400: My 2026 New Year’s Resolution (And How To Think About Your Goals)

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 400.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And the first thing that I want to say at the onset of this episode is a big, huge thank you. I released my episode last week about how I was thinking about quitting the podcast, and I made some changes to what you can expect this year with the podcast. And I don't know what people were… How they were going to respond to it, but overwhelmingly I have had so much love and so much… Many people reach out to me and just say how much the podcast means to them. And I will say, and this is not like a whiny, woe is me. I will say of all of the things that I do, the podcast probably has the least closed loop feedback, if that makes sense. I get a lot of feedback in real time on social media things that I post, or my stories, or things that I do with my clients. And I don't get a whole lot of… That's not true. I do get some feedback, but it's much more detached when I do the podcast. It's like I put it out into the world, and then it's just kind of like yelling out into the world and hoping that people, I don't know, listen to it and it makes a difference. And so it was really nice to just have a little bit of that closed loop feedback of that it's really, it does make a difference. And that some of you guys have been here for years and years, and that you really enjoy the podcast and you're glad that I'm continuing with it. So that was very wonderful to hear. And I am looking to be here hopefully for a long time, which is why I'm kind of slowing down some of the production so that I can continue to show up and show up as my best self. 

Reflection and Podcast Direction 02:37

So today's podcast episode is going to be all about how I'm approaching goals for 2026. Now, I will say I have recorded goal podcasts multiple times over the years that I've had the podcast. If you go back to January of many of the years, I talk about how to set new year's resolutions, how to think about goals, what my personal goals are for the year. So I've done a lot of different ways of goal setting and a lot of different ways of thinking about new year's resolutions. I remember this, I mean, this was probably, oh geez, 15 years ago. I remember one year I set 52 goals for the year. And I had a blog, this was probably back in 2009 when everybody had a blog. And I remember I had all 52 goals bulleted out. And then throughout the year, as I would hit each of those goals, I would blog about it. That was a long time ago. I wonder if I could find that blog. That would be kind of fun to go back and look at it. 

So I've done that. And then I've done more, I've done goals that are based off of health and fitness. That is how Biceps After Babies actually got started in 2016 is I set a goal. I set a new year's resolution. My new year's resolution in 2016 was to get a six pack. And let me tell you that new year's resolution changed my life because it spawned my Instagram account, it spawned my company, it spawned my brand. And I am here today recording this podcast episode because I fricking set a new year's resolution in 2016. So I am a big believer that there's nothing special about new year's resolutions. You can set goals at any point, but I know that there is something special that happens. We all kind of feel it when it's like a new year, new you kind of mentality. And so I'm a big proponent of setting goals and yes, setting new year's resolutions at the beginning of the year as I think about how I want to show up this year. So all of that today, I say I have set goals in a variety of different ways over the years. 

So as I was thinking, as 2025 was coming to an end and I was thinking about, okay, what do I want for 2026? And one of the questions I asked myself was, what do I want more of in 2026? And then also, what do I want less of in 2026? And I held a goal setting class for my MACROS 101 students. And that class, as I was prompting them and asking them questions and we were doing some writing exercises, I was doing the same exercise myself. And I really started to think, okay, what is it that I want to create? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? And December 30th, I went back to my journal and on December 30th, what was coming up for me that I wanted in 2026 was to master my interstate. Now, what the heck does that mean? In fact, I shared this with some of my friends over the new year and that was their first question. They're like, okay, but what does that mean? And I will try to communicate to you, it means something to me intuitively, but I'll try to communicate what that means to you. 

I feel like I've spent a lot of the last couple of years of being very reactive. And it's like something happens in my business and I react and I fix it. Or something happens in my life and I react. And it's from a frenzied place, if that makes sense. And I really want to stop that. I really want to be more proactive. I really want to be more present. This has been something that I've thought for multiple years, this idea of living in the present moment. I tend to live in the future. And to be clear, that helps me in a lot of ways. I'm really good at goal setting. I'm really good at achieving things. I'm really good at being creative and thinking about what could be and then working towards it. That really has served me in a lot of ways. But it means that I spend a lot more time in the future than I do in the present. And I think that that robs me of the beauty that's around me. It robs me of what I'm actually experiencing and what I'm actually living. And so I want to bring more presence into my life. I want to be more here. I want to spend less time on my phone, which I feel like pulls me out of the present moment. And if I'm being really honest and really vulnerable, I feel like sometimes I use it as a way to self-soothe. Like I'm uncomfortable or I don't know what to do. And so then I just get onto my phone rather than using it as a tool. I don't think the phone's bad, but I've noticed that I use it a lot to deal with the discomfort of the present, if that makes sense. 

Vision Versus Process Goals 07:54

And I guess since I'm being really honest and vulnerable, I feel like I've lost sight of one of my most important roles in my business, which is creating a vision. And I know that that feels, maybe that feels like, well, Amber, didn't you just say you want to spend more time in the present moment and less time in the future? Yes. Yes. And one of my jobs for my company is to think about, like have a vision, have something that we're working towards as a team that it's really clear. And I think I have operated under so much fear, under so much trying to control everything that the vision is blurry. And I'm also not enjoying like the, in the present moment. So I don't know if that makes sense. It makes sense to me. But that is what my vision is for 2026. 

Now let me step back and talk a little bit about how this can relate to you. So again, there's no one right and only way to set goals. There's no one right and only way to think about New Year's resolutions. This year, I would call Mastering My Interstate, like my vision for the year. And I talk to my MACROS 101 clients a lot about the difference between an outcome goal and a process goal. So I think it really applies to the situation. So I would consider Mastering My Interstate an outcome goal. You could also call it a vision. So it can be very broad. It's very not specific, right? There's no numbers attached to it. It is ethereal. And that's all okay because the vision or the outcome goal really just sets the trajectory and the direction that you want to be moving in, if that makes sense. 

That is very different from what a process goal is, which is the steps that you need to take to get to that vision. So the steps that you need to take when we're talking about on a day-to-day basis, this is where I really push my clients to get very specific on numbers. Is it binary? Can you say yes or no to it? Is it very specific? Is it action-oriented? Is it something that you feel like you can achieve this week? Those are questions that I'm asking my clients on a week-to-week basis as we're setting their goals for that week. So an example of a good process goal would be something like, I commit to going to the gym three times this week, working out for an hour. And those three days are going to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday. To be able to make it happen, I'm going to set an alarm on my phone. And Wednesday might be a little tough. So if I can't work out in the evening, that's a good process goal. It's very specific. It's very binary. At the end of the week, I can say, did I do this? Did I not? Check yes, check no. I have a plan. So goals, sometimes people get really, they miss the mark when they're setting goals because they say what they want, but they don't actually have any plan to make it happen. So I have a plan. I know which days I'm working out. I know when I'm working out. I know what workout I'm going to do. And then I've also thought through what could get in the way and made a plan for that. That's a really good process goal. 

So that's what I'm always helping my clients to focus on a week to week basis, which is very different from what I'm talking about right now, which is for 2026 is my vision for the year. It's to master my interstate. So then, and that'll be like what I'll be orienting to towards the whole year. But then on a week to week basis, I've started to ask myself, okay, what am I doing this week to master my interstate? And that's where the process goals come in. So I want to talk a little bit about how I've been thinking about that so far. 

Reframing Past Failures 11:48

One of the biggest things that has come up for me as a tool that if I'm being honest, I've known has been helpful for years, but I've never, ever figured out a way to make it work for me and to be consistent with it is meditation. And I think with my focus being so much on mastering my interstate, having more peace on a day-to-day basis, being more present on a day-to-day basis, that meditation becomes one of the best tools to be able to create that outcome. Now, I will say that I have tried to meditate in the past, and I've done so somewhat successfully, question mark, I don't know. It hasn't been super successful. And so I'm bringing it back. I'm recommitting to that tool. 

Now, one thing I want to talk about is utilizing and having a goal with something that you've “failed on in the past, because that applies to me with meditation. This is not the first time in my life that I have set a meditation goal. I'm going to talk about what my goal is, but this is not the first time in my life I've set a meditation goal. This is not the first time in my life I've said, I'm going to have this meditation practice, and it's going to be beautiful and wonderful, and then not follow through on it. So I have a lot of “failures” as it comes to getting excited about meditation and then not following through.

And what I think is really important to remember, if this is you and you're setting a goal that maybe you've set in the past, you've set this goal multiple times, you've tried it before, it's really easy to use the past to predict the future. It's really easy to look in your rearview mirror and think about all the times that you failed in the past. But like I tell my MACROS 101 clients, if you are trying to drive a car while looking in the rearview mirror, you're going to crash.And so I've had to make peace with what I've done before, which is get really excited about meditation, start, and then not actually keep it going long-term. And let that be at peace with that, that was then, that happened then, I'm not ignoring that it happened. And coming into this new experience, still believing that I can be successful and not bringing that past with me.

Making Peace With the Past and Learning the Lesson 14:17

So that's thing number one. Thing number two is I also am not ignoring the lessons that I learned previously. Why was I not successful previously? Why did I not keep it up previously? And there was a couple things as I was reviewing the past times that I've tried to set this habit before and haven't been as successful as I wanted to be. There was a couple of lessons that were coming up for me that are really important that I've implemented this time to make myself more successful. And that's a key that I want you to take away from this. Again, none of those things, none of those times that I tried it before, I consider failures. I consider they're things I tried. I learned some lessons there and I'm going to take those lessons and move forward with them. So the problem is, is that most people don't learn the lesson. That's really the problem. They call it a failure and then they don't want to look at it. And then they don't learn the lesson and then you repeat the lesson. So I'm not going to do that. So I'm looking at these times of, okay, what is different this time? How am I approaching this differently? And one thought that I had is my vision is different. My why is different. And I feel really rooted this year in what I want. I've gotten to the point where I deeply want this. I deeply want presence. I deeply want to feel peace on a moment to moment basis. I deeply want to get out of fear about what could happen or worrying, running through all the scenarios of what could go wrong. I want to get out of that. I want to have more peace. I want to make decisions from a grounded place. I want to be here now and not always in the future.

The Importance of a Strong “Why” 16:05

And that matters to me. And I feel like when I talk about this, I feel it in my bones. I feel it deep down inside of me of, this is my desire. And I know that meditation is a tool that's going to create more of that. So I think the takeaway from this is having a good enough why. And I walk my MACROS 101 clients through a really cool exercise to help them discover their why. Because when you are grounded in a really important why, you're willing to put the effort in. You're willing to do the things that are hard, and you're willing to keep it up because the why matters so much to you. And this why matters a ton to me.

Adjusting the Structure of the Goal 16:52

Another lesson that I'm pulling from previous is that I've set time limits for my meditation in the past. I will meditate five minutes a day every day, or I will meditate 10 minutes a day every day. It's usually a time limit and it's an everyday thing. And so what I'm doing this year is I'm not actually putting a time limit on it. One minute, 20 minutes, an hour, there's no time limit. It's like, I will meditate daily-ish. That's the second thing. It is giving myself permission that I would really like to meditate every day. And I would like that to be my ceiling goal, but I am okay with it being every day-ish. And that's my floor goal. Now, if you're like, what's a ceiling goal? What's a floor goal? My Macros 101 clients will know this. I recommend setting a ceiling goal, which is what you're aiming for, and a floor goal, which is what you're committed to being the floor. I'm not going to go any lower than this. So for me, I'm going to aim for meditating every day in 2026. That's very lofty. That's very lofty. And I may come back and I may have failed miserably at that. That's okay. I'm still setting the goal because that's my intention. But my floor goal is everyday-ish. And that gives me a little bit of flexibility. I will say, I'll talk about how the school has gone so far, but I will say I'm recording this on Tuesday, January 20th. So about a week before this will come out. Last night, I was in my bed. This is the first time it's happened since the first of the year, but I was in my bed and I realized that I hadn't done my meditation. And so I pulled out my phone, I put it next to my ear, I did a five-minute meditation and then went to sleep. But that was a really proud moment for me where it was like, I'm committed to this. I'm going to follow through on it. I realized that I had missed my normal meditation time and finished it off. 

Early Wins 18:49

Okay. Something else that I think is really important to point out. I actually didn't start this New Year's resolution, goal, whatever you want to call it, on January 1st. I started it on January, no, I started on December 30th. So two days before the new year. And that was really important to me because it was like, I had the realization of what I wanted to focus on, on the 30th. And I don't need to wait two days to be able to start to take action on it. So I actually started this meditation practice on the 30th and I have kept it up. I'm very proud to say I've kept it up every single day since then. 

If you're wanting to do something like this and you're wondering what app I use, I love Insight Timer. It's a free app. They have tons of guided meditations, but I also really like that they have just like timers. So I can just set like a five minute timer. So I kind of decide, do I want something that's guided today or do I want just some silence and I can do my own meditation? Okay. So that's thing number one that I've been implementing and I'm really excited about it. It's been a really, really great enjoyable experience for me. And I think that's something that I can't say in the past. I'm actually learning to enjoy it. And I think that's a really important lesson for me is that in the past I've done it because on some level I feel like I should do it or because everybody else is doing it or because all these other people are telling me that it's an important thing to do and I've, if I'm being honest with myself, I've operated a little bit from that like should framework in the past and I'm not there right now.

I'm not doing this because anybody else wants me to do it. I'm not doing this because anybody else is telling me that I should do it or I think that I should do it. I'm doing it because I want to do it, because I am enjoying the time, because I'm seeing the fruits of my labor. I want more presence on a day-to-day basis. And I notice that when I meditate and do some of the other things I'm going to talk about in just a minute, I have more of that. So I'm building that feedback loop with myself. You say you want more presence, Amber. When you meditate, you have more presence. Okay, so we're like closing that feedback loop. If you do this, you're going to have more of what it is that you want. And I think having that feedback loop with yourself is really, really valuable. I think about it in terms of eating healthy or in terms of going to the gym, of really paying attention to how do I feel when I'm done with that and anchoring into that. Yes, going to the gym is hard, but on my way home from the gym, I feel like I have more energy. I feel better about myself. I feel more positive about the day ahead. Awesome. Anchor into that so that you can remind your brain when it's hard. Yes, it's hard and I'm going to feel better when I leave. Yes, it's hard to not eat that cupcake, but I know tomorrow morning I will feel awesome and amazing instead of sluggish. So I'm anchoring into here's what I want to create and here's what I'm doing that's creating it and I want to link those two things together. 

Meditation Habit, Journaling and Reading for Presence 22:04

Now, I am continuing to ask myself the question, how can I master my interstate or what does that look like this week? So this will likely change as I go throughout the year and maybe I'll update you as it does. But for me right now, this is looking like a daily meditation habit, a daily journal practice, which I can't even tell you. I've never done that before. Like never, ever in my whole life. I remember when I was in high school, I had a friend who she journaled every single day, every single day. And at one point, like I saw the journals that she had and she had probably 16. I mean, she was 16 at the time. Like she probably had 16 journals that she had just been journaling in every single day for like her whole entire life. That was never me. I've never been a journaler. I've never kept a journal. That's not true. I guess I've never been a daily journaler. I should say that. I used to do more journaling back when I was a teenager and young married, but I was never, ever a daily journaler. 

But that is something that I feel like in my quest to master my interstate, in my quest to slow down, in my quest to be more present, slowing down and writing and getting my thoughts out on paper felt like a way to move in that direction. And oh boy, has it. I actually can't believe how helpful it has been for me to write daily about… And it's different every day. Some days I do gratitude. Some days I do what I'm thinking about. Some days I do what I'm considering in the business. Some days I do what I did my reading on that day, different things. But I will just say that my daily journal habit, I can't even believe how awesome it has been in helping me reorient to the now and the present. And as I'm trying to get out of fear, as I'm trying to make a decision from a more grounded place, being able to put that onto paper has been a game changer. 

And then the third thing I've been doing is a daily reading practice. And this has also been so, so beneficial for me to have some sort of book that I'm reading. Usually it's a nonfiction book. I'll talk about some of the ones that I've read so far, where I'm doing at least like a 10-minute reading session. And then I sit and journal and that's where I synthesize it. So again, that journaling time oftentimes is like reflecting on what it is that I read and how I'm thinking about it in the context of my own life. And linking those two together has been really great. I started the year rereading The Power of Now, which if you have not read that book, it is fantastic. I've read it, I think this is like my third time reading it, but it encapsulates exactly what I mean when I say I want to master my interstate. Because Eckhart Tolle, who wrote the book, is all about the present. It's all about coming back to the present and this idea that there are no problems in the present. There's only problems when we go out into the future or into the past. And he examines this idea in so many different ways and in so many different lights that it's been so good for me to reread and then do that journaling on synthesizing what it is that I'm remembering or relearning and how I want it to be applied to my life. 

So those are the three practices that I have been doing since December 30th. It is daily meditation, it is daily reading, and then it is journaling. Oh, the other book that I read. So I kind of flit between books depending on what it is that I feel like I want that day. So I started with The Power of Now. I also am reading The Abundance Code, which is also another book that I've read in the past and am rereading that's on money and money blocks. That's been helpful for me. And then the third one is actually a new book, or at least a new to me book. It's called Meditation for Mortals. It's by Oliver Berkman and it's broken up into like 28 days of just like structured reading. So they're short and they're like one per day. I read them faster than that, but that was a new to me book. And that would, I would give that maybe a four out of five. I would give Power of Now a five out of five or like a five, six out of five. I really, really enjoyed that book. Meditation for Mortals was fine. I just finished it.

But again, the whole point for me for this reading is not to just read fast. And that's a lot of times when I'm trying to read, I'm just trying to read fast. I'm a very fast reader and I can just like get through things really quickly. That's not my goal with the reading. My goal with the reading is to read slowly, to underline, and then to synthesize and actually apply what it is that I'm reading. And I think a lot of times I get into the like, I just need to read this and like hit done on this book rather than actually allowing the book to transform me.

Shifting From Consumption to Transformation 27:23

And that's what I'm trying to do right now. So daily meditation, daily reading of some sort of nonfiction, some whatever it is that I feel like I want to be focusing on. And then the daily journaling linked to that as well. A lot of days I do it in the morning before I open my laptop and get started for work, especially like Monday through Friday. That's a pretty good time for me that I can realistically have that focus time before it is that I dive into work. It's been a little bit trickier on the weekends because my weekends are a little less structured and they're a lot more about family and my whole family is around the whole time. But I figured out ways to be able to fit it in and I'll continue probably to get better at looking like that, what that structure can be on the weekends. But I am very proud to say that I have done all three of those things every single day since December 30th. And as I do a little reflection, I do feel different.

Now it's subtle. It hasn't overhauled everything in my life, things that I struggle with. Previously, I still struggle with. I'm not present all the time. I still feel somewhat reactive and a little bit frenzied, but I will say I can feel the shift starting to happen. And that's what you want for a year long focus. This is not a sprint. It is a marathon. And my goal is just a little bit better every single day, a little bit of progress every single day. And just like James Clear says in Atomic Habits, that 1% better mentality is how you make progress. And you can't imagine where you'll be in a year from now when you're focused on 1% a day. And that's really been my focus.

Establishing a Daily Rhythm and Noticing Subtle Change 29:10

So I hope you're taking away a couple of things from this episode. One, I hope you're thinking about what it is that you want to create this year. And even if you're listening to this in November, you can still think about what you want to be creating until next November, right? A year is an arbitrary time and we can start at the beginning of the year, but you could also start it on July and say, what do I want to create before next July? So what do I want to be creating in my life? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? And how can I think about that in a vision for where it is that I want to go? The vision is really important. It's the why, it's the feeling, it's the outcome that we're wanting to generate and create. But then on a day-to-day basis, asking ourselves, well, what am I focusing on today? And that's where those process goals come into play. So that's where we want to be really specific. We want to be binary. We want to have a plan. We want to have ideas of what days it may be challenging to make that happen and have a plan for those days, right? That's how on a week-to-week or a day-to-day basis, we actually make progress towards that vision and towards that outcome.

And then looking for the evidence that will make it easier to keep going, right? I talked about linking what it is that I want with what I've been doing and what it's creating and creating that feedback loop for my brain to be like, you want this thing, Amber. You want more presence. And if you do these three things, they are creating more presence. Thus, I have more of a desire to continue doing them, right? You see that feedback loop. I don't know how long I'll be doing this, like the three things that I talked about. My thought as of now is to keep this habit up at least through the month of December or December, January, at least the month of January. And then think about what it is that I else want to add. Once this becomes an easy habit that I'm not having to exert effort into, it just becomes a part of my daily life, then I can start to think about, well, what else do I want to do? Or where do I still notice myself struggling? Or what are other ways that I can start to integrate the ways that I want to feel on a more regular basis, so I continue to ask myself that question. But I'm giving myself at least till the end of January, maybe I'll do February, until it feels easy. Until the habits feel easy and they are habits, and I don't have to think about them, and I don't have to try to get myself to do them, then I will think about what's next and what else I want to layer on, continuing to ask myself that question, what do I need to do this week to master my inner state? Because that's my goal, and that's my vision. 

I hope this offered something for you. If it did, shoot me a DM on Instagram, let me know what it is that you're focusing on for this year, or what your goals are. Like I said, recording podcasts can really feel like I'm just recording something and then shooting it out into the ethos, and then never hearing from anybody about it. So I love it. I love, love, love it when I get that feedback, when I can close that loop a little bit of like, hey, the things that you're saying, people are actually listening to them. It's you're sitting there on the other side of this podcast as a real live human being that I'm making a difference for, that you're enjoying this. So thank you for being here. Thanks for being a part of the Biceps After Babies community, and I hope that this was helpful for you as you start to think about what it is that you want to create in your life. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong, because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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