A ritual is an activity that eases a person into a focused mindset.  In Zen monasteries, even activities like bathing and eating are ritualized and given the complete attention of practitioners. This encourages a mindful approach to tasks. Rituals can be as simple as taking a walk at a particular time of day, baking bread, or cleaning your space.

Rituals can enrich your life

Routine implies a rigid sense of structure, with time management and prioritized productivity. A ritual might resemble an everyday routine. But instead of limiting yourself to a defined ideal, you focus on the specifics of the process. For example, rituals can be an artistic process, a meditation, a communal celebration, or a simple act of observation.

Ritual vs routine

A ritual may seem overly simplistic or devoid of meaning to outsiders. Artists are inseparable from their creative output. For example, writer Ingrid Rojas Contreras always wears a distinct “muted blue ultramarine” shaded garment when working, as picturing the colour helps her concentrate and enter “a somnambulistic trance.” Likewise, the novelist Toni Morrison would wake at 5 am, make coffee, and watch the sunrise.

Your ritual might seem silly or odd to others

Whether it's a daily or celebratory ritual, experimenting can help to find a ritual that feels good to you. The intent is key. Ensure to have some context for the ritual or an idea of why you're doing it. What is important is the mindset that you bring to the practice.

Experiment and have fun with rituals

What’s the difference between a ritual and a routine? Rituals can help you approach basic tasks with more mindfulness.

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Why we need rituals, not routines

The main difference between habits and routines is how much aware and intentional you are. A habit usually manifests itself as an automatic urge to do something, often triggered by a particular cue. The stronger the connection between the trigger and the habit, the more ingrained the habit. Both habits and routines are regular and repeated actions, but habits happen with little or no conscious thought, whereas routines require a higher degree of intention and effort.

What is the difference between habits and routines?

The difference between a routine and a ritual is the attitude behind the action. While routines can be actions that just need to be done—such as making your bed or taking a shower—rituals are viewed as more meaningful practices which have a real sense of purpose.

From routine to ritual

Applying mindfulness to daily routines is a great way to create rituals for yourself. <ul><li>Showering can become an opportunity to become mindful of your body and its connection to your mind. F</li><li><a href="http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2013/02/25/ajcn.112.045245.abstract">Research</a> shows that mindful eating can indeed improve the flavour of your food, making you feel more satisfied.</li><li>Even cleaning the house can be used as a way to become more aware of your body movements and sensations in your muscles and joints.</li></ul>

How to create rituals

In the end, it boils down to the classic habit loop. <ol><li>Cue: choose a trigger to tell your brain to start the routine you want to turn into a habit.</li><li>Routine: execute the routine, ideally starting with a small, actionable chunk. Don’t go for an overly ambitious new routine from the get go.</li><li>Reward: do something enjoyable, which will tell your brain that this particular habit loop is worth remembering for the future.</li></ol>

Turning habits into routines

As much as we wish for each day to be different, the cycle of repeating the same actions day after day is pretty common. Habits and routines are an important part of our lives. Making your bed in the morning, that first cup of coffee, grabbing a croissant on your way to work, listening to your favourite podcast on the train.And while we tend to use the words “habit” and “routine” interchangeably, they both mean two distinct things. Understanding their definitions can help you design good routines and build good habits.

Both habits and routines are repeated actions, but habits happen with little or no conscious thought, whereas routines require a higher degree of effort.

The difference between habits, routines and rituals

Our default understanding of the word ritual is misleading. Ritual is not about meticulously obeying stale old rules. Instead, Confucius taught life as a ritual, transforming everyday actions into sacred activities. Ritual governs our greetings and conversations. If you submit to ritual and practise it, then it can change your life for the better.

Ritual is not about stale traditionalism

Treat all contexts as sacred spaces with their own rhythms and patterns. For example, driving a car is not a time to check your phone. Hiking is not the time to scroll on your phone. When you start treating your contexts with the reverence they deserve and submit to their rituals, it becomes effortless to resist the pull of your phone.

Ritual is about reverence

Habits (good and bad) are effortless and cultivated through repetition. But habits are hard to change. A ritual is more like improvising music or an athletic performance. It means adjusting to different conditions. Confucian ritual is similarly flexible. It depends on the awareness of the relevant factors in a situation. For example, someone who submits to a ritual does not shake hands out of habit but because it is the proper thing to do in that context at that time.

Everything is ritual

<ul><li>Habits leave no room for asking questions. </li><li>Ritual governs all behaviour in all contexts. The right ritual in a situation is only possible when you learn to ask questions. You won't be able to live harmoniously if you do not understand why you should act in a certain way.</li></ul> Studying the classics is uniquely helpful with rituals.<ol><li>Classics contain time-tested life wisdom.</li><li>Sacred texts, folk tales and fairy tales, nursery rhymes and proverbs are woven into the fabric of our lives and the organisation of our communities.</li></ol>

Ritual differs from habit

"Fake it until you make it’ suggests that performing the right action will eventually lead to the right mindset or intentions. The underlying assumption is that the rightness of an action is separate from the character of the person doing it. How﻿ever, a ritual cannot be performed insincerely. A fake ritual is not a ritual at all, no matter how much it looks like one. For example, pretending to love another human won't work, because 'loving' means doing it for real. You may know when laughter is appropriate, but if you fake it, the ritual will fail.

You can’t fake it until you make it

For a life of harmonious ease, find the rhythm in the everyday: make your world your temple and submit to its sacred ritual

How to set yourself free with ritual | Psyche Guides

One of the most easily recognised features of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/ocd">OCD</a> is the seemingly illogical actions people initiate while suffering from the condition. However, even though these rituals may seem illogical to the casual observer, our work has demonstrated that these rituals have an intelligible underlying logic of their own. It is also important to point out that successful treatment of OCD is based on being able to identify the underlying logic and use interventions based on the exact same logic.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD)

We can distinguish obsessive compulsions based on <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/fear">fear</a> (such as hand washing enacted to prevent contamination) from those based on pleasure (such as <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/compulsive-behaviors">compulsive shopping</a>, vomiting syndrome or pathological gambling).  Many such rituals are done in a specific sequence and others can be done to feel a certain way or to achieve a specific sensation. The logic underlying these rituals is important, because if the clinician doesn’t recognise the logic supporting the compulsion, they won’t be in a position to know what kind of intervention will be necessary to treat the problems effectively.

Rituals Based On Fear Or Pleasure

Rational and preventive rituals: These rituals are specific actions that arise from the patient’s belief that doing so can prevent a certain feared situation from happening.  Reparative rituals: The performance of these ritualised actions or thoughts hold the illusion of protection for the person from something that could have happened already. Propitiatory rituals: The performance of these rituals or thoughts (seemingly magical) appear to make something positive happen, or have the illusion of helping the patient avoid something negative.

A Strategic Description of Rituals

<ul><li>Avoidance of any anxiety provoking places, people or objects. This is essentially an attempted solution which feeds the problem.</li><li>A continual search for reassurance or help from family members, friends or partners, who can eventually become entangled in the pathological mechanisms.</li></ul>

Failed Attempts at a Solution

Family members are very often involved in these dysfunctional rituals or control. Patients who suffer from OCD can become more anxious and aggressive over time towards friends and family if they refuse to cooperate and this must be managed effectively so as to avoid worsening the situation. It is very important that others participate in the treatment to increase its effectiveness. It is important that family members step aside from this pathological and vicious circle and allow for the restoration of the patient’s responsibility for their problem.

Family and Friends

Rituals in OCD may seem irrational, but they have a unique logic of their own.

The Logic of Compulsions and Ritualized Behaviors

"In helping humans perform, psychology is the software, but biology is the hardware."

"To really make the most of the final moments before you perform, reducing anxiety isn’t enough. You also want to build positive emotions, such as confidence, self-efficacy, and power."

The rush of fear and anxiety we feel before a big presentation or interview is caused by adrenaline being dumped into our system. Originally quite helpful when confronted by a dangerous animal, in modern days we are stuck with the racing heart, sweaty palms, and frozen brain of the “fight or flight” response. How we speak to ourselves in the moment can make a difference.

Leverage biology

As a leader, you can help your teams achieve better results by introducing them to pre-performance routines.<ul><li>Research shows that getting together to perform seemingly-silly ritual actions such as handclaps, foot stomps, and huddle-style “Let’s go!” before embarking on a task can improve a team’s performance.</li><li> Is there a ritual you can invent to accompany your customers’ experience? Think of Walmart greeters or the actions a good salesperson takes when they prepare your dressing room with the clothes you’ve selected. These enhance the experience, build loyalty, and boost sales.</li></ul>

Pre-performance routines

<ul><li>Try one of these: have your team, colleagues, or worker-bees journal about their past successes before attempting today’s challenge. </li><li>Frame reminders of past work on the walls. Take and share a photo of the team flush from a past success before they climb the next (metaphoric) mountain. </li></ul>In experiment after experiment psychologists documented enhanced performance when workers were exposed to reminders of positive performance like these.

Priming

Before an important event:<ul><li>Remind them why it’s important.</li><li>Tell them why you know they can do it.</li><li>Have them pause and think about what they have accomplished together.</li><li>Exhort them to go and do it.</li><li>Just don’t tell them to “calm down.” That’s not realistic and that emotion is too different from their agitation.</li><li>And while it seems helpful to describe what might go wrong and why the world will keep spinning if it does, now is not the time to introduce negative thoughts to their consciousness.</li></ul>

Tell your team what they are being asked to do

For example, one study compared the performances of people who said, “I’m so excited” vs. those who said “I’m so nervous” and those who said nothing before going on stage. The people who said they were excited, and thus reappraised anxiety to excitement, performed the best.Why does this help more than not saying anything at all? Because transitioning from anxiety to calm is very difficult, as the two emotions are very different. Transitioning from worried to excited, however, does not take much effort at all.

Deal with performance anxiety by reappraising it 

This is another essential technique in calming performance anxiety. You can center yourself by breathing deeply and concentrating on your breath while releasing all muscle tension. Imagine all the energy in your body moving into one point, the belly button. Once it’s all there, visualize releasing it. Using this technique before an important event will help you regain focus and kick anxiety to the curb.

Centering yourself

Regardless of what you choose to do before your performance, however, there is one thing that should always happen: consistency.Studies back up the effectiveness of athletes’ routines before a game, for example. Athletes are aware of this and do what they can to prepare.

Rituals can improve your performance

When it comes to performance, competition and rivalries are a great thing. Studies show that competition dramatically enhances performance.The feeling we get when we are racing against others and someone is right on our tail drives us to do better, to prove ourselves. Cyclists do better when competing rather than beating the clock, and the same goes for other sports as well. Furthermore, fighting against a rival, or someone you know, rather than a stranger, boosts your abilities even more.The motivating effects of competition help not only in sports but in the business world as well.

Competition will improve your performance

Closing the sale. Asking for a raise. Nailing the big presentation. Of the 2,000 hours you work every year, your success or failure is determined in the couple of dozen crucial hours when you need to bring your absolute best. Will you? The last few minutes before a major challenge can be terrifying. Ever wished you knew how to make sure you ace the make-or-break test, audition, or interview? We often feel the most powerless just before we’re expected to act powerful. As you’ll learn in this life-changing book, practice might make perfect, but perfection is useless if you can’t summon it when it counts. Pulling off a great speech or the pivotal at bat also requires the right kind of mental preparation. In Psyched Up, journalist Daniel McGinn dives into the latest psychological research and interviews athletes, soldiers, entertainers, and others who, despite years of practice and enviable track records, will ultimately be judged on their ability to delivera solid performance when it’s their turn to shine. For instance, he reveals... • How Jerry Seinfeld’s jacket and Stephen Colbert’s pen help them get laughs. • What General Stanley McChrystal said to Special Forces before they entered the battlefield. • Why the New England Patriots hired the DJ from the Red Sox to help them win. Among other counterintuitive insights, McGinn reveals why trying to calm your backstage jitters can be worse for your performance than channeling it into excitement; how meaningless rituals can do more to prepare you in the final moments than last-minute rehearsal; and how a prescription from your doctor could help you unleash your best skills. Whether you’re a sportsperson or a salesperson, an actor or an entrepreneur, one bad hour can throw away months of hard work. There’s so much conflicting popular advice that we often end up doing the wrong things. McGinn separates the facts from the old wives’ tales and shares new, research driven strategies for activating your talent, optimizing your emotions, and getting psyched up to take the spotlight.

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#rituals

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Why we need rituals, not routines

The difference between habits, routines and rituals

It's time to

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A PRO!

How to set yourself free with ritual | Psyche Guides

The Logic of Compulsions and Ritualized Behaviors

Psyched Up

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

#rituals

IDEAS ABOUT #rituals

Why we need rituals, not routines

The difference between habits, routines and rituals

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

How to set yourself free with ritual | Psyche Guides

The Logic of Compulsions and Ritualized Behaviors

Psyched Up

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career