#SaneGirlEra: June is the new January—easy ways to reclaim the next six months of your life

Every January, we make icy-spicy promises to ourselves, bundled with things we desire to begin with and what we need materially. “Last year, I ate a lot of junk; now I want to eat super clean food. Let’s stock the fridge with a visit to Nature’s Basket and give up completely on the soda and sugar”. “I am going to focus on picking up a hobby and just have a balance in my life, too much of just working”. “Let’s buy a new Yamaha to play music.” “I really want to quit smoking from January’s New Year’s and just give it a fresh start to my journey and give up on smoking”.

We pledge major transformations by focusing on what we need to buy to get started, rather than on the small, actionable steps we can take to get going and show up every day for our goals. Every day is a struggle, and somehow you end up just explaining yourself with genuine excuses that do not serve you. Because of this, the desire to transform remains just a desire, not a set of goals you can actually act on.

Then arrives the month of June. Half the year has already passed, and you still find yourself where you were without moving an inch closer to the goals. We see January as the prime real estate for reinventing and as a month of new beginnings. It isn’t. June is. A month where half the year is completed, and now you feel it’s that time of the year to renew, reset, and restart. 

Firstly, let’s understand how January and June, as months of change, are perceived differently. January is an inherited Roman convention to begin things anew. But the human body also has its own calendar. Mentally and emotionally, both ways, a human mind becomes more ready and simply better equipped in June than in January for a habit change. 

On social media, the “mid-year reset” ritual has now become a cultural moment. The process and practice of making vision boards, reviewing the goal sheet, revisiting the dreams, and reviewing January intentions have now become too pressured and performative for their audience. Research shows that people initiate new behaviours not only at the start of the new year but also at the start of the month, at the beginning or end of the seasons, and immediately after their birthdays. This is where people can find January as a frozen month and June as a month of growth and clarity, with things already beginning to grow around them. The corporate world, too, is now adapting to shifting from annual reviews to mid-year check-ins. 

By June, one honest reflection does help: you are at least aware of what helped and what did not. It also gives you clear insight into which habits served you and which did not. It helps you set intentions that are grounded in evidence, not just your sentiments. 

Let me help you with scientifically proven, interesting recipes to help you reclaim the next six months. 

A. “Fresh Start Effect” (Dai, Milkman & Riis, 2014) shows temporal landmarks: the mid-year to increase goal-directed behaviour significantly. Also, the month with the most daylight is the best time to see yourself and your behaviours clearly.

What to do: 

1. Make most of the morning pages. Write down honestly about your thoughts every day after you wake up in the morning, which are unfiltered. 

2. Try to get 20 min of morning sunlight daily. 

3. Sit down and review the goals you set at the beginning of the year. 

4. Have three different kinds of conversations with three different trusted people to get perspectives. 

5. Pick one habit to begin and one habit to discard. 

6. Make a “don’t do” or “Stop doing this list”. 

B. The brain consolidates habits when in discomfort. Research shows that performing difficult behaviours repeatedly in a set context creates identity-level change. 

What to do:

1. Take up one physical challenge every day for some minutes. Here, the focus is to build consistency, which rewires the mind. 

2. Revise your social calendar so that you can taper off social gatherings that are overstimulating. Here, focus on consolidating the month, including social meet-ups. 

3. Focus on sleep hygiene. 

4. Maintain your thought log weekly and write about the frictions you have with yourself or with others. Here, the focus is on identifying your mental, behavioural, and emotional patterns in your responses to people and situations. Recognising patterns and being fully aware are your superpowers. 

C. The most productive thing you can do in one of the latter months is stop producing, because the default mode network builds when your mind is at rest. 

What to do: 

1. Schedule unstructured time at least two to three hours a week. This will activate the default mode network. 

2. Go for long strolls with your favourite music playing in your ears. Research shows that slow, long strolls increase divergent thinking by 80 per cent. 

3. Read a new book.

4. Start a passion project to use the creative energy. 

5. Cut down on screen and content consumption. 

D. Create a 90-day goal sheet that has clear daily habits and measurable outcomes. It should not be a list but a sheet that shows the actions and behaviours one can take on a day-to-day basis. 

What to do: 

1. Have an accountability partner for different areas and habits where the two partners can do a quick 15-minute check-in on each other and stay committed and accountable. For every goal, restrict yourself to no more than three goals, and for each goal, set an intention to cultivate habits and show up for those daily habits. Have a partner with whom you can share your progress and attendance. 

2. Create Hygge. Design an environment for the behaviour change you want. 

3. Revise your cognitive overload. Cultivate a weekly ritual: every Sunday, set aside 30 to 40 min to plan your week and identify three top priorities and three daily habits to show up for. Review it every Sunday. 

E. Begin drafting your “year-end narrative” not as a to-do list but as a story of who you became this year. McAdams shows that narrative identity is one of the most powerful predictors of future motivation and self-efficacy. 

What to do: 

1. Practice gratitude. Research shows that practising gratitude activates positive affect more than rote recitation. 

2. Make a list of your achievements, which includes small wins every month, small steps taken to reach the main goal, and small shifts in your perspectives and behaviours. 

3. Pen down habits that benefited you the most and how these habits helped you to achieve what you had envisioned. 

F. Having a few closing rituals gives you the clarity and a sense of achievement to savour the essence of it in the last month of the year. 

What to do: 

1. The closing ritual can begin with writing a letter to yourself, which you can open next June. It could be about what new things you would like to achieve. 

2. A warm, intimate dinner with yourself, or just with very close people, to give it closure and reward yourself for the small wins, for actually achieving whatever you could, and for showing up to it, irrespective of what helped and what didn’t. Life is a celebration!

3. Identify three people with whom you could connect the most and express your gratitude by writing thank-you notes that have a genuine message. Expressing gratitude increases reward circuitry in both the receiver and the giver. 

4. Rest without guilt. Remember, your nervous system requires recovery and prepares you for the next year mentally, emotionally, and socially. Please make REST a non-negotiable ingredient. 

Sane Girl Era is our column featuring psychologist Meghna Karia, who pens down her expert advice to help Cosmo readers find solace and sanity amidst the chaos.

Meghna Karia is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and mental health trainer, trained and certified in REBT from the Albert Ellis Institute. She specialises in treating addiction, eating disorders, anxiety, relationship concerns, corporate stress, and existential crises.

Also read: #SaneGirlEra: How to stay sane when the world feels like it’s constantly on fire

Also read: #SaneGirlEra: Why people are paying strangers to build their fake social media lives—and what it says about us