It’s Not Art Unless It Has a Butt
Achieve a mid-year reset without needing an actual rock bottom to have a breakthrough.
The fireworks from the Fourth have faded into the distance, though I can still hear a spare shell or two during my evening patio sits. You’re six months into 2026, either wondering what happened — has time always moved this fast? — or secretly wishing for a reset. Your Q1 and Q2 Targets vs. Actuals reports are ready for your quarterly EOS meetings that you’ve hopefully held by now.
You might even be calling any progress a win because you’re tired of not winning. Worst of all, maybe some of the anticipated friction is stronger than you thought, or reality is creeping in to remind you of the effort the rest of the year will require.
You want a do-over, and the good news is that you don’t have to earn one. You can simply take one.
You Don’t Need a Rock Bottom to Reset
Somewhere on the internet, the meme below was born.
It’s an unconfirmed photo of a boulder that looks unmistakably like a human backside, captioned “Well it’s official…I’ve finally found Rock Bottom.”
If you’re in on the internet’s modern art joke scene, you’ll instantly recognize the piece of art that this is. (Because it’s not art unless it has a butt!) Ridiculous, yes. Also the whole point of this post.
Intentionally create a mid-year reset (rock bottom moment) and make the rest of your year art-worthy.
You don’t need an actual rock bottom to get the clarity that a rock bottom experience gives you. In the words of Novus Global coach Janet Breitenbach, “Coaching can provide rock bottom experiences without actually hitting rock bottom.” Transformation happens when the cost of the pain of change becomes less than the cost of staying the same. You don’t have to crash entirely to disrupt the cost balance in favor of transformation.
The Summer Slog
Summer is an odd beat in the business calendar. School has a predictable rhythm: fall ramps everyone up into a routine; the holidays hand you a built-in reset based on the new year; then spring wraps up the routine before summer arrives and launches you into graduations, weddings, vacations, picnics, lake days, and sunburns. It’s hard to find a consistent summer ritual in the middle of everything else.
Turns out that’s not just a vibe. Researchers tracking attention and working memory across the calendar year found that both dip through the summer months and peak in the fall (Perspectives on Psychological Science). If you’re technically hitting your numbers but feel like you’re dragging a boat anchor to get there, it could be your brain running on its seasonal setting. Which means the friction you predicted back in January and are now feeling in July isn’t proof that your strategic plan has failed. It might just mean that you’re a human being in the middle of summer.
I see this same pattern with almost every leader I work with this time of year. People can be so convinced they’ve lost their edge when it’s really just the normal seasonal focus dip conflicting with the strategy they started in January. It’s a different season now with different needs and constraints, and possibly even new goals. And before the shame settles in that you started the wrong strategy, remind yourself that you did the best with what you knew in January…and know you know more.
The Summer Reset and Reflection
Behavioral researchers Katy Milkman, Hengchen Dai, and Jason Riis studied something they call the “fresh start effect” (Wharton): people commit to goals with noticeably more energy right after a landmark moment, and that moment doesn’t have to be January 1st. Any date that feels like a clean line between a “before” and an “after” works. You can pick your own.
The crazy, hectic summer can be one of those moments for you too. It’s far enough from January that you likely have better insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the strategy in play. And it’s early enough that you still have a runway to make significant strategic improvements with time to see results before December. You are, right now, in one of the most underused reset moments on the entire calendar.
At the halfway point, are you happy with your progress?
Are you happy with how you showed up to get it?
Where’d you get in your own way most often this year?
If nothing changes between today and New Year’s Eve, will you be proud of how you spent the back half of 2026, or just relieved it’s finally over?
Maybe you’re hitting your targets and running on fumes to do it. Maybe the resistance you predicted has become the justification for refactored goals. Either way, you don’t have to grit your teeth through six more months of pain and frustration. Doubling down may feel like commitment, but it’s a stronger commitment to avoiding the pain of change than it is a commitment to your goals. In fact, a strong commitment to your goals shows up in your willingness to reinvent, your capacity for change, and your belief in what could be possible.
Reinventing your approach here at the midpoint isn’t giving up on the strategy. It could be the single most strategic change you can make right now.
Don’t wait for a fresh start moment to be thrust on you. Create your own.
Meta performance coaching exists to hold space for exactly this moment: pushing leaders and teams beyond high performance and into the transformation that doesn’t require an actual rock bottom, boulder-shaped or otherwise. Wanting more out of the remainder of the year is reason enough.
If you’re ready to make the second half of 2026 count for more than the first, I’d love to have that conversation with you.
Let’s talk about what your reset could be →
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For Further Reading
Hohm, I., Wormley, A. S., Schaller, M., & Varnum, M. E. W. (2023). Homo Temporus: Seasonal Cycles as a Fundamental Source of Variation in Human Psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 19(1), 151–172.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10790523/Knowledge at Wharton. (2014, January 6). Need a Fresh Start? Here’s How to Begin. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/need-fresh-start-heres-begin/
Aaron Ott is an executive coach who helps leaders promoted for expertise become the leader the role actually requires. He spent 19 years leading IT teams in the non-profit and for-profit spaces. His coaching practice is built on one belief: you’re capable of so much more than you could ever dream. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his wife, Sarah, who is a non-profit operations leader, author, and writing coach. This article is 100% human created. AI-created content variants may help publicize this piece.