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Hi friends,

 

Your fresh start is here!

 

What is a fresh start?

 

It could be New Year's Day or your birthday. Or it could be the start of a new month or week.

 

Not so often does the start of a new month collide with the beginning of a new week. In 2025, that perfect overlap happened once, on June 1st, a Sunday. But that wasn't so great since we were in the middle of a transition to summer break and Eid holiday.

 

Now, on the eve of another rare alignment, we're about to experience the next best thing: September 1st falls on a Monday.

 

At my job, the sales team loves it when a new month starts with a new week because they feel the month is longer and more promising in successfully achieving their sales targets.

 

September, however, has a magical charm. It is the start of another kind of year: the school year. Just like students, we get to have a new beginning after the summer break. We get to settle into new routines. We get to set new goals and establish new habits without the pressure of January (new year, new you). We get a new opportunity to end the year more intentionally, regardless of how we did in previous months. We get to write a new success story.

 

I learned from reading How to Change and creating a podcast series about it that humans love fresh starts because it allows them to feel that their past self is far away along with its failures. A blank slate awaits us.

 

From the book How to Change:

 

“In our research we had seen that some calendar dates seem to provoke larger reactions than others. New Year’s, for instance, typically exerts a far greater influence on behavior than, say, your typical Monday. The bigger the landmark, the more likely it is to help us take a step back, regroup, and make a clean break from the past.”

 

“When we surveyed a panel of Americans about how they feel on fresh start dates such as New Year’s or their birthday, we heard again and again that new beginnings offer a kind of psychological “do-over.” People feel distanced from their past failures; they feel like a different person—a person with reason to be optimistic about the future.”

 

“We’re more likely to pursue change on dates that feel like new beginnings because these moments help us overcome a common obstacle to goal initiation: the sense that we’ve failed before and will, thus, fail again.”

 

However, if you were doing great in summer and practicing healthy habits, a fresh start may not be best for you. You need to keep going:

 

“Resets helped underperformers up their game but harmed people who were already doing well.”

 

On another note, you may feel behind and unprepared to use this fresh start. No worries; set a date to make it your fresh start and tell others about it. If you decide it's next week, use this week for planning:

 

“So, if you’re hoping to make a positive change in your life but are pessimistic about your chances, perhaps because you’ve failed before and worry another attempt is likely to turn out similarly, my advice is to look for fresh start opportunities. Is there an upcoming date that could represent a clean break with the past?”

 

A friend told me she is still overwhelmed after summer vacation and does not know what goals or habits to set for September. My advice is to go back to what worked.

 

When were you at your best last? What did you do then? There is no need to come up with something new. Repeat what worked.

 

If you need inspiration, here are lists of habits and goals you can pursue

 

 

 

 

So, First name / my friend, use the fresh start or create your own. We all deserve to give ourselves the gift of a new beginning.

 

(BTW: The next new week and month alignment is December 1st, but it surely does not meet the fresh start's compelling motivation to begin again, as we would be about to enter the holidays, end-of-year-craziness.)

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P.S. I found this sentence in my Google drive journal from the year 2011 when I took one week off from work:

 

"I’m in love with such a long vacation, and I promise myself of a fresh start and clean slate at work after it, more serious and focused Bardees."

 

How cool is it that I wrote that before I found out fresh starts are scientifically proven?

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Here is your weekly dose of The Sunday Spark ⚡️a newsletter listing 3 “Best of” sparks that I thought were worth starting your week with. 

 

1. 📚 Because he published more than 9000 blog posts by writing every day, I will share something by Seth Godin here at the end of every month. Today I selected this reminder: String too short to be saved. (wow right?)

2. ⏲️ Get familiar with one of most favorite focus techniques: Time Boxing/blocking, by checking this post I wrote about it and watching this video that I created. This book is a valuable resource.

 3. 💭  A beautiful quote:

 

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

 

― Seneca