How to Achieve the Big Goals You Have for Your Business

It’s that time of year again. Everywhere you look, from Instagram to your favourite podcasts, people are talking about setting New Year’s goals for ourselves and our businesses. It feels almost unavoidable.

And yet… statistics show that only 33% of people stick to all of their New Year’s resolutions. For most of us, the problem isn’t ambition – it’s follow-through.

So if you’ve set goals before and not achieved them, you’re not alone. It’s normal to wonder whether it’s even worth setting goals at all if you’ve struggled to stick with them in the past.

But there are good reasons to set goals, and ways to make sure that they are goals you actually achieve.

Let’s explore why goal-setting still matters, the real reasons most of us don’t achieve our big goals, and how you can dramatically increase your chances of success in 2026 and beyond.

Why You Should Set New Year’s Goals for Your Business (and Your Life!)

Goals do more than give us something to wish for. They also give us direction. 

Research from psychology and behavioural science highlights some key benefits of setting clear goals.

1.Goals improve focus and performance.

Decades of research shows that clear goals can improve our focus, motivation and performance, especially when we are intentional about the goal and have a way to track progress.

When we clearly define what we want, our brains prioritise relevant actions and filter out distractions. We are more likely to take the action needed to achieve them. In short, clear goals turn vague intentions into purposeful activity.

2. Goals boost motivation.

Human behaviour is driven by progress, and hitting small, measurable milestones provides us with frequent “mini dopamine boosts,” – these help to sustain our momentum and keep us taking action. If you don’t have clear goals, it’s difficult to see progress and so the momentum can fade quickly.

3. Goals help us measure progress.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’re getting closer? Goals give you measurable checkpoints and feedback. They also help you to focus on the most important actions, rather than getting distracted by other possibilities.

For creative business owners, this means that goals are not just business strategy, they are motivational scaffolding. With clear goals, you give yourself permission to work with intention rather than constantly react to whatever lands in your inbox.

Why Most People Don’t Achieve Their Big Goals

So if goals are a good thing, why do so many of us set goals and then fall short?

One major reason is identity, or how we see ourselves. When we set big goals without understanding the stories we hold about ourselves, and the patterns we default to under pressure, we can end up undoing our own progress.

Most of us can sustain big changes for a short period of time, but when we have a big goal it often requires us to change our usual patterns and keep this change going for the long term. In other words, it requires us to change parts who we are and how we show up every day.

Here’s what often happens when we try to make a big change all at once:

• We set big goals that require big changes in how we live or work.
• We start with good intentions but don’t take the right action consistently enough, because it requires such a big change in our usual patterns.
• We lose confidence in our ability to reach the goal because we haven’t been able to be consistent.
• We lose trust in our ability to do what we say we will do.
• We tell ourselves stories like:
  • “I always start but never finish.”
  • “I can never be consistent.”
  • “This just isn’t achievable for me.”

These narratives can become self-fulfilling prophecies. The more it happens, the less belief we have that we can actually do it, and this is when self-doubt, procrastination and overthinking creep in. We start to question our ability to ever reach the goal, and as a result find it even harder to take the action we need to take to achieve it.

A couple of everyday examples illustrate this concept of identity and goal setting:

Weight loss.
Many people lose weight temporarily through intense, short-lived changes such as a drastic change in diet or a short period of intense exercise before a holiday.

But once normal life resumes, old habits return and they gain weight again.

They never became someone who eats well and moves regularly every day – they just completed a short intense burst of change, then went back to their normal patterns.

Lottery winners.
We’ve all heard the stories of people who win huge sums of money and spend it all, finding themselves with nothing left.  Why? 

They might have had a normal pattern of spending all the money they earn, and as our brains lean towards familiarity, their normal pattern of spending all the money they receive continues. They haven’t developed the identity of someone who manages money well, and so they aren’t able to manage their winnings well.

Even when we want change, if we don’t change who we are and how we see ourselves, we subtly sabotage our progress.

How to Overcome These Problems and Actually Achieve Your Goals

The good news is that you can work with your brain to support your goals, and make it much more likely you’ll achieve them. Here are three ways to do this:

1. Start with Small, Incremental Improvements

It might sound counterintuitive, but you are much more likely to achieve your big goal if you break it down into much smaller goals and just focus on the first step.

If you continually fall short of achieving your goal, it’s often because you’re trying to change too much at once.

Instead: Focus on small changes that are immediately achievable, and that you know you can stick to no matter what else happens.

For example:

• Commit to posting on Instagram once per week instead of five times per week.
• When the once-per-week habit feels normal, and you have become someone who posts on Instagram every week no matter what, increase the habit to twice per week. You’re much more likely to stick with this for the long term than if you try to post five times a week from the off.
• Each small success reinforces your belief that you can do this, and that you can keep your promises to yourself, strengthening your confidence and self-trust.
• Over time you will eventually reach that goal of posting five times a week, but doing it in small incremental steps means that you can grow your belief in your ability to ‘be consistent’, and the way you view yourself as someone who posts consistently at the same time as growing the habit.
• Business is a marathon not a sprint – it’s ok to develop a habit slowly, and it’s actually more likely that you’ll be able to stick with it for the long haul if you do.

2. Focus On The Person You Want To Become

Instead of focusing only on what you want to achieve, think about who you want to become. 

Chances are when you think about achieving your big goal, you don’t see yourself looking or behaving in exactly the same way as today. You probably see a different version of yourself achieving the goal – perhaps someone who is more confident or calm, who wears different clothes or behaves in a different way. 

Most of us do this – we imagine the version of us who hits the goal as being different to the way we are now. But we won’t magically change into this new person on the day we hit our big goal. Instead, we are much more likely to hit the goal if we start becoming that person first.

Ask yourself:

• Who are you when you’ve achieved this goal?
• What are you doing daily?
• How do you think about yourself?
• How do you show up?

Then, identify one small step you can take towards being that person every day. 

3. Use Habit Stacking for Consistency

James Clear’s concept of habit stacking, drawn from behavioural psychology, is a really helpful way to make sure new habits and actions get done.

Habit stacking means attaching a new behaviour to an existing habit that you aleady do without thinking about it. For example:

• If you want to start a habit of writing a gratitude list each morning, you could tag it to brushing your teeth. After you brush your teeth each morning write your gratitude list.
• If you wanted to get better at writing social media captions in advance, you could tag it to your daily morning coffee. After you make your morning coffee, set a timer for 10 minutes and write social media captions.

By anchoring new actions to existing habits that you already do without thinking about them, you make it far more likely that you’ll actually do the things that move you toward your goals.

Summary and Next Steps

Setting goals isn’t the problem. The problem is often how we set them, and how we think about our ability to achieve them.

To set yourself up for success this year:

• Define clear, specific and measurable goals and write them down.
• Plan the first small change you will make to get closer to your goal – make sure that you know you can stick to every week without fail – this will build your confidence.
• Only expand that change or habit once it is embedded in your life as ‘just the way you do things.’ Don’t rush it! These small incremental changes make it much more likely that you will stick with the new action or habit long enough to achieve your goals.
• Explore the version of you who has already achieved the goal – how can you start being more of that person now?

Exploring identity and habits is just one of the ways I help my coaching clients to master the inner game of business – so that they can take decisive action, achieve their goals and feel more ease and enjoyment in their work.

Click here to find out more about mindset coaching with me, and how we can apply this work directly to your business:

Mindset coaching for photographers and creative business owners