Welcome to the second half of 2026 and our annual summer tradition of a Mid-Year Reset in July! It’s a moment we pause and reflect, reset, and realign with what matters most.
Today, I want to carry on that tradition and share one specific tool you can use to make the second half of 2026 everything you’d like it to be. Especially if the first half didn’t go quite as planned.
If you set some goals back in January that haven’t come to fruition. Or have completely disappeared. I got you!
First of all, who hasn’t? Even me, your Best Self Bestie who specializes in behavior change, experienced it earlier this year, and I want to share the science-backed way I self-corrected. But before that, I want you to stop for a moment and exercise some self compassion. We get so much further ahead with compassion than criticism. We’ve all been there. And besides, it’s probably not your fault anyway.
Here’s why.
When we fall short of achieving our goals, it can be easy to conclude we just weren’t disciplined enough. Not committed enough. That we’re just not capable. But after years of doing this work with people, and living it myself, I’ve realized that a lot of the time the goal itself was wrong from the start.
I’ll show you what I mean with something real from my own life this year.
In 2025, I made a lot of progress with some spine issues I was experiencing that really limited my mobility. But even though I was now capable of moving more, I wasn’t. So I asked myself why. Why would I want to move more? And I came up with a pretty compelling list that included these (all strongly related to my now post-menopausal self):
- I don’t want to get heart disease.
- I’m sick of being tired all the time.
- I have chronic back pain.
- I don’t want to become a burden to my son as I age.
But for the longest time, none of it got me to actually move more.
When I wrote it down on paper however, and really looked at it, I immediately said out-loud “Well, duh. They’re all avoidance goals.”
I know the science of behavior change, and while I try really hard not to have blind spots, I sure had them.
So why wasn’t I moving?
Every single one of my reasons to move more was about running away from something. Away from disease. Away from pain. Away from fatigue. Away from being a burden. Running away makes a terrible engine.
Here’s why.
There are two kinds of goals. Goals where you’re moving toward something, and goals where you’re running away from something.
Example:
“I want to move more so I don’t become a burden as I age.” That’s running away.
“I want to move more so I have independence as I age.” That’s moving toward.
Same behavior. Completely different engine.
Research confirms this exact difference. Goals where you’re moving toward something meaningful produce more sustained effort, more positive emotions along the way, and more resilience (especially when life gets hard and you need it the most). These are called approach goals.
Avoidance goals on the other hand, the running-away kind, are exhausting. You’re never actually done. Fear is never satisfied. The moment you don’t feel scared enough, your motivation is gone. So you push hard for a while, and then you run out. Because fear was never going to get you there.
It’s why so many of us can name every single reason we should change something, and still not do it. We’ve been running away from something instead of moving toward something.
So I beg you, please stop running away.
For me, things got easier when I stopped listing what I was afraid of and asked myself what I actually wanted.
You may unknowingly be doing the same thing. So here’s what I’d love for you to try, right here at the halfway point of 2026.
Think about a goal you set this year that didn’t stick. Just one.
Now ask yourself, was that goal about moving toward something you want? Or was it about running away from something you’re afraid of?
That little bit of awareness is the beginning of building goals you can actually achieve. The kind that pull you forward instead of chasing you from behind.
We still have six months left in 2026. And this short reset might be all you need to stop running in the wrong direction.
So happy half year my friend! I hope you found this helpful and just want to remind you that whatever it is you’d like to achieve, it’s possible. :)
You got this.
love, b
