The word ritual often brings to mind religious practices or another mysterious setting. The word ritual brings to my mind a Catholic Priest walking down an aisle at Mass swinging a thurible emitting a fragrant smoke throughout the Church. We might think of a coven of Wicca practitioners in a dark forest performing some secret ceremony. However, I would like to call attention to a different sort of ritual. This has a religious context as well. Catholic monks often have a practice called the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours. Effectively, these are set times, which are named, that remind the monk to perform specific prayers. Similar to the Islamic faith concept of Salah. I believe there are five daily prayers offered at particular times during the day. This is the type of ritual that I am referring to. Small reminders to guide your day so that you maintain and keep your life-changing behaviors in place. When we embark on a transformation journey, we are faced with the very daunting prospect of trying to tear down our old habitual patterns and establish new ones. This is incredibly challenging, and often, throughout the day, you will find yourself mindlessly falling back into your old ways. Establishing new habits is the way to stop this from happening. Effectively, you start mindlessly doing the right things. This is hard to do. The initial effort is usually what prevents people from being successful. Forming a new habit is essential for personal growth, improving productivity, and general well-being. One technique you can consider as an aid during this difficult transition from old to new is establishing micro rituals. This is a tool to help remind you, bring your consciousness back into mindful mode, and allow you to focus on the activity that will eventually become a habit.
Watch my video on the subject here
Micro rituals are not an extensive routine that you might perform. For example, when you go to the gym, you will start to adopt a routine. A routine is usually something formed over time or a process that you learn to be more effective at achieving your desired result. A ritual is a smaller thing you do to signal that you are ready to transition to a new activity. There is an absolute psychological link between establishing small rituals and creating habits in the same area of research in stimulus/response, such as in the famous research project about Pavlov and his dog. This is the concept of classic conditioning, and the use of micro rituals allows you to tap into this instinctual behavior. By breaking our personal transformation down into easier and more manageable steps throughout the day, we can accelerate our success. Creating small rituals that signify to yourself that it is ready to start the next step is a shortcut that helps improve your adoption of new habits.
The first step in creating these rituals is to identify the habits that you want to establish or maintain. You should clearly consider what role that habit will play in helping you achieve your goals. You should not invest a lot of time in building a ritual around something that really is not benefiting your long-term vision for yourself. I recommend that you start with just one and then slowly add more as you gain confidence. Once you have identified the habit, then you can determine a small thing that you can perform to set the stage for the habitual activity. As an example, there is a habit that is absolutely critical for my well-being. This habit is the process I go through to review my day, determine how well I did and how I might improve, and then be okay with closing the day down. This has been hard for me to do sometimes, as I get caught up in the day’s stress. A micro ritual that I do is to make a cup of relaxing herbal tea using a particular mug and then go into my backyard. I turn my fireplace on and then sit in this chair with my notebook and allow myself to relax for a few moments. This ritual sets the stage for the vital activity to follow, and that is reviewing my day.
Over time, you can learn how to design an effective ritual. The good ones are rituals that help you accomplish something simultaneously. For example, I need to drink more water – so I incorporate a glass of water into my ritual. A solid micro ritual design will be something fun for you and give extra motivation. Above all, ritual will only be effective if you are consistent and committed. In my religious example above, both the Catholic and Islamic faith will also use bells, signals, chimes, or something to remind the practitioners of the beginning of a ritual. So, in your ritual design, consider creative things that you can do to remind you that it is time to perform your ritual. Now, there are obstacles all the time. You will not be at home, on vacation, or on business travel, making your normal routine much more difficult. I adopt the ‘best I can do’ standard and allow myself some slack on being exact when my condition is not conducive to being effective at performing the habit.
Despite the fact that you might stumble now and then, you should definitely keep track of your rituals and subsequent habits. I use my morning journaling process for this purpose. I keep track of how many days in a row I have successfully performed the ritual and habit pair. I will keep that up for 90 to 180 days, depending on how consistent I am being. Once the habit is ingrained in my process, tracking is less important. Adjusting or improving the rituals that help me get ready to perform a habit is fun and interesting to people you know or live with. Do not be surprised when people start adopting your micro ritual, even though they have no idea why you are doing it. You are trying to reinforce life-changing habitual behavior, so bring some fun, creativity, and gravitas to your preparatory ritual.
We all know people who are incredibly successful and seemingly unchanged by the chaos around them. These people seem like stalwarts standing completely still in the middle of a powerful storm. This is accomplished by creating a combination of ritual and habit that provides such consistency in your life that people start to notice and are in awe. For you, it will be just a mindless process you engage in because you have memorized the behavior and carved it into your soul by repetition. I have learned that habits are the key to being the person I want to be, and micro rituals are the key to making that happen. Instead of battling with stops and starts of your desired behaviors, consider establishing micro rituals instead. In my opinion, this is how you become that disciplined person that you are always impressed by.
