We All Perform Rituals, but Most Aren’t Intentional and Some Are Sabotaging You
I used to be averse to the concept of rituals. The rebel in me felt that intentionally doing the same thing on a particular cadence would make me rigid and boring. Also, I was put off by the word “ritual” itself since it felt too new age or religious for me.
Then I realized I was already doing rituals, they just weren’t intentional and they were often creating negative utility in my life.
Checking work emails in bed on your phone right after waking up is a ritual.
Frantically catching up on Slack messages the minute before your staff meeting starts is a ritual.
Doom scrolling in the car right before seeing your family for the first time in ten hours is a ritual.
Ruminating in bed about what didn’t go well during the day is a ritual.
Once I acknowledged that I was already doing rituals, my aversion to the concept of rituals or the word itself no longer held me back.
So then the question becomes, what are the rituals I’d like to create to replace negative rituals?
Rituals work well when either:
Placed at existing transition points (such as waking up) or
To create transition points (such as when you decide to stop working for the day)
Rituals create the mental state for what you’re doing next.
One of the most important transition points for me is the beginning of a coaching session. I generally see my clients every two weeks and it’s important that we maximize the value of that time. It’s key for me to be extremely focused and present in those sessions. When I first started coaching, I used to check various things online (such as email or the news) in the minutes leading up to a coaching session.
Though I was still able to be present with my clients with the current ritual, I knew this pivotal transition point could be upleveled. The ritual I created was partially inspired by a coach named Steve Hardison who only coaches in person at his home office. To prepare for each client’s arrival, Steve rakes the carpet in the room. I’m sure this makes the room look better for clients, but the biggest benefit is that Steve is taking intentional time to get present and focused on the next client who would be arriving, which is a much bigger benefit to the client than a well groomed carpet.
I do most of my coaching over video calls.
The ritual I created that I now do before every coaching session is to:
🖥 Close all browser windows and applications that are unrelated to my client
🗄️ Put my phone in a drawer behind me so I can’t see even it if I tried
🕯️ Light a candle
When my coaching session ends, I blow out the candle before moving on to anything else. Even if I have back-to-back coaching sessions, I will blow out the candle and re-light it.
This ritual has helped me become more present faster and helps honor each client I am working with.
It can also be helpful not only to notice the negative rituals you have, but the positive ones (whether intentional or not) as well. Maybe you make coffee or tea in the morning and that puts you in a good mood (rituals don’t have to be using a fancy espresso maker, coffee pods count too!). Maybe you have a ritual for putting your child(ren) to bed like tucking them in or reading them a bedtime story. Often seeing the positive rituals you’ve created for others such as your kids, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren can help reinforce the power of rituals and give ideas for rituals for yourself. If you doom scroll before bed, you can ask yourself “would it be better to read my kids news about war and famine before bed or do something calming like reading them a story?” Then apply the ethos of that answer to what you do for yourself.
A lot of the things we do in negative rituals are useful things to do. Checking emails or thinking about how to best convey a key point at an important meeting the next day are clearly important things to do. It’s not that you shouldn’t do some of the things you do during your negative rituals, it’s about changing when you do them. You’d probably like your child to study for a final exam or practice lines in a school play, just probably not when they are in bed trying to sleep.
One of the transition points that everyone has is waking up in the morning. If you typically check your phone first thing in the morning, it can be useful to instead read a notecard that has a sentence describing the mindset you want to have that day or the inspiring mission for what you are currently creating. Or maybe do that very specific stretch your doctor recommended to alleviate pain.
You can also use a ritual to create a clear transition point when before there was none. When I was working at Airbnb, I noticed that I didn’t have a clear delineation of when work ended at night. I would get home, do some focused work, then as I moved on to non-work activities I’d arbitrarily tune back into my work computer all night. This meant I was always at least kinda in work mode. It wasn’t a productive work mode and it meant less time for me to recharge. I created a transition point (which at the time I didn’t know was a ritual 😉) of turning off and closing my laptop and logging out of Slack on my phone. This ritual creates more steps to break back into work mode and provides a clear, kinesthetic delineation (I still can feel the feeling of pushing the off button on my laptop and closing it for the night). My team knew they could call me if they needed me and if there was an outage I’d be automatically notified by a phone call and text message from PagerDuty.
What’s one negative ritual you’d like to replace? And what would you like to replace it with?