There’s a reason September feels different, even years after the last first day of school. The air shifts. Routines reset. Store shelves fill with fresh notebooks and sharpened pencils, and something in us responds — a quiet, almost involuntary sense that a new chapter is beginning.
Most of us save our big “restart” energy for January. But if you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution that quietly disappeared by February, you already know that January isn’t always the most reliable reset point. September, it turns out, might be a better one.
Your Brain Is Already Primed for Change
For most of your life — through elementary school, high school, maybe college — September meant a genuine new beginning: new teachers, new goals, a clean slate. That association doesn’t just disappear because you’re no longer in school. Psychologists call moments like this “temporal landmarks” — points in time that feel like fresh starts and make us more likely to pursue meaningful change. New Year’s Day is the most famous one. But birthdays, Mondays, and yes, September, work the same way.
That means right now, this week, your mind is more open to revisiting your vision than it will be during most of the rest of the year. It would be a shame to let that window pass by unused.
A Simple Exercise to Reset Your Vision
You don’t need a weekend retreat to do this. You need about ten quiet minutes and a pen. Here’s the exercise I walk my private clients through at the start of every new season:
- Sit somewhere quiet and take three slow breaths.
- Ask yourself: “If I’m being fully honest, where do I feel most alive right now — and where do I feel like I’m just going through the motions?”
- Without editing yourself, write down one sentence describing what you want the next three months to feel like. Not what you want to accomplish — how you want to feel.
- Read it back. Does it excite you? If not, revise it until it does.
This is the same starting point I use with clients before we ever set a single goal. Goals without a clear, felt vision behind them tend to feel like obligations. A vision you’ve actually connected with feels like a pull forward, not a push.
You Don’t Have to Do This Alone
If this exercise stirred something in you — a sense that you’re ready for more support in bringing your vision to life — I’d love to invite you into a few resources. My book, Envision Your Extraordinary Life: Living Happy, Joyous, and Free, walks through this process in much more depth [Amazon link], and its companion workbook [Amazon link] gives you space to work through each step on paper.
And if you’re craving community alongside the process, enrollment is now open for the Visionary Women’s Mastermind Alliance, a small monthly coaching group launching this September 26th [Registration link]. More on exactly what that looks like in next week’s post.
Whatever you choose, don’t let this season pass without asking yourself what you actually want it to be about. You deserve a life that’s more than a series of completed tasks — you deserve one that’s extraordinary.
Linda
Author | Founder, Envision Your Life Coaching
We’re thrilled to introduce our new Extraordinary Life Assessment, a quick, 5-minute check-up designed to pinpoint exactly where you stand on your journey from aspiration to achievement.
Recent Comments