Your New Year's Resolutions Failed? Here's Why That Might Be Progress

How did your 2025 New Year's resolutions go?

Answer honestly ;) humor and guilt both welcome. Because even when you do make progress, it rarely looks the way you imagined on January 1st.

Recently I reread a list of goals I had written at the start of last year. These goals were mainly for business and creative work:
• write that book
• publish it
• start with "that fun idea" you had 2 years ago
• establish consulting business
• find more free time to enjoy

At a first glance it looked like I hadn't followed through at all. But then something interesting happened.

I realized I had moved forward… just not in the way I expected, not on the timeline I planned, and not with the neat outcomes I had pictured.

This is the part we rarely talk about.

Progress doesn't arrive as a clean checklist. It arrives sideways. Messy. Out of order. You see, I did write a story, just not the one I first planned. I'm nowhere near publishing it but that's ok. I did start "a fun project" but the one that was possible for me to do now. I'm 1 year late with starting a consulting project but I'm finally ready to go. And I found free time, though not by choice but life forced it on me.

At some point, usually with age or experience, a quiet switch flips. You stop waiting for perfect conditions and stop confusing clarity with readiness. You stop treating time as something that will eventually feel "right."

You still set goals, you still revise them, and course-correct when necessary. But you stop measuring progress by how closely reality matches the fantasy version you had in your head.

Instead, you begin to trust:

• movement over precision

• momentum over perfect timing

• doing over overthinking

We imagine that once we hit the goal, be it the book, the launch, the brand, the next chapter, we'll feel lighter, clearer, freer. But liberation rarely shows up in a single moment. It shows up gradually through accumulated action.

A decision here. A start there. A pivot that makes more sense than the original plan.

This shift changes everything. Because progress isn't about doing everything you planned. It's about choosing the things you can actually build now, with the energy, resources, and life you have today. And that's often enough to get you rolling.

You don't need grand announcements or perfectly packaged outcomes. You need a quiet commitment to keep showing up for the work you know you're meant to do, and hopefully help others do the same.

If you're thinking about the year ahead, before you set goals for 2026, ask yourself these questions:

• Biggest ripple effect: If I focus on one area of my life, which will impact everything else most?

• Imagine you hired a first class CEO: What should be cut, delegated, or simplified first?

• End-of-year proof: What must happen for me to call 2026 a success?

• Fear check: Which risk feels big now but seems insignificant to my 90yo self?

• Legacy view: What would my 90yo self wish I had done more of at this stage?

Good luck, start moving and keep going.