Sparka Major Life Change...Anytime

WH Lifestyle Director LINDSAY GELLER explores why a new school year, a big birthday, and even the dawn of a new morning can shift everything.

- LINDSAY GELLER

I could never sleep the night before the first day of school. Every year, I was too excited by the prospect of a fresh start-the chance to crack open my notebooks full of blank pages, debut a brand-new and painstakingly chosen outfit, and be a better, smarter, more popular version of the person I was last year. Obviously, I was a total nerd, so that last one never really panned out, but even now as an adult, the start of September still gives me those first-day-of-school feels. I'm not a student, a mom, or a teacher, but I still view the beginning of each school year as a special time to set new goals.

I'm not alone in feeling more motivated around milestones that represent new beginnings. It's a widespread phenomenon called the "fresh start effect." You might recognize it as "New Year, New You" energy, spring cleaning, or my personal fave, back-to-school vibes. These types of temporal landmarks (i.e., fleeting, but nonetheless important, moments in time) are "psychological fresh starts where nothing has changed except the calendar," says Katy Milkman, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. "There is no logical reason why your behavior should change, and yet we're so influenced by these cycles." If you've ever made a New Year's resolution or aimed to accomplish an aspiration by your next trip around the sun, you've used this concept to amp up your excitement when, on any other day, you'd have zero extra oomph.