Dear Stoics,

Around the world, the school year begins at different times, but the feeling of starting a new season is universal, and you probably remember it in all kinds of ways. There’s the fresh, unopened notebook, the new set of pencils, and all the other things you’ll be needing for the year ahead. And there’s also a mix of dread and excitement in your mind (which you feel in your stomach, too). Because setting all the new supplies aside, one of childhood’s great emotions lives in that classroom: the sense that everything will be different this time. Why not revisit it now?

Behavioural scientists have already documented what they call the fresh start effect: our motivation to pursue goals rises just after a certain milestone, even if it’s just a date on the calendar. It’s the same mechanism behind New Year's resolutions. Do you know anyone who’s never made one? Psychological studies have shown that gym visits and commitments to personal goals all spike at these notable moments. The researchers’ explanation makes a lot of sense: calendar landmarks open a new mental accounting period. This is when our past imperfections get filed away in the previous chapter as “the old me,” and we start writing our lives once again, on a totally blank page.

Childhood handed us these blank pages every year in the form of a new classroom, but as adults, we have to set them ourselves. Nobody will make you go back to school, no matter how often this happens in your dreams. This is why so many of us feel something familiar this time of year, like an old reflex reaching for a new backpack. We should remember that this nostalgia isn’t a bad thing — research links it to a strengthened sense of continuity between our past and present selves. Missing the new-notebook feeling is proof that we once loved beginning things.

We want to leave you today with an affirmation we find especially lovely: Every page of my life is allowed a fresh start. With that in mind, we invite you to hold your own first “day of school,” starting it just the way you want. Be kind and patient with yourself, even if the only new thing you start now is a new week.

Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team

P.S. We made a guided journal in Stoic for exactly this kind of reflection. Open the app to start writing.

Some thoughts pay no rent and yet occupy the best rooms in our heads, like a conversation we keep rewriting or a worry that never comes true and never will. That is why this week’s theme for reflective journaling is “On Rent Free.” We’ll treat it like a necessary inspection of our mental tenants.

We probably won’t be evicting anyone by force; we’ll walk the corridors and ask each occupant how they got in, and why they’ve stayed for so long. By Sunday, you may find yourself a fair and knowledgeable landlord, clearer about which thoughts deserve a longer lease, and which are just making noise at night.