Reflect & Rise - How to Hit Your 2026 Goals

All right. New year, new goals, fresh start. But how are you going to lock in and confirm that you're actually going to reach those goals in 2026? In this video, I'm going to show you one tool that you can use to increase your chances of reaching your goals this year. And it is so dang simple. You are going to be very much able to implement this as we go. This is the simple act of reflecting. I'm going to tell you why this is needed, and I'm also going to give you a simple tool to do this as much as you want. Reflecting. What is it? What are we even talking about? Journaling? Yes. This is a form of reflecting at the end of a project. Stopping to ask, how do we do? Did it work? Did it not work? What do we want to change going forward? Easy, simple form of reflecting. Even looking at, these are my goals, how far or close, and what obstacles are in my way to keep me from getting there, Right? These are all forms of reflecting. Just stopping to look at how am I doing? How are we doing here? How is this going? Simple act of reflecting. In fact, this is good news. Listen to this. Researchers Gino Pasano, Distefano and Stats found that stopping and reflecting on work can improve. Improve job performance over just repeating. Let's go, let's go. Let's keep going. No, let's stop. Let's stop and check in. Participants who spent 15 minutes a day reflecting on their work performed about 23% better than those who didn't stop to reflect. In addition, research shows that when you stop to reflect as individuals, our happiness levels absolutely tick on up. And you know, I love that. In addition, it helps us reach our goals. This idea of stopping to look at where is it that I want to be and what is in my way. When you do that, you are more likely to get where you're going because you're parsing through what's not working. And we're going to clear that and we're going to get back on track. Now, how can you do this and stay on track with a reflective practice in a practical way all year long? Well, here's what I do. I use something called the Reflect and Rise circle. If you comment rise, I will totally give you a copy of this so you can walk through it on your own as well. The Reflect and Rise circle is simply that was just a completed one I did, but it is simply a circle where in this circle you make a pie chart and you identify the eight areas of life that are most important to you. And I'm going to walk you through mine right now in case this is helpful for you too. The first one is Soul Fuel. Soul Fuel simply is my heart. Okay. Right now. How is my soul feeling? Does it need to be nourished? Simple, simple, simple, simple. I nourish my soul through church. I nourish my soul through great music. I nourish my soul through a walk in the park. I nourish my soul through coffee with friends. This could look like a lot of different things. Even writing. Sitting down to write. Second category for me, family, high priority. It's a value that we pull through even in our company and how we work with our clients. We want to embrace the family values that we have across the board, so there's continuity there. So family is another area that I reflect on and measure each year. The third wheel in my circle is business. Business overall. I run companies. I love business. I love consulting with my clients in their business. How is business going? Number four, clients separate from business. I do think about my clients. How are my clients doing right now? Is there anyone that has need something from me? Is there anyone that has something going on that I saw in our weekly check in that I may need to follow up on as well? So I do a client check in. Fifth, I check in on money, both my personal finances and my business finances in this reflect and rise circle. In the sixth circle, I look at wellness and in the wellness category, I look at my overall health but also movement. Am I getting movement in which is a priority for me? Am I eating foods that nourish me? Do I have any doctor's appointments that I need to go to, etc. Etc. Etc. And the darn dentist appointment. Man, I love going to the dentist, but it is one of the hardest appointments for me to schedule and then keep. I don't know why that is. Anyway, next category for me is white space. White space. How much space do I have in my calendar for not only reflecting but thinking, strategizing for random things that come up? There's a lot of benefit to giving yourself some white space in your calendar. Very specifically, I do this in two ways. Number one, I have a productivity week every single month on my calendar from now until eternity until the calendar stops going. I don't even know how far that is in the system because it is set so that the Sunday, the last Sunday of every week blocks one week for me where calls can't unexpectedly be scheduled. So I've got booking links out there. People can hop on my calendar of course and I block my calendar so that I look unavailable. And truly, it is time that I am unavailable for a lot of external. That's when I go internal. I set aside time to, yes, reflect, but maybe also work on a big project to reset to take care of some of that health and wellness, whatever needs to be done in that month. But what's important is that I never get too caught up and I never go too far without there being a pause and a reset moment. Now, will I take calls for my clients? Absolutely. Like, yes, if something comes up at the team, if we need to talk, Absolutely. I am there. There is enough space for that because I built it in. The other thing I do throughout the year is that I have decided that, and I've been doing this for several years now, but I just formalized it in 2025 that I work a 24 hour week because I was finding that I was working a little here, I was working a little there, and in between, oh, I needed to go get coffee in between, I needed to take this phone call in between, I needed to run something to the girls at school. So what was happening is I was doing the same amount of, but it was just all spread out. A coffee chat with someone, someone walks in the office and they say hello and okay, now we're chatting a little bit, right? So it was still the same amount of work. But what I did is I have compressed it so that my workday begins at about noon or one and I work for six hours and then I wrap up. So my day is shifted forward a little bit. It goes a little bit into the evening because of my time zone. I'm currently working and living in Zagreb, Croatia. So I start a bit later to keep on schedule with the majority of my team and my clients. And then my morning is for all of those other things that sometimes randomly come up throughout the day. Working out, movement, doctor's appointments, kids, need, anything, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what I've done is I've taken out context switching, by the way. Context switching is that thing that can happen when you are in. You're focused on something, then you got to ping over to something else. But now I need to go back and focus on that other thing. It takes about 20 minutes for you to get refocused on that thing that you already had focus on. You got out of the zone and now you're back in 20 minutes. 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. So it adds up. So I took all of that away and now I have again compressed my days six hours, Monday through Thursday. But if one of those days gets cut short, I have Friday for overflow. And I can certainly dial up, dial down as needed. So my white space is just having space in my day to think. And if you are a leader in a business, if you're a leader in an organization, on a team, you need that space just to think through what you need to be doing and how you need to serve people. So this space becomes even more and more important as your responsibility shifts. And then the last category in our Reflect and rise circle is general. Generally, how am I feeling? Because I could be feeling great in all of those categories, but generally feeling down. Or I could be feeling not great, but still generally be feeling okay. And those are things I want to keep an eye on, look into, ask myself questions about, and use an opportunity to reflect. Now you've got the circle, you've got the categories. What do we do next? Well, what I do is I take each one of those categories and I score myself potentially on a scale from 1 to 10, but more so I just fill in the wheel with a little shading. So I shade it up if I'm doing great. And maybe it's only shaded halfway if I'm not feeling great or doing great in that category, if I've got some worries, if there's an action I need to take, et cetera. So I fill all of those up, and then I reflect. How do I feel about, you know, family only being at a 75% full right now? What do I need to do there? What do I want to do there? Why is it there? I'll use this as a visual opportunity to reflect and check in. And then money. Oh, man. Money. It's low right now. It's low because whatever, whatever, whatever. I noticed that my credit card statement hadn't been paid yet. And I like to pay that on time. I like to make sure it's all paid off all the time. Okay, cool. I can easily take action on that. Let me make a note about that. So I'm constantly resetting, and I'm constantly taking the opportunity to say, hey, if this is what matters to me in my life and this is what I want to be paying attention to, what do I need to be paying attention to? And then I'll also, of course, look at my goals. Am I on track? Am I off track? And then what do I need to adjust in line with that? But usually that fits right into one of these buckets as well, because my Goals are absolutely connected to what matters to me in both business and life. So how often do you look at this? Well, you could certainly look at this every single day. What I do is I look at this and every single week at the end of each week. Not only do I have a process where I set myself up for the week ahead, because I firmly believe that your next week begins at the end of this current week. For me, a Thursday. For you, maybe a Thursday, maybe a Friday. Whenever your week wraps up, I like to set myself up for success in the current week so I'm not going into the next week scrambling. So you could do your Reflect and Rise circle once a week at the end of each week to set yourself up for success in the week ahead. And this will help you determine what you need to put on your calendar for next week also. So I wanted to share this with you because I think this is a tool that'll really help you get ahead in 2026 and stay close to what matters to you and stay close to your goals and just make micro adjustments as you identify things you need to shift while you are moving throughout the year. And as you complete this Reflect and Rise Circle again, if you want this, just let me know Rise in the comments and we'll pop you a link to it. But also, if you would like to know more about how my Reflect and Rise Circle turned out for the year in the next episode, I've created an entire breakdown of how I use this Reflect and Rise circle to look back at last year and to think about where I'm going for 2026. And I broke down all the details of that in our next episode, so check that out if you want the extended edition. Happy New Year. Thanks for being here. You are right on time. It is time to go and hit play on getting everything you want in 2026. Stay in the game and keep reflecting to know where you need to dial it in. See you next time.