Why Are These Your Goals

I hope you have your goals locked in for 2026.

I know that I do.

However, I want you to think about this:

When you have set goals that are maybe very ambitious, what is that saying about your current situation?

Because I think there is something to be said for having goals that are part of a growth plan for whatever it is that you want to achieve

But some goals are an escape plan from a situation you’re genuinely unhappy with.

There’s nothing wrong with using dissatisfaction as fuel

But sometimes these escape-plan goals can lead us to focus on trying to become someone else, rather than becoming more of what you want to be

Which then lends itself to this kind of ‘once I achieve X, I’ll finally be okay’, arrival-fallacy-type-problem.

So I want you to think about whether the dissatisfaction driving the goals is;

a) Diagnostic - You telling yourself there’s something real about where you’re not aligned that you need to address b) Symptomatic -It’s a self-criticism that’s going to follow you into whatever new goals that you have.

Some things that can help are asking:

• If you achieved all your ambitious goals but your day-to-day experience stayed emotionally similar, would that feel like success?
• Which of the things you want to leave behind are situational - wrong place you live, wrong systems you have, wrong type of work - versus internal - wrong ways of thinking, relating, or being?
• Is there anything about the life you’re leaving behind that you’ll actually miss once it’s gone?

Doing this is going to help you not just with your goal-setting as a process

But setting goals that genuinely help you feel fulfilled rather than feel like they’re for someone else.