Okay, okay - we know. We’ve been full steam ahead on the whole “new year, fresh start, what do you really want” train since December. You’re probably thinking “another email about planning my year? Really?” 

But here’s the thing: Everything we have been talking about - the missed opportunities, the hesitation tax, the old year energy, the patterns that keep repeating - there’s actually a reason all of that keeps happening. And it might not be what you think.

After years of doing this ourselves (and watching hundreds of people try), here’s what we have figured out:

That being said, the order matters if you truly want to create your life on your terms this year: Identity —> Experience —> Outcomes —> Strategy.

Let’s first get clear on a few common misconceptions about identity:

Identity is not your personality, your job title, your brand or your aspirations. Identity is the role you unconsciously default to under pressure. It’s the version of you that makes decisions when no one is watching. It’s the internal rules you live by.

In other words, identity is how you relate to life. 

So what does identity have to do with goal planning?

Well, your identity answers three questions before you ever even try to make a plan (without you even being conscious of it):

If your identity stays unconscious, it will automatically:

That means that when you go ahead and try to set even a “good” goal, it is getting executed by an old operating system. This is why it is so difficult to stick to a goal, even when you have an enormous amount of willpower and motivation. Your old identity doesn't announce itself. It doesn't say "I'm going to sabotage you now." It just quietly filters your goals, makes certain paths feel "off," and pulls you back to what feels known - even when what feels known is making you miserable.

So. How does one go about upgrading their identity to match the life they want to live? It’s all about intentionally choosing to embody the identity of the person who is living the life you want to live right now.

Have you heard people say you should live from your future self if you want to have ultimate success in life? When you hear that hyper-successful people got there by living from their future self, what you’re really hearing is that they didn’t wait for permission to become someone new. They chose an identity first, and then let their experiences, decisions, and strategies organized around that identity. In other words, they weren’t trying to simply reach new goals or become someone new or different through those goals - they were expressing who they had already decided to be and everything else followed.

Let’s take a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger because he is a classic example of living from your future self. Long before Arnold had fame, money, or could even speak fluent English, Arnold already decided who he was. As a young man growing up in Austria with very little external validation, he wasn’t saying, “One day I hope to be successful.” And he certainly didn’t think about or focus on his current circumstances. He was walking around with the internal choice of being a champion. A movie star. A man destined for greatness. Not as a motivational trick, but as a decision. 

Because of that identity choice, everything he did was what a world-famous bodybuilder and movie star (someone like him) would do. Training didn’t feel like a grind, and sacrifice didn’t feel like deprivation; they felt aligned. What happens when some of us get rejected? We feel like failures and give up. Not Arnold. He just assumed that if he was rejected, the world simply hadn’t caught up yet. His circumstances didn’t change overnight, but his experience of them did - and that’s what made consistency, discipline, and resilience feel natural instead of forced. 

When we “try” to live from our future selves, it is easy to miss a piece of the puzzle. We focus on copying habits, making vision boards, or visualizing outcomes…but we’re still operating from the same internal rules that created our current reality. When that happens, even the best intentions and goals get filtered through an old identity - the one that decides what is possible, what is allowed, and what is too risky to fully commit to. 

When we as a couple sit down to plan out our year, we’re not hyping ourselves up or pretending to be someone we aren’t. We’re talking about consciously choosing who gets to be in the driver’s seat before we decide where we’re going. Because we know this - once identity is clear, experience shifts. And when experience shifts, outcomes stop feeling like something we have to chase and start becoming byproducts of how we are living. 

This is exactly why willpower burns out eventually…but identity endures.

You don’t rise to your goals, you return to who you unconsciously believe yourself to be.