Why Do I Feel Like I Need to Get My Life Back on Track?

There is something about the end of August and the beginning of September that seems to change the way many of us look at our lives, even when we haven't had a child in school for years, and there is nothing particularly different happening in our own schedule. Summer hasn't really ended yet; the days can still be hot, gardens are overflowing, and there may still be weekends at the beach or evenings outside. But somewhere underneath all of that, there can be this growing feeling that it is almost time to get serious again. We start noticing the things we haven't accomplished, the routines that slipped away, the weight we wanted to lose, the exercise we meant to do, the money we spent, the rooms we wanted to organize, and all those things we told ourselves we would get to after summer. Without anyone actually telling us that September 1st is a deadline, many of us begin thinking some version of the same thing:

I really need to get myself back on track.

It is an interesting reaction when you consider what September actually represents in the natural world, because nature certainly isn't starting over. Here in Canada, the light is already beginning to change; plants are moving toward harvest rather than new growth, birds are preparing for migration, evenings are becoming shorter, and the whole natural world is gradually heading toward a season of conservation and rest. Yet human beings seem to be moving in the opposite direction, filling calendars, restarting programs, registering for activities, returning to routines, and feeling an almost instinctive urge to become more organized, productive, and disciplined. January may officially own the resolutions, but September has a different kind of power because for many of us it doesn't feel like someone else's tradition that we adopted as adults; it feels familiar in a much older way.

September Was Our First New Year

Long before January meant resolutions, diets, gym memberships, and promises about what we were going to do differently, September was already teaching us what a new beginning felt like. For twelve or thirteen years, and considerably longer for anyone who continued into college or university, our lives were divided not primarily by calendar years but by school years, and every September we crossed a very clear boundary from the person we had been into the person we were now expected to become. We weren't in Grade Two anymore; we were in Grade Three. We weren't one of the little kids anymore; now there were younger children below us. Eventually, we weren't in elementary school anymore; we were entering junior high, and then high school, and with each transition came a slightly different set of expectations about what we should know, how we should behave, how much responsibility we should carry, and where we belonged.

The remarkable thing is how completely our environment reinforced that beginning. The stores changed, school supplies appeared, new clothes were bought if the family could afford them, backpacks were packed, lunches were planned, bedtimes moved earlier, buses returned to the roads, and suddenly everyone around us was preparing for the same transition at the same time. Even the smell of a new notebook, freshly sharpened pencils, or walking back into a school building could become part of that September memory, and because it happened year after year, we didn't need anyone to explain that summer life and September life were different. We could feel the difference.

What we may remember less clearly as adults is everything that was happening underneath those practical preparations, because September wasn't simply about returning to mathematics and spelling. Every new school year brought an enormous social unknown with it. Who would be in the class? Would your closest friend still be your closest friend? Would you like the teacher, and, more importantly, would the teacher like you? Would the child who made the previous year miserable be sitting three desks away again? Would you understand the work? Would you be one of the smart ones, the funny ones, the athletic ones, the attractive ones, the strange ones, the ones who belonged somewhere, or the ones who never quite figured out where they belonged?

Those questions changed as we got older, but they didn't disappear. By junior high and high school, returning in September could mean walking back into an entire social world after two months away, and two months can be a very long time during adolescence. Bodies changed, hair changed, clothing changed, friendships changed, relationships began and ended, confidence could appear or disappear, and suddenly people who had known one another since elementary school were trying to work out who everyone had become. At the same time, there were marks, teams, activities, part-time jobs, teachers, parents, and an increasing awareness that the choices being made now were supposedly beginning to determine what came next. September could be exciting because there were possibilities everywhere, but possibility has another side to it: if this year could be better, it could also be worse.

For some children, September probably meant mostly excitement. For others, it meant dread. For many of us, it was a complicated mixture of both, but regardless of whether we loved school, hated it, or simply got through it, the beginning of another school year mattered because our world changed when it arrived.

And then we did it again the following September.

And the September after that.

What Do Repeated Beginnings Teach Us?

Psychologists have identified something called the fresh start effect, which describes our tendency to become more motivated to pursue goals following meaningful points in time. A birthday can create it, so can the beginning of a week, a month, or a year, and researchers have also found it around the beginning of a new academic semester. These points in time are sometimes called temporal landmarks because they stand out from ordinary days and help create a mental boundary between what happened before and what happens next.

There is something very human about that boundary. If yesterday belongs to the old chapter and today begins the new one, it becomes easier to imagine that yesterday's habits, mistakes, or disappointments don't necessarily have to follow us. The person who didn't exercise can become someone who does. The person who has been spending too much can start saving. The person who has been putting something off can finally begin. For a short period of time, the distance between the life we're living and the life we imagine living can seem smaller, and that can provide enough motivation to make us move.

What research cannot tell us is that years of going back to school every September definitively conditioned all adults to experience September this way, and I don't think we need to stretch the science far enough to make that claim. What is more interesting is simply to notice the enormous number of September beginnings many of us experienced while our understanding of ourselves and the world was still developing, and then ask what those beginnings may have come to represent for us personally. For well over a decade, September wasn't just another square on the calendar; it was one of the most significant recurring transitions in our lives, and each time it arrived, we were asked, in one form or another, to step into the next version of ourselves.

But there is another layer to that experience that I think deserves more attention, because school didn't only teach us that September meant to begin again. It also gave us a very particular idea of what beginning again was supposed to involve.

A New Beginning Usually Came With New Expectations

When we moved into the next grade, we weren't simply starting something new; we were expected to progress. The work became harder, the expectations became greater, and there was an assumption built into the whole structure that we should be more capable this year than we had been the year before. Progress was measured constantly and very visibly through tests, report cards, assignments, reading levels, awards, teams, graduations, and eventually acceptance into whatever came next, and even children who weren't particularly concerned about marks still understood fairly early that there were ways of doing well and ways of falling behind.

Then there was another kind of measurement happening at exactly the same time, although nobody handed out a report card for it. Children were also learning where they sat socially. Who was popular and who wasn't, who got invited and who didn't, who had the right clothes, who could afford the school trip, who developed early, who developed late, who was athletic, who was funny, who was shy, who spoke up, who disappeared into the background, and who seemed to understand the unwritten rules better than everyone else. We weren't simply learning school subjects; we were learning to locate ourselves in relation to other people, and some of those lessons followed us much farther into adulthood than anything we memorized for an exam.

This is where September becomes more complicated than a cheerful fresh start, because a new beginning can carry hope while simultaneously carrying judgment. Maybe this year I'll do better. Maybe this year I'll fit in. Maybe this year I'll finally be good at math. Maybe this year I'll make the team. Maybe this year I'll have the right friends. Maybe this year people will see me differently.

There is hope in all of those thoughts, but hidden inside them is another message: maybe who I was last year wasn't quite enough.

That doesn't mean school deliberately taught us to dislike ourselves, nor does everyone carry those experiences in the same way, but I do think it is worth noticing how easily that old pattern appears in adult fresh starts. Think about what happens in January, on a Monday morning, after a birthday, after a vacation, or as September approaches. Very often, our first instinct isn't to look at everything in our lives that is already good and decide what we would like to build upon. We immediately start making an inventory of what needs correcting.

I need to lose weight. I need to eat better. I need to stop wasting money. I need to get organized. I need to exercise. I need to work harder. I need to stop procrastinating. I need to get the house under control. I need to get myself together. We call that motivation, but sometimes it is worth asking whether all of it really is. 

 

What Does “Back on Track” Actually Mean?

We use that expression so casually that we rarely stop to listen to what we're saying. We need to get our eating back on track, our exercise back on track, our finances back on track, our sleep back on track, and sometimes our whole life back on track, but the interesting thing about a track is that it already has a route and a destination. Once you're on it, the direction has largely been decided.

So, before deciding that September is the month to get back on track, there may be a more useful question to ask.

Back to which track?

Is it one you deliberately chose, or is it simply the one you've been trying to stay on for years because somewhere along the way you decided that this is what a successful, responsible adult is supposed to do?

There are many ways we continue grading ourselves long after anyone stops giving us report cards. We compare our bodies, our houses, our marriages, our children, our careers, our incomes, our vacations, our productivity, and increasingly even our leisure time, and social media has given us an almost endless supply of people against whom to measure how well we seem to be doing. The classroom may be gone, but comparison certainly isn't, and neither is that feeling that there is a version of life we are supposed to have reached by now.

This is where a fresh start can either become useful or simply become another opportunity to tell ourselves we aren't doing enough.

If September arrives and your first reaction is to create a list of twelve things you need to fix about yourself, you haven't necessarily created a fresh start. You may simply have created another report card.

What if we did something different this time?

What If September Wasn't About Correcting Yourself?

There is another way to use a landmark, and it has very little to do with reinventing ourselves.

We can use it to look up.

Most of life is lived remarkably close to the ground. We wake up, make tea or coffee, feed animals, get people where they need to go, answer messages, work, buy groceries, make supper, wash dishes, pay bills, watch something, go to bed, and begin again. Days can be incredibly full without ever giving us much opportunity to ask whether the collection of things filling them is actually creating the life we want.

A natural stopping point gives us a reason to look farther ahead.

Instead of asking what is wrong with your life, you could ask what has been working.

What happened this summer that you would like to carry into fall? Was there more time outside, more conversation, more movement, more family, more reading, more sleep, or simply more room in the day? Was there something you stopped doing for a few weeks and realized you didn't miss? Did you spend time with someone who made you remember how much you enjoy them? Did you notice that certain environments make you feel better and others leave you depleted? Did you rediscover something you used to love doing? Did you finally admit that something you've been trying very hard to make work simply doesn't anymore?

Those observations tell us far more about what the next three months need than another generic list of goals ever could.

And sometimes what needs to change isn't an addition.

We have become very accustomed to improvement, meaning more: more exercise, more productivity, more organization, more discipline, more routines, more projects, and more things squeezed into days that are already full. Yet one of the most important changes a person can make may be deciding what they no longer want to carry into the next season.

A fresh start can involve beginning something.

It can also involve ending something.

Or doing less of something.

Or finally protecting something that is already good.

Three Months Is Long Enough to Matter

September gives us an interesting window because December is close enough to imagine but far enough away for something meaningful to happen. September, October and November are roughly ninety days, and while ninety days isn't enough time to construct an entirely new life—and thankfully we don't need to—it is more than enough time for a small decision repeated consistently to begin changing the way life feels.

So instead of asking yourself what you need to fix by the end of the year, imagine November 30th for a moment. Summer is long gone, the leaves have fallen, the days are short, and Christmas is approaching. You are looking backward at September, October, and November rather than forward at them.

What would you be genuinely glad you started?

The answer doesn't have to be impressive.

You may want to feel physically stronger because your body has been telling you for some time that it needs more attention. You may want to know where your money is going instead of feeling anxious every time you open your banking app. You may want one room in your home to finally work for the life you actually live rather than becoming another place where things accumulate. You may want to know your partner better than you do today, spend more time with your grandchildren, rebuild a friendship, start painting again, learn something you've been curious about, or get outside while there are still autumn days to enjoy.

You might want to accomplish something tangible.

Or you may reach November and be most grateful that you stopped filling every open space in your calendar.

There is no correct answer because there is no universal track.

There is only the question of whether the direction you choose belongs to you.

The First Step Has to Survive Your Real Life

Once we decide something matters, there is another old habit that can appear very quickly: we want to prove how serious we are.

We create the perfect eating plan, the elaborate morning routine, the five-day exercise schedule, the complete budget, or the enormous list of everything we're going to accomplish, and for a few days it can feel wonderful because planning change gives us some of the emotional reward of actually changing.

Then Tuesday happens.

Someone needs something. Work runs late. You sleep badly. The dog is sick. The weather changes. An unexpected bill arrives. You don't feel like cooking. You miss the walk. The beautiful plan that worked wonderfully for the imaginary version of your life suddenly has to operate inside your actual one.

This is why the first question shouldn't be How much can I change?

It should be: What can I repeat?

A walk you can realistically take four times a week is more useful than an exercise program you abandon after nine days. Putting a manageable amount of money aside every payday matters more than an ambitious savings plan you can't sustain. One evening of real conversation every week can change a relationship more than announcing that you both need to “make more time for each other.” One cupboard cleaned and reorganized is movement; planning to reorganize the entire house is still planning.

The beginning doesn't need to be impressive.

It needs to continue.

Maybe We Don't Need to Go Back at All

Maybe that is the most interesting thing September can teach us as adults.

For years, September meant going back. Back to school. Back to routine. Back to schedules. Back to expectations. Back to being measured in one way or another.

But we aren't children anymore, and nobody is assigning the next grade.

We get to decide what the next season means.

So when that familiar feeling appears—the one that says summer is ending and it is time to get your life back on track—don't immediately start making the list.

Stay with the feeling for a little while.

Look at where you've been.

Look at where you are.

Then look toward the end of November and decide whether there is something you genuinely want to be different when you get there.

Not because September says you should be better.

Not because everybody else seems to be starting something.

Not because you need another opportunity to measure yourself.

Simply because three months from now, you might be very glad that today you noticed where you were going and made one deliberate change in direction.

Maybe the question was never “How do I get my life back on track?”

Maybe the better question is:

Where do I actually want to go from here?