Stop Lying to Yourself About Your Goals I had someone sit across from me last month and tell me their sales target missed by 22% because "the market was tough." When I asked what they'd actually changed in their approach, they went quiet. The market was tough. But they hadn't changed anything. That's the moment most people stop being honest with themselves. I've watched this happen hundreds of times now, working with people running their own thing here in London and beyond. They set a goal. Something goes wrong. Then they tell themselves a story about why it wasn't their fault. The story makes them feel better for about 48 hours. Then nothing changes, and the same thing happens again. Honest goal review isn't about being harsh with yourself. It's about actually learning something so you don't repeat the same mistake twice. The Excuses We Tell Ourselves The easy ones are external. Market conditions. The economy. The Iran situation affecting supply chains or travel bookings. These things are real. But they're also convenient. I'm not saying external factors don't matter. Of course they do. But here's what I've noticed: people who actually succeed don't spend much time on them. They spend their time asking what they could control and didn't. The harder excuses are the ones we tell ourselves quietly. "I didn't have enough time." "My team wasn't ready." "I was waiting for the right conditions." These ones sting because part of you knows they're not entirely true. The worst excuse is the vague one. "It just didn't work out." That tells you nothing. You can't learn from nothing. What Honest Review Actually Looks Like Start here: write down your goal exactly as you set it. Not the memory of it. The actual goal. How specific was it? If you said "grow revenue" instead of "reach £45,000 in monthly recurring revenue by Q3," you've already found your first problem. You can't hit a target you haven't properly defined. Then write down what you actually achieved. Be precise. Not "didn't hit it" but the exact number. The gap between the two is your data. Work with that. Now the hard part. Sit with that gap and ask yourself: what did I do about this goal? Not what did I intend to do. What did you actually do? Did you check in on it weekly? Monthly? Never? If you're checking in monthly, you're probably waiting too long to notice something's off course. I've found that people who review weekly catch problems around day 18, not day 60. Next: what changed that I didn't expect? This is where you separate the things you genuinely couldn't control from the ones you could have. A supplier going under is different from deciding halfway through to shift focus to something else that felt more interesting. Then ask the question that matters: if I did this again tomorrow, what would I do differently? Not next time. Tomorrow. Because if you can't answer that, you haven't actually learned anything. You've just made an excuse. The Difference Between Honest and Harsh There's a difference between honest review and beating yourself up, and I see people confuse these constantly. Beating yourself up sounds like: "I'm terrible at this. I always fail. I shouldn't have tried." That's not honest. That's wallowing. It doesn't help you improve. It just makes you feel worse and then you avoid looking at goals altogether. Honest sounds like: "I set a goal to do X. I achieved Y. The gap happened because I did A, B, and didn't do C. Next time I'll do C differently." It's factual. It's specific. It points toward action. Honesty also means recognising when a goal was genuinely wrong from the start. Sometimes you set something based on incomplete information. That's fine. Own it. Learn from it. Change direction. That's not failure. That's actually how learning works. The Excuses Worth Keeping Not every external factor is an excuse to hide behind. Some things genuinely are outside your control. Rising costs affecting margins. A major client leaving. The economic uncertainty making people cautious about spending. These are real constraints. But here's the question you ask about them: given this constraint, what's the goal I can actually hit? If mortgage rates are falling and your clients might have more breathing room, does that change your approach? If young people are staying with their parents longer because housing costs are brutal, does that change who you're targeting? If people are choosing UK holidays over international ones, is there a business in that? You can't control the constraint. But you can control how you respond to it. The review question isn't "why didn't I hit my goal despite the constraint." It's "what goal could I hit because of how I responded to the constraint." What to do this week Pick one goal you set this year that didn't land the way you wanted. Write down the exact target and the exact result. Then write down: what did I do about this goal in the last 30 days? Not what did I mean to do. What did you actually do. If the answer is "not much," that's your answer right there. That's not an excuse. That's information. Second: if you're going to set a goal, commit to reviewing it weekly for the first four weeks. Every Monday morning, open a note and write one sentence about progress. Four weeks of one-sentence reviews will tell you more than a monthly check-in ever will. You'll see patterns. You'll catch yourself making excuses before they become habits. Third: before you set any new goals, run them through a basic reality check. Use something like ALIRA's Decision Matrix to pressure-test whether the goal is specific enough, whether you've actually got the resources, and whether you'll actually prioritise it. Most goals fail at the starting line, not the finish line.