Why Your 2026 Goals Will Fail
And what to do instead in the next 20 minutes
Here’s how to calibrate your attention system before everyone else starts setting resolutions they’ll abandon by February.
I was sitting at my kitchen table last Tuesday morning, still in my robe, staring at a blank page in my notebook.
My coffee had gone cold. I hadn’t noticed.
I’d opened my notebook just to “jot down a few things,” but the truth was my chest felt tight in that familiar, quiet way it does when I’m pretending I’m fine. 2025 had been a blur: beautiful moments and missed ones, wins and worries. A year where I did a lot, but still wondered:
Did I actually move toward the life I want? Or just survive the one I have?
I picked up my pen and wrote one sentence:
“It’s December 10, 2026. I wake up and…”
Twenty minutes later, something in me had shifted.
Not emotionally: neurologically.
And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.
Because if you want 2026 to be different, the most powerful thing you can do right now is not set goals, build a plan, or create a vision board.
It’s something much stranger.
And infinitely more effective.
Your Brain Doesn’t Respond to Wishes
Here’s the problem with how most of us approach a new year:
We say we want “clarity,” or “success,” or to “finally do the thing.”
But your brain doesn’t respond to vague desire.
It responds to instructions.
Right now, your brain is drowning. Eleven million bits of information every second, confirmed by neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania studying sensory overload. You’re consciously aware of about forty of them.
Your Reticular Activating System (RAS): your brain’s attention filter, deletes the rest before they ever reach you.
It has to. Otherwise you’d collapse under the noise.
So your RAS makes a ruthless decision, moment by moment:
What’s relevant? What’s ignorable?
That choice shapes everything:
what you notice
what you miss
which opportunities feel “random”
which red flags you walk right past
which ideas suddenly “occur” to you
which possibilities stay invisible for years
And here’s what matters most for your 2026:
Your RAS bases those decisions on what you’ve told it is important.
So when you vaguely “want success,” your brain just… shrugs.
That isn’t an instruction.
That’s noise.
The opportunities you need for 2026 are probably already in your world—sitting in your inbox, living in your network, hiding inside skills you haven’t used, waiting in a conversation you keep postponing.
They’re already there.
You just can’t see them yet.
Because your attention isn’t calibrated.
The Day I Realized I’d Been Blind for Thirty-Two Years
I learned this the hard way.
When my son was thirteen, he spent time in the hospital. I sat next to his bed listening to the monitors beep: sharp, rhythmic, antiseptic; and out of nowhere, memories from when I was thirteen slammed into me.
Hospitals. Needles. Nights I pretended weren’t terrifying. Silence so heavy it lived in my bones.
I hadn’t thought about those years in a long time.
And sitting there in that too-bright room, I realized something that knocked the air out of me:
For thirty-two years, I had been walking past help.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Articles about childhood medical trauma? I’d scroll past.
Friends recommending therapists who specialized in exactly what I had lived through? I’d nod and forget.
Books about healing? I’d close the tab.
Someone saying, “You know, there’s treatment for this”? I’d change the subject.
The resources were always there.
My brain was simply deleting them because the pain was too heavy to hold.
It had decided:
This is irrelevant. Delete it. Keep moving.
And I did.
Until I couldn’t anymore.
That’s when I understood something that changed the trajectory of my life:
Your brain only shows you what it is programmed to notice.
For decades, my internal programming said: Survive. Don’t feel. Don’t look back.
So I didn’t see the help that was right in front of me.
Not because it wasn’t there.
Because my attention wasn’t calibrated to recognize it.
And that is exactly what we’re going to leverage for your 2026.
Your Brain Believes What You Write
Most people try to think their way into a new year.
But your brain doesn’t change through thinking.
It changes through sensory experience.
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman calls this neural priming: when you expose your nervous system to detailed representations of future states, your brain begins treating them as navigation targets rather than fantasies.
This is why the 20-minute exercise works:
When you write your future in present-tense detail, two systems activate at once:
Your RAS says: This is relevant. Show me anything connected to this reality.
Your prefrontal cortex begins: mapping pathways, solving problems, spotting patterns, connecting dots.
Writing is not magic.
It’s instruction.
It’s calibration.
It’s identity rehearsal.
It’s the installation of a new “search pattern” for your brain.
Think about the last time you wanted a specific car.
It suddenly appeared everywhere.
The cars didn’t multiply.
Your attention did.
This exercise does that: except instead of cars, your brain starts noticing:
opportunities
invitations
ideas
conversations
next steps
solutions
names in your contacts list that suddenly matter
This isn’t imagination.
It’s training.
Your 20-Minute Protocol
You need a pen, paper (not a screen: handwriting activates different neural pathways), and twenty uninterrupted minutes.
Here’s the protocol:
Step 1: Choose the Day
Pick one day exactly one year from today.
If you’re reading this in mid-November 2025, write November 10, 2026. If you’re reading this in January, pick a date in January 2027.
Not “next year.” Not “by the end of 2026.”
A specific date creates a neurological target your brain can lock onto.
Step 2: Write in Present Tense
Start with: “It’s November 10, 2026. I wake up and…”
Future tense (”I will…”) signals the brain to ignore it.
Present tense makes the nervous system care now.
Step 3: Add Sensory Detail
Don’t write: “I’m successful and happy.”
Your brain doesn’t know what that means.
Instead write: “I wake up at 6:47am without an alarm. The room is cool. My phone is across the room on airplane mode. When I turn it on, I see messages from clients I’m genuinely excited about. My bank account shows $147,891.”
Specificity = power.
Step 4: Write for 20 Minutes Without Stopping
Do not pause. Do not edit. Do not write for your internal reader.
You’re not journaling. You’re programming.
The breakthroughs happen after your mind runs out of the obvious.
What Happens in the First 48 Hours
Within two days, something always shifts:
a name pops into your mind
a message catches your eye
a conversation feels more meaningful
an idea won’t leave you alone
a sentence in a book hits differently
People call it luck, intuition, synchronicity.
It’s none of those.
It’s calibration.
Your brain has begun showing you what was always there.
Why You Shouldn’t Wait Until January
January is when everyone else begins—hungover from the holidays, staring at seventeen half-formed goals scribbled on New Year’s Day, trying to muster motivation they don’t have for a vision they can’t see.
If you start now, you’ll walk into 2026 already seeing what they’re still trying to imagine.
Everyone else will be setting resolutions.
You’ll be executing from identity.
With six weeks of neural priming behind you, you won’t need to “find” opportunities in 2026. Your brain will already be trained to recognize them.
The Real Cost of Not Doing This
Think of 2025.
How many opportunities did you not notice because your attention wasn’t trained to see them?
How many conversations could have changed something, if only you realized their relevance?
How many quiet invitations were already in your world, waiting to be recognized?
You can’t get that time back.
But you absolutely don’t have to repeat it.
Attention is trainable.
And 2026 will be shaped by the quality of yours.
Your Turn
Close this tab. Open a blank page. Set a timer for twenty minutes.
Write:
“It’s December 10, 2026. I wake up and…”
Don’t think.
Don’t edit.
Just write.
Write the scene you’re afraid to live.
Then read it every morning for six weeks.
Your future is already seeded in your present.
You’re not waiting for a new reality to arrive.
You’re training your brain to see the one that’s been hiding in plain sight.
Your pen is your permission slip.
Now use it.
P.S. Next week, I’m sharing the follow-up protocol: what to do when your brain starts showing you opportunities you don’t know how to take. It’s the piece I wish I’d had when the shifts started happening. Paid subscribers get it first, along with the template I use to track what changes week by week.
If you’re ready to go deeper with this work, upgrade to being paid subscriber.
This hurt to read but it’s true and powerful.
I'm still doing this practice, Magdalena! I like going a year out. I'm working on getting more and more detailed with each session.