This is episode 261, my first episode for 2026. I hope you are easing your way into the year in whatever way works for you, whether you are bursting with energy and ready to get going, or you’re gently emerging or just kind of in that in-between place.

Today’s episode is all about big, bold goals, the kind of goals that really stretch your sense of what’s possible and evolve your identity and really ask you to meet yourself at a deeper level. So not the tidy, socially acceptable goals that you may have chosen in the past or others have suggested to you.

The ones that are reasonable and achievable, or definitely don’t rock the boat. I’m talking about the ones that you’ve perhaps been afraid to say out loud. And this is the perfect moment to talk about them, especially because Powerful, my coaching membership, is open for you to join.

So if you are feeling the pull towards a bigger life this year and you’re just fed up with operating at what you know is a fraction of your potential, and you want to build the emotional and practical skills that make your goals inevitable, then I would love to have you join us because inside Powerful, that is where you’ll do the work that makes your big bold goals possible.

So, come on in and join us, head to maisiehill.com/powerful, or use the link in the show notes and across my social media. All right, let’s talk about big bold goals, what they really are, and why they matter.

If you want to do things differently but need some help making it happen, then tune in for your weekly dose of coaching from me, Maisie Hill, Master Life Coach and author of Period Power. Welcome to The Maisie Hill Experience.

Hello, gorgeous ones, and happy New Year to you. It’s actually a little bit challenging for me to say Happy New Year to you because I’m actually recording this at the start of December. This episode comes out on January 7th, which for me is actually too late to be saying happy New Year. I have a cutoff date of like January 3rd or 4th, but I think this New Year period is going to feel very New Year-y, so I’m going with it.

Also, when this comes out, I will have just wrapped up my three-day event, Design Your Decade, that I’m currently preparing for and feeling very excited about. So those of you that came, thank you for helping to make it the amazing event I’m sure it ends up being.

Now, I am very excited for this episode because it’s the one that sets the tone for the year ahead. I wanted to give you an episode to anchor into and that gives you an orientation point, something that you can return to as you move through the year that you are creating. And those of you who’ve been here for a while will already know this, but it’s worth repeating. I’m not talking about in a new year, new you way, right? This is more of a, “Let’s have an important, grown-up conversation about the life you’re building and the future you are claiming for yourself,” kind of way.

So this episode is called Big Bold Goals, and I want to talk with you about a distinction that will shift your relationship with planning, desire, ambition, and your self-leadership, all of the things that shape the direction of your life far more than resolutions ever will. Ditch your resolutions.

Because here’s what I want, okay? I want every single person listening to this podcast, now or in the future, to have goals that stretch your mind, that strengthen your identity, and expand your self-concept, and really create a sense of forward direction and momentum that feels both exciting and a bit scary, but also so right. And I also want to help you understand why so many intelligent, thoughtful, capable human beings end up creating goals that are technically big but don’t actually change them. And why a bold goal has a completely different energy to it.

So first, we have to look at what we think a big goal is, right? When most people use the word big, they’re talking about scope or scale or some kind of tangible result on paper. So a big goal often has a clear, measurable outcome, and that is important, okay?

You want to be able to write it down in a sentence or be able to explain it to someone at a dinner party, that you’ve just got this clear idea of the achievement, the number, the milestone, whatever it is. It tends to be relatively easy to articulate. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy to talk about it, because then you’ve got other people’s reactions to contend with, and that doesn’t have to be a problem, by the way. But the actual sentence is straightforward, even if it makes you want to vomit a bit.

So a big goal gives you a direction and a structure and a focus. They create a reason for you to prioritise things, to make choices. It gives you something that you’re aiming towards, and you have a vision for your life that really compels you to lift your gaze up to the horizon, right? The potential on the horizon, rather than getting pulled back into the day-to-day demands that take up your energy and focus, but have you like looking down rather than looking out in front of you.

But I don’t just want you to have a big goal. I mean, I want you to have big goals, but not just a big goal, because big goals just describe something that you want. I want you to set a goal that requires something from you on an identity level. Because you can say things like you want a promotion or a house or a book deal or an income goal, or come first in a weightlifting competition. And all of those goals are fantastic, and they can be really genuine and heartfelt and exciting to you. But is your big goal also a bold goal?

Because a bold goal is something else entirely. A bold goal is the kind of goal that shifts you as you pursue it. It’s one that radically alters the way that you think about yourself. It changes the tone of your inner voice, what you see as possible for you, and that’s regardless of your life circumstances. And it asks you to lead yourself differently.

So the boldness of a goal really matters because it’s going to ask you to be more honest with yourself and other people. You’re going to have more tenacity, more willingness to feel things, more trust in yourself, more courage, more capacity to be inside discomfort without abandoning yourself in the process. So a bold goal really demands that you expand the edges of who you consider yourself to be.

If it doesn’t, then it’s not a bold goal, because with a bold goal, you also can’t stay small or hidden. You will have to confront any old habits that are draining or limiting you, and that largely includes the thoughts that you have, addressing your mindset.

Bold goals do not let you indulge patterns that are very familiar but really shrink your future. And they also won’t let you place everyone else’s needs ahead of your own all year long, whilst like quietly hoping that your life will just magically open up and change somewhere. And a bold goal will also challenge the version of you who has been running the show so far. And the version of you that’s been running the show so far, I have no doubt that it has achieved great things. We love this version of you.

But I’m speaking to those of you who tend to be the competent one, the over-functioning one, and the one who carries everyone and everything else and who maybe avoids rocking the boat. That version of you who knows exactly how to keep things running smoothly even when it costs you.

So the thing about being bold is that means a willingness to take risks, to be confident and courageous. So you can see why I feel so committed to you all having a big, bold goal. But I also love the word bold because I associate it with how it’s used in Ireland.

So in my 20s, I had an Irish boyfriend and I visited Dublin with him quite a bit. I got on with his family really well. They were all great. And on one or more occasions, I drank a fair bit of whiskey with his granddad, and I just loved going there. And one of the Irish phrases that I heard his family use a lot that I really love is when someone is described as being very bold. Now, I’m not Irish, but my understanding is that bold is used to describe being naughty or unruly in some way. And I like bringing that vibe into your goal setting because it’s the opposite of how we’ve all been socialised.

Because when women set goals, or when people who’ve been socialised as female set goals, we tend to go for a big goal before we go for bold. And that’s just the tendency, because if you’re anything like me, you’ve been rewarded your whole life for being mature, sensible, reliable, self-sacrificing, even if it wasn’t out and out described as that. That is essentially what you’ve been doing. So most of us learn to pursue goals that are socially acceptable, but we avoid bold ones because boldness often has social consequences. Being bold is uncomfortable. It’s disruptive, and that is a very good thing. 

But it does disturb the status quo. So, whereas a big goal might be socially acceptable, it might impress some people, they might agree to it, agree with it. A goal that is bold risks inconveniencing them. And your nervous system has been trained to avoid that. So boldness shifts relational patterns that other people rely on and have come to expect of you. And it disrupts the distribution of labour in a household or in your workplace or in your social circle. So again, you can see why I love this plan for all of you.

Setting a big bold goal literally touches on all the things I coach people on. And when these words landed in me, and I thought about a big bold goal, it just lit every part of me up. And my body, my mind just started paying attention. So this distinction really matters because if you really want to live a life that feels like yours, not the life that you’ve been raised to maintain, not the life that other people rely on you to uphold, then you need to start choosing goals that stretch your identity, not just add things to your to-do list. So I want to bring this to life with some examples for you.

A big bold goal might be running a half-marathon and challenging all the thoughts that you’ve been socialised into thinking about how your body isn’t the type of body that runs marathons, or addressing the question of how do you prioritise training for it when your partner and kids are used to you being around for them? So running a half-marathon, we can all agree that’s a big goal, but how can we make it a bold goal by challenging things? Challenging how you see yourself, challenging the current setup in your life.

A big goal also might be launching a business, but that becomes a bold goal when it also involves allowing yourself to be seen, letting go of your need to be liked by everyone in order for you to market and sell in a way that generates business so that you can actually pay yourself. Earning more money could be your big goal, but a bold goal might be putting yourself forward for a job that you don’t think you’re qualified for or raising your prices and dealing with all your thoughts about charging more, or stepping into your expertise by fully recognising them and expanding your self-concept of who you are professionally.

It could also mean saying no to work that drains you and showing up as someone who’s willing to be paid well without justifying why, right? Without over-explaining why you charge what you charge. You could also have big goals that are to do with improving your relationships in some way. And that becomes bold when it involves telling the truth about what you want or ending patterns of emotional over-functioning and stepping into relational leadership with very clean communication and clear boundaries.

So can you see how big goals that are also bold touch on something deeper? They ask you to shift how you see yourself, to tell the truth about what you want and also what you’re done carrying, because I know for sure you are all carrying too much. But if that crucial element of being bold isn’t there, then your big goal is actually more likely to fail. This is so important. So listen to this.

Every single year, I speak to people about the goals they’ve set for themselves. They’re excited about it, they’re ready to go, they’ve bought the planner, they’ve written it down in a lovely notebook. And then life happens because it always does. Your work gets busy, your period is due, you’re tired, other people need things from you, you start compromising on your vision, and you step out of self-leadership and into over-functioning for others. And all that’s happening here is you’re reverting to the form you are most used to being in, your most practised ways of being. That happens to everyone, me included. Trust me on that.

And I can tell you that in the thousands of people I have coached, including myself and my coach peers, we are Jedi-level mindset coaches, and we all have this tendency. It’s not a big deal that it happens. It’s not unique to you. It just happens. So your brain will feed you reasons to wait or slow down or return to what’s familiar. And because nothing in your identity has shifted yet, you just slip right back into the behaviours and beliefs that have kept you stuck for the last year and the year before that and the year before that.

But those patterns can be interrupted without judgment, and you can course correct. This is the whole point of my membership. This is what we do. So your goals don’t fall apart because you’re not capable. It is not that at all. You just haven’t expanded into the identity that is required for your goal to become inevitable yet. Okay, you haven’t got there yet.

So people assume that failed goals come from lack of discipline or lack of time, things like that. But I want to offer that what they usually come from is a lack of boldness. Because boldness is the bridge between your vision and actually embodying your goal. It’s the part of the process where you decide to become the person who creates the result you want. And there is a point in that journey where the goal becomes inevitable because of who you have become in the process. 

So boldness is the bit that changes you. And you need that change if you want a new outcome. If you want something different in your life, then you have to change in order to create that change.

So if you want to sense whether a goal is bold, then pay attention to its tone inside your body. A big bold goal usually brings up a mix of excitement and discomfort. There’s often a feeling of recognition, like part of you already knows you want it, combined with a part of you that wants to pull back and like slam on the brakes.

That part of you that doesn’t want to deal with the emotional consequences, the emotional risk that’s involved, because it asks something of you. It requires you to look at patterns you know aren’t great but that you’ve been avoiding. And it nudges you to make decisions that you have been delaying or avoiding. It asks you to stop negotiating with your own potential. And it brings you into a more honest relationship with yourself and likely with others, too.

They require you to risk disappointing someone. That doesn’t mean that you will disappoint someone, but your big bold goal will rub up against the parts of you that are very concerned with your obligations and responsibilities, including being over-responsible for the people around you and how they feel.

So, as you walk into 2026, I want you to really think about your goals. Are they big and are they bold? I want you to have a big bold goal that carries you into the next phase of your life and challenges the current version of you. So that is your mission this week, should you choose to accept it. And I really recommend that you do because this matters. It really, really matters.

And if you’re listening to this and you’re ready for a year that totally transforms your life and moves you forward, I want you to know this is exactly what we’re doing inside my membership, Powerful. It’s my academy for big bold goals. It’s the place where you build that identity, where you create the habits, and you create the emotional capacity and the practical structure that brings your goals to life.

So we take your big bold goals, we build the bold identity that brings them to life, we break down everything into seasonal goals, and you learn the emotional and practical skills to carry yourself not just through this entire year, but the rest of your life. The stuff we teach you, once you know it, it becomes who you are. There’s no going back.

And the doors are open right now. So if you want this year to be the year where you become the person who creates your results on purpose, then come and join us, because it would be a delight for me to help you make this your boldest year yet.

Okay, that is it for this week. I will catch you next time.

Hey, if you love listening to this podcast then come and check out my membership, Powerful, where you get my best resources and all the coaching you need to transform your inner and outer life. Sign up to the waitlist at maisiehill.com/powerful, and I’ll see you in the community.