.
Failure is not the problem. It is part of how this works. But you have to actually process it, interrogate it, and let it go rather than just layering new intentions on top of it.
Failure is Feedback. Problems are Progress.
I was with a new client recently and I asked her at the end of our first conversation whether there was anything she wanted me to know before we started working together. She said, "yes, I am more afraid of success than I am of failure". And when we dug into why, just bringing that into the light shifted something for her.
Awareness doesn't fix everything, but it does free you to do things differently.
This year, I would say it simply. Remove what drains you. Anchor your goals in identity. Release the past.
That is the surefire way to stop repeating the same patterns with just a fresh set of intentions attached.
If this has resonated and you want some clarity on your goals and how to make them actually stick, I have a goal mapping template I can share with you. Just get in touch and I will make sure you are focused on what you need to carry, and not carrying what you don't.
And if you'd rather watch than read, the full goal setting video is here on YouTube.
