Standards vs. Motivation: How to Live Your Life on Your Own Terms in 2026

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in twelve months and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.”

I first heard that quote from Tony Robbins, and it completely changed my approach to yearly goals. I stopped setting ‘New Year’s resolutions’ and began looking further ahead to see what I could do over the next twelve months that would move me closer to my longer-term dreams and goals.

In this week’s special episode, I will share with you why smaller steps over the next twelve months will do so much more for you than trying to do something big and scary that you ultimately fail at.

Let’s go.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Join the Time And Life Mastery Programme here.

Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off.

Download the Areas of Focus Workbook for free here

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

The Working With… Weekly Newsletter

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

Carl’s YouTube Channel

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Subscribe to my Substack

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Script | 399

Hello, and welcome to episode 399 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What are the mistakes most people make when it comes to goals and resolutions for the New Year?

Well, the simple answer is that they overcomplicate things and try to do too much in one year.

Let me explain. Like most people, I used to set New Year’s resolutions when I was growing up. At various times in my life, they included losing weight and getting fit, quitting smoking, saving money and many more.

And, again, like most people, I failed miserably every time.

What Tony Robbins’ quote made me realise is that I was failing because none of these resolutions were connected to my long-term goals or vision.

I was in my twenties, and I believed I was immortal. It wasn’t until I reached my early thirties that three-day hangovers convinced me that I wasn’t immortal after all.

It wasn’t until I’d settled down, married and begun to see a life ahead of me that I started to wonder if I could control that life and the direction it would go in.

And yes, I could. And so can you. But you do need to know what kind of life you want to be living in ten or twenty years.

Hope is not a good strategy. It’s no good carrying on as you are and “hoping” you will one day reach the goals and the life you’ve always wanted to live.

To achieve that, you will need to take action.

To give you an example of what I mean.

I want to be active well into my eighties and nineties. I long admired Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh. He died in 2021, just a couple of months short of his 100th birthday. And yet he remained active throughout his eighties and nineties, being one of the hardest-working members of the Royal family.

The Queen allowed him to retire at 97.

How did Prince Philip maintain his strength and endurance?

He did something called the 5BX every morning for eleven minutes.

5BX is a series of body-weight exercises you can do anywhere that was developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force in the 1940s to keep their servicemen fit, healthy and strong.

I highly recommend you search for the original Royal Canadian Air Force instructional video on YouTube and watch it. It seems so quaint by today’s standards.

He also walked miles and miles every day, ate small portions of food based on a traditional balanced diet, limited his alcohol intake, and went to bed and woke up at the same time each day.

If we were to break that down into daily activities, it was simple and doable. Because he was able to do it every day—even when he was travelling—it meant there were few excuses he could use not to do it.

You wake up, and after a few minutes, do your 5BX session, shower, have a small, healthy breakfast, and get on with your day, taking every opportunity to walk. And you do it every day.

Tie that to going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, and you would be setting yourself up for a long, healthy, active life.

And in that, there is nothing complicated or time-consuming.

There are also no goals involved. It’s just a shift in your daily routine, so these activities become part of your daily routine.

Although I would suggest you use January as a “test”. Often, we read or listen to something, think it’s a good idea and then find that because of our circumstances, we struggle to make it work.

That doesn’t mean it cannot work. It means we need to rethink the routine and make a few changes so it works for us.

I remember reading Robin Sharma’s The 5 AM Club and thought it was a good idea. And it was a good idea in 2016. I could get to bed at a reasonable time.

Then I started my productivity work and coaching programme, and it became challenging to get to bed before midnight. Something had to change.

I realised that the power of the 5 AM Club was not in getting up at 5 AM. It was what you did when you woke up. So, the only thing I needed to change was my wake-up time. And ten years later, I still follow the morning routine I developed after reading that book.

Another example would be with your personal finances. Davie Ramsey’s book, The Total Money Makeover, gives a simple step-by-step approach to getting your personal finances in order.

The first is to build a starter emergency fund—usually around $1,000 to $5,000. Then pay off all non-mortgage debts as quickly as you can.

The third step is to build a longer-term emergency fund. That would be three to six months of living expenses.

And then to invest in your retirement and live on less than you earn.

Within that framework, there would be a few key things you could do. For example, try to save the starter emergency fund in 2026 and pay down some of your shorter-term debts.

Around those areas, you could set some goals in 2026.

The bigger principle in The Total Money Makeover is to pay off all debts, including mortgages. That’s unlikely to be possible for most people in one year, but over ten years? It could be possible.

The good thing about something like this is that you can plan five or ten years ahead and set a goal to be completely debt-free by 2036.

Whether it’s health or finances, what you are doing is setting standards for how you live your life. You eat healthy, do some exercise each day, and live within your means.

And really, that’s what a new year should be all about. Not resolutions or goals, but reaffirming your standards. The standards you live your life by.

Standards don’t need motivation; they are just the way you live your life.

However, when setting your standards, you will likely need some help from motivation and self-discipline initially. There will be days when you forget to do something or cannot do it. That’s perfectly normal.

It’s not about hitting everything 100% of the time. That would be impossible anyway. I would suggest a monthly target of 80%+

A good example of this is when I travel to visit my parents. The trip from our home in Korea to where my parents live on the West Coast of Ireland takes about 26 hours door-to-door.

During that time, I am not able to go out for a run or to the gym. If my goal were to exercise every day, I would be setting myself up for failure before I begin. I travel to visit my parents at least once a year.

And if I were determined to do it, why put myself through that extra stress? Travelling is stressful enough.

Then there would be those occasions when I am ill or delayed when travelling domestically.

However, if my target was an 80% success rate, I’m in with a chance, and on those days when I’m exhausted or an emergency comes up, I wouldn’t be destroying my standards.

If you want to discover what is important to you in your life, I suggest you download my free Areas of Focus workbook. That workbook will take you through each of the eight areas of life we all share, help you define each one and then set some actionable steps you can take to keep your areas in balance.

It’s a great way to kick off a new year, as it will help you focus on what matters to you and identify areas where you can establish habits and standards that will be meaningful to you.

A new year is a wonderful opportunity to review how things are going in our lives and reflect on what we could change to get our lives back on the right track, living the life we want.

If you’re entirely new to this approach to a new year, don’t really know what your longer-term vision is, or aren’t clear on what is important to you in life, and you’re ready to make changes, I would recommend my Time and Life Mastery online course.

This is a complete package that will help you explore what is important to you. Once you have established those, I then show you how to build your standards into your daily life.

Plus, you get my complete mini-course library for free when you join. And if you act now, you can save 50% with my End of Year Sale offer using the coupon code “codisgreat” (all lowercase, and one word).

I’ll leave the details in the show notes for you.

Thank you for listening, and let me wish you an amazing 2026.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.