7 Ways to Make Your Life Better This Fall

September has always felt a little bit like a second New Year to me.

Maybe it’s the crispness in the air. Maybe it’s the return to routines after summer. Maybe it’s the sight of school buses, football games, and pumpkin-flavored everything suddenly appearing everywhere you look. Whatever the reason, there’s something about fall that makes me want to take a good, hard look at my life and think, “Okay. What are we doing here?”

And no, I’m not talking about your business. I’m talking about you.

Because if you’re a successful woman who has spent years building a career, leading teams, raising kids, managing a household and generally making things happen, you probably don’t need yet another list of things you should accomplish.
You might need a list of things you should enjoy.
We’re remarkably good at treating January 1st like the official starting line for changing our lives. New year, new goals, new planner, new workout routine that will absolutely last this time. And by February, the planner is under a stack of papers and the workout routine has been replaced by “walking briskly through Target.”

But who says we have to wait? September is a perfectly good time for a personal reset. You don’t have to reinvent yourself. You just have to make a few intentional changes that make your actual life feel a little more like the life you want.

Here Are 7 Ways to Make Your Life Better This Fall:

1. Put something you enjoy back on your calendar.
Not something that will make you more productive. Not something that will improve your résumé. Something you actually enjoy.
Take a cooking class. Read a novel. Play tennis. Go antiquing. Pick up line dancing. Schedule lunch with your girlfriends. Whatever makes you think, “I love doing this.”
If you can find time for a business meeting, you can find time for something that makes you happy.

2. Create one completely work-free evening every week.
No checking email. No “quick” calls. No sneaking into your office after dinner because you just remembered a task you forgot to do.
Pick an evening and declare it a No Work Zone. You may discover that the world continues to spin without you answering an email at 8:47 p.m. Shocking, I know.

3. Reconnect with someone you miss.
There’s probably someone you’ve thought about more than once and said, We really need to get together. So… get together. Call them. Text them. Invite them to lunch.
We spend so much time maintaining professional relationships that we sometimes forget to maintain the relationships that make our lives feel rich and meaningful.

4. Take a real lunch break.
And by “real,” I mean step away from your desk. Your lunch break is not a character flaw.
Eat something that didn’t come from a wrapper. Sit somewhere other than your office. Go outside. Have a conversation. Take 30 minutes without simultaneously eating, answering emails, and solving a problem that could have waited.

5. Get outside and enjoy the season.
Fall practically begs us to slow down. Go for a walk and actually notice the leaves changing. Visit a pumpkin patch. Get lost in a corn maze. Go apple picking. Sit around a bonfire telling ghost stories. Buy the ridiculously overpriced cider and cinnamon sugar donuts.
You don’t have to turn every experience into a family tradition, Instagram post or productivity hack. Sometimes a beautiful fall day is just a beautiful fall day meant to be enjoyed.

6. Stop saying yes automatically.
Successful women are used to being capable. Need someone to organize it? Sure. Need someone to lead it? Sure. Need someone to fix it? Sure.
Try giving yourself a pause before answering. “Let me think about it and get back to you.” Then actually consider whether you want to do it and have the time and energy for it. That one sentence can change your life.

7. Decide what you want MORE of – not just what you want to accomplish.

We’re trained to think in terms of goals: What do I want to achieve? What do I want to build? What do I want to check off? But what if you asked a different question?… What do I want more of?…  More laughter? More adventure? More time with people I love? More travel? More quiet mornings? More creativity? More sleep? More fun?

Those answers may tell you more about the life you want than any five-year plan ever could. You’ve probably spent years learning how to be the CEO of your business, your career, or your household.

This fall, consider becoming the CEO of your life. That means deciding what deserves your time, protecting what matters, eliminating what doesn’t, and refusing to measure a successful life solely by what you accomplished. Because eventually, the goal isn’t to have a longer résumé. It’s to have a life you genuinely enjoy living. Don’t wait until January, choose a few things from the list above that you can do this fall to make your life better:

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