Fresh Starts Need Endings and Renewals

It’s a New Year! Is it time for a new you? The beginning of a New Year is synonymous with fresh starts, clean slates and blank canvases. Making a ‘fresh start’ isn’t just a figure of speech, it is a psychological concept. It is called the fresh start effect and it states that when given a fresh start, like with a New Year, we are better at disconnecting from who we have been in the past, and find it easier to look at tackling new goals and ideals.

Collectively we associate the 1st of January with the symbolic act of metaphorically hitting life's reset button. This is where New Year’s resolutions come from. With hitting life’s reset button we are more inclined to leave our missteps in the past, and create the ‘new me’ for our present and future selves.

This clean slate leverages our desires to distance ourselves from the imperfect past-self, and link up with the more rosy version of how we would like to see ourselves. The feeling of a better, and more in control future-self, acts as an additional motivator guiding us to make life changes that are more in line with who we would like to be. It is no coincidence that gym memberships spike in January, or that doctors get more patient calls about quitting smoking in the New Year. The feeling of starting over nudges us towards more goal-driven behaviours, where we don’t want to ruin our clean slate.

It is hard to keep ourselves in this freshly motivated state, the kind that comes with the euphoria of a fresh start. Old habits are easy to slip back into and mistakes are simple to make, especially when we don’t keep two important factors in mind: Endings and Renewals.

We need to purposefully close the chapter we are currently reading (endings) and empower ourselves to see the world afresh (renewals) in order to imbue our fresh start with meaningful substance. This is how an attempt at better life choices becomes more than just a ‘start’.

Endings

For a fresh new beginning to work we need to have an ending. As Lao Tzu writes, “new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

Not just an ending but a well-rounded ending, one marked by a sense of closure. Closure involves the feeling that one has done everything one could have done. It is also the sense that one has completed something to the fullest, and tied up all the loose ends.

Until we achieve the sense of closure, we are plagued by the shoulda-woulda-couldas. The feeling that we could have done something better. Here we dwell on alternative choices or actions we might have taken, and limit our full emotional investment in the next step or chapter.

To close something off well, we need to take inventory of our regrets, take note of what we have learned and where we have grown and then finally say a proper goodbye. It is the taking stock that enables us to see where we have failed and where we have succeeded. From here we can create realistic goals for the future.

Renewals

For a new start to work we need to approach it with a sense of self-renewal, which is the attention you give towards ensuring that your life is forward-moving. A focus on forward momentum inspires us to set goals in line with our true selves.

In his book Self-Renewal John Gardner writes about the type of approach we need to have to the direction of our lives. It is a drivers seat position. Not like an aeroplane ride where you book your ticket and your only involvement is the choice of destination. Whereafter you sit back and enjoy the flight, maybe taking a nap or marvelling at the view. Rather, according to John, life is "a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, with you in the driver’s seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress.”

Every time you renew yourself, you relate to your world with a renewed sense of aliveness. This puts us back in the driver’s seat of our lives. This renewal allows for forward momentum and no matter where you are going, moving forward in your life is a great thing, something to celebrate.

With closure to our endings and self-renewal for our beginnings, we are able to take powerful steps towards fresh new starts and inspired beginnings. I hope that your New Year will be filled with wonderful moments and sweet experiences, that your life will be rich and inspiring, and I hope, as John Gardner says, that this year you don’t only set out to be an interesting person but also choose to be an interested person.

So as you close off your old year, aim for a renewal in this New Year with a celebration of all success, great or small.

Kirsty Watermeyer