Habits & Rituals
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As you embark on a New Year and think about the "new you" that you want to be, remember that goals aren't about changing who you are; goals are about finding who you are and that process begins on day one. When you set your eyes on a target, and start making a plan for how to reach it, you should be thinking about two things: habits and rituals.
A habit is what you do; a ritual is how you do it.
Think about the moment you get out of bed in the morning. What do you do? Where do you go? Anything that happens automatically, is a habit. Whether it be positive (drink a glass of water) or potentially negative (down a hot sugary latte), if it's something that has been built into your unconscious actions then it is a habit whether you like it or not. It's what you do. A ritual, on the other hand, is more involved.
A habit is passive; a ritual is active.
Last year in January I ran a 5K every day. Okay, so it was more like walk 5k every day, but by the time I got to the end of January it had become a habit that I stuck with for most of the year. The reason it got to that point, was because I started with a ritual. Every night I would lay out my clothes so they were ready for the next morning and I would repeat to myself why the goal was important. I made an active decision that had a deeper meaning. Rituals will vary greatly in form, but they will always be spiritual in nature. We were not meant to passively walk through life and so when we engage with rituals we reach into a more purposeful existence.
A habit is mechanical, a ritual is meaningful.
When you pull clothes out of the dryer and fold them, you have a habit of folding laundry. If you pull clothes out of the dryer and think about how grateful you are to have clothes, you have a ritual of folding laundry. The folding is the habit, it's passive, it's what you're doing. The being grateful is the ritual, it's active, it's how you're doing it. If you currently don't fold your laundry but wanted to start, the ritual of being grateful may be the thing you need to make it a habit.
Meaningful, active rituals lead to passive, mechanical habits.
Habits are formed when we make an active decision, tie it to a deeper, meaningful purpose, and repeat it over a period of time. Eventually, the ritual that was so conscious at the beginning, turns into a passive habit that is just part of us. This means the person we become isn't formed on the last day, it's formed on the first day when we choose our rituals. Over time, the key is to grow the passive, mechanical habits without forgetting the meaning behind them. When we do that, we don't just reach our goals but we find a deeper version of ourselves that we didn't know was there.
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