I love fresh starts. Blank pages, new notebooks. The start of a new football season. The start of a new week, month… a new year. Fresh starts mean opportunity and possibility, optimism and clarity. They give you the chance to try something new, or go again with renewed vigour, taking with you the lessons you learned previously.

Fresh starts give you energy. Which is why you should build more of them into your, more often.

I used to love getting new notebooks at the start of a new school year. Each one gave me the chance to get things just right. Neat writing, straight lines, maybe even a new handwriting style. All the mistakes I made in previous notebooks were history. My mind would be full ideals and positivity about how well I would to do in the year ahead.

And I was always most motivated at the start of a football season. As difficult as preseasons were, finals aside, those were some of the most enjoyable months of the football year.

Starting afresh gives us hope and opens us up to the possibilities of what could be. It lets you reflect on the mistakes you made in the past, and allows you to design solutions so you don’t make the same mistakes again.

A fresh start allows you to experiment and try something new. This is exciting. Maybe (probably) your experiments won’t work, but each attempt teaches you something. You learn what doesn’t work, and you get get closer to what does. And then you get to go again. And again. And again. This is how we learn, by doing, making mistakes, and fixing them.

It’s iteration. A constant cycle of design -> act -> reflect -> design -> act -> reflect.

Doesn’t it make sense to make that feedback cycle as tight as possible? Aren’t you better off starting again tomorrow instead of next week, or next month… or waiting for the new year to kick off?

Isn’t that what life is, an iteration? Day in, day out, the sun rises, the sun sets. You can view each day as a continuation, another one to get through. Or you could view today as a clean slate, a chance to take what you learned yesterday, and every day before that, and attempt to get this day just right.

This is one of the reasons I love bullet journaling. Every day I get to start again with a blank page. I think about what isn’t working and the lessons I’ve learned, and I get to design solutions to resolve those issues and improve my life. When you bullet journal you iterate more. Each day, each month. Each new notebook. Plan. Do. Reflect.

Maybe this is a metaphor for life. Everyday can be a clean slate if you choose. An opportunity to do things differently. To get out of the rut that you’re in. To try something new. It’s a fresh start. A clean slate. A blank page. Grab it with both hands and make the most of it.

Your thoughts? I'd love to hear them. Please get in contact.