Rituals build resilience
If you could design your life, what are your deal breakers? What things would you design everything else around?
I've challenged you over the past few weeks to use this COVID-19 experience to look at what's essential to your productivity, joy and engagement. And I introduced the idea that even with all of this change, you can use those anchors to plan from a productive perspective.
For example, if you've realized that you think more clearly on or after a walk, build a daily walk (or two) into your day. Diarize it. Hold yourself to it as things change, and change again.
The anchors that have been serving you, and others, are worth defending. They might even be worth elevating.
Build rituals around your day.
When I talk about building rituals, I mean stringing together daily, self-care habits that you elevate and repeat — no matter what — because they anchor you, are meaningful to you and set you up for success.
Your rituals might be built around movement, meditation, breathwork, reading, writing, food or food preparation, or a combination of these and other forms of self-care.
I'm more routine-oriented than most. My kids think I'm a freakin' metronome. But I stick to my rituals, quirky as they may be because I know they serve me and that helps me serve everyone else.
Rituals build resilience.
Everyone needs to create space for themselves. The very act of carving parts of your day to practice self-care — with 100% adherence — builds resilience, peace of mind and a sense of control in this crazy world.
I'm a strong advocate of book-ending your day with self-care rituals.
Use the first 30-60 minutes of the day to set yourself up for the day. Use the last 30-60 minutes of the day to set yourself up for a great sleep. Why? These are the times of day that you likely have the most control over, and they offer you the highest leverage by helping you be productive by day and rejuvenate by night.
We've looked at morning routines before. To recap, I believe it's critical for leaders to use a morning ritual to build energy and focus before they jump into the fray. In my sleep video, I touched on things you can do before bed to help you have a good sleep.
But I want to come back to my first question. If you could design your life, what deal breakers would you design everything else around? What's really important and meaningful to you? Now, how could you build those things into morning and evening rituals?
If you know something serves you, don't just haphazardly “try to find time” for it. Build a ritual around it, so you can build a life around it.
