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Many of us set goals at the beginning of the year, but January isn’t necessarily the most productive time to plan for success.
Dreary winter days and low energy levels can make diving headfirst into a new fitness regime or starting a new side hustle daunting. That’s why a mid-year reset can be so helpful.
June/July offers a natural halfway point in the year to pause, reflect on our goals for 2026, and make some course corrections. It’s an opportunity to readjust and hopefully use the uplifting feeling of summer to drive us forward.
Even if you didn’t set yourself specific goals at the beginning of the year, you can still take advantage of a mid-year reset by reflecting on the last six months and planning for the second half of the year.
Below, we’ve collected some tips to help you get the most from your mid-year reset.
1. Focus on the positives
The first step for any mid-year reset is to reflect on your year so far, reviewing any existing goals and evaluating your progress. This can help you decide whether you might benefit from any adjustments to make them more attainable or letting some go entirely.
While it’s easy to get bogged down in what hasn’t gone to plan, life coach Natalie Trice urges people to try focusing on the positive. As she tells Stylist, “This could be with your career, a relationship, maybe your feelings about your body – whatever it is, find the good in where you are.”
Say you set the goal of running three times a week. Even if you haven’t hit that mark, you might be exercising more than last year. Or perhaps you’ve seen some unexpected benefits from the running you have done, like making a new friend at a running group. There are always positives to find if we look hard enough.
2. Consider what’s prevented you from staying on track
If you’re currently a little behind where you expected to be, one helpful question to consider in the early stages of your mid-year reset is: What’s prevented me from staying on track?
Looking ahead to the next six months can be exciting, but the odds are that not much will change unless you identify and address hurdles that’ve slowed your progress. And some of these may be simpler to fix than you think.
For example, if social media is draining time away from your goal of painting at least one artwork per month, you might consider how to reduce time spent online, such as turning off notifications or setting time limits on your mobile apps.
If you’re struggling to identify some of the things that are holding you back, check out this article from Psychology Today.
3. Practise gratitude
One challenge of a mid-year reset – or goal-setting of any kind – is deciding what aspirations to prioritise. After all, the possibilities for achievement are endless, and there are only so many hours in the day. But one surprising way to help you decide what matters most is to practise gratitude.
As psychotherapist Eloise Skinner tells Stylist, “On a sheet of paper, write a list of all the things you’re most grateful for this year so far […] You can make your list as inclusive and wide as you want.
“Take a moment to review your list and see if there are any consistent themes or ideas that come up, because this could be an indication of where to place your energy for the remainder of the year.”
For example, if you find that the things you’re most grateful for this year are all family-oriented, you could prioritise goals that bring you closer to your loved ones. This method of reflection is useful because it helps us single out goals that are likely to bring us reward and satisfaction in the future.
For more advice, check out our article: How practising gratitude can lead to a happier life.
4. Set aside ‘thinking time’
To get the most out of your mid-year reset, it can be helpful to set aside dedicated time to reflect and plan without interruption.
If you do your best thinking while on the move, perhaps you could schedule a long walk to be alone with your thoughts. Or maybe you’re a collaborative thinker who’d benefit from a reflecting/planning session with a friend, where you can bounce ideas off one another. Or, if you do your best thinking on the page, why not have a go at these journaling prompts from Your Coach Meg?
5. Don’t be afraid to let go of goals
A lot can happen in six months; people and priorities can change. So, if any of your early 2026 goals don’t feel right anymore, it’s okay to let them go and come up with new ones.
If a goal you set for yourself at the beginning of the year now seems unrealistic, but you’d still like to achieve it someday, why not tweak it to make it more manageable? For example, you could write five chapters of your book this year instead of 10.
Or maybe, after careful deliberation, you decide that one of your goals doesn’t align with your values or lifestyle anymore. In this case, you could put it aside entirely.
Letting go of outdated goals can feel like quitting, but in some cases, it’s quite the opposite. Instead, try to see it as an indicator that you’ve grown and need to adjust your aspirations accordingly.
6. Start with some easy wins
According to research, making our beds in the morning is a simple way to boost productivity levels. The thinking behind this is that checking off a quick and simple task can give us a sense of accomplishment, setting off a domino effect that leads to more productivity throughout the day.
We can also apply this logic to our mid-year reset by considering whether there are any easy goals we can check off our list first to get the ball rolling. For example, have you been delaying a visit to the doctor for a check-up, or is there a cluttered room in your house that you’ve been putting off organising?
Starting with easy wins that we can tick off in a single day or afternoon can help spur us on to tackle some of our larger goals over the next six months.
7. Schedule regular deadlines
Many productivity experts and life coaches recommend breaking goals into smaller stages and setting regular deadlines and/or monthly check-ins to help you stay on track.
As psychologist and author Dr Christian Jarrett writes, “Deadlines can make us stressed, no doubt. But they are also galvanising and useful for pacing our efforts.”
Without regular deadlines, just a long stretch of time ahead, it’s easy to let ourselves slow down, thinking that we can always make up for it later. But always having a deadline on the horizon can stop any momentum loss. Just try to make sure they’re realistic to prevent burnout.
For some advice on deadline-setting, check out our article: The benefits of deadlines and how to set them effectively.
8. Focus on systems, not goals
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Goals help give us direction in life, but as productivity expert James Clear writes in his bestselling book Atomic Habits, just setting goals won’t necessarily help us achieve the results we want. After all, lots of people have the goal of writing a book, but only a handful end up doing it.
Instead, Clear recommends putting energy into developing the systems of habits and behaviours by which we can achieve our goals. For example, if your goal is to run 10 miles by the end of the year, your system is the training plan that you follow.
Using a mid-year reset to focus on building sustainable systems (whether they be writing routines, exercise plans, or study schedules) will help us make meaningful progress that we can continue long after the year has ended.
Of course, what systems are ideal for you will depend on your goal and individual circumstances. But you can find some helpful advice on building them in our article: 8 tips on how to break negative habits and develop positive ones.
9. Consider an accountability buddy
One of our favourite mid-year reset tips is to pair up with someone, not just for the reflecting and planning stage, but for the rest of the year.
Your buddy can help you stick to the promises you make to yourself. For example, it’s easy to stay in bed and defer that Sunday morning run, but it’s more difficult if someone is outside waiting to tag along.
That said, your accountability partner doesn’t need to have the same goals as you. Simply telling someone about your goals and scheduling regular check-ins to discuss your respective progress can be surprisingly powerful.
For example, a U.S. study of health behaviours found that telling someone else about a goal gives you a 65% chance of achieving it, while scheduling check-ins with a partner boosts your odds to 95%.
10. Go easy on yourself
Mid-year resets are great for reconnecting with what’s important to us and realigning our priorities. But they can also open us up to frustration and disappointment.
Perhaps you’re looking back on the last six months, and you’re disheartened with what you haven’t achieved. Or maybe, as you take your first, carefully plotted steps into the future, you find yourself stumbling.
Either way, it’s important to try to be kind to yourself. Remember that we’re only human, our achievements aren’t the sum of our lives, and tomorrow offers a fresh start. Because, after all, that’s what a mid-year reset is: an opportunity to try again.
Final thoughts…
There isn’t one right way to approach your mid-year reset. Perhaps you’ll want to make a vision board or a detailed plan of the year ahead, or maybe you fancy simply taking some time on a warm, summer afternoon to ponder what you’d like to gain from the year ahead. However you choose to reset, we hope you’ve found some of the tips in this article helpful.
For more advice, head over to our personal development section. Here, you’ll find all kinds of articles to help you succeed, including: What are the benefits of goal-setting tools?, 8 ways to empower yourself every day, and How to create an inspiring vision board.
Are you considering a mid-year reset? Or have you already started yours? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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