The September 10 Energy Reset: Clearing Mental Clutter, Reclaiming Your Routines, and Starting Again!
There are certain dates on the calendar that seem to hold more weight than others.
Sometimes it is because of a season changing. Sometimes because of an anniversary, a birthday, or a personal memory. And sometimes a date arrives that seems to invite us to stop, reflect and pay attention to where we are in our lives.
For me, September 10 is one of those dates, not only does fall around the time of the New Moon, but a phase also often associated symbolically with new beginnings, reflection, intention and starting again. But September 10 was my father’s birthday.
My father has now passed away, but his birthday remains a date I will always remember. And for anyone who has lost someone they love knows, certain dates never quite become ordinary again nor is it easily forgotten because at least for me, my father’s presence will always be with me.
So, this year, September 10 feels like an especially meaningful opportunity for me to think about reflection, memory, gratitude, the passage of time—and what it means to consciously reset the way we are living.
However, for some it might go back to childhood and the beginning of a new school year. Maybe it is the subtle change in the weather, the return to routines after summer, or the realization that we are entering the final stretch of the year.
But September 10, 2026 gives us another interesting marker: a New Moon.
For those of us on the U.S. East Coast, the New Moon occurs late on September 10 at approximately 11:27 p.m. EDT.
Astronomical calendars using other time zones may list the New Moon as September 11, which explains why you may see both dates referenced.
Now, before we go charging off into “the moon is changing your energy” territory, I want to make an important distinction.
There is no solid scientific evidence that a New Moon magically resets your brain, wipes away negative thoughts, or transforms your life. Research examining lunar cycles and human sleep and behavior has produced mixed findings. Some smaller studies have suggested associations between moon phases and sleep, while very large data sets have found no meaningful lunar effect at all.
So, this is not about handing your personal power over to the moon. It is about something much more practical.
Using a natural transition point as a deliberate opportunity to stop, evaluate, clear out what is no longer working, and reset.
And that is something I can absolutely get behind.
At Coach Jeanette, the idea of resetting your mental energy is not something we reserve for a New Moon, January 1st, your birthday, Monday morning, or the mythical day when life finally becomes less busy.
Mental resets need to happen throughout the year. Because life accumulates clutter, all year long. And no, not just the stuff sitting in your closet.
We accumulate unfinished conversations. Commitments we no longer want (or maybe event wanted). Habits we have outgrown. Expectations that no longer belong to us. Worries we keep rehearsing. Routines we follow simply because we have always followed them.
However, Eventually, all of that starts taking up mental space.
September 10 gives us a good excuse to clean house.
What Exactly Are We Resetting?
When people hear “energy reset,” they often imagine meditation, candles, crystals, journaling or some elaborate spiritual ritual.
There is nothing wrong with any of those things if they work for you. But mental energy is also very practical.
Think about how you feel after spending an entire day jumping between emails, messages, errands, obligations, appointments, family needs and your own internal commentary.
You may have done very little physically, yet by evening, you are exhausted.
That is mental energy, every decision takes some of it. Every unfinished task occupies some of it. Every argument you replay consumes some of it.
Every time you tell yourself:
I should have done more.
I need to get myself together.
Why haven't I finished that yet?
I can't believe I said that.
What if this goes wrong?
…you are using mental bandwidth.
A reset therefore begins by asking a surprisingly simple question:
What am I carrying mentally that I no longer need to carry?
That question alone can reveal quite a lot.
Start With Your Daily Habits
When people decide to change their lives, they usually aim far too high.
They decide they are going to exercise six days a week, meditate every morning, stop eating sugar, get eight hours of sleep, journal, declutter their entire house, drink two liters of water and finally become the person who answers every email immediately.
By Wednesday, the revolution is over!
Real change usually happens at a much smaller level.
It happens through ordinary daily habits repeated consistently.
So rather than asking:
“How do I reinvent my entire life?”
Try asking:
“Which three daily habits would make my life feel noticeably better?”
Your answer may not be dramatic.
Perhaps it is:
Drink water before coffee.
Walk for twenty minutes.
Put your phone away thirty minutes before bed. [This one is my Achillies heal]
Spend ten minutes planning tomorrow.
Stretch when you wake up.
Sit quietly for five minutes.
Prepare lunch instead of grabbing whatever is available.
Call someone you care about.
Write down three priorities instead of carrying fifteen around in your head.
These actions look almost insignificant. They aren't.
Your life is largely made up of things you repeatedly do.
Which means that if you want to change the direction of your life, one of the best places to begin is with the routines that make up an ordinary Tuesday.
Audit the Routines That Are Running Your Life
We all have routines.
The problem is that many of them were never consciously chosen.
You wake up.
Reach for your phone.
Check messages.
Check the news.
Check social media.
Check email.
And before your feet have touched the floor, forty people, three news organizations and an algorithm have been given access to your brain.
That is a routine.
Maybe not a particularly helpful one, but it is still a routine.
September 10 can become a Routine Audit Day.
Look at how your day actually operates, not the ideal version, the real one.
Ask yourself:
What happens during my first hour awake?
What normally happens during my last hour before bed?
When during the day does my energy drop?
Which habits make me feel better afterward?
Which habits consistently make me feel worse?
Where am I wasting time without receiving much enjoyment in return?
And perhaps most importantly:
What am I doing simply because I have always done it?
That final question can be uncomfortable - Good - Sometimes discomfort tells us we have finally reached something worth examining.
Clear the Mental Junk Drawer
Most homes have one.
The junk drawer.
Batteries.
Old keys.
Takeout menus.
Tape.
Pens that may or may not work.
A mysterious charger belonging to a device you haven't seen or owned since 2017. Our minds develop junk drawers too.
Except instead of batteries and chargers, we store:
old resentments,
unfinished decisions,
comparison,
guilt,
self-criticism,
worry,
regret,
obligations ........
and twenty-seven things we keep telling ourselves we “really need to get around to.”
Mental clutter becomes tiring because the brain keeps treating unresolved matters as active business.
This September reset is an opportunity to start closing some of those mental tabs.
Take a sheet of paper and write:
What is currently taking up space in my head?
Do not edit yourself.
Write everything.
The appointment you need to schedule.
The friend you need to call.
The room you want to organize.
The business decision you keep avoiding.
The conversation you know you need to have.
The project you may need to abandon.
The boundary you need to create.
The thing you are still angry about.
Get it out of your head and onto paper.
Then separate the list into three categories:
Do it.
Schedule it.
Release it.
That third category is often the most powerful, not everything requires completion, some things require permission to be finished.
Stop Confusing Busyness With Progress
One of the things I focus on in coaching is helping people recognize where their energy is actually going.
Because being busy can create a wonderful illusion of productivity. You can spend an entire day responding, organizing, preparing, researching and fixing small things without moving one inch toward something that genuinely matters.
That is particularly easy to do in midlife.
We have responsibilities.
Families.
Businesses.
Careers.
Homes.
Health concerns.
Friendships.
Financial decisions.
And plenty of people who would happily volunteer our time for us.
So a reset also means asking:
What deserves my energy now?
Not ten years ago.
Not when your children were younger.
Not when you started your career.
Not when you first got married.
Now.
There is a difference between abandoning responsibility and recognizing that your priorities have changed. Growth requires occasionally revisiting the agreement you made with your old life.
Create a Morning That Protects Your Mind
You do not need a two-hour morning routine worthy of Instagram.
You need one that actually works.
The objective is simple:
Try to enter your day intentionally rather than reactively.
That might mean creating a fifteen-minute buffer before the world gets access to you.
For example:
Wake up.
Drink water.
Stretch or breathe for two minutes.
Sit quietly.
Choose the three things that matter most today.
Then open the phone.
Notice the order.
You decide what matters before other people's priorities arrive.
That small distinction can dramatically change how your day feels.
Create an Evening Reset Too
Mental clearing is not only something we should do when overwhelmed.
We can build it into everyday life.
Before bed, try a short mental checkout.
Ask yourself:
What went well today?
What am I carrying into tomorrow?
What can I leave here?
Write tomorrow's priorities down.
Your brain does not need to spend the night trying to remember them.
Then ask yourself:
Is there anything I need to forgive myself for today?
Maybe you didn't finish everything.
Maybe you ate badly.
Maybe you procrastinated.
Maybe you were impatient.
A reset does not require pretending these things did not happen.
It simply means refusing to turn one imperfect day into a personal identity.
Tomorrow is allowed to be different.
Where PQ Work Can Help
This is also where some of the Positive Intelligence (PQ) work I use in coaching can be helpful.
PQ work focuses heavily on recognizing the mental patterns—often referred to as Saboteurs—that influence how we respond to challenges, stress and ourselves.
You may recognize some familiar voices.
The Judge.
The Controller.
The Pleaser.
The Stickler.
The Avoider.
The Hyper-Achiever.
Different people develop different patterns. What matters is learning to notice the pattern without automatically obeying it.
For example:
A thought appears:
“You're behind. Everybody else is doing better than you.”
Instead of immediately believing it, you begin to recognize:
There is that thought pattern again.
That tiny space between having a thought and believing a thought matters enormously.
PQ practices can also include short sensory exercises designed to bring attention back into the present moment—what Positive Intelligence calls PQ reps. Nothing mystical. You are interrupting automatic mental chatter and deliberately directing attention elsewhere.
And this is one reason mental fitness is a significant part of the work we do here at Coach Jeanette.
Not because September 10 has special powers but because your mind influences your choices on September 10, January 16, March 3 and every random Wednesday in between.
Reset Your Relationship With “Should”
One particularly expensive word in adulthood is:
Should.
I should be further ahead.
I should have more money saved.
I should weigh less.
I should be more organized.
I should have figured this out by now.
I should be happier.
I should want what everyone else wants.
That is a lot of mental energy being burned comparing reality with an imaginary rulebook.
During this reset, catch your “shoulds.”
Then examine them.
Ask:
Who decided that?
You may discover that some of your strongest expectations were inherited from parents, culture, colleagues, friends, social media or an earlier version of yourself.
That doesn't automatically make them wrong.
But it does mean they deserve inspection.
You are allowed to reconsider.
Remove One Thing Before Adding Another
Here is where most self-improvement plans get this completely backwards.
We keep adding.
New habit.
New goal.
New app.
New planner.
New commitment.
New system.
Eventually personal development becomes another exhausting job.
Try something different this September.
Before asking:
“What should I start doing?”
Ask:
“What can I stop doing?”
Maybe stop checking work email after dinner.
Stop automatically saying yes.
Stop keeping clothes that haven't fit in seven years.
Stop following social media accounts that make you feel inadequate.
Stop repeatedly explaining yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.
Stop committing to activities you privately dread.
Sometimes the greatest increase in energy comes from subtraction.
Choose Your Energy Priorities for the Rest of 2026
We are moving toward the final quarter of the year.
That makes September an excellent time to ask:
How do I want to feel going into 2027?
Notice that I said feel, not only achieve.
Goals matter.
But achievement without well-being is a pretty lousy bargain.
Perhaps you want to feel:
Calmer.
Stronger.
Healthier.
More financially organized.
More connected.
More confident.
More creative.
Less rushed.
More present.
Then work backwards.
If you want to feel stronger, what needs to happen weekly?
If you want to feel calmer, what needs to disappear?
If you want deeper friendships, who needs to hear from you?
If you want financial confidence, what number have you been avoiding looking at?
If you want more adventure, what exactly are you waiting for?
A reset becomes useful only when reflection turns into behavior.
Otherwise it is just a nice journal entry.
Your September 10 Reset Ritual
Keep this simple.
Set aside thirty to sixty minutes sometime around September 10.
No complicated ceremony required.
Take your journal, notebook or a few sheets of paper somewhere quiet.
Then answer these seven questions:
- What is draining my energy right now?
- What am I continuing out of habit rather than intention?
- What conversation, task or decision needs to be completed?
- What do I need to stop carrying mentally?
- Which three daily habits would make the biggest difference to my well-being?
- What deserves more of my time between now and December 31?
- What am I willing to release?
Then choose ONE action you will take within 24 hours.
That last part matters.
Insight feels productive.
Action creates change.
The Moon Is the Marker. You Are the Reset.
There is something beautiful about using the rhythm of nature as a reminder to check in with ourselves.
September 10, 2026 brings a New Moon, traditionally associated in many cultures and modern wellness practices with beginnings and renewal.
You can enjoy that symbolism without pretending the universe is going to reorganize your calendar for you.
The moon can mark the moment.
You still have to do the work.
You decide which habits continue.
You decide which boundaries are needed.
You decide which thoughts deserve your attention.
You decide whether the next chapter looks exactly like the last one.
And you do not have to wait for another lunar cycle to reset again.
That is one of the central ideas behind the work we do at Coach Jeanette.
Mental fitness is not a once-a-year event.
Neither is personal growth.
We continually notice.
Adjust.
Clear.
Choose.
Begin again.
Sometimes because life demands it.
Sometimes because we finally recognize something isn't working.
And sometimes simply because a date on the calendar reminds us to look up, look inward and ask:
Is the way I am living still supporting the person I am becoming?
This September 10, give yourself some time to answer that question.
Then clear what needs clearing.
Keep what matters.
Change what doesn't.
And move forward with a little less mental baggage.
That is an energy reset worth having!
If you would like to start your September Energy Reset, click the link and sign up: https://coachjeanette.com/page/the-september-energy-reset
Thank you for reading.
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