Achieve Your Goals in 2026

Welcome to 2026. The year you achieve your goals.

I don’t do resolutions. 

During each of the 15 years that I trained in and taught martial arts and self-defense at a martial arts school we’d see a surge of new people in January. By the of February they were gone.

Goal setting and implementation is different from resolutions. Provided you do so with intent.

In the Empire Strikes Back, Yoda tells young Luke Skywalker, “Do or do not. There is no try.” It’s one of the most iconic lines in film. 

Yoda had tasked Luke with using the force to get his X-wing craft out of the swamp. 

Luke responded to Yoda’s directive by citing all of the challenges that in his mind, made the task impossible to achieve. 

Luke, as many of us have done, got in his own way. 

And sure enough, he failed to achieve the desired results.

Yoda then used the force to lift the craft out of the swamp, accomplishing exactly the result Luke had talked himself out of being able to achieve.

The difference between the two wasn’t skill. It was mindset.

If you’re feeling more like Luke than Yoda when it comes to achieving your goals, you might benefit from Yoda’s advice to Luke just a bit earlier in that same scene, that sometimes, “you must unlearn what you have learned” in order to develop the right frame of mind to achieve results.  

2026 is here. It’s time to decide, will this be a year of do or of do not?

My dad used to use the idiom, “to give it the old college try” (yes, it uses the word try) when he wanted me to give it my best shot regardless of the odds for success. 

I was fortunate to have a great dad. And thanks to his encouragement, I’ve been willing to take chances in life. To put in the effort towards achieving my goals without prejudging the outcome. 

Sometimes I’ve failed, but more often than not, thanks to the intent to succeed, I achieved the results I sought.

And you can too. Whether you are:

• An organization looking to protect your employees and your bottom line from the harm of workplace violence. 
• A plaintiff law firm looking to maximize client recoveries and firm revenue. 
• A business owner or professional looking to protect yourself from the grievance driven violence targeting professionals and business owners.

The first step to achieve any of these results is to believe that you can accomplish your goals. Doing so makes it much more likely that you will. 

Results start with being intentional in what you want to achieve. 

But there’s more than just intent that you’ll need in order to reach your goals. Here’s the process I use. And if it works for me it will work for you too:

• Identify your goals. Be specific too. If you can’t identify your specific goal, you have no achieve to achieve it. It really is that simple.
• Break down your objective into actionable steps. These steps when taken will lead you towards the specific results you want to achieve.  The more clearly defined your steps are, the more achievable your results will be. 
• Take that first step. Newton’s first law states that, “bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.” We can over analyze things to a point where paralysis by analysis sets in. And that will stop you from reaching your goals. A better approach is to recognize that often times “the only way around it, is right through the middle.” So get started.
• Revisit the process you’ve laid out. Once you’ve taken that first step, evaluate how that’s worked out.  If you need to make adjustments, then make those adjustments. Based upon the results of your assessment, you can then revisit the steps you laid out, and make any additional adjustments that help you to keep moving towards your goals. 
• Get help. All of us can use input, guidance, and even a second set of eyes, from someone experienced in what we’re trying to achieve. Getting that help can help you to improve your processes, and make your results more effective. Getting help when you need it is the clearest sign that you have the intent you need to succeed.
• Implement. Implement. Implement. Keep at it until you achieve the goals you identified.
• Celebrate your successes. But don’t rest on them.

My book the California Workplace Violence Prevention Manual, takes you through the process of designing, implementing, and maintaining an effective California compliant workplace violence prevention program. Learn more here.

My Book Effective Litigation Investigations takes you step-by-step through the investigative processes that I used to provide the quality information that helped my attorneys optimize their case results.  Learn more here.