If you repeat this January for 10 years, where would it take you? And more importantly, would you like that place? That question predicts your 2026 better than any list of resolutions.
January is the month of lists. Goals. Intentions. Resolutions. Every year, millions of people write down what they want to achieve: lose weight, save more, read twenty books, learn a language, change jobs. And a few weeks later, most of it fades.
Not because you lack willpower. Not because you’re “inconsistent.” Often, it’s something simpler—and deeper: we plan the what without stopping to ask the why.
We write what we want to do. We rarely name why we want to do it. And when the why is blurry, any obstacle is enough: a heavy week, a bad night of sleep, a trip, a low-energy day… and the plan disappears.
The problem isn’t your goals
Viktor Frankl—an Austrian psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor—dedicated his life to a hard question: what helps some people find strength to keep going when everything seems lost?
His answer was simple: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
In January, we often do the opposite. We build the how without defining the why. It’s like mapping a route without a destination. You can stay busy… and still not arrive anywhere.
The why is meaning. The how is a system. And without a system, your why turns into good intentions.
A scene that repeats every year
February. A random Tuesday. 7:40 p.m. You’re tired. You open your phone “for one minute.” Half an hour disappears. You remember the habit you started strongly on January 1… and you don’t even feel like thinking about it.
You didn’t fail. You just didn’t have a minimum plan for a normal day. You didn’t lack motivation. You lacked structure.
That’s why the 10-year question matters so much. It doesn’t talk about your best day. It talks about your habits.
The question before the goal
Before you ask, “What do I want to accomplish this year?”, there’s a more important question:
What am I living for?
This isn’t a philosophical question to sound deep. It’s practical. Because if you don’t know what you’re living for, your goals become borrowed: what looks good, what others applaud, what you “should” want, what sounds impressive.
Aristotle called it telos: the end that everything else is meant to serve. For him, a good life wasn’t a life full of achievements—it was a life oriented toward what truly matters. And what truly matters doesn’t show up by accident. You discover it through reflection.
Leonardo Polo put it differently: the human being is unrestricted growth. We’re built to grow, to give, to transcend. But growth without direction isn’t growth. It’s just movement.
The emptiness goals don’t fill
Frankl described the “existential vacuum”—that feeling of apathy or disorientation that appears when life loses meaning. And it’s more common than we admit.
You can achieve everything you set out to do and still feel like something is missing. You can keep your resolutions and reach December with a question that stings:
“Was that it?”
That’s why I keep coming back to my favorite question—the one I use for my own planning and the one I include in the Daily Journal I’ve refined over five editions—because it doesn’t let you escape:
If I repeat this month for 10 years… where does it take me? And do I want to be there?
That question pulls you out of the day and forces you to see the pattern. And many times, the honest answer is: “No. This doesn’t take me where I want to go.”
That discomfort—the good kind—is the beginning of real change.
Because goals answer a tactical question: What will I do?
Purpose answers a deeper one: Who will I become?
The “how” that holds your “why”: a 3-layer system
After years of testing different approaches, I concluded: loose goals don’t work. What works is a system that connects what you do today with the person you want to become over time.
1) North Star: Life vision and purpose
Before any annual goal, you need clarity on your values, your direction, and what “a good life” means to you. Not what it means to your boss, your parents, or Instagram. To you.
This includes your gifts, your passions, and your long-term goals (15 years, 5 years)—and those “someday” goals you keep quiet.
2) Route: Annual and quarterly operating system
With your vision clear, you ask a powerful question: What do I want to be true about me when December ends?
Then, every quarter you zoom out: review, refocus, and choose 1 to 3 moves that truly matter for the next 90 days. Not ten. Three, at most.
3) Today’s step: Daily practice
Vision without action is fantasy. That’s why you need a simple daily space:
gratitude (anchors you),
one concrete action (moves you),
an identity statement (“I am…”) (reminds you who you’re practicing being),
and an end-of-day review (teaches you).
You don’t need an hour. You need 10 minutes of intention.
This three-layer system—North Star, Route, and Today’s step—is the structure of Living with Purpose · Daily Journal for 2026: life vision, annual and quarterly planning, and 365 daily pages. All inside a hyperlinked PDF so you can move in one tap between your vision, your annual plan, your quarters, and your day. (Because if it’s hard to use, it won’t get used.)
From purpose to plan
When your purpose is clear, your goals change their nature. They stop being wish lists and become vehicles for meaning.
“I want to lose weight” becomes: “I want the energy to be present with my kids.”
“I want to earn more” becomes: “I want the freedom to choose projects that matter to me.”
“I want to change jobs” becomes: “I want to contribute to something bigger than myself.”
The goal may look similar. But the fuel changes. And fuel determines whether you keep going in February… or quit.
What I’m inviting you to do (without drama)
I’m not asking you to drop your goals. I’m asking you to anchor them. To sit with the hard questions before you write the list. To give yourself permission not to have everything clear right away. And to trust something simple: clarity arrives when you commit to reflection.
If you want ongoing support, I will send a monthly email with one idea and one short exercise (Spanish and English). No noise. Just tools to think better and decide better.
Your year doesn’t change in January. It changes on an ordinary Tuesday.
Your exercise for today (7 minutes, on paper)
Before you write a single goal for 2026, answer—without filtering:
If a year from now I look back and feel I lived with purpose, what would have had to happen?
Why does that truly matter?
What would be the concrete evidence? (What would I see in my calendar, my habits, and my decisions?)
Don’t look for a perfect answer. Look for an honest one. That’s usually where the truth is—what you’ve been avoiding naming.
May 2026 not be the year you achieve more things.
May it be the year you live with more meaning.