A More Authentic Approach to Goals and Growth

By Denise Colin

The New Year often arrives carrying a quiet pressure. We’re encouraged to set goals, improve ourselves, fix what feels unfinished, and aim higher than we did before. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this impulse. It usually comes from a sincere desire for clarity, stability, or a sense of direction.

But many of us know the other side of this story, too.

We set goals with sincere motivation. Then we get distracted or busy and they quickly become good but unrealized intentions, and we like we failed. Or we may meet them. But still, something feels off. Not broken — just lacking. The goal didn’t provide the outcome we anticipated.

What if the issue isn’t a lack of discipline, low motivation, or insatiability? What if the answer isn’t something external we need to achieve, but something internal we need to pay attention to?

This year, instead of asking What do I want to accomplish? we might try a different question: How can I live more authentically and true to myself?

Focusing on alignment rather than achievement invites a deeper kind of growth. It shifts the purpose of goals away from proving, fixing, or measuring ourselves, and toward living in a way that feels honest, sustainable, and true. 

From this place, goals don’t disappear. They simply change their role. They become tools for supporting an authentic life, rather than measures of our success.

Inward vs. Outward Goals

Achievement-focused goals tend to direct our attention outward, emphasizing productivity, improvement, and outcomes. Alignment-focused goals bring the focus inward, centering our values, needs, priorities, and the ways we want to move through our lives.

Alignment means living in relationship with yourself — your values, your needs, your limits, and what matters most to you right now. When your life is aligned, your actions feel connected to an inner compass, even when circumstances are uncertain or imperfect.

Many of us were taught to measure progress primarily by outcomes: milestones reached, productivity maintained, boxes checked. Alignment invites a different kind of awareness. It asks whether your days feel sustainable, whether your commitments feel honest, and whether the way you spend your time reflects what you value most.

Achievement can be motivating, but without alignment it often leads to exhaustion or disconnection. Alignment creates a steadier foundation. From that place, effort feels purposeful rather than draining, and growth feels integrated rather than forced.

When goals are shaped by alignment, they no longer ask you to override yourself in order to succeed. Instead, they support the life you’re actually trying to live. From this place, it becomes easier to follow through on your goals. And when you accomplish them, they’re more likely to bring a genuine sense of fulfillment rather than a fleeting sense of completion.

Signs You May Be Out of Alignment

Living out of alignment doesn’t usually announce itself in dramatic ways. More often, it shows up quietly in patterns we normalize, the discomfort we push through, or in a persistent sense that something isn’t quite right even when things appear fine on the surface.

You might notice that your days feel overly full but strangely unsatisfying. You’re doing what needs to be done, meeting expectations and staying busy, yet you don’t feel present or find meaning in what you’re doing. Or perhaps you feel a constant tension between what you say yes to and what you actually want to do.

Being out of alignment can also show up as chronic exhaustion, irritability, or numbness. You may find yourself operating on autopilot, moving from one obligation to the next without checking in with how you’re actually doing. Over time, this can create a feeling of living your life from the outside rather than from within.

Another sign is the quiet habit of overriding yourself. This could be ignoring your body’s signals, minimizing your needs, or silencing your intuition in order to stay productive, helpful, or agreeable. These patterns are often learned and adaptive, but they can slowly pull us away from ourselves.

These signs don’t indicate failure or an urgent need to fix something. But they are useful information. Awareness is often the first indication that authenticity is asking to be prioritized and that you may need to reconsider how you relate to your life. 

Reimaging Resolutions

Living more authentically doesn’t happen through intention alone. It happens through practice.

Listening to your body, honoring your boundaries, and making aligned choices are skills. And llike any skill, they get stronger when they’re exercised regularly. Without consistent moments of reflection, it’s easy to default back to habits of busyness, obligation, and self-overriding, even when we genuinely want to live differently.

This is where goals can become useful again.

Rather than resolutions focused on outcomes, consider goals that create ongoing opportunities live more authentically. These habits are about building a steady relationship with your inner experience so your choices come from awareness instead of autopilot.

Some alignment-based goals might look like:

• A daily or weekly meditation practice focused on listening rather than problem-solving. Even just a few minutes of noticing what’s present without trying to change it

• A consistent journaling habit, such as a morning or evening check-in that returns to the same question:

• • What feels important today?

  • What do I need more or less of right now?

• An evening reflection ritual, asking:

• • Where did I feel most like myself today?

  • Where did I override my needs or instincts?

• A weekly pause to reflect on what’s feeling aligned and what feels forced so you can refocus your efforts for the rest of the week.

• Intentional boundaries around rest, silence, or screen time that create space to notice your internal state.

• Choosing one core value, such as honesty, presence, or compassion, and paying attention to how it shows up in your daily choices (this is another great evening ritual question).
  

These are still goals. They require commitment and repetition. The difference is that their purpose is awareness rather than performance. Progress is simply consistency.

Over time, these habits build momentum. They make it easier to recognize when something isn’t aligned and to choose differently when it matters.

Redefining What Success Looks Like

When goals are rooted in alignment rather than achievement alone, the way we define success naturally begins to shift.

Success stops being measured only by what you complete, produce, or accomplish, and starts being measured by how you experience your life. Do your choices feel intentional? Do your commitments reflect your values? Are you able to stay connected to yourself even when things are busy or uncertain?

Focusing on aligning with your authentic self is not a softer or lesser form of growth. It is one of the most personal and impactful kinds of growth there is. When you understand yourself more clearly (your needs, limits, values, and inner signals), that understanding carries into every area of your life. It shapes how you work, how you relate to others, and how you respond to change.

This kind of growth tends to be quieter, but it’s also more enduring. Instead of chasing motivation or relying on willpower, your goals begin to feel self-reinforcing. You follow through not because you “should,” but because what you’re doing actually supports the life you want to live.

And when you do accomplish something from this place, the fulfillment feels different. It’s not just the relief of finishing or the satisfaction of checking a box. It’s the sense that what you worked toward mattered, and that you didn’t have to disconnect from yourself to get there.

Redefining success in this way doesn’t mean letting go of structure, purpose, or aspiration. It means choosing measures of success that reflect who you are, not just what you can achieve.

A Gentler Way Forward

Choosing alignment as a guiding principle for the year ahead is an act of intention. It’s a decision to pay attention to your inner life, to let awareness inform your choices, and to allow growth to unfold from a place of honesty rather than pressure.

Spaces that support reflection and self-connection can make this process easier. At Womanspace, the emphasis is on slowing down, listening deeply, and exploring what authenticity looks like in your own life, in community with others who are doing the same. It’s not about becoming someone new, but about creating room to be more fully yourself.

As you move into the New Year, you might consider not just what you want to accomplish, but how you want to live. Let alignment guide the way and allow your goals to grow from there.