rediscovering ritual: bringing magic to everyday life
I take a deep breath, trying to capture the sensation of being in this moment.
Voices rise in a familiar melody around me as my eyes catch a vibrant patch of blue sky overhead. Springtime trees embrace us in a backyard hug, this small circle of people gathered together to celebrate freedom.
It’s Passover 2021 and this is a real live Seder. We’re not on Zoom - we’re flesh and bone, breath and blankets, and we’re singing songs I’ve sung every year since childhood.
Time slows down.
When I was a child, I experienced the Passover Seder as an insufferable occasion that seemed to have been designed by boring grown ups just to torture us kids with a never ending cascade of esoteric prayers about Egypt and enslavement and the parting of the Red Sea. Every year my stomach growled in protest under the table and my eyes stared lifelessly at a book that might as well have been written in Swahili, and all I could think about was how desperate I was to eat even a mere morsel of matzah (also known as cardboard).
In this moment, though, the old rituals come to life in new, inspiring ways. We read quotes and tell stories about enslavement and freedom that pulse with relevance, sprinkling in traditional songs and prayers throughout the evening, blending old and new in ways that wake me up and make me think. In this moment, not only do I feel connected with others more deeply than I’ve felt since before the pandemic, I understand the meaning of this ancient tradition in a more dynamic way. Familiarity and freshness wash over me as the sky grows dark in this canopy of community and it feels like magic. A fire crackles inside the circle and I feel the warmth of all things.
I am rediscovering ritual.
“By composting old rituals to meet our real-world needs, we can regrow deeper relationships and speak to our hunger for meaning and depth.” - Casper ter Kuile, The Power of Ritual
Over the years, I’ve not only become more attuned to and acceptant of my own hunger for meaning and depth, but aware of the surprising role that ritual plays in nourishing that hunger.
I think of ritual as an action or practice that is performed with intentionality and consistency to invite more connection, presence and aliveness. I believe that by rediscovering this historically religious concept in a more contemporary, inclusive, and accessible context, we can create more magic in our everyday lives.
Rediscovering ritual is not just about composting old rituals or religious traditions like Passover; it’s an invitation to identify things you’re already doing that could actually be considered rituals, and to create brand new ones based on your current needs and desires.
Inspired by years of dedicated personal exploration, extensive work with groups and organizations, and reading compelling books on the subject, such as The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile, 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and many more, I’ve come to believe that rediscovering ritual is one of the most powerful tools we have to live more meaningful, harmonious and intriguing lives.
Let’s take a look at why ritual is so powerful, then explore some practical ways we can rediscover ritual in our everyday lives.
Three Reasons Ritual Matters
1. Ritual connects us to each other and the moment.
My fascination with ritual started about 6 years ago with Shabbat, another ancient Jewish tradition that felt like a burden as a child and became meaningful in adulthood. As a busy worker bee, I was always thrilled to be invited to end the week at a Shabbat dinner hosted by one gracious soul or another on a Friday night, and decided I wanted to pay it forward and create that experience for others. I’ve hosted countless Shabbat dinners in the years since, bringing hundreds, if not thousands, of people from different ages, backgrounds and faith orientations together in community to unplug from work mode and relax into the weekend with purpose and intention. I’ve observed the way people unwind and transform over candlelight and conversation after a long week, wrapped in a cozy cloak of ritual that’s rooted in tradition but tailored to suit the crowd and the moment.
In a professional context, I’ve seen people shed their work personas in bursts of joy, connection and presence through rituals as simple as everyone clapping at the same time to close a meeting, to more ornate and meaningful rituals like annual award ceremonies that honor individual community members.
When you consider this point in your own life, what are some things you currently do - or could do - with your team and/or family to generate more presence and connection?
2. Ritual grounds us in the midst of stress, chaos and confusion.
Beyond the garden-variety stress that comes with being a human in the world (especially during these turbulent times), 18% of Americans suffer from anxiety. The American solution for anxiety is prescription drugs. I spent 8 years of my life on anti-anxiety medication, so I know all about that. The drugs did help, but in the 7 years since I stopped taking them, I’ve come to understand that, for me, medication was a band-aid. The true healing tonic has been a series of wellness rituals I’ve honed and refined over many years and can always depend on to cope with moments of anxiety.
The tools in my wellness ritual toolkit include breathwork, meditation, exercise, therapy and journaling. These tools are rituals because I invoke them with consistency and intention. In fact, I practice some of them every day as a preventive measure, and it really works.
Are there things you sometimes do - and could do more of - with intention and consistency to ground and comfort you?
3. Ritual brings magic to the mundane.
Rituals also have the power to spice things up. COVID has taught us many things, including the fact that Groundhog Day was not just a movie featuring Bill Murray - it was (and basically still is) our actual lives. One thing that’s kept me sane in my personal version of Groundhog Day is ritual. While rituals are repeatable, they are different from habits in that they are infused with a kind of intentionality and, dare I say, spirituality, that makes them feel like bursts of color in a black and white world. To continue with the movie metaphor, think The Wizard of Oz.
Simple daily actions like serving myself water in a beautiful glass carafe on a wooden tray before I start a Zoom meeting, or making eye contact with my dog in that anticipatory moment before I call her over to eat her food, or cleaning the dishes while listening to music before bed so my kitchen will be clean and welcoming in the morning - these are rituals I’ve created for myself that make my everyday life feel full of subtle magic. It’s become a kind of game, creating and identifying new and existing rituals to color my world in rich tones and textures invisible to the naked eye.
What tokens, artifacts and actions do you currently take - or could you take - in your everyday life to infuse your life with a little more magic?
Inviting Ritual Into Everyday Life
Now that we’ve considered why ritual is important, let’s explore some real-life examples of ritual in three different contexts: morning rituals to start your day, pre-game rituals to prepare yourself before doing anything that matters, and group rituals to enrich collective experiences.
Morning Rituals
The way we start our days has a massive ripple effect on our lives and the lives of others. If, for example, you had a frenetic morning and roll right into a meeting stressed and frazzled, that energy will leak into the meeting and inhibit your ability to listen and contribute. If, on the other hand, you show up to a meeting calm, open and curious, or you take a moment to recenter between the frenetic morning and the meeting ahead, anything is possible. So how do we create more mental spaciousness?
One of the most powerful things I ever did was invest ($11.97) in an alarm clock. I noticed that when my phone was plugged in by my bed and used as an alarm clock, the first thing I did each morning was mindlessly check my phone. Random text messages and alarming news alerts set the tone for my day. That’s a lot of power to give away! One day, I decided I wanted to set my own tone each morning before allowing the noise of the outside world to influence my mood and thoughts, and it changed the whole game for me. Check out this post by James Clear, author of a life-changing book called Atomic Habits, if you want to learn more about environment design.
With the freedom to start the day my way, I replaced my phone - and all the mishegas that came with it - with a morning practice I call the 3 M’s: movement, meditation and morning pages.
My morning practice looks like this: I turn off the alarm clock (usually after a little snooze action), heat up the kettle while I let the dog out, do a few minutes of stretching, meditate for 5-15 minutes, depending on how much time I have, and sit down in my favorite chair to write my morning pages while I drink hot water with lemon. Sometimes I play music and sometimes I prefer silence. Then I take a look at my planner and I’m off to the races.
Not everyone has the conditions to accommodate an elaborate morning practice like mine, but if you’re sitting there thinking, “I don’t have time for morning rituals,” I call bullshit! Consider this: waking up and stretching your arms overhead, rolling your wrists and ankles a few times, then leaning over to kiss your partner on the cheek - that takes 15 seconds and it’s definitely a ritual if you decide it is and treat it like one. You could even create a ritual around tending to a crying child, like taking one deep breath before tending to them.
Morning rituals must evolve with your evolution in order to maintain effectiveness. This can be a fun and exciting process if approached with curiosity. For example, when I got my puppy, Frida, I kissed my 3 M’s goodbye for a few months. My mornings became, simply put, puppy poop. As Frida and I have grown accustomed to one another, I’ve found ways to incorporate her presence into my morning rituals, which has enriched my entire morning practice.
Close your eyes. Scan through your morning. How do you begin each day? What ritual(s) do you currently do or could you do to center yourself or “arrive” in your day?
Pre-Game Rituals
Rituals are not just reserved for mornings and special occasions. They can serve as a powerful moment of pause before pretty much any important occasion as a way to summon your best self.
The “moment just before” is a massive opportunity to pause, choose how you want to show up in a particular situation, and shift your state of being to meet that choice. For example, if you want to be more patient in a team meeting, you might move verrrrry slowwwwly for a few minutes before the meeting begins. If you’re more quiet by nature and want to pump up your energy to host an event, you might have a private dance party to your favorite song before you start welcoming your guests, or just wave your arms overhead and shake your body for 15 seconds. If you’re looking for that special someone, dating and relationship coach Logan Ury suggests that you can shift your mindset with a pre-date ritual like listening to comedy before going on a first date. The contexts and options for pre-game rituals are endless!
As a facilitator, one of my all-time favorite pre-game rituals is simply taking 3 deep breaths before leading literally anything. I’ll do this by myself or, if I’m working with a team, I’ll invite everyone to do it together. During those 3 slow, steady breaths, I calm down my nervous system, take a moment to access my confidence, and cultivate the kind of energy I want to lead with. Pre-game rituals can also include physical artifacts. My colleague Adam, known for his awesome hat collection, among many other awesome things, likes to get in the zone by putting on his hat of choice before he facilitates.
What is one “game” that’s coming up for you, and one small ritual you can experiment with to get into it?
Group Rituals
Here’s where the power of ritual to create connection really shines. Whether you’re leading a board meeting, hosting a dinner party, organizing a family gathering, or guiding a group in any way, ritual can generate wonderful bonding opportunities and create a sense of belonging.
I like to use group rituals as “bookends” for pretty much any event. Beginning and ending gatherings with ritual generates an atmosphere of participatory “in it together-ness.”
For example, I always begin work-related gatherings with personal check-ins. I like switching up the activity to meet the objective of the gathering (often with inspiration from Jenny Sauer-Klein’s Play on Purpose library of interactive games), and it has become a ritual to start all my gatherings with personal sharing to spark connection right away.
As a gathering gets going, we can use ritual to help usher people into the world of our event by creating what Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, calls a “passageway,” a physical or metaphorical experience to help them shift their mindset and become more present. For example, I once designed and hosted a training in a house with a lovely porch and greeted people at the door by inviting them to rinse their hands with a pitcher of water before entering the house as a way to “rinse off” the outside world and step into a new one.
Group rituals can also be activities that recur over time. One of the companies I work with has an annual offsite ritual called “Hero Stories,” where each employee is assigned to tell a story celebrating the virtues of another employee. People look forward to this meaningful tradition all year long and leave the retreat saying it was the #1 highlight.
A closing ritual I’ve enjoyed facilitating in this virtual landscape is to invite everyone to scroll through the Zoom pages and take an extended moment to smile at the faces behind the boxes. I love seeing the genuine smiles and eye-sparkles as people pause to truly “see” each other before they sign off.
Now, as we close this exploration of ritual, you might pause and ask yourself...
What is your relationship to ritual? What do you want it to be?