#83 Why Your Dance Goals Aren’t Working (And How to Fix That in 2026)

How to Set Real Dance Goals for 2026 (Not Just Wishful Thinking)

As dancers, it’s easy to say “I hope I get better” or “I want to improve this year” — but hope is not a strategy.

In this episode of Dance Colleges & Careers, Brittany Noltimier breaks down what it actually takes to set real, achievable dance goals and why so many dancers stay stuck despite working hard. We talk about the difference between wishes and goals, how to identify what’s really holding you back, and why lifestyle and daily habits matter more than motivation.

If you want better turns, stronger performance, more confidence on stage, or real growth in 2026, this episode will help you rethink how you’re approaching your training.

Inside this episode:
 • Why most dance goals fail before February
 • The difference between “wanting it” and working for it
 • How to identify the real barrier behind your struggles
 • Why confidence and performance are trainable skills
 • How small daily changes create big results on stage

This episode is for dancers who are ready to stop hoping and start building.

Transcript

Brittany Noltimier (00:00)

Hello, hello there and welcome back to Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm your host, Brittany Noltimier and this is the podcast where we talk about all things dance, colleges, and careers. My friends, it is the start of a new year. This is the time when we are excited, we are stressed, and our goals in our brain are bigger than we can.

Possibly muster. Yes, we are we have big dreams We have big aspirations and we believe at this time that we're make them come true. The problem is that so many people set New Year's resolutions or goals for the year and rarely follow through with that and so Let's chat today so that we can actually achieve these goals for 2026

So one of the biggest problems is that people see goals as a wish. Like, ⁓ in 2026, I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get famous. I'm going to run a marathon. Although I've never been to the gym once ever in my life and I'm not planning to. That doesn't make sense. You guys, that doesn't make sense.

We need to actually strategize and think about our year ahead with realistic goals, realistic milestones ahead and

specific actions to help us get there.

So hoping things change isn't a plan. Hoping we get more pirouettes this year without doing something about it isn't a plan. That's not how we achieve our goals.

a goal isn't I hope I get more turns. I want to use my face more in class

I want to be more confident this year. Those aren't really goals. It's an idea, sure. It's things we might want,

Those are desires, not goals.

A goal includes a result you want, an honest look at what's blocking it, what is your barrier,

And what behavioral or lifestyle shift do we actually have to make for this to come true?

Brittany Noltimier (02:10)

So let's use an example. How about, let's say this year you are working on getting another pirouette. You want to get a triple instead of a double. What is our desired result? We want to get one extra turn. We want to do a triple rather than a double. What's our frustration? What is the problem? Well, we're

falling out of it if we do more than two, or maybe we can't land it, or maybe it's messy, or we have a lot of panic. Okay, so we are not cleanly doing more than two. Then we need to think about what's the barrier, what's holding us back in this. So in a pirouette, is not psyche. It's not like, ⁓ I can do it if I just have the courage. No, it's a technical move, right? So let's say in this instance,

we need to engage our core. Okay. So how about we're doing our double, we're placed in our first and second turn by the end of the second one, we start to tilt our pelvis and our core gets loosey goosey and it releases causing us to no longer have our upright vertical stacked position. So that is our technical barrier. So this is not something we can change overnight, right? Because it's technique. It's not just like,

be brave and we can fix it. No, we literally have to fix our core to fix our pirouettes.

So then if the result is more turns and the barrier is our core, the real action to get that triple pirouette more turns is to work on your core, is to do more abs, to put in some extra time at home with a little bit of Pilates, maybe with mom or dad or with a sibling, but taking a little bit of time outside of the studio, focusing on this so that we can reach the goal.

Does that make sense?

Let's use another example talking about facial expressions and performance quality. So maybe this year you really wanna work on your showmanship. You want to smile, you wanna score higher. you don't wanna hear that dreaded thing when a judge says, are you even having fun up there? I know that can hurt and I've heard so many people say that and get that as feedback and it cuts deep. So this year it's your goal to not...

Get that comment. Are you even having fun up there? Come on, let's smile. Let's act, use our personality to this piece. So what is our barrier here?

In this case, our desired result is that we want to feel comfortable using our face more.

So our barrier is fear of looking silly in front of our class, overthinking technique so that we can't use our face or focus here because all of it is tension that we're putting into our technique, honestly, it's just lack of clarity on what our face is supposed to be doing. That's what I teach. Hi.

I'm Brittany. is exactly what I love to teach Is your song storytelling or is it a style and what you should be doing in your piece because it's not as tricky as we believe it to be.

So then in this case, the real goal of using our face, our expression on stage needs to be

becoming comfortable practicing expression in regular class. Okay. The mistake here is that we think that, I'll just do it on stage, but a real skill in facial expression is not the

same as what we do with adrenaline.

So it might feel like we're working on our expression because adrenaline kicks in and we feel like we're smiling and telling that story. But honestly, we don't have the stamina in our facial expressions and we don't have the clarity. And that's what we're working on today is finding our clarity for 2026.

And finally, here's the third mistake that most people make when they are setting goals

We forget that it needs to be a lifestyle shift, not just a resolution. We can't just wish for the ending and hope it appears. We have to make day-to-day changes to watch it come true. We have to make shifts in our habits to become better, stronger, more confident in these small day-to-day actions to reach that final resolution. Think.

If you are like, oh, I want to get fit this year. I want to lose 20 pounds.

It's not that we can't go to the gym. It's the mindset shift in why we're not going to the gym.

What's the barrier holding us back from going to the gym on a consistent level? That's what we're working on. That's how we make real changes in our lives. And that's how we actually attain our goals.

it's not just for the stage. It's not an overnight, ⁓ turn the switch and now we're, now we have the courage to do our faces. Now that's unrealistic. If we already could do that, you would be doing it, right? If you already could, if it were that easy, you would be doing it. It is a mindset shift. is.

becoming brave. is taking specific tools that maybe you don't know yet and learning how to use them.

so that you can get braver in class so that they show up without even thinking when you go to the stage.

Creating these habits make it easier to reach that resolution rather than fighting with that inner self of whether I can't do it, I'm not smart enough, I'm not strong enough.

by taking these little actions and turning them into habits.

You can actually make a change in the classroom at home so that you don't even have to think about it when you're on stage.

So now it's your turn. go set your goals. And the best thing about being a young dancer is that this isn't your start of the year. This is actually your second chance. Our start of the year is in August when we go back to school and when we go back to dance this a few months later, now we get to enhance whatever goals we already set for us this year. So maybe at the beginning of the year we were working on doubles.

But now we're really working on skills way above where we thought we were going to be a couple months ago. Because at this point in your training, you have the stamina, you are back in shape.

And you're really working on that choreography for the competition season.

Whether it's precision you're struggling with, or technique, or facial expressions, if you're not practicing it day to day with these small daily habits, it will not resonate on stage. If you guys don't practice precision in class, you won't all of a sudden dance together on stage. That's not how it works.

And here's the framework for creating excellent goals. One, what's the outcome? What do want?

Or you can ask yourself, what do I want more of this year?

Or how do I want to feel on stage? How do I want to feel in the classroom?

What's a skill I want to achieve by a specific date? And we're really not talking about the whole year here. We are talking about January to May, this competition season. So what do you want this year? And then ask yourself the hard question, what's actually getting in the way? And don't make excuses, be real. What's getting in the way?

I'll give you an example because I was talking about meal planning on here a couple episodes ago and I've been diving in to try to do some soul searching on this and what I learned about myself is that decisions are very difficult for me. So when it comes to making lunch or making dinner and being so insecure in the kitchen like I was talking about in the episode about the Kevin's chili, what I've learned is that it's all about making the decision. I can't decide what I want to have,

And so that is my barrier making the decision

And then you need to choose one supporting habit.

So what's one thing you can do consistently to support this goal? If the goal was an extra pirouette and we're falling out because we have a loose core, then we can do more abs every day. Even five to 10 minutes can really go a long ways. Maybe you wanna have stronger, maybe you keep falling out of your pirouette on that supporting leg because our ankles aren't strong enough. So more plie releves every day could do the trick for you.

Or let's say our arms are all wobbly and we have no engagement right here with our pecs. Okay, couple more pushups could give us, could help us in the long run. 10 extra pushups a day would help us find this engagement of finding our first position. those are some technical examples, but in Inside My Fame Academy, I do give you examples on how to be brave, little actionable steps.

that we can use and take in our day-to-day lives so that we can finally start to feel a little bit more confident with our expression and how we communicate with our thoracic area or what I like to call our story center rather than just our face because this gets weird and creepy when we only use our face and not our whole thoracic part of our body and neck and head, our story center.

So right now, grab your pencil, grab your piece of paper, and set your goals. about 15 minutes and plan it out. Because if you don't think about it, if you don't actually make a plan, if you don't say, is something I'm reaching for, then it's not gonna happen. Or maybe it will by happenstance or by luck, yay, great. But it is heck of a lot easier to reach our goals when we actually have an end goal in sight.

Be so much more proud of yourself when you get there, when it was really part of the plan, when it's something you've been striving for and you are the one who made it happen. you took an extra step outside of what you're already doing to make that happen, to make it come true.

This is exactly what I do with my students. We pinpoint where their weaknesses are, give actionable steps on how you can overcome the weakness and come back like a superstar.

going on stage for competition with a plan rather than just...

a hope and surprise.

If you need help figuring out your next step, just reach out to me. I'm a person, and I love to help people. All you have to do is DM me or send me an email and tell me what your biggest struggle is right now, and I would love to help you figure out that next step.

Thanks so much for being here on Dance Colleges and Careers.

Grab your pencil, set the timer 15 minutes and start your planning.

00:00 Setting Realistic Goals for the New Year

02:10 Understanding Barriers to Achieving Goals

03:37 Technical Skills and Performance Quality

06:15 Lifestyle Changes for Lasting Success

08:58 Framework for Goal Setting and Action Steps