The October Theory (And Life Reset)

    So yesterday I had a long drive.  After we traveled to Charlotte for the Panthers/Dolphins game Sunday, my Dad took my daughter back with him to the mountains.  She spent a few days wit her Grandma and was able to go to Tennessee to get a cowboy hat to wear at the state fair in a couple of weeks.  That was super exciting for her, so yesterday I traveled to Asheboro to meet my Mom and bring her back home.  I don't really knew how podcasts work, so I decided to switch on the youtube of Cal Newport and listen to one of his youtubes (since he works like a podcaster and doesn't require actually watching the video) while I was driving.

   A few days ago a Youtuber that I followed posted that she was spending the rest of this year doing a makeover on her life.  October leaves 3 months left in the year, so she stated that was the perfect time to do a life reset.  I suppose I had never thought of it that way- but it does seem like a better time than in January.  I was really excited and surprised to hear Cal Newport say the same thing.  He said that October is "The right time to make changes is not in the New Year, but in the fall."  He said the fall is a time that you're going back into routine after a long summer and your mentally in a great place to make new changes.  

   So today as I sat down to check over my goals, I was super excited to see that the "October Theory" is a real thing!  Not just something that a couple of people talk about, but apparently, October is an amazing time of year to set new goals, and that's widely known and studied.


   So last week I made my super long post of Goals that I had for the rest of this year and for 2026.    I think all of these things were things that I've had in my head and my heart for a long time ago, and finally took the time to pen them down.  Yesterday however, I did enjoy the podcast about goal setting, and it did give me a new drive to change it up a bit!
   On the video, The Ultimate Guide to Reinventing your Life, Newport went through several of what he coined as the best life reset videos online and took away five of the most important aspects from each of these.  Those were; 
  • Update a brain dump every week.  (Taking a notebook and literally just dumping everything in your brain weekly- every thought you can come up with, just letting it all out on paper)
  • Have a plan for the information that you consume. (Take the information you have from books/podcasts/videos and implement them into an action plan.
  • Simplify your goals (separate your vision from the goals that are considered 'next goals')
  • Read increasingly smarter and harder books
  • Control your time on multiple scales (quarterly or weekly)
   Now as I thought all of this was good advice, by far the best advice I believed was to Simplify your goals.  This is something that I'm not necessarily great at doing!  I have a tendency to list a whole list of things (Like I did last week!) and then I get overwhelmed at checking them off.  There's still SO many that won't be checked off.  I suppose this is ambitious, but it also leaves me feeling unaccomplished.  It's like when you walk around the house and take all of these mental notes of the things that need to be done- and they get so big that you feel like you will never get them done.  
   To me, overwhelm is the thief of my motivation.  The minute I feel overwhelmed, I start to feel unaccomplished.  Instead of meeting smaller goals, I feel defeated by the bigger ones so I tend to 'check out' and put things off until I feel like there's a day that I can feel more motivated.  That day never comes, and often I feel defeated by the goals I did not meet.  
   So here is my personal plan to begin the October Theory and be successful in my life reset.
  • Blog about my journey.  This fulfills my creative outlet, my accountability, and I just love it so it makes me happy.
  • Write my big goal list (my Vision) on the last page in my journal.  These are things I want to have accomplished by the end of the year, not the end of the week.  So I will revisit that once I complete my "Next Goal" each time.
  • Make a few smaller, weekly goals and accomplish those first!
   So today I'm working on setting smaller goals, defining my vision clearly, and deciding which goals I want to accomplish first!
   Are any of you working on Resetting your life this October?  Let me know and I would LOVE to follow along!   I'll be sharing my Life Reset Journey here with you!


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