Make 2026 the Best Year (Answer These 7 Questions)

**Greg Isenberg** (0:00)
Today's episode is Why You're Failing to Achieve Your Goals and How We Can Fix It. I brought on my friend Sahil Bloom, New York Times bestselling author, has invested in 100 companies, because 2026, the new year is coming. And most people drift into a new year without any real clarity. So we're doing a different type of episode today. We're walking through seven simple questions that reset your direction, that clean up your priorities, and give you a clear plan that you can actually follow. This is the stuff that Sahil uses, I use and the founders we work with use, because they want a serious upgrade in their life and in their work. If you sit with these questions, the new year is going to be a very different year. And get your pen and papers out, because we are going to do the personal annual review together in this episode. Let's get started. I'm here with Sahil Bloom. Welcome to episode 472 of Where It Happens Podcast. My co-host, welcome back.

**Sahil Bloom** (1:12)
What's going on? This is the throwback. Episode four, what is it, 472?

**Greg Isenberg** (1:18)
Some crazy amount.

**Sahil Bloom** (1:20)
I disappeared for 440 of those, and you've gone and taken it to much higher heights. This is amazing.

**Greg Isenberg** (1:29)
Well, welcome back for this special episode. You have a really interesting topic. What do you want to talk about today, and what will people get out of this by the end of the episode?

**Sahil Bloom** (1:41)
I want to talk about why we are all failing to achieve our goals. And what are we going to get out of this? I hope it is the solution, the antidote to that, to really set us up for the biggest 2026 that we've all imagined, but a clear structure for how to actually get there, how to look at 2025 so that you can take whatever learnings you need to and actually march into 2026 with those new insights, new perspectives to operate at full power.

**Greg Isenberg** (2:12)
OK, so if people stick to the end of the episode, they're going to have your framework, you're going to give away your framework for how you basically get the most out of the year, because you've got a very special framework and I haven't seen this anywhere and you're going to let us in, you're going to reveal it, and people could take out their pens, take out their papers, and while we're going through it, they can actually answer those questions, right?

**Sahil Bloom** (2:38)
Exactly right. We're going to go through seven questions that are going to allow you to more meaningfully reflect on the year that was so that you can actually create a real structure for crushing the year ahead.

**Greg Isenberg** (2:51)
Cool. Let's do it.

**Sahil Bloom** (2:52)
Let's do it. First, just to set the stage very quickly, why is this important in the first place? There's a quote that I absolutely love. We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. This is something that we often forget, right? Like we are in such a rush at the end of the year to plan for the year ahead to like, okay, I'm going to create all my goals. I'm going to set all my systems, all of these things that we forget. But the most important data points just happened this year that we just had. So this entire process that we're going to walk through, this seven question framework is all about reflecting. It's getting that information, sucking it out of 2025 so that you're armed to use it in 2026 to go out and achieve the things you want to achieve. I call this my personal annual review. It is seven simple questions that have been transformative, really life-changing for me in my own journey. It's led to some of my biggest changes that I've made. And I think for anyone listening to this, you're going to get a ton out of going through this exercise. Would highly recommend taking out a blank sheet of paper as we talk through all of these. You can write down the questions. We'll obviously have them in the show notes as well. But run through this as we talk through it. We'll deconstruct each question. Greg, I hope you'll share some of your reflections as we go through each one, but let's dive right in.
Question one, what did I change my mind on this year? The reason this question is so important is the smartest, most successful people are not the ones who have all the right answers. They are the ones who ask the right questions. I have found that time and time again. I'd be curious if you've observed that in others that this willingness to have software updates to your brain and embrace the software updates rather than trying to resist them is such a powerful force for continued growth and change.