27 Goal Setting Made Easy: How to Achieve Your Biggest Goals

Ready to set goals you will actually achieve in 2026?
In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, we break down the ALIGN Framework, a practical and values-centered approach to choosing goals that fit your life, your leadership, and your capacity. Instead of setting goals that fizzle by February, you will learn how to design goals that feel meaningful, energizing, and fully within reach.

You will discover why only 8% of people achieve their goals, how to anchor your goals in what matters most, and how to create a clear and navigable path forward. This episode gives you the clarity and structure you need to enter 2026 feeling grounded, motivated, and confident in the direction you choose.

If you want step-by-step support in turning your ALIGNed goals into a plan you can implement, check out The Success Blueprint, my $26 mini-course that walks you through the full goal-setting and implementation process.

#WomenLeadWell #JoyfullyUnstoppable #WomenInLeadership #GoalSetting #LeadershipDevelopment #WomenWhoLead #SustainableSuccess #AuthenticLeadership #LeadershipCoach #PersonalGrowthJourney #ProfessionalWomen #LeadWithConfidence

Joyfully Unstoppable—helping women reconnect with what matters most.

Subscribe so you never miss an episode!

✨ Let’s stay connected
Want more support as you lead with clarity, confidence, and joy? Here’s how we can keep growing together:

💻 Grab Your Success Blueprint and make 2026 your best year yet!
👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏾 Join the Women Lead Well Community on Facebook!
🌿 Meet Becky – Get to know the heart behind the mic
💼 Coaching for Women Leaders – Ready for personalized support? Explore 1:1 coaching
📚 Free Leadership Resources – Practical tools to help you lead (and live) well
🏡 Explore Women Lead Well – Learn more about Women Lead Well and everything we offer

Transcript

1:06

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to lead boldly, live lightly, and reclaim their joy. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. After years of high level leadership, I discovered that success doesn't have to come at the cost of your peace, your values, or your wellbeing. Each week, we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you to hustle harder and prove your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Did you know that only 8% of people achieve their goals? 92% of us set goals that we don't achieve. I think that is wild. While I know like the goal achievement is a challenge and when we know about New Year's resolutions, right as we go into the holidays, we maybe are thinking about resolutions for 2026 that. That we might set those resolutions or intentions or goals and not follow through. I did not realize that it was only 8% of people or 8% of the goals that people set we actually achieve. So I'm a curious cat and I wanted to know why. And what I found was probably not surprising. One, uh, we set goals that aren't tied to our values. We set goals that. We don't actually care about achieving. You've heard me talk on the podcast before. I surely talk with my coaching clients. No shoulds when I'm coaching a woman, it does not matter what should happen, what she should want, what she should do. I mean, seriously, the tagline for my business is joyful, sustainable, authentic leadership, and that authentic piece and that sustainable piece, and that joyful piece. Really important. And if you're focused on what you should do as opposed to what you actually want to do, what actually lights you up? What's actually aligned with your values? You are not gonna get very far. And so a lot of goals sit unfulfilled because they were never the right goal for the person to begin with. The goals were not aligned with the individual's values. They weren't authentic to the person. They didn't light'em up, so the person didn't have motivation to do them. The second reason why a lot of people fail to achieve their goals has more to do with that sustainable part of joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership, and that is that, that people. Choose goals that are not set up for success, that people lack the capacity to actually achieve the goals they set. The goals might be aligned, they could be amazing. But if you don't have the time or the energy or the knowledge, the skill, the know-how or the financial resources to achieve the goal, how you gonna get there? Right? And so I. Don't mean to brag. It's gonna sound like I'm bragging on myself for a minute. I really don't mean to, I just want to illustrate the fact that I am a little bit of a gold queen, that I am firmly in that 8%. And here are the receipts. Receipt number one, had my PhD by the time I turned 27. Uh. Uh, it, it was not a small thing to earn a PhD from Georgetown University. It's a pretty prestigious program that I went through. Uh, ranked really high at the time. I think it's even more prestigious today, but I did it. Five marathons. By the time I turned 40 again, why? Why would anyone run a marathon? I don't know. But I did it. I did it five times The Marine Corps marathon in Washington, DC loved it. I became the vice president of a, an organization that a hundred million dollars operating budget. I became the VP of that organization by the time I was 42. And then now the year I turned 50, I launched a successful coaching business. Women Lead Well. I know how to identify big juicy goals and achieve them. And you know, I am here to support women's professional growth. And so we are gonna talk about how it is that you can join that 8% and you can set big juicy goals. And then achieve them. I have talked, in the last couple of episodes about the success blueprint. That is the mini course that I've developed on goal setting and goal implementation. It is currently priced at$26 because we're moving into 2026, and I wouldn't something that was really accessible for people to be able to, to purchase and then start implementing before the new year rolled around. And so I'll link that in the show notes if you're interested. That of course gives you a whole lot more depth into what we're gonna talk about today, as well as the implementation of what we're gonna talk about today. But what we're doing today on the podcast is I'm gonna walk you through the framework that I used to finish that PhD and run those marathons and, and serve as a vice president and the now as a founder and CEOI am not. A smart goals girly, like I, I understand smart goals. Logically they make sense, but they do not light me up. Like that is not, that is not how my mind works and that is not motivational for me. So if you're a smart goals girly, rock on with your bad self. But that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're gonna talk about the method that I use or the framework that I use to set and achieve my goals. And that is the Align framework. And so let's spend a little bit of time going through the Align framework, which is just an acronym for Anchored, limited, impactful, grounded, and Navigable, and what I work with with my clients and when I am setting and achieving my own goals. This is the framework that I use to make sure. That I'm picking the right goals, that these are goals that are connected to my values and that, that I have set myself up for success by picking goals that that I can support, that I actually can implement. And so let's do it, and we're gonna start with anchored. So what does it mean that your goal is anchored? Well, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you're gonna know that I care deeply about people being aligned with their core values. And so anchored is, is this aspiration, this thing that I wanna do? Is it anchored in my core values, or is it coming from somewhere else? And here's what I mean by that. If something is anchored in my core values, then the goal flows from what is most meaningful, most important, most motivational to me. And so you guys know my core values, service, family, freedom, and harmony. That's that. That's it. I got four. And I would tell you. We will talk about core values in a few weeks, but I would tell you your list, your core values, you're not talking more than four or five. You can't prioritize if you've got 20 core values. They're not core, right? But those top four or five values, is your goal anchored in one of those core or many of those core values? And so let's take me launching Women Lead Well, the year I turned 50, why did I do that? Well, I did it because that core value of service. I also did it because I, I was in a position where I was gonna have to commute three to four hours every single day to stay in the job that I had been in and before I left to, to found women Lead well and. Yeah, there was no time freedom. So that dynamic was violating my core value of freedom, and that was three to four hours a day that I was separated from my family. And so clear violation of that core value. Alternatively, the way that I have founded Women Lead Well with one-to-one coaching and the group programs and the digital products. I have a ton of time freedom that I can then focus on my family, my children, and my husband, and the home and our dogs and, and the life that we have. And so founding Women Lead well aligns with that core value of service. It aligns with the core value, a family, and it aligns with the core value of freedom. Launching a business is not the most harmonious thing that I've ever done. And so I'm not saying it's a slam dunk, and I'm not saying for you for a goal to be good that it has to align with all of your core values. What I'm saying is if you have a goal that does not align or an aspiration that does not align with any of your core values, you might wanna think about whether it's a real goal that you wanna invest any of yourself in. It might be a nice to have, but not something you really wanna leverage some of your time or energy capacity or money against. So that is anchored. Next up in the Align framework is limited. You have to know the essential result you are looking to achieve. So think of this in terms of outcomes, and I can use weight loss as a clear example because it is pretty concrete this way. Let's say you wanna lose 20 pounds. Well, the essential result is that you lose 20 pounds As you get into building your action plan, you got a lot of options for how you can achieve that essential result. Probably ladies, if you're perimenopausal, if you're little later in life, you're not gonna exercise your way outta 20 pounds. Nutrition is gonna have to be a key piece of that. But there are different ways to dial in your nutrition. There are different things that you can do to burn more calories to get the exercise to. speed up your metabolism. So there are different levers that you can pull on to achieve the essential result, but you know what that essential result is, as opposed to, let's talk about an unlimited or a vague goal. That would be something like, you wanna improve communication. Well, what is that? What does that look like? Right? The essential result, improving communication that is laudable, that is wonderful. If it's at work. Improve communication with your team. If it's at home, improve communication with your partner. All of that is amazing, but how do you know it? When you see it? What is the essential result that you're driving toward? So again, as you're refining this aspiration into a goal, if it's aligned with your values, awesome. Move to the next step. Is it limited? Can you define the essential result that you want to see? And you just keep tweaking it. You keep working with it. You keep refining it until you hit an essential result, like an actual outcome, a tangible, observable thing that you can see to say, yes, I have achieved this goal, and if, if it's just not there, then maybe think about how you are conceiving the goal. To see if that can't give you some perspective to clarify that essential result or that key outcome that would demonstrate success, that you would achieve the goal. Next up is impactful. So we've got anchored, we've got limited. Now we're talking impactful. Is the goal impactful? And here, when I say impactful, what I mean is will achieving this goal meaningfully move the needle where it matters most to you? With limited, I was telling you to get super precise and specific and observable and tangible, and here with impactful, it sounds a little vague, so let me clarify. Let me be clear with it. when your goal is impactful. You will see the effect that it is having on your life. Why is this important? Because the bigger the goal. The longer it's, it's probably gonna take to achieve it. And potentially the bigger the goal, the more you will have to change as a person to achieve it. And we know by now, if you've listened to this podcast, you know that our ego, that part of our brain that just tries to keep us alive and keep us safe. It is wedded to the status quo. It does not want you to change. It doesn't care that you're dissatisfied. It doesn't care that you're 20 pounds overweight. It doesn't care that you're stuck in a job you don't love. You're alive. That's a good, it has cleared the bar, right? And so when I say impactful, you're going to want the value of the goal and the progress along the way of achieving the goal. To be meaningful enough in your life that it can overcome that inertia. That is just a natural part of the human experience. You will reach a point at some point of implementing any goal where you wanna give up. That's normal. That is not a sign of failure. That is not a lack of motivation. That is not a weakness of your character that is high. You are a human being. Period. And so an impactful goal, one that really moves the needle on your life is part of what overcomes that inertia to help you build and then maintain momentum, to keep making the forward progress, particularly when you just aren't gonna want to. So you're, it's not a hack, but you're stacking the deck in your favor by identifying goals that are gonna. Be both limited that you know, success when you see it and impactful, that's gonna help you get over the hurdle of inertia that is just there. It's just, it's just part of life. Okay? Anchored, limited, impactful. Next up is grounded. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is your goals have to be grounded in reality. I love you, I love you. I want you to go and achieve big audacious goals. I do. But you have to have the time, the energy, and the resources to do it. So grounded is where you take your aspiration and you ask yourself, do I have the time to accomplish this goal with everything else I've got going on in my life? And if the answer is no, well that doesn't mean that the goal is disqualified. That just means you gotta look at your calendar and say, what can I ditch? Delegate, delay. In order to create some space to give me time to work on this goal that I know is anchored in my values, that I know is impactful and is gonna move the needle on things that really matter to me. So this isn't a disqualifier, this is a get curious start problem solving, get creative, and come up with solutions. The same is true with energy. We've talked about, um, energy engines and energy leaks in the past. Think about that here. This goal. The aspiration that you want to achieve and how you think you might achieve that goal, the things you're gonna have to do in order to accomplish the goal, do those give you energy or do they suck the energy right outta you? And let's come back to weight loss again, just because it's a clear example. Let's say you wanna lose those 20 pounds. Okay, great. And let's say you can block an hour on your calendar every other day to work out. Phenomenal. Love that for you. Well, okay. Um, and what you've decided you're gonna do in that hour every other day is you are gonna go lift weights. Okay. Phenomenal. Muscle is incredibly important, particularly in women as we age, except the thought of going to the gym and having everybody look at you while you work out and try to figure out the weight machines. Fills you with dread. Oh, well then my sweet friend. May I suggest that that goal, as you have defined it, is not grounded in the reality of your energy. Because you don't wanna go to the gym and have people stare at you while you try to lift weights. As you learn how to lift weights, you're not gonna try, you're gonna actually do it, but you might not be confident in it when you begin. And so then, okay, well, what do you like to do? What does give you energy? Walking around your neighborhood, saying hi to your neighbors, and looking at the, the neighbor dogs as they go on their walks or whatever it might be. Okay. Well, then how about on that hour every other day when you're going to work out, you go for a walk instead of going to the gym, right? You do the thing that's an energy engine for you instead of the thing that's an energy leak. Again, you don't throw the goal away, but you refine the goal in a manner that leans into the energy that you have. And you certainly want to, if you can, find a way to pursue that goal in a way that is actually gonna give you more energy than not. Because again, you gotta exert energy to accomplish the goal.'cause you gotta overcome the inertia of where you are. And so you don't wanna have to fight up the hill of overcoming the inertia of where you are while fighting up the hill of doing something that actually drained your energy like that. The math, don't math on that. You are not gonna achieve a goal if that's the way you approach it. So. Grounded. We've talked about time, we've talked about energy, and some things cost money, right? And so you've also gotta think about the financial requirements to achieve the goal. And again, none of this is a, a disqualifier, I would say anchored is a disqualifier. I would encourage you to never pursue a goal that is not aligned with your core values. I just, I would never want you to do that. When you come to Grounded Time, energy and, and financial resources, money. You can play with it. Maybe it's just gonna take you longer to achieve the goal because of the amount of time you've got to put to it. Maybe you've gotta tweak some things about how you're gonna implement the goal, right? So that it, it does, it is aligned with an energy engine as opposed to an energy leak. Maybe you've gotta figure out the financial resources. You gotta stop doing something to, to free up some financial resources to put toward this goal. These are not, um, disqualifiers. These are just areas where you gotta get creative. So that's grounded. And then the final piece of the aligned framework is navigable. Well, what do I mean by that? I mean, you've gotta know your next step, right? I see this a lot with women that I work with. They have an amazing goal that is anchored. It is limited. It is impactful. It is grounded. But they don't know what to do to achieve the goal. And so it stays as this aspiration and it never translates into actual action because the woman doesn't know what to do, or she's afraid to take that first step. There's some kind of a, something is holding her back. Maybe it's a story she's telling herself. Maybe it's a fear. Something is keeping her from taking that next step. And so you wanna make sure. That your goals are navigable, that there is an actual road from where you are today to achievement of the goal. And you can do it. Again, this isn't a disqualifier, this is a put on the creative hat and start problem solving and thinking through the different options that you've got. And now if you've got a goal that hits each of those elements. Anchored in your core values, limited, impactful, grounded, navigable. Then my friend. You have got a really good goal that has a high probability of you achieving it. But you can't stop there. A goal is just something in your mind. You have to actually take the actions to make it happen. And so once you have developed an aligned goal, then it's time to bring that goal into life. I walk you step by step through how to build and implement an action plan. That research shows us increases goal attainment to over 70%. So you go from 8% to 70% if you follow this model, and that is all inside of the Success blueprint. So be sure to check that out if you wanna take these goals and really set yourself up for success. So there you have it. Now, I hope this episode gave you some clarity on how to craft the big juicy goals that you want to achieve in your life. And then if you would like to check out the Success Blueprint again, it's$26. I put that price point really low so it would be accessible for everyone. If you'd like to check out the success blueprint so that you can really take that next step and turn your aligned goals into reality following the action plan to implement. I would love that for you. Again, link is in the show notes below, and always reach out. I'm at Women Lead Well uh, on Instagram. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook, reach out. I'm also on TikTok. Um, I don't spend as much time on TikTok. But you can find me there, reach out and I'm always happy to help you and I hope that you will join me next week for an entire episode on gratitude and the importance of gratitude and leadership, both how it improves team performance, and so your being grateful leader helps improve your team's performance and morale, but also and importantly, how it motivates and fulfills us as individuals, as people. Particularly when times are challenging. 2020 five's been a rough year. I'm hopeful 2026 will be a little bit easier for folks. Uh, but, but being grateful for the goodness that is all around us, even in times of difficulty, is incredibly powerful. And so we're gonna spend the episode next week talking about it. Now if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. It really helps a little podcast like mine. And if you wanna leave us a rate or review, that would be even better. You can also grab one of our free resources, like the year end review, or the values clarification exercise@womenleadwell.net. And linked in the show notes below. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm and this is joyfully, unstoppable.