185: Why Your 2025 Goals Failed (And How to Approach 2026 Differently)

Recording this on the last day of 2025, I'm sharing what came up for me while facilitating my Create 2026 workshop. It's probably not what you expect from a typical year-end review episode.

Yes, we talk about goals. But more importantly, we talk about WHO you need to become to achieve them.

In this episode:

• Why building a business is harder than anyone admits (and why that's okay)
• The skills employees aren't taught that business owners need
• How to hold two opposing energies: caring deeply while staying detached
• Why your 'failures' are actually stepping stones
• The perspective shift that changed everything for me: the process IS the goal
• How to approach 2026 with joy and gratitude instead of frustration

This is for you if:

• You didn't hit your 2025 goals and you're feeling discouraged
• You're building a business on the side while working full-time
• You're tired of the hustle culture and want a more sustainable approach
• You want to become the sort of person who figures things out even when it's hard

Resources mentioned:

• Create 2026 Workshop (FREE): Review 2025, set your 2026 vision, create an action plan
• Bonuses: Annual Planning Guide + 5-Step Problem Solving Framework
• Get it here: sharonsinghsidhu.com/create2026

Connect with Sharon:

• LinkedIn: @sharonsinghsidhu
• Weekly guides: sharonsinghsidhu.com

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm recording this on the 31st of December 2025. I've got today off from work, and so I wanted to get this podcast out before the year ends. Um, and the thing is, this is like take two. I spoke for a good 20 minutes and then I realized I didn't hit record. Why do I keep doing this? It's like the second time it's happened. I actually really need to uh pay more attention to my recording button. But anyway, I wanted to come on here to just give you a quick message um about the workshop that I've just done called Create 2026, where we reviewed the past year 2025, and then set the vision for 2026. Um, and I know that everyone's doing this at this time of the year. You're probably doing it in your job. I know I am, I'm doing my year end review in my job as well, and everyone's gonna be talking about this with New Year's coming up, New Year's resolution, reviewing the past year, and then you know putting your goals for the next year. But I think in this workshop, yes, of course, I I do do that, but I I also um talked about this little bit that probably a lot of people don't really look at when we are doing goal setting or reflecting on the year, and that part is all about who you're being, right? The sort of person that you're being, because it is really about-I mean, whatever results that you want, whatever goals you have set for yourself, in order to achieve those goals, it really demands that you become a that sort of a person who gets those goals, right? So if you have just reviewed your year and you realize, oh, you did not achieve some of those goals, then it just means that you haven't become that sort of person who gets those goals, right? Because if you were that sort of person, obviously you would already have those things, right? And so this is not to make you feel bad like you are not good enough or anything like that. Uh, I really wanted to spend today just to go a little bit more also into this aspect around achieving your specifically your business goals, right? After all, I am really talking about uh talking to women who are building a business on the side, you're working full-time, maybe you have kids, a family, and you're trying to build this business, or maybe you are thinking about dreaming about toying with the idea of starting a business. So I just wanted to record a podcast to give you the behind the scenes and just to really tell you things that maybe I I mean I don't see it a lot, and I wish that people would be a bit more transparent and open about it, and that is to just say that building a business is really really hard, okay? It's not easy, and it will take that's this bird in the background that's really noisy. Okay, I'm sorry about that if you're hearing that. Um, yeah, okay, good. I think it's quietened down a bit, but anyway, the point being that building a business is really really hard, and it's like um it's like non-stop challenges, non-stop problems, and it always takes longer than you expect it would. So I want to just lay it out there because I often see and I think I get I get the intention, the intention of people who are very successful trying to explain that you know anyone can do this, and really anyone can, and it's pretty simple, but simple isn't easy, right? And sometimes I think I know I have misconstrued it to mean if it's simple means it's easy, and therefore my expectations have been like, Oh, you know, why is this taking so long? Why is it so difficult? Why am I still not hitting that particular goal yet after so long, right? And I just want you to know if you are feeling this way, maybe you're coming to the end of the year and you're feeling, oh man, I didn't even hit those goals. Um, you're not alone, really. I have a lot of things that I have not hit, you know, but that's not going to stop me from not trying again because it is so difficult when you're trying to start a business, especially if you're an employee and you, you know, obviously have gone to school and then you've spent maybe a number of years in a job, and it really conditions you to think and operate in a completely different way, opposite from what you need to be as a business person, right? Because when you start up a business on your own, why it's so hard and why it takes so long, first of all, there's so many skills you need to learn. If you're not in a marketing or sales function, and even if you are marketing and selling for a company, it's very different from marketing and selling for your own products. I feel um, you know, when it comes to your job, when it comes to another company, it's a lot less personal. You can detach from it, you can call it a day. Even if you think about it, it's fine. If you really don't like it, you can always quit that job and find another company to go work for, right? But when it's your own business, it feels a lot more personal, and rejection rejections tend to feel like it's more about you if you don't practice releasing it and letting it go and just really detaching from it, right? So there are a lot of skills you need to learn: marketing skills, tech skills, psychology, right? Relationship building, connecting with people, um, all of these things, right? So there's so many things to learn. So that's like on the very technical side, there's there's there's actually skills to learn, but then there's also a lot of the mindset and the emotional drama that you need to overcome, right? Like that when things don't go as planned, you've learned the skill, you tried it out, you put yourself out there, people reject you, people say nasty things about you. Then then there's all these other emotional things that you need to deal with the doubt, the uncertainty, questioning yourself, the fear that will what will people say? What will people think? Will my boss say anything? You know, all of these things, and then you just have to be able to pick yourself up, go again, try again, experiment again, try again, measure, evaluate, try again, and then the cycle keeps going on, right? And so it is hard, right? It can wear you down. That's why they they say persistence, right? You really need a lot of resilience, a lot of persistence, a lot of self-belief, a lot of like trust in yourself, certainty and confidence to keep going, even though it feels like nothing is working. So, you know, I think this is the part where we don't really spend a lot of time on when we're looking at the past year and setting goals, and more importantly, how do you handle all of these things? How do you overcome all of these things, right? And so, yes, while what we want to do is uh review the past year, looked at what worked, what didn't work, but we also want to approach it from a place where, yes, on the one hand, we are detached from it, we're not getting all emotional about it, but yet on the other hand, it is very personal, and we can get emotional about it because we care so much about it, right? And so the ability to be able to hold these two opposing energies, like I like to say, like to be able to care and not care at the same time in that same moment, it's like quite a profound thing that um I feel like growing a business has really uh forced me, demanded me to cultivate, you know, this this ability, this ability to care and not care, to be attached and detach at the same time, to want it so badly and not need it at all. Uh, and so this ability I feel is really the key to it, right? And so while we can, you know, reverse engineer, take a big goal, break it down into our our quarterly goals, our monthly goals, our weekly goals, and our daily tasks, and all of these things that I talked about in the workshop that I've just done, but there's also this portion that I talked about, which is who are you being in the process, right? And and that's the thing, right? The process is the goal, the journey is the destination. I I've been saying this a lot, like I find myself commenting about this a lot, and it is true. Um, we think about some place we want to get to, some goal we want to achieve, which I see just as milestones, it's just a milestone of who you're being. If you've achieved that goal, it just means, oh, now I'm a different person than I was before I achieved that goal. Like I said, because it takes a certain sort of person to be able to actually have that sort of goal, I mean to actually accomplish that thing, you know, and so it is not just so it's not just about oh making that million dollars, right? It's about who you are being and who you had to become in order to be the sort of person who makes a million dollars, you know, and then when you've made that million dollars, and that's the reason why after you get that tangible thing, yes, it's really nice for a while, but then soon you're on to the next thing. Because as human beings, we're ever growing, we're always growing, we're part of nature, and you can see in nature it's always moving, it's always expanding, it's always growing, right? And so we are that's that's actually who we are, right? We have to keep progressing, keep growing, keep feeling this sense of progress, otherwise, we just wither away and die. And so that's our very nature, and so you know, we will have the next goal and the next goal and the next goal, right? And so for me, it was the same thing, you know. Like, I mean, I've been uh working all this time, except for that very short period of time when I actually, you know, my husband and I quit our jobs and went full-time and ran the cafe. But apart from that, I've I've always had a job alongside like growing a business because you know it has been this process of figuring things out, and to me personally, I just I'm in a job, I like the having the regular income, I do work that I actually don't really mind doing, it's pretty easy for me to do, and you know, it it gives me the ability to provide for my family and give them experiences and support their hobbies and interests, so it does not make sense for me to step away from my job when I am still able to grow a business alongside it, right? And so, anyway, okay, that that's kind of a bit of a digression. My point just being that you know it is really all about this process, the process is the goal, and for me, uh, I've tried so many different things, right? And along the way, I've learned so many things. So, even though I had these so-called failures, like spectacular failures, like the six-figure dad phase so-called failure, but I wouldn't be where I am today without that, right? I wouldn't have gotten smart about money, I wouldn't have started blogging about personal finance topics, and then along the way, you know, become a certified mindset coach, and then along the way become a facilitator for leadership courses and all of these things. I mean, really, everything that's happening is always happening for us. Uh, and it is to help us to step into that next level of ourselves, who we are being, in order to accomplish that particular goal, which is that milestone at that point in time, so that we can continue to evolve and grow. So, when we come back to your business, let's say you've revealed your year, you're not quite where you want to be, it just signals to you that you're not quite that person yet. So, then our job now is to go figure out what sort of a person will like do I need to be in order to have that particular to hit that next milestone, right? Um, and so that is the work, and I think like I need at least at least for myself, right? One of the things I'm going to focus on in 2026 is as I'm going through this process of becoming this person I need to be, I want to do it with more joy and gratitude. Because a lot of people, myself included, when we encounter problems and challenges, we can get frustrated and impatient and annoyed. And I know like my dominant state has been this for like pretty much all of my life until maybe in the recent years when I started um being more mindful, being more intentional, and being being more intentional about how I wanted to be different, that I started showing up differently and becoming a different person to a point where people actually did notice and say, Hey, you know, you've changed, which is good news for me. That's exactly I didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what I was trying to do. I was trying to change and become a different person, and I'm gonna continue that in 2026. But what I'm trying to say is if if you are at a point where you're growing your business, it's not going the way you want it to, and you're frustrated and you're impatient and you're dejected, discouraged, yes, it's perfectly fine to feel that way. All human beings feel that way. That's a full set of emotions that we human beings actually experience. That's the point of it. But do not stay in that space for too long because I have noticed that the people that I look up to who are at the level of success that I want to be at, they have this ability to get yes, they realize certain things didn't go the way they wanted, but then and they might feel a little bit like down for a while, but then they get up and then they go again. And it is like the ability to maintain this as your dominant state, um, to have problems come up and know that hey, you know, that is part of the territory. That's exactly precisely what I signed up for when I decided to start my own business. Where when you have a business, your job is to remove problems for people and solve problems for people yourself, and then to teach it to other people. So you are literally signing up your job description says problem solver, okay? That's all it is. And so if you're going to sign up for this job and be annoyed and frustrated, then what are you signing up for this job for, right? Then go do something else, like just stay in a 9 to 5 where you can say that's not my job, it's someone else's problem, right? But we are not doing that, right? When we want to start a business, that's that's not what it means. And so for me, one thing that's come to me, the insight that came to me as I was doing my even my own process of reviewing the year and setting goals for 2026 is I want to continue to change myself to be this um to step into I mean continue, right? It's a continual growth process to become more and more of the sort of person who can even be grateful for the problems and the challenges. I'm starting to see that now. When I look back in hindsight, a lot of my biggest challenges, my lowest moments, the hardest times have turned out to be the best lessons for me and have turned out to uh help me become a much better person. Uh, you know, someone who's far more resilient and has a lot more faith and belief in herself and also in the universe, that everything's going to be just fine, and no matter what, there's going to be some way it's going to work out, you're going to figure it out, or you know, you're going to be shown a certain way. You've got the path is going to open up in front of you, and it always has been this way. That's why I'm still standing here podcasting, despite having gone through that six-figure debt and lots of lots of lots of pressures and a lot of uh tensions and everything, you know, all the drama. But I'm still here, I'm still podcasting hundred over episodes in after many years. My kids are not starving, we're not homeless, we still live a very good life. Uh, you know, so and same for you. If you're here listening, you're still here. We've gone through difficult things, we have come out of it somehow, some way, along the way, even though it feels like someone else was stumbling along, we're still here. And it can only get better, right? And so when we're growing a business and we're looking at our goals and we haven't quite hit it, it just it's just one simple thing, like okay, who do I need to be? Who do I need to be? What is that missing here? What's the skill I need? What's this drama I need to overcome? You know, what is the perspective I need to shift? And so for me, the big perspective shift for me was that the process is the goal, the journey is the destination, and also I'm going to be actually really joyful and grateful along the whole way, and even though it gets frustrating, I'm going to actually be able to catch myself and be aware and say, Hey, it's a good thing. There's gonna be a great story to tell after this, there's gonna be a podcast episode to share after this, there's gonna be something I'm still missing that I need to learn that I'm being shown, um, what sort of a person I still need to become if I want to hit that particular goal or milestone, right? And so as we enter the new year, uh, I hope that I can leave you with this kind of like this mindset, this attitude of how we're going to approach our business in 2026. That no matter how unclear, confused, overwhelming, whatever, whatever challenge that you're encountering right now, it's really all good, it's all here for us. Everything is always happening for us. There is a purpose and a reason. There's something we are meant to learn here, we're meant to see here, we're meant to shift here. Uh, and it is actually for us to approach it with curiosity, with anticipation, like going for a holiday, trying to figure something out, just trying to work out a puzzle. And I feel like if we can approach it with that kind of attitude, life is so much more fun, it's a lot lighter, it's a lot more fun, and um, you know, I I think that it makes it so much more enjoyable, not just for ourselves, but for our loved ones and the people around us, right? And I think when we can get to that level, then all the money and success, it just comes by the way, right? It just comes as a byproduct of that version of us, then we are being okay. So, pretty short message, I think. Yes, I'm checking my record button uh button, and yes, it is at 16 17 minutes now. So I want to keep today's episode quite short. I want to be able to upload it before the end of today, so I get it in by 2025. Um, and you know, if you're curious about that workshop I just ran, go get it. It's um it's free. You'll also get my annual planning guide as well as my five-step problem solving framework when you sign up for the workshop, work through it. Um, I take you through a very short kind of a meditative experiential um exercise as well in the workshop to help you to really get clear on who you are being, who you need to be for 2026 so that you accomplish all of your big and ambitious goals. So just go to sharensingsidu.com forward slash create2026. I'll put it in the show notes as well. Grab the free workshop, the free guide, and the problem solving framework. And I wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year, and I will see you next year. Okay, then bye.