December 20th. You’re scrolling through your notes app, past the ambitious goals you set in January. Learn Spanish. Meditate daily. Finally finish that certification. The evidence of another year of good intentions and inconsistent follow-through stares back at you, and a familiar thought surfaces: “Well, I’ll start fresh in January.”
But here’s what most people miss: the final weeks of December aren’t a waiting room for change. They’re actually one of the most powerful psychological windows for transformation you’ll experience all year. The research on temporal landmarks, those mental milestones that mark the passage of time, suggests that you’re standing at the threshold of something significant. Not because a new calendar year is approaching, but because of what’s happening in your brain right now.
The question isn’t whether you should wait for January. It’s whether you understand the unique opportunity this season presents, and whether you’re willing to use it differently than you have before.
The Fresh Start Effect Is Real (And December Amplifies It)
Behavioral scientists have a name for the psychological reset that happens at meaningful time markers: the fresh start effect. First documented by Wharton researchers Katherine Milkman, Hengchen Dai, and Jason Riis, this phenomenon explains why we’re more likely to pursue goals after temporal landmarks, dates that feel like new chapters in our ongoing story. New Year’s Day is the most obvious example, but the effect occurs at birthdays, Mondays, the first of the month, and even after major holidays.
What makes the fresh start effect so powerful isn’t magic or motivation. It’s the way these moments create psychological distance from our past selves. When you wake up on January 1st, you’re not the same person who skipped workouts in November. That was “last year’s you,” a version you can view with some compassion but aren’t obligated to repeat. The temporal landmark creates what researchers call a “new mental accounting period,” allowing you to reset your self-concept without the weight of accumulated failures.
December’s power lies in its position: you’re approaching the most significant temporal landmark of the year, but you’re not there yet. This creates a psychological state researchers call “anticipatory reflection,” where you’re naturally inclined to both assess the past and envision the future. Unlike January, when the pressure to perform is immediate and often overwhelming, December offers a liminal space, a threshold period where you can do the internal work that makes external change actually stick.
The research suggests something counterintuitive: people who use December for intentional reflection and gradual experimentation often outperform those who wait for the January starting gun. Why? Because they’ve already begun the identity shift that sustainable change requires.
Why Most Fresh Starts Fail (And What Actually Works)
If temporal landmarks were all it took, everyone’s New Year’s resolutions would succeed. They don’t. Research from the University of Scranton found that only about 9% of people feel successful in achieving their resolutions by year’s end. The fresh start effect provides the spark, but something else determines whether that spark becomes a lasting flame.
James Clear, whose work on habit formation draws heavily on behavioral science, argues that most people fail because they focus on outcomes rather than identity. “You don’t rise to the level of your goals,” he writes. “You fall to the level of your systems.” But even this misses a deeper truth: your systems emerge from your identity. If you don’t believe you’re “someone who exercises,” no amount of calendar blocking or habit stacking will make it stick long-term.
December offers something January can’t: the psychological space to begin this identity work before the pressure starts. When the cultural expectation is reflection rather than action, you have permission to ask the deeper questions. Not “What do I want to accomplish?” but “Who am I becoming?” Not “What habits should I build?” but “What does this new version of me do naturally?”
This is the critical insight that most fresh-start advice misses: sustainable change requires grieving who you were, accepting who you are, and committing to who you’re becoming. That process takes time and emotional energy. Trying to do it while simultaneously executing new habits is like renovating a house while living in it during construction. It can be done, but it’s chaotic and often abandoned.
The December advantage is that you can complete the renovation, or at least the planning and demolition, before you move into the new structure. You can sit with the discomfort of recognizing that last year’s version of you wasn’t quite right. You can explore what that reveals about your actual values versus your performative ones. You can begin to see yourself differently before you ask yourself to act differently.
The Reflection Practice That Changes Everything
Most year-end reflection is shallow. We review our goals, note what we did and didn’t accomplish, and make slightly revised goals for the coming year. This approach treats us as productivity machines that simply need better programming. It ignores the emotional, relational, and identity dimensions of why we do what we do.
A more powerful approach, one grounded in the psychology of meaning-making, involves what researchers call “narrative identity work.” This is the process of examining and revising the story you tell about yourself. Psychologist Dan McAdams has spent decades studying how our personal narratives shape our behavior, and his research suggests that people who can construct coherent, redemptive stories about their lives, stories where setbacks lead to growth and difficulties have meaning, demonstrate greater psychological wellbeing and more adaptive behavior.
Here’s a reflection practice designed for the second chance season. Set aside an hour in a quiet space. You’ll need something to write with, paper or digital, whatever feels most comfortable for sustained thought.
Begin by writing about the year as if you were telling a story to someone who cares about you. Not a highlight reel, not a failure inventory, but the actual narrative arc. What did you hope for? What happened instead? Where were the turning points? What surprised you about yourself? Take at least twenty minutes on this part. The goal isn’t efficiency; it’s excavation.
Next, identify the “protagonist lessons,” what the main character of this story, you, learned through the experiences of the year. Not what you should have learned, but what you actually learned, including uncomfortable truths. Maybe you learned that you value security more than adventure, even though you wish it were otherwise. Maybe you learned that certain relationships drain you more than they nourish you. Write these down without judgment.
Finally, and this is where the identity work happens, write a brief character description of who you want to be in the coming year. Not what you want to accomplish, but who you want to be. How does this person handle stress? What does this person do on an ordinary Tuesday? How does this person talk to themselves when they mess up? The more specific and behavioral you can be, the more useful this becomes.
This practice isn’t about setting goals. It’s about establishing a psychological foundation that makes goals meaningful. When you know who you’re becoming, the habits and behaviors follow more naturally because they’re expressions of identity rather than impositions on it.
The Grief Work of Growing
There’s something nobody tells you about personal growth: it involves loss. To become someone new, you have to let go of who you were. This includes the comfortable stories you’ve told about yourself, the justifications you’ve used for staying stuck, the familiar identity that may be limited but is at least known.
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief framework, originally developed for death and dying, applies surprisingly well to personal transformation. When you decide to become someone different, you often experience denial (this doesn’t apply to me), anger (why is this so hard?), bargaining (maybe I can change just a little), depression (I’m not sure I can do this), and eventually acceptance (this is who I’m choosing to be). These stages aren’t linear, and most people cycle through them repeatedly during significant transitions.
December, with its natural orientation toward endings and reflection, provides permission for this grief work. The cultural pause around the holidays creates space for the emotional processing that rushing into January action would bypass. When you give yourself permission to mourn the version of yourself that didn’t quite work out, you free up psychological energy for the version that might.
This might look like journaling about what you’re releasing, a habit, a self-concept, an expectation, a relationship pattern. It might mean having honest conversations with people who’ve known the old you, acknowledging that you’re working on becoming different. It might involve rituals of release, writing something on paper and burning it, or a symbolic act that marks the transition.
What it shouldn’t involve is toxic positivity, forcing yourself to “focus on the good” before you’ve processed the difficult. Grief that gets rushed doesn’t disappear; it goes underground and resurfaces as resistance, self-sabotage, or mysterious lack of motivation. The second chance season invites you to feel what you feel about the year that was, including disappointment and frustration, so you can release it completely.
Starting Before You Start
Here’s the counterintuitive strategy that December enables: begin the identity shift before you begin the behavioral change. This isn’t procrastination; it’s preparation. And research on implementation intentions suggests that this kind of mental preparation significantly increases follow-through.
Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation intentions shows that people who create specific “if-then” plans for goal pursuit are two to three times more likely to succeed than those who simply set goals. But effective implementation intentions require clarity about who you’re becoming, not just what you’re doing. “If it’s 6 AM, then I’ll go to the gym” works only if you’ve already begun to see yourself as someone who exercises in the morning.
December gives you time to try on new identities before fully committing. You might experiment with small shifts in your morning routine or test a new approach to decision-making. The stakes feel lower because it’s “not January yet,” which paradoxically makes genuine exploration more possible. You’re not failing at your resolution if you try something and it doesn’t fit; you’re gathering data about what will work when you’re ready to commit.
This experimental approach also addresses one of the biggest reasons fresh starts fail: mismatch between stated values and actual values. People often set goals based on who they think they should be rather than who they actually are. December experimentation reveals these gaps. If you commit to journaling every morning and find it feels like a chore, that’s useful information. Maybe you’re a night processor. Maybe you prefer voice memos. Maybe reflection works better for you in movement than stillness. Better to discover this in low-stakes December than high-pressure January.
Your Invitation
The second chance season isn’t about waiting for the calendar to give you permission to change. It’s about recognizing that right now, in these final weeks of the year, you have access to a psychological resource that won’t be available in the same way come January: the combination of natural reflection, reduced pressure, and imminent possibility.
Use this time differently than you have before. Instead of making premature promises to yourself about next year, sit with the questions that matter. Who have you been? Who are you becoming? What needs to be released before new growth is possible? What identity do you need to inhabit for the changes you want to actually stick?
The research on temporal landmarks is clear: these moments matter. But they don’t work through magic or motivation alone. They work because they create psychological permission for change, a sense that the old chapter has ended and a new one can begin. December offers you that permission right now, not on January 1st, but today. The question is whether you’ll use it to scroll past your unmet goals with familiar disappointment, or whether you’ll recognize this moment for what it is: your second chance season.
The door is open. The landscape beyond it is waiting. The only question is whether you’re ready to step through before the crowd arrives.
Sources: Katherine Milkman, Hengchen Dai, and Jason Riis (Wharton) research on temporal landmarks and fresh start effect, University of Scranton resolution success rates, James Clear on habit formation and identity, Dan McAdams on narrative identity, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross grief framework, Peter Gollwitzer on implementation intentions.
