1.
Use a yearly theme to guide your New Years goal setting efforts.
Choose a simple one-to-three word theme to define what you want 2026 to be about. Your annual theme serves as an overarching intention that guides your daily actions. It’s a unique approach because it keeps you focused on progress (which is the real key to happiness). A strong yearly theme also keeps you locked-in + focused throughout the year… Instead of deferring your happiness until you accomplish a specific goal, each day you do something in line with your theme, you’ll get a sense of fulfillment, which makes it easier to stay motivated and on track.
Here are some examples of my own yearly themes from the past: 2018–Inspire + Inform, 2020–Be Prolific, 2026–BOLD Action.
2.
Focus on the process, not just the outcome.
Most new year’s resolutions and goals are purely outcome focused (ex: “run a marathon by X date”). That’s not a bad thing… Unless you overlook the actions that lead to the outcome you want. To increase your likelihood of achieving your 2026 goals + give them extra power, you want to fall in love with the daily practice that leads to that outcome as well. You’ve got to fall in love with the struggle, the hard stuff, the consistent practice and the actions you need to take in order to achieve your goal.
For example, If you want to have written a book by this time next year (your outcome), then commit to a writing practice every morning, and the results will follow. This isn’t about one or the other – you need to be clear about what you want, and you also need to be willing to take focused action toward making it happen.
3.
Get specific with your goals + habits.
One reason so many New Year’s resolutions fail is because they’re too fuzzy – e.g. “get in shape” or “save money”… Let go of vague resolutions and replace them with specific outcome-based goals or daily habits. For example, don’t set a goal to “lose more weight,” set a goal to “lose 25 pounds in 12 months by meal prepping + exercising 5x per week”. Or, if you’re setting a habit goal… Don’t say you’ll “meditate more,” say you’ll “meditate for 10 minutes every morning at 7:00am.”
This forces clear thinking and deliberate action. Stop setting fuzzy goals, and start writing down a detailed outcome along with all the sub-goals you’ve got to meet in order to get there (monthly, weekly, daily targets). The specificity and built-in action plan make success FAR more likely than the usual vague and open-ended goals that most folks set.
4.
Use anchoring beliefs.
New year’s goals—or any goals for that matter—are most effective when they’re anchored to strong beliefs. When you believe strongly in something, what you’re really doing is sending signals to your brain—signals that say, “this is really important to me” or “accomplishing this goal is a high priority.” And when you anchor a strong belief to a goal, you reinforce how much it really matters to you, which increases your likelihood of accomplishing it. Let’s say you’ve got a new year’s goal to lose 25 pounds over the course of the next twelve months… Here’s an example of how you might anchor your goal of dropping the weight to a strong belief:
New Year’s Goal: Lose 25 pounds (or more) by this time next year.
Anchoring belief: Living a healthy lifestyle allows me to live with vibrancy and perform at my peak on a daily basis.
You can create whichever types of anchoring beliefs you want. The only real criteria is whether it inspires you—emotionally and viscerally—to be the type of person who achieves these goals or practices certain habits. Can you see how powerful linking an anchoring belief to a goal can be?
5.
Limit your number of resolutions.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with dozens of goals, and don’t neglect important areas of life. I suggest setting no more than 7–12 goals for the year and making sure they’re spread across the key domains of your life. For example, you might have one health/fitness goal, one financial goal, one personal development goal, one relationship/family goal, and so on – whatever areas matter most to you.
This gives you a more holistic approach to self-improvement, unlike typical New Year’s resolutions that often fixate on just one aspect (such as only fitness or career success). By having a well-rounded set of goals, you’ll grow in multiple dimensions and avoid the trap of overloading in one area of life while ignoring others.
6.
Connect your roles to goals.
Look at the important roles you play in your personal + professional life – e.g. parent, leader, student, partner, entrepreneur – and set one majore, meaningful goal for each. This helps you prioritize and align your goals with your actual, real-life responsibilities.
For instance, if one of your roles is “Manager,” a fitting New Year’s goal might be “improve team morale by organizing quarterly team-building events” . If you’re a writer, your goal could be “publish one article per month in a major outlet” . This role-based approach ensures that your resolutions directly reflect what matters to you in daily life (your family, your career, your community), making them far more personal than generic goals. It also helps you avoid neglecting any role – an issue with typical resolutions that might, for example, emphasize work at the expense of family or vice versa.
7.
Make contingency plans for your goals.
Most people don’t consider what happens to their resolution when life hits ’em with a curveball. For each goal you set, think through potential obstacles in advance and decide on a fallback plan… A “minimum viable action” as I like to call it. For example, if your goal is to hit the gym five times a week and you suddenly have to travel, or you fall ill, or you’re short on time – plan an alternative like doing bodyweight exercises in your hotel or a quick at-home workout.
Setbacks are inevitable, having contingency plans in place is like having insurance plan for your goals. They’ll keep you on track even when the unexpected happens. This addresses a common reason so many resolutions fail (life getting in the way) in a proactive way. So, anticipate the “what if” scenarios (what if I have to travel? what if work gets crazy?) and write down a minimum action you can do to make progress so you don’t lose momentum at the first sign of trouble. Very few people do this, but it can mean the difference between crushing it vs giving up by February.
8.
Declare a year of action.
Sometimes, you’ve gotta let go of the plans that keep you in paralysis and just TAKE ACTION. Stop over-planning and start DOING. I dare you. In fact, I challenge you to decide right now to make 2026 the year you take courageous, heroic action on your biggest goals rather than endlessly strategizing or waiting for the perfect moment. The best time to get moving towards your goals was yesterday. The second-best time is TODAY.
Deep down, you already know the one change that would most improve your life. It probably scares you, too. It could be changing careers, making more cold calls, launching a business, sharing how you feel with someone, or transforming your health. Instead of setting a long list of resolutions, commit to that #1 goal… Stop talking about it, and start doing something about it. Starting right now.
Enjoy these ideas?
There’s a lot more where that came from… Inside Club 12.
