Hey Reader

How's your "new year, new me" energy going?

...😅 yeahhhh

Maybe you started strong and then fizzled out.

Maybe you missed a day, which turned into 2... and then 5...

Or maybe there are some goals that you have full intentions of coming back to, but the progress has just stalled out.

If you've already fallen off with your 2026 or Quarter 1 goals, you're certainly not alone in this.

Over 60% of people who set new year goals for themselves have quit by this point, and typically less than 1 in 10 people will actually achieve their goals.

I like to think of you as that 1 though 😈 Let's not have an imperfect start hold us back from achieving what we want!

But how can we get back on track quickly? 🤔

The idea - The 4 A's

If you'd rather watch-then-read, this is a tip I've got a full video on. Hit the video box below to check it out!

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When you've fallen off with a goal, or you just aren't doing the things you need to do, it pays to have a framework to help get yourself back to a point of making progress.

It pays even more if the framework is easy to remember 😝

What I've started using is the 4 A's system:

• Acknowledge
• Analyse
• Adjust
• Advance

Another way to remember this is as the "what, why, how, now" approach, but let's have a look 👀

Acknowledge

Our first step is to look at things objectively.

A problem is a lot easier to solve when we know what the problem is, so acknowledgement of the problem needs to come first.

Here we can ask ourselves:

• What task keeps getting skipped?
• What habit isn’t happening anymore?
• What part of the plan is being avoided or ignored?
• What negative action keeps happening?

It's important to be specific here. Saying "I fell off with my health goal" is vague and thus harder to solve for, but saying "I haven't done any exercise this week" or "I keep eating junk food" are things which are easier to address.

Acknowledging isn't an opportunity to be judgemental with ourselves, or beat ourselves up. We aren't trying to make excuses or further probe into the lack-of-happening.

Rather, we just want to get very specific about what hasn't gotten done that is necessary to move us forward.

Analyse

Once we know what isn't getting done, then we can dig into the reason behind it.

Here we want to know why our goal actions aren't getting done.

Different problems need different solutions, so in this step we can ask ourselves:

• Why hasn't this action been completed? Or,
• Why does this negative action keep happening?

Honesty matters here.

While there may be a range of reasons behind something not happening, more often than not there's one main thing that's holding us back.

In this step, it can pay to dig even deeper by asking ourselves why more than once to really get to the root cause.

This is your permission to embrace your inner 3-year-old and ask why a lot.

(We'll just keep any temper tantrums to a minimum 😝)

For example, if the Acknowledge stage turned up that you haven't been following your exercise programme, your probing might look like this:

With each "why?" we ask, there are a lot of answers that could come up.

The final “why” is the real problem to solve though.

The Analyse stage can also be a good opportunity to reflect on what is working in your goal plan.

It's important to remember that most plans don't need to be fully overhauled to work better. They just need small tweaks.

Adjust

Time to plan some changes! Or change some plans 😝

This is our how step, where we can ask ourselves:

• How can I change my plan for this goal so I can make progress?
• How can I approach this goal so it works better for me?

We aren't fully scrapping the plan and starting again. We just need to address the parts that were holding us back.

Here we want to stay committed to the goal outcome we were hoping for, not the original process we planned to achieve it.

Needing to change your initial goal plans is not a sign of failure 👏

Very few plans work perfectly from day one, especially for new goals.

You're older and wiser now 😉 You've got more lived experience with the goal to know what does and doesn't work for you. Let's use that!

Advance

Once the plan is adjusted, it’s time to move forward.

But not tomorrow, or next week.

Now.

The way to do that is by making the next action step tiny.

We're talking so small it feels kind of laughably little 😅

This could be something you could do in 2 minutes, or 5 seconds, or even without getting up from where you are.

The smaller the task, the better.

Even this tiny amount of progress is better than what we had before, which was nothing 😛

Once you've done that tiny step, why not pick out another...and another 😈

All your tiny steps add up to big progress which is exactly what is going to get you to the outcomes you're hoping for.

I need more help

If you wanted more support on how to plan and action your 2026 goals to be the 1 in 10 people who actually achieve what they set out to, I'd love to help you with our EPIC Goals Course!

In that one you get the full step-by-step breakdown of how I:

• Brainstorm my potential goals for each new quarter
• Select the goals that are going to be the most impactful for me
• Plan the actions needed to make real progress
• Reflect on my goal-getting to make goal-achieving easier
• And more!

Hit the button below to check out EPIC Goals and see if it's right for you 🥳

Let's take action

For one of the goals you've fallen off with at this point, ask yourself:

• What specific action isn’t happening?
• Why is that action not getting done?
• How can I adjust the plan to make it work better?
• What tiny action can I take now to move forward?

Save the 4 A's to apply any time you fall off with a goal to help get back on track quickly and make more progress 😊

Until next time!

- Jess

Sick of setting goals that don't get achieved? Learn the system everyday goal-getters are using to make EPIC things happen.