Realizing your Dreams in 2026
Approach your year with intention, in order to make it a meaningful one.
The start of a new year for many of us feels like a clean slate, and a fresh start. ‘This year will be different!’ we proclaim, with optimism and a strong sense of resolve, and a feeling of possibility. But how do we ensure that the dreams that we have at the start of the year turn into our new reality? Einstein said that the definition of madness is doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different result. If you’d like to look, feel and achieve differently, you’ll need to take some new and different steps.
Using January as a planning month can set you up for a year of achievement and progress, as long as you are prepared to do some preparatory thinking and decision making. Take a moment, and picture your life as being on a treadmill. The ground is moving underneath you, and you have no choice but to keep taking each step, otherwise you will fall off. You are taking steps, or running, sometimes almost in a trans-like state. Your attention is fixed on the screen, either on a blur of images, or on your heart rate, your steps, or your time left. The treadmill is going too fast. Or it is going too slow. Perhaps the constant pace is feeling monotonous, and exhausting. Consider the idea that you have set the speed of the treadmill, and only you can adjust the buttons.
You can slow it down. You can speed it up. You can set the gradient and vary it, or you can make it one continuous uphill slog. In your mind, step aside from the treadmill, and take a long, deep breath. Perhaps it is time to rethink and re-evaluate what is important to you, in your life, at this moment. I’d like to encourage you to pause like this more often this year. To learn to reflect and to pay attention to yourself and to your real wants and needs. To extract the fragments of thought that race through your head, and construct them into fully formed sentences, to either be acted on, or discarded.
Begin with identifying your Dream
A dream is a meaningful and inspiring personal goal with a longed-for, rewarding and satisfying outcome. You can inject a small dose of reality here in terms of what is achievable, but not enough that it squashes your ambitions. As a start, identify any one dream or a goal that you have. It can be related to absolutely any area of your life - your family, work, recreation, spirituality, wellness, growth - you decide. It can be something you’ve always wanted to do, or it can be something recently occurred to you that you would like to achieve.
Write or type your dream down, in one clear sentence. What is the reason (or reasons) you want to achieve this dream? Write these down too. Make sure that some of your reasoning includes how you will feel, not only once you have achieved your dream, but also whilst you are working towards it. Spend some time on this - the more reasons that you can think of, the stronger your motivation will be. It may ask to help yourself “What else?” a couple of times, each time you have written a reason. Construct a Power Sentence that you can say to yourself for the course of this dream, to remind you of your motivation, and to keep you on track. This is a unique sentence, just for you, so you choose the format and the wording. You have decided what you want to achieve - now decide what you want to keep saying to yourself to help you get there.
An example: Dream: This year I want to get my financial affairs properly in order. Reasons: I want to feel financially stable, more secure in my financial future, be clear of unnecessary debt and worry less about my resources. I want to feel more in control and create discipline around my spending and saving habits by having a plan. I want to set a good example for my children. I want to create an infrastructure that I can keep to going forward that will give me security, and greater opportunity. Power Sentence: I am financially savvy and sound, and am creating resources and options for my future.
Decide on your Plan
What are the concrete steps that you will need to try, each day, to cover the ground to reach your goal? Don’t let your dream stay trapped as a wish – it needs specific actions to be realized. Dote on the details – the more time you spend constructing a concrete plan, the more achievable it will be. Remember to be realistic with the steps that you identify. In her book Tiny Experiments, author Anne-Laure Le Cunff talks about the merits of experimental growth, and tells us to strive for sustainable excellence rather than fleeting perfection.
To help formulate your own customized plan, go through each of the questions below and use some of them to help you decide the best path to follow. Use them as a framework to help you construct your plan. Have your diary or calendar close at hand, and schedule the main steps just as you would important appointments. These “meetings” in your calendar with yourself are a commitment - treat them just as you would any other important appointment that you make. Arrive on time, be prepared and have the right attitude.
How long do you realistically need, to achieve your dream? Set a target date. How often do you need to take each of these steps? What exactly needs to be done, each day, or each week? What time of day will you take these steps? What is the first thing that you need to do today to begin? And the next thing? And the next? How will you track each of these steps? What are the challenges you may face, and what can you do when you encounter these challenges? Do you need to make any changes to your environment to support the steps that you have identified? Do you need to enlist the help of others to achieve your dream?
Are any of your current habits not supportive of your plan, and what can you do to change these? Revisit the time and target date question. Now that you have thought a bit more about this, how long do you need to take all the steps necessary to realise your dream? Keep your plan realistic. If you have a bad day or week, what will you do to get back on track? Be open to tweaking and adjusting as you follow your plan. Do not expect linear progress, and allow your own feedback loops to make your plan stronger. What (positive, reinforcing action or gift) can you reward yourself with for every week that you follow your plan? Put your list of rewards in your diary or tracker too.
You might find yourself reading this quickly and skimming through these questions. You may think that you will come back to do this another time, and be content just to have identified the dream for now. I urge you not to skip the planning and decision steps. If you do not make the time to construct and personalise your plan, you are less likely to achieve your goal. This is the hard part; but if you work through this thoroughly, the sky is the limit for what you can achieve. The plan is what gets you to the place - even more so if you are the one that came up with it. If it gets handed to you by someone else, you have far less chance of taking ownership of it, and therefore achieving it. The creation of your design will take energy, commitment and time. There are no short cuts. Take the time, and make your plan.
Get going with the Doing
The plan is often the hardest part, but you have formulated it. Now it is a case of following it consistently for its full duration. Prioritise, persevere and persist. Trust time. If you stick with your action steps you can only cover ground. The power is in having your plan, and then pitching up, relentlessly, to follow it. Adhering to your decision, day after day, even when you don’t really feel like it, is what will move the needle, and get you by degrees to your goal. To persevere you will need to have passion for the plan – and for your reasons for wanting to follow it.
Review and reassess periodically and adjust and refine where necessary, so that your action steps keep making sense. If you trust in the process you have created, it will take you to your destination. To help you with the doing phase: Read your plan, every week. Keep using your diary and your tracker, daily. Follow your plan. Tweak and adjust your plan where necessary. Stick to your plan. Slip up and stop following the plan – then review again, and renew your commitment. Pick up where you left off, or start again. Keep persevering. Keep persisting. And trust time to take care of your progress.
A friend posted this message on a group that we share recently that I love: ‘Believe in the magic of dreaming up an epic version of your life.’ In our year ahead there will be mixed experiences; happy and sad; rewarding and difficult; challenging and sobering. We have the choice to focus on the things that we can control – our dreams, deciding on our plans, and doing the work. We design our days, and how we choose to navigate them. If your dreams and decisions are sound, then there will be great joy and satisfaction in the doing. Here’s to an intentional 2026 based on planning, progress and most importantly, pausing to enjoy the results of our efforts.
Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash