128. Stop Waiting for January—Your Midlife Reset Starts Now

 Forget “New Year, New Me.” In this episode of The School of Midlife podcast, Laurie makes the case for why August (or early September) is actually the best time to reset your habits, routines, and priorities—way better than January’s cold, dark, post-holiday slump. She unpacks the natural cycles of rest, planting, growth, pruning, and harvest, and shows you how to use this season’s momentum to reflect, realign, and make intentional changes. You’ll learn why working with nature’s rhythm makes change easier to sustain, how to identify what’s thriving in your life (and what needs pruning), and how to plant one meaningful seed that will be rooted before the holiday chaos hits.

Whether you’re sipping iced tea on the porch or getting kids ready for school, this is your invitation to start your “new year” now—while the light is golden, the energy is high, and the possibilities are ripe for picking.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why January is the worst time for big life changes
• The natural rhythm of seasons—and how they apply to your goals
• The power of pruning: letting go of what’s draining you
• How to define your own “harvest” in midlife
• One small, intentional step to start right now

Links & Resources:

• Connect with Laurie on Instagram: @SchoolofMidlife
• Learn more about the Best Life Retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho

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Transcript

In this week's episode of the School of Midlife Podcast, I'm going to convince you that August is a better time to do any sort of reset in your life than it is to wait until January and a brand new year. So let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Well, Hey friends, it's Laurie. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. It is great to see you back here today.

On the day this [00:01:00] episode drops, um, Boise schools are going back to school. I cannot believe it is so early. When I was growing up in Washington State, we would never go back to school until the Tuesday after Labor Day. Well, Labor Day weekend is in three weeks. It's bananas that here we are not even middle of August and kids are heading back to school.

I don't know if you are seeing it in your area as well, but even if the kids aren't going back to school, ads for Target back to school Specials, Backpacks and lunchboxes are popping up in my social media feed.

I had to take some tile samples back to Lowe's yesterday, and there were huge Halloween yard decorations all over. I mean, it seems crazy to me that it's already back to school season, but it seems way, way, way too early to be thinking about those [00:02:00] dark October trick or treating days.

Well, like I said, today, Boise School District goes back to school. So if you follow me on social and if you don't, why aren't you following me On social, there's a clickable link in the show notes to my Instagram account, which is where I usually hang out. Anyway, since the day this episode drops is the first day of school, I will be posting my annual back to school photo. It's not of me, but every year it is one of the posts that gets the highest number of comments always. So make sure that you take a look at that 'cause that'll be coming.

I do feel a little bit of a subtle shift in the air. I can, you feel it? To me, it's, it is starting to feel a little bit more like fall. It's still super hot during the day, but we we're having some of those cooler crisper mornings that are beautiful and the [00:03:00] sun is setting a little earlier, which means it's a little easier to go to bed at night. By the way, did you see the incredible Full Moon over the weekend? Pretty sure it was the sturgeon moon, but amazing. Fantastic.

Um, back to school is not what I wanna talk about today. It may seem like it is, but it's not. What I wanna do in this episode is I wanna change your mind about the end of summer.

I wanna help you reframe this incredible opportunity that we have ahead of us as summer is winding down. I think most people think that January is the best time for fresh starts, but today, I'm here to make a case for why August or maybe September if, if you aren't going back to school, you're not getting back into the routine until first week in September.

But why is right now? Why is it a better time for new routines and new habits and new [00:04:00] beginnings than waiting until January? Sound good? All right, let's dive in.

So let's begin with why January is overrated. If you have been a long time podcast listener, then you know that I have never been a fan of making major change in early January. It's the dead of winter. It's cold, it's dark. We're tired and maybe broke from the holidays, and our bodies are literally screaming for a little bit of rest.

And yet, every January, every year, we act like January 1st is the magic date when we should be leaping out of bed. Heading to the gym. Starting a new eating program, completely reinventing ourselves. Chasing new dreams at work.

I mean, we have this whole idea that because it's January 1st, everything has got to change, right? We're accustomed to setting big goals [00:05:00] and resolutions in January. It is completely tied to how we were raised, how we were conditioned, what we learned growing up.

And it's not just in our personal life that we do this, we do this at work too, for most of us that work on a calendar year, and if our compensation is based on a calendar year, then we also have to put together new sales goals and new work goals. And we always do that at the beginning of the year. Or maybe we finished the year before. With the goals that we are immediately going to start as soon as we get back into the office the first week in January.

In January, we say things like New Year, new me, or this year is going to be my year. But here's the thing. January's timing for this sort of huge explosive growth or change actually [00:06:00] works against us. Here's what I mean by that.

In January, it's cold, it's dark. We are depleted from the holidays, which means we are actually trying to force change to create change at possibly our lowest energy point of the entire year. I mean, think about it. We, we make these resolutions, which are often too big. We make too many of them because there's this artificial urgency to get started early, fast, right away. As soon as the calendar changes.

And we go hard on those goals for three or maybe four weeks. We're completely invested in this new life that we're creating. And then what happens? We don't see results fast [00:07:00] enough after three or four weeks. So we quit.

Or we have already added too much to our to-do list, which is in addition to all of the shit that we already have going on in our life. So we end up with without enough hours in the day, not enough hours in the week. We end up resentful, overwhelmed, burned out, and on top of that, We're already depleted.

We're physically depleted because it's January, it's dark. There aren't a lot of hours that we can be outside. If we are outside, we're probably in the rain or in the snow. We're emotionally depleted because the holidays were hard. We were doing, uh, all of the things to make everyone else's holidays great around us, which meant that just like the SNL skit about mom got a robe, right?

She makes this beautiful [00:08:00] holiday experience for everyone else, and she gets rewarded with a robe and a sink of dirty dishes to do. So emotionally they're hard. Plus, we might actually be traveling to spend time with family that can have its own interesting set of circumstances. it could be that you are missing people over the holidays. That your holiday celebration is different than it used to be. but suffice it to say they're hard.

Holidays generally hard, emotionally, top to bottom. Doesn't matter how you slice it doesn't matter what your experiences is.

We might even be financially depleted because we took a big trip or we bought a lot of gifts, or somehow we may have overspent over the holidays.

Which means we find ourselves at the end of January and we've just tried to do too much.

It's too much for us to [00:09:00] continue moving forward in the way that we seem to think that January should go. And what's interesting about being a human in January is, it's completely different than the way the entire animal kingdom approaches winter.

January is deep winter in the northern hemisphere. January is supposed to be a season for rest. Restoration. Sleep. Think about it. There are animals that hibernate in the winter. They're asleep for all of January because it's cold and it's dark. And animals and even mother nature understand that cyclically winter is a time for rest. Winter is a time to not add more to your to-do list, but actually take a beat. Slow down, rest, [00:10:00] recover, and get ready for spring.

That's what January is. January is supposed to be a time to take a breath, a time to maybe sleep a little bit more, right? But instead, as humans and as high achieving midlife women, we think, you know what? January is when I am going to create this whole new year, new me. I'm gonna start strong. Then I'll have all this momentum that's gonna carry me through the year.

And while that sounds like a great plan, think about how often the new year new me with all of its unrealistic expectations, think about how long that lasts. Usually three weeks, maybe four. Maybe if you are really gritty and you are just staying the course, no matter what, maybe it'll last a couple of months.[00:11:00] 

Because it's unrealistic. Because we're already starting from a level of fatigue and maybe even burnout, physical, emotional, spiritual, economical, I mean, all the burnouts, right? But we have this idea that just because the calendar says it's a new year, that everything should be full speed ahead. This is the year I'm going to do everything. That is how most of us have approached January.

In my opinion, August or September, depending on when routine returns to your house, and a lot of that depends on if you have school age children at home when, whenever your summer ends, Whether that is in August, like in Boise right now, or whether it's after Labor Day, that is a much better time for a [00:12:00] reset.

Here's why. First, and maybe this reason is obvious for most of us, but August, September, there's still all of that back to school energy, that excitement over a new year. It's been decades since we had to remember a locker combination, but think about how excited you were to go back to school. Think about how excited you are for your kids to go back to school. I know that many of our listeners have kids who are going to college for the first year. And yes, that might be a little bittersweet, but you are so excited for them. You're so excited for them to step into this next version of themselves, to go off and and explore and develop and learn things and learn about themselves.

And it's just this incredible time of exciting opportunity.

It's like fresh start mode, right? We've come off a great summer [00:13:00] of good experiences. We have spent a ton of time relaxing, enjoying our friends, enjoying our family. We've maybe have done some traveling summer. Awesome summer, hands down my favorite season, and in Boise, we have had a beautiful summer. It hasn't been too hot, it hasn't been too smoky. It's just been incredible.

So summer is meant to be this playground. It's meant to be liberating. It's meant to be fun. Isn't that a better time to maybe take a step back and figure out what you actually wanna do when you're coming off of fun instead of when you're coming off of a holiday season that has completely wrecked you? That, that you're tired, that all you wanna do is sleep for a couple of days? No, right now, this back to school, this August energy, it's exciting, it's new, it's opportunistic. That's when we [00:14:00] should be really thinking about big resets in our life.

Let's talk about the natural rhythm of life in late summer. This is when we are coming off of high energy season. We're coming off of summer and all of its excitement. The days are still long. There is still plenty of daylight after we get home from work. The light is beautiful and golden and you just still want to get outside and move because the mornings are cooler, the evenings are cooling off a little bit.

Because we're watching everyone around us, the kids get ready for school. They're, you know, they're preparing to, to go back to school. It's, it's this subtle but undeniable shift that we should be preparing for this next piece of our life, this next part of our, our year, this [00:15:00] year.

This is where the whole metaphor of nature fits so beautifully. Think about it in we, it's harvest time. It's time to reap the benefits of what we have sown all year long. Let's break this down.

So we started in winter when we rested and recharged, and it's a season of repair and getting ready for the next cycle.

And then we moved into spring. And we're preparing in the fields and planting the seeds. And for a lot of us, this is when those small intentions, those small habits that we've been working on, those really start to get ingrained. Because we're seeing longer days, we're waking up from our metaphorical hibernation. We're tending the fields, we are planting the seeds.

And then we move into early summer [00:16:00] where we are continuing to water and fertilize and giving sunshine to those ideas. It's not too hot yet. There's still a ton of growth. We're in the season where those small intentions in those small habits, they're really taking root.

And as we move through summer, when we're talking about habits and intentions, we have to do a little pruning. Think about a Rose Bush. Think about what that looks like in all of its glory. Beautiful buds. Everywhere. The thing about the rosebush though is it only is beautiful and produces these lovely blossoms after it's pruned.

If you are pruning it correctly, 'cause you, you prune it so far down it, it almost looks like you're killing the plant. But what you're doing is you [00:17:00] are getting rid of the small little branches that are taking too much energy so that the whole plant can flourish.

So you're getting rid of the small things that are taking away from the nutrition and the nutrients and the water and the sunlight and all of the fertilizer , all the things that are needed for this plant to survive. We're getting rid of the small things that would make it so that the Rose Bush couldn't actually bloom to its glory.

We need to do the same thing with our own life.

When we're talking about pruning the Rose Bush, we're talking about cutting away the dead or weak growth so that the Rose Bush can thrive. So that it can be this beautiful cluster of blossoms. Same things goes with our own [00:18:00] life. In the early summer, we have to do some pruning. We can prune all year long, but go with me in the metaphor here, which is we need to start saying no to some of our commitments. We need to start delegating some of our commitments. We need to take some things off of our plate so that we can focus on what's really important.

We might need to prune some people or relationships that are draining our energy. We might need to offload some projects that are draining our energy. You get the idea, this whole idea of pruning as not a bad thing, but actually making small decisions about what has to go so that the good can stay.

Then after early summer, we go to late summer or fall, which is where we are kind of on the precipice right now, in August, early September. We're in [00:19:00] that late summer, early fall season, which is harvest time.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you stepped away from your life to actually focus on your life? No emails, no group texts, no one asking, what's for dinner? Just space. Just time for you.

If one day sounds like a dream, imagine what an entire weekend could do. 

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We're in that late summer, early fall season, which is harvest time.

And this is when we enjoy the results of what we have nurtured, what we have planted. So this is the season when we should actually be taking stock of what has worked in our life, what isn't working, what is no longer serving us so that we can figure out what we need to keep growing.

This is the time of the year where we are reaping the benefits of all of that [00:21:00] planning and work and hard work that we have done up until now. This is when it gets good because we have, we've created that foundation. We have been intentional about choices that we're making. And if there is ever a time in your life to make to do a reset to maybe make a pivot to evolve, make a change, It's right now. When you've got all of this beautiful time invested, you've got the foundation built, you know where you stand, and there's still so much possibility and opportunity because it's still still daylight for hours a day. You see where I'm going with this metaphor, right?

And we stay in this late summer fall series until we get back to winter. We get back to the short days., We get back to the long nights. We get back to the cold [00:22:00] temperatures when we're supposed to rest and recharge and repair and rest to actually sleep so that we can get ready for the next cycle.

Which means if we are making bold predictions and trying to make big changes in the middle of winter, we are less equipped for those changes to stick. That's why August or early September, that's the sweet spot. We are in that right now. We're still riding the energy of summer, but we can see fall on the horizon, which makes it the absolute perfect time to reflect, realign, and maybe plant one or two intentional seeds that we will continue to nurture through the end of the year when it's time to start the whole cycle over again.

Do you see how August, how fall, how [00:23:00] harvest time is such a better time to be making some of these big decisions than it is to wait until January. And try and get the momentum, trying to get the excitement, trying to build on something that's just harder to create at that time.

Now, if you are like me and you're in midlife, then I know that you have spent decades, decades trying to keep pace with someone else's calendar because we have been taught that we start in January, we start at the beginning of a new year. We rest, maybe never, but we we're, we're sold this idea that we just need to keep pushing through.

But the beauty of midlife, and I hope that you are hearing this through all of the messages of the School of Midlife, but in particularly in what we're talking about on this podcast, the beauty of midlife is that you get to make your own rules. You get to choose [00:24:00] your seasons. You get to figure out when you're going to work and when you're going to pull back, because we can't just be in this building. More, more, more. What's next?

That kind of running through life, that way of showing up every day, every week, all year with what's next with no rest or recovery. That that's not gonna get us anywhere. It will leave us overwhelmed and burned out. And yeah, we'll have a lot of achievements and accolades and maybe some letters by our name and maybe a big paycheck.

But at the end of the day, is that what we are really working towards? Is that what's most important to us?

I, I don't think so, because most of the women that I talk with in midlife, they wanna live a life that matters. They wanna spend their [00:25:00] time doing things that fulfill them and satisfy them, so that they can create a life that they are proud of, so that they can actually envision, create, and live the best life that we talk about all the time here.

Part of living your best life is knowing when it's time to pull back, when it's time to rest, when it's time to prune. Because not everything that we planted earlier this year is going to bear fruit. And that's okay. If there is a goal or a habit or a relationship that feels like it's sucking up way too much of your time and attention, and all of the water and sunshine and fertilizer on the way, but it's not producing things that are meaningful anymore, it's time to cut those back. It's time to prune them, and that's okay.

As a midlife woman, you also get to define what harvest means to you. This relates to one of the basic [00:26:00] foundational principles at the School of Midlife, which is creating your own definition of success. So if it's harvest time right now, or if you decide that harvest time is later in the fall or whenever, you get to choose what harvest means to you. It's probably not about money. It's probably not about status. It likely is not about some giant achievement.

Harvest is probably something that you cultivate, like deeper friendships or a sense of calm or finally feeling like you are comfortable in your own skin again, especially having gone through all of the seasons of perimenopause and menopause and when you just didn't feel like yourself at all because you were having so many hormonal changes and you're having hot flashes and brain fog and you're gaining weight in places that you never gained weight before and the sound of your spouse's chewing is driving you [00:27:00] crazy and you don't wanna be touched anymore. Like all of the things that you have experienced that you finally have a handle on in midlife, but you still maybe aren't feeling like you are back to yourself again. That just means that you need to figure out what does harvest mean to you? What does success mean to you? What do you actually want in life?

And once you know those things, then you can start creating your best life.

And here's something that might sound a little radical, but maybe just maybe, maybe the most radical thing you can do in midlife is understand that it is not necessary to fill every second of every day with activity. We don't have to fill every week or every month with big action. Just like nature, We need the in between.[00:28:00] 

There are times when things are growing and need to be nurtured, and then there are times when things need to be rest. They need to be put on hold.

And if there's anything that we have learned from nature, like the fruit tree, even when you're not picking a perfectly ripened peach off of the vines of the tree or a crisp apple, There is still plenty going on in that tree. There, there's so much happening beneath the surface. The roots are still growing, it is still preparing to bear fruit.

It's exactly the same for your life. Just because you are not filling every single moment with activity doesn't mean that you aren't busy building a strong foundation, creating strong roots for what is next to come in your life.

You might be wondering how do you do an August reset? We have a great idea on how do we wrap up the end of the year? We [00:29:00] understand doing a yearend review. We understand looking back at the goals that we have set, did we make them, did we not, where are we as far as progress that we were hoping it, we understand how to wrap up the year with a, a nice little bow.

Well, how do we do that in August? How do we create a reset in August? Here are a couple of ways. It's a great time to look back at what you have been nurturing in your life since January. What is working for you? What's thriving? To go back to the nature and the sewing the fields analogy, What is thriving? What's wilted? What needs to be pruned away? What isn't serving you any longer?

And then once you decide that, then get really clear on what's not working so that you can prune intentionally. What I mean by that is go [00:30:00] in, get rid of the things that are dead or decaying, or taking way too much time in your energy, which aren't actually producing any fruit, prune those away so that you can free up your time and your energy for what matters most to you.

Maybe take a moment and harvest your wins. What'd you achieve? What, what is it time to celebrate? What is something fantastic that happened to you that you were just like, yeah, well, I, I'm good at that. That happened. That's great. And then you immediately moved on to the next. We need to take some time to acknowledge progress, even if it's super small. When we get in the habit of celebrating small things, then we realize that there are plenty of small things out there, and then we are not chasing that high of only thinking that we are being successful, or that we're only achieving things when they're really, really big.

And because it's harvest time, I would challenge you [00:31:00] during this reset to plant one new seed. Choose one small but meaningful habit, maybe a project to start right now, goal that you wanna work on. Choose one thing. A conversation you wanna have, a boundary that you need to set. One thing, choose one thing so that it's already rooted by the time we are wrapping up the year. By the time the holiday chaos hits. When everyone else is expecting you to start with a reset. We're gonna already have this small seed that we've planted. The roots will be strong into the ground, and that's going to weather the weather.

I, I may have taken this analogy a little too far, but you get, you get where I'm going. If we plant one seed now, if we start doing one thing now, then it's not gonna be necessary to [00:32:00] completely wipe the slate and start all over in January 'cause we're already gonna have one thing that is growing and hopefully flourishing.

We might need to do some pruning, but we're gonna be well on our way to creating something beautiful and meaningful. Because we started now and we didn't wait until the beginning of the year.

For me, I'm pruning a lot of projects that felt exciting to me in the spring, but frankly don't feel aligned anymore. I'm realizing that there are a number of things I have done in my business at the School of Midlife that I've done because I really liked them, but they have produced no fruit or very little, and it's time to let those go to prune those away and to focus on what I do best and that is serving the women of this community.

There are a number of great new programs [00:33:00] that will be coming out in, um, in the next couple of weeks. It's harvest time, so there's, there's been a lot of things percolating, which I'm very excited to share with you.

But I have spent a good chunk of my year this year working towards my 29 0 2 9 event in July.

So a lot of what I needed to focus on was pushing my body essentially to the limits and it's really good to have that over now. It's good to know that I did it. It's good to know that I'm capable of doing it, but many of the things that I just didn't focus on over the first half of the year, it's, it's time for me to take ownership of those other projects.

I'm pretty excited about that so that, you know, I, I can make some more time for harvesting what [00:34:00] is really important to me going forward?

I guess I'll wrap it up here with, let's forget the January mantra of New Year. New me. Let's look outside. I mean, nature has been doing this for millions of years, and I, I'm pretty sure Mother Nature has never made a vision board in a snowstorm.

Right? To me, August is the real new year. August is the time when we really should be thinking about reset. Because our eyes are clearer. It's just, it's, there's more light. There's more opportunity. Which means if August is when we are creating our reset, then we need to get intentional about pruning and harvesting.

And what's one thing that you could plant right now, that future you will Thank you for? I would love to hear what that is. Will you please send me a DM on Instagram or send me an email? I'd, I'd love to hear [00:35:00] what you're pruning, what you think about an August reset.

Honestly, anything. It's like I've said before, this podcasting thing is, is very one sided and, um, yeah, I just like to hear from you. Talk to me please. So, um. Let's, let's talk about it.

Um, the other thing that I'm looking at the calendar and I haven't decided if I'm going to maybe take a couple of weeks off from podcasting.

I know I took a, a week off last week. I'm feeling like we are, like, I'm kind of at the end of summer and I need a little bit of a break. We are getting ready to move, so there's plenty of things on the calendar. I always feel like when I don't bring you a brand new episode that I am, you know, I feel guilty about that, which is silly because when I tee up a replay episode,

it's because [00:36:00] I myself have listened to it again and thought, you know what? That is a message that other people need to hear again. I guess what I'm saying is if I do decide to do a couple of replay episodes for the next couple of weeks, listen to them again. Don't just see replay in your feed and think I already listened to that.

Because you are a different person than you were when you listened to it the first time, which means you are going to pick up on different things and you'll hear things differently than you did the first time. And I'm only going to select episodes for replay that have a message that maybe you need to hear again.

I mean, think about going through school or learning anything, anytime you're trying to make a change or learn something new, you can hear the same things over and over again and it doesn't hit, and then you hear it that one time and it like it all makes sense then. Same thing happens with these podcast [00:37:00] episodes.

You might have listened to whatever episode it is a year ago when it originally dropped, but you are not the same person that you were when it originally dropped. You're not the same person when you listened to it the first time. Many of these things you actually need to listen to over and over again.

So I'm not saying I am doing replays for the next three weeks. I might, I'm giving myself that option. But I just want you to know that if I do that, please, please listen to the episode again, download it because there's a reason I chose it for you to listen to again. Because I think that the topics are important, even if the dates are a little outdated. You know, even if, uh, the episode talks about it being March and you know it's not March, well, there's probably still something in there that that is important for you to listen to.

So anyway, thank you so much for [00:38:00] being here today. As always, I am so grateful that you spend some of your week with me, and I look forward to seeing you right back here next week in the School of Midlife is back in session. And until then, take good care.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll [00:39:00] see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.