Behind the Brilliance 262 Beyond Goals and Resolutions: 6 Strategies for a Better Year
In this special year-end episode of Behind the Brilliance, Lisa presents six evidence-based strategies for designing a year that feels good while you're living it. Moving beyond traditional goal-setting advice, this episode explores the psychological architecture behind sustainable achievement: why updating your self-concept matters more than willpower, how to engineer habits that survive bad days, and why strategic incompetence is a sophisticated choice rather than a failure. Lisa shares a liberating perspective on deciding what deserves optimization versus maintenance and makes the case for building celebration into your system. If you're tired of aspirational new year hype, this episode offers a more strategic, psychologically grounded approach to having a great year.
TOPICS COVERED
- Identity architecture: Why self-concept determines behavior success
- Designing habits for bad days, not ideal conditions
- Addition by subtraction: The power of strategic elimination
- Intentional incompetence: Permission to not master everything
- Minimum effective effort: Maintenance vs. optimization modes
- Building celebration into your achievement system
- The relationship between identity and execution
- Engineering consistency by removing friction
- Distinguishing between habits you need vs. habits you think you should have
THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Lisa's newsletter, CUE
- Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Obvious to You (video) by Derek Sivers
- Minimum Effective Effort (essay) by Lisa