2025 Was My Year of Failure — Here’s How I’m Using It as Fuel to Win in 2026

The $100k Healer: marketing and mindset for entrepreneurs building a wellness based coaching business

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2025 Was My Year of Failure — Here’s How I’m Using It as Fuel to Win in 2026

Chelsea Turgeon

Dec 24, 2025

This is my 4th consecutive year making $100K+ revenue in my coaching business.

And although that may look some kind of “successful” from the outside, the truth is that behind the scenes this year felt like one failure after another.

Between falling short of my big goals, breaking my self trust, and confronting difficult patterns- this year was quite the reckoning.

In this honest year-in-review episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what happened with my $1M year experiment and how I’m “picking up the pieces”.

You’ll learn:

4 ways I failed HARD this year- and the exact shifts I’m making to rebuild momentum and change my approach to business.
How to move through the “failure resilience cycle” so you can rise up stronger after setbacks.
How to get real about your own self-sabotaging patterns without spiraling into shame + blame.

On paper, 2025 doesn’t look like a failure.

It was my fourth consecutive year making six figures in revenue in my coaching business. For many of my clients , that is #goals. The literal definition of success.

But for me, 2025 felt like the year of failure. A year where I set a big goal: to hit $1M in revenue. Where I pushed myself out of my comfort zone over and over again, and repeatedly fell short of my potential.

And I want to make this clear:

I’m not sharing any of this from a place of shame, self-attack, or self-pity. Because there are many ways I completely nailed it this year. There are so many things I’m celebrating and feel proud of myself for. AND at the same time- there are some things to address.

So, I’m sharing this t from a place of loving self-accountability.

Because something I’ve recognized after years of entrepreneurship, coaching, and personal development—is this:

The difference between people who eventually succeed and people who stay stuck isn’t talent, strategy, or luck.
It’s how they fail—and whether they are willing to get back up.

This is what I call the failure-resilience cycle. Learning how to move through it this year has changed everything.

The Big Goal I Failed to Reach

At the end of 2024, I set a massive goal:
2025 would be my million-dollar year.

I didn’t just quietly decide this. I went all in.

I created a Telegram group called My Million Dollar Year. I invited people into it. I committed publicly to showing up every single week for 52 weeks. I promised that I would push myself out of my comfort zone weekly, then report back with a voice note sharing what I learned.

I was energized. Excited. Fully bought into the vision.

I was living in Mexico City at the time, telling myself: This is it. I’m locking in. I’m going for it.

And now, looking back at that version of me, there’s something almost tender about it. Because the truth is simple:

I fell short. Like… big time.

Revenue-wise, I’ve landed around $100,000 for the year. Solid, yes—but nowhere near the million-dollar mark. Not even close.

And yet… I’m so grateful I set that goal.

Because it compelled me to make some big moves. To stretch myself. To stress test my system. And this process revealed everything that has been holding me back for years.

Self-Love can shift with the seasons

Before I go any further, I want to name something important.

There are seasons in life where self-love looks like softness. Where healing means “letting yourself off the hook for once”. Where you need unconditional self-regard more than discipline. Sometimes the pendulum needs to swing hard in that direction. That season is real—and necessary.

That’s not the season I am in right now.

My version of self-love in this chapter includes self-accountability. Not punishment. Not shame. Not blame.

Just the unfiltered truth.

Truth that says:
I have gifts. I have potential. I have a mission I want to show up for. I can’t keep letting my fear shrink me into stagnation.

The energy is simply: That’s not serving me anymore. Let’s do this differently.

The Gift Hidden Inside Failure

Here’s the coolest part about failing a goal this big:

I now know exactly why I failed.

Not just this year—but the deeper patterns that have been limiting my growth for a long time. When you put yourself under real pressure, when your back is against the wall, the truth surfaces fast.

I stress-tested my systems—and found the cracks.

That information is priceless.

It’s uncomfortable, yes. But it’s also a gold mine. Because now I’m not guessing. I’m not throwing noodles at the wall. I know precisely what needs to change.

That’s what this post is about.

The four main ways I failed in 2025, and how I’m using each one as fuel to build something stronger in 2026.

Failure #1: I Broke My Self-Trust

This is hard to admit, because I am such an advocate of self trust. And it doesn’t serve anyone to pretend like I always get it right.

In 2025, I broke my self-trust repeatedly.

Specifically, I broke it around follow-through.

There’s a concept called say-do coherence. It’s the alignment between what you say you’ll do and what you actually do. And over time, mine eroded.

The Million Dollar Year Telegram group is the clearest example. I showed up every week for the first half of the year. I did the voice notes. I pushed myself. I shared vulnerably.

And then… things weren’t going “according to plan”

So I stopped. I slow faded my own group.

I didn’t even offer an explanation. I didn’t formally close the loop. I didn’t even fully acknowledge it to myself. I just let it sit there in the background—this quiet, unresolved “I should really update them this week.”

That kind of thing has consequences.

Not just externally, but internally.

When you stop honoring your word to yourself, something shifts. The internal dialogue turns sharp:

You never follow through.
Your word doesn’t mean anything.
Why commit if you’re not going to do it anyway?

And from there, one of two things happens:

You stop committing altogether
Or you continue to overcommit—without accounting for the cost of not following through.

I did the second.

I declared I’d go live on Substack every day. I did it for two weeks. Then I noticed people unsubscribing because they were getting flooded with emails—and I stopped. Again, without acknowledgment.

Each time, my self-trust weakened.

And here’s the scary part:
When you don’t trust yourself, entrepreneurship becomes almost impossible.

If you can’t rely on yourself to do hard things when you don’t feel like it, what foundation do you actually have?

Rebuilding Self-Trust by Building Myself

The realization was sobering:
I had become so focused on building my business that I neglected building myself.

But I am the foundation of the business.

If I’m not solid—nothing else can be.

So the shift I’m making now is simple, but profound:
I’m prioritizing inner leadership.

Inside my programs, especially within The Sanctuary, I’m focusing hardcore on skill developing.

Throughout the year we will be building skills like:

Self-discipline
Clear communication
Ownership and accountability
Emotional regulation

Each month, we focus on building one essential skill of inner leadership.

Because leadership isn’t something you can build with affirmations.
It requires a dedicated effort of acquiring skills and compiling evidence.

Failure #2: Chasing Shiny Objects

The second way I failed in 2025 was by chasing shiny objects—constantly.

This showed up everywhere.

Personally, I tried to:

Hike a big mountain
Learn Spanish
Master Bachata
Deep-dive into a spiritual study group

Professionally, I bounced between:

Instagram
LinkedIn
Podcasting
New courses
New ideas
New systems

At one point, I even created an elaborate Post-it-note scheduling system that looked beautiful—and was completely unrealistic for any human person to maintain.

The root issue wasn’t ambition.
It was overcommitment.

I wanted to do everything. Improve in every area. Explore every possibility. And the result was predictable:

I stretched myself too thin.
I half-assed too many things.
And I followed through on very little.

Doing Less, But Better

The turning point came when I learned about essentialism—the discipline of doing less, but better.

Emotionally, this was hard.

Logically, I know you can’t do everything. But somewhere inside me was the belief that I might be the exception. That maybe I could defy the limits.

But there’s no evidence for that.

There are hard constraints:

Time
Energy
Attention
The human need for rest

Strategy, at its core, is simply how you allocate limited resources.

And I wasn’t being strategic.

So now, the rule is simple:

Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.

When I finally narrowed my focus in Q4, something amazing happened:
I started completing my to-do list.

And that sense of completion?
It builds confidence.
It rebuilds self-trust.

Failure #3: The Expectation–Reactivity Cycle

This is a pattern I named specifically for this episode- but I’m sure you have experienced it before.

I call it the Expectation Reactivity Cycle.

It goes like this:

I set high expectations for how a project will land based on…. nothing.
Reality doesn’t meet those expectations
I feel disappointed or deflated
Because of my emotional state- I become inconsistent
The outcome reinforces the disappointment

For example:
I’d launch something and expect people to buy immediately- without warming up my community, without market validation. When it didn’t pop off right away- I’d declare it a failure before giving it a chance to take off.

I’d stop talking about it and promoting it. Which, of course, guaranteed that it wouldn’t sell.

This wasn’t a strategy issue.
It was an emotional intelligence issue.

Separating Actions from Expectations

The solution I’ve landed on is brilliant and super effective (if I do say so myself)

I uncouple my expectations and my actions. I put them on entirely different time horizons.

My expectations live on a 10-year horizon.

That means:

I don’t expect quick wins
I don’t need immediate validation
I trust that I’m building something that compounds

My actions, however, live on a “million dollars tomorrow” horizon.

I show up, sell, create, and lead as if I want a million dollar business this week. My actions are a cheetah at zebra o’clock and my expectations are a chillasaurus-rex.

The two are completely uncoupled. It’s genius.

Failure #4: Being Outcome-Focused Instead of Process-Focused

The final failure was tied to my desire to quantum leap.

At its core, that desire came from impatience. From knowing I was capable of more and wanting to get there now.

Impatience can be a superpower. It can push you out of complacency.

But it can also make you obsessed with outcomes instead of systems.

I set goals. I planned actions. But I didn’t build processes to ensure follow-through.

Without systems, goals are just wishes.

Especially if you have ADHD and crave novelty.

Building Systems That Actually Work

In Q4, I finally shifted my focus to systems.

Not dozens of them.
Not all at once.

Just three foundational ones:

A morning routine
An evening routine
A weekly planning process

I’m refining these slowly, intentionally. Letting them stabilize before adding more.

As James Clear says:
We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.

That truth has reshaped how I approach everything.

The Real Win of 2025

When I look back now, I don’t see a wasted year.

I see:

Emotional maturity
Self-awareness
Structural growth

I learned how to:

Move through shame instead of getting stuck in it
Use failure as data
Stay anchored to a compelling vision

That vision—the person I’m becoming and the impact I want to have—won’t allow me to stay down wallowing in sad coach energy.

And that’s the real skill.
Learning how to bounce back stronger from every failure.

Why I Know 2026 Will Be Different

At the beginning of every year, it’s easy to think “this time is going to be different.” I pretty much always do that. And to be fair- it usually is different in many ways.

But, what I will say now looking down the barrel of a brand new year…. 2026 is the beginning of something BIG for me. Not because I’m expecting to accomplish some grandiose plans. Because I am dedicating myself to The Process.

I am