Trying Something New This Year...

Last month I attended a free journaling workshop to help me plan my 2026. During the workshop, the facilitator said that goals are deeply flawed because they are often very easily derailed by life circumstances; when life throws you a curveball, you often end up not meeting your goals. Or your goal is based off of circumstances outside of your control (that's less so the case here, but if you're working on say improving your business by x, you don't necessarily have control over that, even if you work towards it). Instead, the facilitator recommended you work towards changing your identity. Using the same example, if you want to be a successful business person, you do things a successful business person would do. Maybe you focus your reading on business books to learn about good business practices. Maybe you set up a schedule for posting to build brand awareness and stick to it. Maybe you do some of everything. So by the end of the year, even if your business hasn't grown much due to market factors or other things outside of your control, you've built habits towards becoming that successful business person. 

Then a couple of days ago when I was reviewing my 2025, my partner happened to read some of what I was writing (I don't like people looking at my writing as I'm working on it like that, so I wasn't thrilled, lol). He noticed how I had failed almost every goal I had set for myself, and didn't like that because I was putting myself down when I had, in reality, accomplished a lot this year, like building some better morning habits, and stretching more thanks to physio. He told me that he doesn't like goals for that reason, echoing some of what the workshop facilitator had said earlier in December. 

So after thinking about all of this for a bit, I decided not to set any goals for the year. Instead I will work towards becoming a healthier version of myself (I guess that's like the intention I set last year). I'm going to try providing updates through the year of what I've been up to, what's working, and what isn't.

In terms of microresolutions, I've also decided to use them as a tool on an as-needed basis. So if there's something I want to work towards, I'll set a microresolution, but otherwise, I'm not going to set any.