My 2026 goals are over four months late this year which is a reflection of where my life is currently at – off balance!
As a strategist, I recommend setting annual goals in January when we have the energy and motivation to plan for the year ahead.
When January is over, this motivation fades and the time required to set annual goals gets filled with the never ending to do lists.
That’s what happened me this year, January went by and suddenly it was May! 🙄
January is the best time to set annual goals, yet ‘now’ is the second-best time.
Setting annual goals gives us direction for the year ahead, the more we work on our goals, the further we travel in our chosen direction.
When we don’t set clear goals for our lives, we can tend to float around and not move in any specific direction for too long – this is how the end of 2025 and the start of 2026 has been for me – directionless and all over the place.
Not any more!
As outlined in Setting Dream Driven Goals, when setting annual goals I ask myself four simple questions for each area of my life,
💚 1. What are my Dream Driven Goals?
💚 2. Why are these goals important to me?
💚 3. How will I achieve these goals?
💚 4. What metrics will measure progress?
Here are my answers to these questions for 2026,
❤️ 1. SENSE OF SELF:
Sense of self combines my spirituality, psychology, personal strategy and personal development. Sense of self is all about who I am and how I feel about myself & the world around me.
This is where I work on the concepts of self love, self worth, self esteem, self belief, self trust, self respect and self awareness.
The success of this area determines the success in all other areas of my life and so it deserves the most attention.
What are my Sense of Self Dream Driven Goals?
These goals have remained consistent over the past few years yet have deeply transformed who I am and what I bring to my life and to the world around me.
- Learn more about myself and psychology to bring the best version of my most authentic self to my life, my relationships & the world.
- Learn more about, grow and stay grounded spiritually.
- Utilise, improve and learn more about my personal strategy.
Why are my Sense of Self goals important to me?
My sense of self has taken a bit of a battering over the past few years and so has been pretty unstable. I ended 2025 on this same note which is one of the reasons it has taken me so long to set my goals for 2026.
Working on my sense of self and learning more about spirituality and psychology has been a game changer in terms of overcoming life’s recent challenges – the more I learn, the more capable and resilient I seem to be.
My personal strategy gives me visibility into all areas of my life, keeps me on top of everything and ensures I move through life with as little stress as possible. The more visibility I have in my life, the more peaceful and contented I feel.
When I don’t use my personal strategy I feel disorganised, overwhelmed, under pressure, stressed, less grounded, less happy & less fulfilled.
How will I achieve my Sense of Self goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ Learn more about spirituality, psychology and concepts of sense of self.
⭐️ Metrics are learnings and how my life changes and improves.
✅ Follow my personal strategy and carry out regular reviews.
⭐️ Metrics for my personal strategy are documented in all areas of my life below.
✅ Prioritise solitude, writing, reading and journaling.
⭐️ These soul nourishing activities are solely for enjoyment – no metrics required!
❤️ 2. RELATIONSHIPS:
What are my relationship Dream Driven Goals?
- To nurture & enjoy my relationships with my family, friends and those who bring joy to my life, this area of my life is all about enjoying the company of those I love and who love me.
❤️ There is no greater gift.
- To continue navigating the grief and sadness of losing my beloved Dad.
My Dad passed away in August 2023 and even though my family and I have lived with my Dad’s immense loss for almost 3 years, it feels like a bad dream. Not a moment of my day passes where I don’t think of and miss my Dad, my heart and soul carry a constant ache of sadness.
Some days I don’t even know how my life actually functions without him, it’s just so incomprehensible.
💔 There is no greater pain.
Why are my relationship goals important to me?
Those I love and who love me are my greatest source of happiness – I want to ensure my relationships are given the time and attention they deserve.
Grief is the price we pay for loving someone and losing them. Losing my Dad and learning to live with his absence is by far the most painful experience of my life. I want to continue to honour him and his memory every day by understanding my grief and living my best life, the life he gave me.
How will I achieve my relationship goals and what metrics will measure progress?
❤️ Spend precious time with my family and friends which brings me much joy.
💔 Navigate the journey of grief for my Dad which brings me much sadness.
⭐️ There are no metrics for this category, I capture the precious time I spend with those I love and who love me in photos and journaled memories.
❤️ 3. HEALTH:
What are my health Dream Driven Goals?
My health goals are very simple yet are also layered and complex, this reflects the journey of health in our lives, it’s a bit of a rollercoaster!
- To nurture & improve my mental, physical and emotional health.
Why are my health goals important to me?
My health is the foundation on which everything else is built, without health, nothing else can thrive. My perspective on health has changed immensely over te past few years, it is no longer about being healthy because I enjoy eating well, exercising and fitting into my clothes.
My health is now about longevity and having fitness, strength & mobility to enjoy that longevity. When I feel fit and healthy, I feel more grounded, joyful, capable and at peace with myself, I also feel less anxious, less stressed and less overwhelmed with myself.
How will I achieve my health goals and what metrics will measure progress?
I set the same health goals every year and have learned that progress is not linear, some years I am at my healthiest, fittest and strongest and some years I am not.
What matters is not so much linear progress, but what I learn about my health and the continuous work I put in to improve it.
✅ 1. Mental health:
Prioritise what supports my mental health, mental health is the most important element of overall health as without mental health, everything else will be an uphill struggle.
⭐️ I use the mental health evaluation scale below to monitor my mental health, you can read my blog post about it here, Where are you in Colour.
✅ 2. Emotional health:
Prioritise what supports my emotional life, I’m an Enneagram 4 and so pretty much live on my emotions. Managing my emotions is a daily practice to stay sane!
I keep a close eye on my emotions so they don’t do me or anyone else any damage! 🙄 Over the past few years, I’ve been doing lots of work on my triggers and what I have found to be the opposite of triggers, glimmers. I’m learning loads and will write about my findings when I know more.
✅ 3. Physical Health:
Prioritise what supports my physical health to be healthy, fit & strong by embedding habits for nutrition, exercise, sleep, relaxation etc and scheduling health check ups for bloods, scans, optician, dentist etc.
This element of my health is like a rollercoaster, sometimes it’s going uo and sometimes it’s going down – a constant work in progress!
⭐️ I measure progress or lack thereof through bmi, weight, nutrition, exercise, sleep and results from health checks.
❤️ 4. FINANCE:
What are my finance Dream Driven Goals?
- To achieve and enjoy financial freedom.
Whilst this is a very simple goal, it takes much work and sacrifice to move through the levels of financial freedom. In saying that, it’s a fascinating journey of which learning is a constant companion.
Financial freedom is defined as,
‘having sufficient income, savings or investments to live comfortably for life and meet all one’s obligations without relying on a salary’.
In his excellent book Money – Master the Game, Tony Robbins says financial freedom is,
‘a long-term plan to build the life of your dreams. Tony also says ‘success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want, that’s also financial freedom’.
These definitions sum up my dreams for financial freedom!
Why are my finance goals important to me?
For me, financial freedom isn’t about having a certain amount of money or having the financial means to buy material things. My idea of financial freedom is more about using finance to enjoy freedom in all the other areas of my life.
I want the freedom to enjoy and spend my time in whatever way I want, to work for joy, not for the necessity of money and to contribute to the world in whatever way suits me best.
How will I achieve my finance goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ 1. Increase my financial value.
Financial value is a much better metric than earnings as while earnings might stay the same, financial value can increase due to savings and investments.
In stark contrast, earnings may be increasing but if there are no savings and investments, financial value will decrease.
⭐️ Metrics for financial value are total savings, investments and pensions (minus debt).
✅ 2. Spend and enjoy spending.
This may sound like an unusual goal yet it’s as important to enjoy spending money as it is to enjoy earning it.
I’m not great at sticking to a budget yet I am good at monitoring spend in great detail. This ensures I know exactly how much I spend and can adjust my habits accordingly, before they do too much damage.
Over the past few years I have dramatically improved my spending habits, being without a salary is a good motivator to do this.
⭐️ Metrics for spending are total spend which is detailed (daily spending), capital (large spending) and business spend.
✅ 3. Increase my income.
I left the corporate world in October 2021 and my income dramatically reduced as a consequence. This reduction in earnings resulted in abundance of another type, the abundance of time which brings me more joy than any amount of money ever could.
In 2025 I created a new income stream in my business which will gives me the freedom to explore more income streams in 2026.
⭐️ Metrics for income are total business income minus expenses/tax etc.
✅ 4. Learn more about finance.
Although finance isn’t my favourite subject, I know i need to learn more to move closer to my goals. I have only read a few finance books yet they have all made a huge impact on my financial decisions, you can find my favourite finance books here – my favourite books.
⭐️ Metrics here are financial learnings and the action I take from these learnings.
❤️ 5. WORK – WRITING/BUSINESS
What are my work Dream Driven Goals?
✅ 1. Be a writer and build my own business as an entrepreneur
✅ 2. Practice and teach Lean philosophy
✅ 3. Continuously learn and improve my skills
Why are my work goals important to me?
There are so many reasons I want to be a writer yet the biggest are that writing and reading (which makes me a better writer) are my favourite things to do.
Imagine making a living from your favourite things to do, that’s my dream.
I have always wanted to work for myself and have total freedom over my work, my time and my creativity – my business as an entrepreneur is a channel to achieve this freedom.
Over the past 4+ years I have spent the least time in this category which is ironic as for the previous 25 years it is where I spent the most time. Having left my day job in October 2021, I took a break from much of my work and focused on building a solid foundation for my entrepreneur world.
This took much longer than expected and was more challenging than I ever could have imagined. In saying that, the foundation I have built is now stronger and so am I – challenges have a way of building the resilience we don’t know that we need!
How will I achieve my work goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ Create stability in my current income streams – my income streams have been unstable over the past few years as there has been much change in my life, stabilising my income streams will also help stabilise my life!
✅ Create stability in my weekly newsletter (join my weekly newsletter here), blog posts and social media posts – my writing has also been unstable over the past few years and so it’s important to stabilise my writing before I take on any more work.
✅ Create more time to read and write – reading and writing both take a huge amount of time and so it’s a constant work in progress to schedule sufficient time to do both. This has been a priority of mine for a few years yet I’m still not assigning enough time to reading and writing as I would like – here’s to improving this in 2026.
✅ Launch an exciting project I am working on 🥳
I’m stepping back into the Lean world yet in a very different way to how I practiced Lean for over 20 years. This is something that has been on my mind for a few years now yet it has never been the right time to launch it. I just know 2026 will be the year – I just don’t know when!
⭐️ I use metrics for all of the above at a high level only. Previously I had mountains of metrics yet I spent more time managing the metrics than managing my business – this was a lesson learned and a mistake I’ll work very hard to never repeat.
❤️ 6. EXPERIENCES/FUN:
What are my experiences/fun Dream Driven Goals and why are they important to me?
- To have enjoyable experiences, have fun, live my life to the fullest and enjoy all aspects of my life.
This goal is important to me for the simple reason that it brings me much joy.
How will I achieve my experiences/fun goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ Over the past 2 years I spent time travelling alone in sun destinations which reminded me how much I love solo travel and adventure. As a travel photographer, I used to travel a lot on my own and I have really missed it. I plan to travel more on my own in 2026 which is an adventure in itself.
✅ Spending time with my family and friends brings me so much joy and I look forward to spending more of my time with these amazing people in 2026. I also plan to travel more with my family and friends.
✅ Plan experiences that bring me joy and make me feel alive – these experiences don’t have to be big, grand gestures. For me, it’s the small, everyday experiences that we can all access that bring immense joy – quality time with loved ones, a swim in the ocean on a cold day (nothing like the Irish Sea or the Atlantic Ocean to make you feel alive 🥶), a walk on the beach, a coffee date with a friend, a meal with friends, a kind word, a genuine smile, a helping hand.
⭐️ There are no metrics in this category, I capture experiences and fun times in photos and journaled memories.
❤️ 7. ENVIRONMENT:
What are my environment Dream Driven Goals and why are they important to me?
- Improve and enjoy my environment which is my home – remove everything that doesn’t serve me and only keep what brings me joy.
This goal is important to me because I enjoy looking after & improving my living space. When my living space is free of clutter, tidy and organised, my mind feels less cluttered and less overwhelmed. I’m a minimalist and so I don’t need much stuff yet I always seem to be decluttering – something doesn’t quiet add up there I know.
How will I achieve my environment goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ I’ve been carrying out Marie Kondo’s decluttering for a few years yet it all ramped up last year when I moved house, moving is a great way to declutter and I did remove much of what I no longer needed. I’m moving again in 2026 so I’ll be removing more of what I no longer need.
Marie’s overarching teaching in her brilliant book ‘The Magic Art of Tidying Up’ is to remove anything from our homes that doesn’t spark joy, this is something we can bring into all areas of our lives – only keep what sparks joy!
Marie’s book is a must for anyone who wants more space in their home and life!
⭐️ The metrics I use are progress with Marie Kondo’s decluttering, space created and how much less overwhelmed I feel.
❤️ 8. CONTRIBUTION
What are my contribution Dream Driven Goals and why are they important to me?
- To contribute to the world financially and also with my time & skills.
This goal is important to me as I want to give back to a world that has given and continues to give me so much.
How will I achieve my contribution goals and what metrics will measure progress?
✅ Contribute to the world with my finances, time and skills, this means different things at different times.
✅ I have been supporting four main charities that mean a lot to me for many years and I continue to support them albeit not at the same level as I did when I had a full time job. I also give to charities that family and friends are supporting.
⭐️ There are no metrics in this category just the joy of giving back!
That’s it, my 2026 goals.
It’s never too late to set annual goals for your life, the best time is January yet the next best time is now! Whatever your goals are for 2026, I wish you success, love, health and happiness as you live your best life every day.
Thanks for reading 🙏
Siobhain
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✅ Here’s a few resources to help you set your own annual goals for 2026 ✅
This is a motivating video on setting dream driven goals by one of my favourite thought leaders, Brendon Burchard, it’s only 12 minutes long and well worth your time.
How NOT to Set Goals (Why S.M.A.R.T. goals are lame)
And my guide to setting your dream driven goals for 2026,
