The Bold & Courageous Leader Podcast: Episode 15
Rhonda: Welcome to the Bold & Courageous Leader Podcast from rhondapeterson.com. This is Rhonda Peterson, your Bold & Courageous Leader coach, along with my co-host Andee Marks.
Today, we’re exploring a concept we discovered a few weeks ago. While we discovered the name recently, we live it out every day. It’s called the Fresh Start Effect. Katherine Milkman, a professor at Wharton has researched this effect and finds that capitalizing on these moments can help us achieve our goals. These moments lift us out of the daily grind and give us new motivation to move forward toward achieving our goals. She and her co-authors defined the Fresh Start effect as the energy and determination we feel when we’re able to wipe the slate clean. We see this when people make New Year’s resolutions. They want to change something about their life so they set the date to start the change on January 1, when we turn the year from the old to the new.
Our culture and advertisers leverage this Fresh Start to the hilt. We even have statistics on how many people make New Year’s resolutions that don’t keep them beyond a day, a week, a month, well you get the picture. That’s one Fresh Start opportunity, but there are Fresh Start opportunities all over the place.
Andee: You know Rhonda, every day really, is a Fresh Start. Every morning, we get up and we start afresh.
Rhonda: That’s true. If we can keep that in mind, that can help us on a daily basis to recognize the fact that we don’t have to carry with us what happened yesterday, but we get a new opportunity with the dawn of each new day. That’s one of the things that this is related to. It’s that whatever failures or whatever didn’t work in the past isn’t what we have to carry forward with us. We don’t have to carry that big bag of failure behind us. We can start anew. I would add to that, we can start anew, not carrying the failures but carrying the learnings that we captured out of what happened when we failed in the past.
Andee: That’s exactly right. I think a critical part of that may be our willingness to release that sense of failure so that we can actually embrace what God would teach us out of that experience. Maybe a process for that may be when you go to bed at night before you drift off to sleep, to just release the day’s events to God. One of the things that I do quite frequently is I’ll say, “Lord will you please redeem this day. What I said that I shouldn’t have said or what I did today that I shouldn’t have done. Would you please show that to me right now and then redeem it for your glory?” That way when you get up in the morning you really are kind of starting with a fresh, clean slate.
Rhonda: I guess I would like to add to that because though we’re talking about God redeeming it, to also focus on the positives that happened in that day. God redeem the things I said that I shouldn’t have said, the things that I did that I shouldn’t have done, and help me to focus on those things that I did well and those things that are building up others and myself for your kingdom. Those are really important also.
Andee: Yes.
Rhonda: So there’s so many opportunities for the Fresh Start effect and I’d like for us to talk about some of those. But before that I want to share a little bit of what they found in the research because there’s a great story they tell in their research about how people look at a Fresh Start and identifying a key point that they can focus on. Where we focus our attention and how we define that point of Fresh Start can really make a difference. When they did the research on this, one of the things that they did was told people that they would send them an email, a reminder email when they wanted to start this new Fresh Start opportunity that they were going to do. They gave them two choices. They could either have it be the third Thursday in March, or they could have it be the first day of spring. The majority, a far greater majority of people, choose the first day of spring, even though the first day of spring and the third Thursday in March were the same day. Because they called it the first day of spring, it was a prime date. It was a Fresh Start date that was marked for people similar to the first of the year.
We find that the Fresh Start effect is how our mind identifies that point in time. Whether it be the first of the week. Whether it be the first of the month, a new quarter starting. They say in planning processes, that doing a 90-day plan is much more likely to get you results than just saying you’re going to start on a certain date. Quarterly planning is much more productive for people because they know they’ve got 90 days to work on this and it’s a finite amount of time. That helps people to stay focused, and so your Fresh Start effect says, “You can start on this particular time, there’s a marker here, and that’s a natural start time.”
Andee: I think that there are so many opportunities for Fresh Starts that we don’t really give a lot of thought to. There’s the obvious ones that you mentioned earlier about the beginning of the year, January 1st. There are the beginnings of the seasons. The first day of spring or the first day of fall and right around that same fall time when school starts. The start of the school year is a huge 1st even for people that it doesn’t relate to them directly, people who don’t have children or whose children are already grown. It’s still very much in our culture, it’s a rhythm. In August or September, we get that back to school rush. That’s typically another Fresh Start moment. Not just in terms of chronological time, but also we can think of Fresh Starts in the context of the rhythms of our life.
For example, I journal and so when I end one journal and begin another, that always feels like a Fresh Start to me. I’m anxious to see what God will say to me through this new journal. There are all sorts of ways that we encounter Fresh Start opportunities.
Rhonda: And you just wrote a blog post about the Fresh Start of getting a new Bible.
Andee: Yes, that’s right.
Rhonda: We should link to that in the show notes. Seriously, that’s a great Fresh Start opportunity. How interesting that we’re talking about the Fresh Start effect and you happened to write that blog post. That was a God incident.
Andee: Yeah, that is another… it’s just a renewed sense of exploration and digging into God’s word. Jobs are an obvious one, ending one job and beginning another. Recently, I moved into not quite a full-time position in order to do that, I left another part-time job. I was already working part-time in this position, I’m just taking on more responsibilities. It’s not really something new but it still felt like a Fresh Start. As I was thinking about these increased responsibilities, I was thinking about the opportunities that would come with them. That, in essence, is a Fresh Start.
Rhonda: I think that’s a really good connection that you made, because you just made the connection between opportunities and Fresh Start.
Andee: Yes.
Rhonda: Every time we set a Fresh Start, because a Fresh Start is a restart, that’s essentially what it is because it’s a mental reset…
Andee: Oh, I like that.
Rhonda: We’re doing that mental reset to take advantage of a new opportunity and reaching our goals always involves taking advantage of opportunities. Otherwise, how are we ever going to reach our goals? There were a couple other Fresh Start opportunities that I happened to experience this weekend because I was in a time of family celebrations. We had two big family celebrations in my extended family. There was a 50th wedding anniversary celebration for one of my aunt’s and her husband and also a bridal shower for my niece who’s getting married in about a month. Both of those things are Fresh Start effects. When we celebrate an anniversary, it’s a looking back time but it’s also a rejoicing, number one in the fact that they got to their 50th anniversary, but also they got the opportunity to live forward into the next year, the next time, the continuing experience of their marriage and what new goals and achievements they want to have in their next however many years that they’re blessed to have here on this earth. Big celebrations like that are definitely Fresh Start effect opportunities.
Andee: I think that 50th wedding anniversary points again to what we were talking about earlier about releasing the day’s events at the end of the day so that we wake up with a Fresh Start the next morning. You look back at your 50th wedding anniversary, wow, that’s a real accomplishment. You look back on what you have experienced, what you’ve learned about each other over those 50 years, because you still have years to go. You’re entering into almost another phase, it isn’t almost another phase, it is another phase of your life together as a couple. It’s old age, it’s ending well together, and so you’re going to use what you’ve learned in the first 50 to hopefully end well in whatever time is left. There is that sense of, as you were saying earlier, taking the good and celebrating the good and also weaving in what you’ve learned from all the experiences as you begin this new thing, whatever it might be.
Rhonda: So Andee, you talked about your part-time job has become more hours than it was before and that it feels like a new job to you even though it’s not. Really, you’re talking more about a transition as opposed to a clean, in quotation marks, “a clean Fresh Start”. You’re not in a new job in a new place. You’re in the same position, you’re just taking on more responsibilities. There is a Fresh Start there but it’s more of a transition. How do you see that as being part of that new way of looking at your goals?
Andee: It is a transition and it is also a Fresh Start. Obviously, there are new responsibilities that come with this Fresh Start, but it is technically, probably more of a transition. However, I think one of the ways that we can even use a transition as a Fresh Start is if we can figure out a way to mark an ending. For instance, in this specific case, I left my other part-time job. My last day there was June 30th. I made a point last week of just having a lighter week if you will. I tried to celebrate the time that I had spent on the other job and I worked intentionally to release it. In some ways it was a very stressful job and so I made a point last week of just releasing some of the people that I’d worked with, some of the situations that I had brought home with me. It always has to do with relationships, you know the people I had related to. Some of them I would miss and some of them I would be concerned for, but I just made a point of releasing that. Releasing the responsibilities of that job so that I can focus with a fresh energy. My new responsibilities and the new opportunities that are going to come from having more time to spend in my church role, in ministry.
Rhonda: That makes sense because when we look at the Fresh Start effect as the energy and determination we feel when we’re able to wipe the slate clean, the wiping the slate clean wasn’t in your role in the congregation, it was in the other position that you’re no longer having to keep up with. That’s where the wiping the slate clean part came from. That makes a whole lot of sense when we put it in that framework. A transition can be an opportunity to wipe the slate clean because there’s something going on where you are letting go of one thing and coming into another.
Andee: There may need to be some intentionality in wiping the slate clean. One way that we can do that is through a period of rest or a Sabbath if you will, which is basically what I did last week. It was a Sabbath week. It was a week of when I could just kind of focus on releasing and receiving. Releasing what I needed to release. Receiving what wisdom and insights I needed to receive and to sort of catch my breath. Now I’m ready to start the new responsibilities, the new opportunities.
Rhonda: That makes a whole lot of sense. Tell me more about the rest part and how the rest is a trigger for the Fresh Start.
Andee: We know in scripture that at the end of God’s great creation, his creative period in Genesis, on the seventh day He rested. We know that scripture commands that we have a Sabbath day once a week. It is a day to honor God but we tend to equate that with going to church. If we go to church on Sunday, we tend to equate that with church, so if we go to church on Sunday, that’s our Sabbath. But that’s not really what Sabbath is about. That’s part of it but not all of it. Sabbath is about a respite from work. Sabbath is about spending time with friends and family and the renewing of the mind, renewing of the body, renewing of the spirit so that when you get to Monday morning, you are starting your week with a fresh energy and a fresh insight. You’re starting it from a place of rest and that’s critical. It doesn’t have to be Sunday and Monday, but we need to incorporate Sabbath into our life.
When people are in an office setting, where they are seated at a desk particularly, for the better part of the day, one of the things that they might need to do during the day to create a Fresh Start for their day, particularly when you’re just dragging. Maybe that two o’clock in the afternoon when the post-lunch blahs hit, the lethargy sets in, so you just stand up and stretch. Become aware of your body and what’s tight and what needs to be relaxed or stretched out. You can make that five minutes of Sabbath where you mentally clear your mind and you let your body kind of renew and reset so that you have a Fresh Start for the rest of your afternoon. Does that make sense?
Rhonda: It absolutely does and I wish people could have seen you as you were telling that because you literally, your eyes were closed, your mind was… you could tell you were moving into that space. Your hands were like washing over and clearing that space. I will also add to what you said that this is one of the arguments for going out at lunchtime as opposed to just sitting there grinding through it and eating your lunch at your desk. Because your mind gets a rest when you switch to something different by going out to lunch. Whether that is going out to lunch and talking with friends or whether it’s going out to lunch and sitting on a bench and eating the sandwich that you brought with you. Either way, your brain is taking a break and when you come back you are refreshed and you do get that Fresh Start effect.
That’s a really good opportunity to think about how we leverage the Fresh Start effect. Personally, we need to know our own rhythms. What are our own most productive times? For me, Monday sets the tone for the week. My Monday is most always better than Friday on productivity. If you did a chart of my productivity over a week, Monday would be like super-duper high and it just starts falling off from there as we go through the week, unless I’m extremely intentional about it, Monday’s always more productive. And morning is always better than afternoon. Now that is a biorhythm thing for me. There are other people for whom an afternoon or an evening is more productive for them. You’ve got to know your most productive rhythms.
Then we need to recognize the built-in Fresh Start opportunities; the beginning of the week, the beginning of the month, the change of the seasons. Holidays are a Fresh Start opportunity. Birthdays, anniversaries, all those built-in times are good opportunities for Fresh Start. If we can slow down and have a little bit of margin in our life, we can get a little reflective to be able to know what it is we need to let go of in that time and where we need to ramp it up for the new opportunity to achieve a goal that we want to achieve. We can also create them when they’re necessary. Andee, when you were talking about the Sabbath and being intentional, there are times when we are going to need to create an opportunity for a Fresh Start.
A few weeks ago, I was one of the leaders for a retreat for the ministry leaders at our church. That was setting a Fresh Start opportunity for the ministry leaders in our church because we intentionally set that time to look toward, what are the goals we need to work on and where are we going?
That kind of moves into from a group perspective and a leadership perspective, how do we leverage the Fresh Start effect there? One of the things we have to look to as a leader is where are the logical Fresh Start opportunities for the group? In a ministry setting, times like fall, when a lot of ministries crank back up again. We move away from the summer ministries and into the school year ministries.
Andee: I was just going to say that relates right back to the school year that we were talking about earlier, that academic year and how it impacts people, it may not relate to them directly, but they’re still affected by it.
Rhonda: You better believe it and that’s absolutely true. I know in my congregation, the switch between the school year and the summer schedule, our worship service times don’t change, though there are places that they do. The kinds of ministry opportunities, the kinds of focus in the ministry is very different during the summer time than it is during the school year. Thinking about as a leader, what do your team members need to experience the Fresh Start effect as a team? How do they need to use that Fresh Start effect to regain their momentum on the goals that you’re trying to achieve as a group? What does that mean for them individually? As the leader, your responsibility is to know the way that each one of your team members is going to be plugged in on all that, so that you can work individually with them on what it is they need for the Fresh Start and to be able to achieve those goals for your group.
Andee: I think one way that we can leverage the Fresh Start effect for our teams, is to recognize that when we end a project or a season of work or ministry, we need to stop, reflect, celebrate, recognize individual contributions and celebrate those. Again, it’s creating a Sabbath rest. We need to just create a little bit of space here where we can honestly reflect and give feedback.
Rhonda: And evaluate.
Andee: That provides the necessary closure so that we can move on to start whatever is new. I think one of the things that inhibits or impedes the Fresh Start effect is when we’ve not had the time to process what the previous experience has been. I think that’s particularly true when you’re working with a team or with a group. Everybody needs to have that opportunity to dialog about what their experience has been so that they can move on to the next thing with fresh energy and fresh enthusiasm.
Rhonda: I think that’s a really good point. The Fresh Start effect is important and we need to understand that. We also need to understand that in order to get to the energy and determination we feel when we’re able to wipe the slate clean, we have to wipe the slate clean. You can only wipe the slate clean without processing it so many times before that’s not going to work anymore and you’re carrying such a heavy load of stuff that needs to be processed that you can’t move into that new space. Not to be a Debbie downer, but the reality is there comes a time when you need to literally wipe the slate clean. I have this picture in my head at this point of a whiteboard and you write on the whiteboard with the dry-erase markers and then you wipe it off with that cool little eraser thing. You can write on it again but it’s not that really beautiful, clean whiteboard that you had in the beginning until you use the spray stuff and the cloth to wipe it off.
Andee: I was going to say a lot of times you could still see the shadow of what was written on it before, even after you’ve erased it if you have not used the cleaner.
Rhonda: Because of that, what that teaches us, if we use that metaphor for wiping the slate clean part of the energy and determination of the Fresh Start, eventually you’ve got to use the spray and clean off the whiteboard. That is the feedback and evaluation timeframe.
Andee: Right, not to beat this metaphor to death or this image, but the other thing too is capturing what was written on the whiteboard before it’s erased.
Rhonda: That’s a good point. That’s part of that evaluation and feedback and what I hear out of that is having enough margin in your planning process to be able to capture that before you go galloping ahead into the next thing. It’s interesting, if we think about the research they were doing, they didn’t say, “We’re going to send you an email tomorrow for the new thing that you’ll be doing.” They said, “We’re going to send you an email that’s a reminder that was out into the future a little bit,” so you would have a little bit of time to think about it, to plan, to evaluate what’s come before so that you can move forward.
I guess the reason why that is so important to me is because I lived in a corporate world for a really long time where it was constantly get to the next thing, get to the next thing, get to the next thing. The time to reflect and learn from what happened before just never happened because you were constantly having to get to that next thing. I know that a lot of the people who listen to this podcast experience the same thing. Though I happen to use the term corporate for that, I’ve seen that happen in churches, I’ve seen it happen in non-profits. There’s always work that needs to be done and the work does need to continue, that is for sure. We always have to do the next thing, but if we can find a way to carve out enough margin for that reflection, we will be so much the better as we move forward into the Fresh Start effect that we want to step into.
Andee: Here are three takeaways from our conversation today. First, what are the natural points for Fresh Starts in the rhythm of your life? Where do you need to create Fresh Starts? Reflect on that. Maybe write them down so you’re actually looking at them. Everything from the dates on the calendar, so January 1st or whenever school starts, to the first day of spring or the first day of fall. What feels to you like a Fresh Start? Where you see that there are opportunities that you might create a Fresh Start. Secondly, incorporate a time of rest or Sabbath, do this intentionally. How do you incorporate these periods of rest into your life? Again, look at the natural rhythms of your life and where they might naturally occur. Then think about, where do I need to create space to rest? As we talked about earlier, it might just be creating a little five minute Sabbath in your day in order to give you a renewed start for the rest of the day. Lastly, recognize the need for closure. We need to give attention to reflection, feedback, evaluation, those are necessary processes as we end one task or one season and look to the Fresh Start of the next.
Rhonda: Those are really important points to remember as we look at the Fresh Start effect and living that in our life intentionally. When you talked about the need for closure Andee, I’d like to give a little plug for next week’s podcast because we’re going to be doing a review of Henry Cloud’s book, Necessary Endings. That’s what it’s about. It’s about making decisions around where you need closure, where you need to say no so you can say yes to the big things in your life. For today, we leave you with the Fresh Start effect and how you can use that in your life to gain the energy to achieve your most important goals.
To find out more about today’s topic, get downloads of our previous podcasts or to learn how you too can become a Bold & Courageous leader, visit rhondapeterson.com. Our ever-growing community is waiting for you. If you liked today’s show, there are three things you can do. You can subscribe to the podcasts on iTunes or Stitcher. You can give us a rating or a review on iTunes. The subscriptions and ratings help others to find us more easily. And you can help us get the word out by sharing the podcast with your friends. This is Rhonda Peterson, your Bold & Courageous Leader Coach. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you for the next Bold & Courageous Leader Podcast.
