Reach your goals in 2026 with these 5 expert tips

Many people use the new year as an opportunity to reset, reevaluate, and approach their goals with a new mindset. However, if there is any doubt about their determination or if things don’t go as planned, they tend to give up. This led to the second Friday of every January being called Quit Day. However, if you’re about to throw in the towel – or have already done so – don’t worry.

Contrary to some discouraging headlines, sticking to your resolutions and achieving your goals is not impossible or even improbable, and you can start again at any time. But generally speaking, thinking of your desires as “goals” can be more beneficial than “resolutions,” said Candice Seti, psychologist, personal trainer and nutrition coach. Indeed, humans tend to do quite well with their goals, provided they have the right approach and set them for the right reasons.

“It’s very important to approach New Year’s resolutions through the same lens as goal setting,” Seti said.

Goals aren’t just fun to achieve: they’re essential to what moves us forward in life. So, let it be a fitness goala new standard of wellness or taking the next step in your creative passion, here’s what Seti and other experts say about working with your own psychology to achieve your New Year’s resolution.

1. Find the deeper reason for your goal

Just like the main character in a movie, you need to find your “want” for your resolution to be effective. Seti calls this “revisiting the why.” Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to eat healthier? (As a spoiler alert, it’s almost never about weight, or food.)

“Weight loss is not the goal,” Seti said. “Weight loss is the means to the goal.”

To reveal your goal of losing X number of pounds, for example, explore the reasons why you want to do it. Do you think you will feel better? Do you think this will give you more energy? Will you smile more when you have more energy?

What are your reasons for stopping drinking?

If you’re struggling to find the deeper reason behind your purpose, therapist and life coach Flynn Skidmore has dedicated much of his online content to teaching people strategies for understanding why they really want what they do. He explains some of the reasons he gets to the bottom of things in an episode of his podcast, The Flynn Skidmore Podcast.

“There are many levels,” Skidmore said on his podcast. “And when you only see the surface layers of what it means to have a desire or want something, life is very, very confusing.”

By going through this mental checklist and finding the true value of your goal, you may receive an energizing boost to pick up where you left off. Alternatively, by identifying what will achieve your goal Really done for you, you may discover that you made the wrong New Year’s resolution. If so, that’s okay. Just go back to the drawing board with an approach that works best for you.

2. If you’ve already “messed up,” start again

Yes, it really is that simple. People can choose the start of a new calendar year to build the momentum needed to reach a resolution, but if it’s something important to you, there’s no reason to stop just because you’ve momentarily fallen off the wagon. This can be especially true when it comes to health goals. If your goal is to eat more nutritious foods so you have a better chance of living longer with less risk of disease, why soak all year just because you ate a few donuts or didn’t eat vegetables one day? If you lead with an all-or-nothing attitude, you’re more likely to give up. This is more likely to happen if our goals are not specific enough or if they are too extreme.

“We can do this for a few weeks, but then it gets really overwhelming and we don’t achieve what we’re trying to achieve, so we go into all-or-nothing mode and say ‘F it,’” Seti said.

The best way to avoid 100 or 0 and get to 80-20 is to reframe your goal and break it into smaller pieces. These are steps three and four.

3. “Approach” instead of “avoid”

Research published in 2019 in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine found that the way you set the goal itself plays a role in your success, at least when it comes to health goals. Specifically, goals that make you “approach” instead of goals that make you “avoid” a certain behavior were associated with more positive emotions and a greater sense of psychological well-being.

An example of a healthy eating “approach” goal would be: “I will eat more vegetables and nutritious foods this year.” A “don’t” version of the same goal would be: “I’m going to cut out candy this year.”

This is why diets based on restrictions are less effective than diets that add healthy foods, instead of restricting “bad” ones, according to Seti.

“When we restrict, we make what we restrict the most powerful thing in the universe,” she explained. By reframing your goal, you can tip the balance of power in your favor.

4. Take small, steady steps toward your big goal

What that looks like will depend on your resolution: is it work-related or a creative project, fitness and health-related, or something else?

If you’re working on a big project, for example, practice getting up a little earlier each morning before you start your regular work day to accommodate your creative passion. Or if you can’t I lack sleepfind another small slot in the day that you can dedicate to working on it.

For fitness or nutrition goals, what counts as a “small task” will be a little more individualized based on your specific wellness plan. But as an example, if your goal is to become more fit, mini”exercise snacks” are easy to insert, and find small, reasonable ways to stay active regularly is an accomplishment in itself.

By checking off small accomplishments—eating two servings of vegetables one day, painting for 20 minutes one day, writing for 10 minutes one day, and so on—you’ll have something you can point to as proof that you’re slowly working toward your goal.

“They allow us to build that confidence and the ability to continue,” Seti said.

5. Look for like-minded communities

Surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals or passions can both motivate you and make you feel less alone. Luckily for us, one of the benefits of social media is that we are in the age of online communities and groups. For example, there is support groups outside of Alcoholics Anonymous for people who want to stop drinking alcohol or reduce their consumption.

There are also groups – such as pottery making, writing, bird watching, etc. – focused on activities that could relate to your big goal and could ultimately help you achieve it. To find one, you can start by doing a quick search for “online group for X” or “in-person group for X near me.”

And whatever you do, never stop looking at the root of your resolution or “connecting the dots.”

“Often when we set these goals, we connect the dots,” Seti said. “But when we implement them, we don’t.”