Design Your Ritual — Sample Daily Hack
For the duration of one month, I am sharing bite-sized daily hacks on Instagram Stories. They are illustrating my combination of systemic intervention and design thinking/doing. They are teasers with a low threshold so that you and your friend can connect with me and ask for more.
More in that case is then design coaching and coaching for couples. It is designerly therapy, too. It is looking forward with a can-do attitude for prevention rather than addressing the traditional mental health categories with talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and problem-oriented approaches alone. It is my offer to increase your well-being and agency through co-design.
“Design Your Future Together” is the coaching package for couples. It starts with 1 session to try out the connection and continues with a 6-session package if you are up for the joint journey. And in that journey, you will recognize several of those daily hacks and all that they embody.
Now, Designing Rituals
Rituals play a special role in the design of everyday life. Rituals are behaviors or habits with special meaning for the individual, couple or even collective. Think of spiritual or religious rituals such as a Jewish bar mitzvah, Christian confirmation, or a funeral. Or smaller everyday rituals such as your guru’s morning meditation, your grandparents weekly church visit, or your own non-negotiable green tea or coffee brewing and consumption.
What comes to mind when you hear “rituals”? Do you recognize how goods have smartly ritualized the unpacking experience or the coffee-to-go experience, for instance?
My current rituals
- tidying shared spaces to allow for a fresh start of the next activity. Each start and end of day, I place items into their designated space and it is important to me to have the outside reflect my inside state of mind. This follows this US study of middle-class homes where the clutter on the fridge correlated with the clutter in the house. After tidying up in the morning, I prepare my first meal of the day. At night, I light a candle for ambient light after tidying up.
- running with a run keeping app. I follow a certain path, am deliberate about the distance and duration to build up endurance, dress for the occasion, and most importantly, label my run to maximize its importance for me. Giving my nike run club excursions special titles increases their significance. The post-run ritual includes a leg stretch, a shower, and a transition to focused work or play. If I skipped one thing, it would feel like ending yoga without savasana.
- letter writing to friends and family. By simply expressing my thoughts and feelings in a linear form, I calm down, get clarity and feel closer to those not present. It is applied narrative therapy. It begins with choosing the appropriate recipient, paper and clippings, pen and words, and is followed by the design of the envelope and the drop in the mailbox. And the experience continues beyond the letter writing, as I enjoy the silent anticipation of joy when the letter will have been received and reacted to.
Prerequisites for Ritual Design
The Stanford University’s d.school in California, USA, has already dedicated concentrated effort on ritual design with classes for students and executives, a dedicated lab and Kursat Ozenc’s published work on the matter.
Yet before you venture off into brain heavy research, trust me that you know already enough about ritual and the design thereof to gain something from today’s post. Simply because you are human, because it is so innate and familiar for you to perform and feel attracted to rituals. You might as well as your 6-year old “What is a ritual?” or your 86-year old “What rituals are dear to you?” Or lean back and observe.
As humans grow up, we tend to appreciate routines and rituals with our primary caregiver(s), in our family of origin or those simply performed by ourselves as we immerse in culture. Rituals are used in schooling, in after school activities, for holidays, and for social connection. Yet also for self-care and health.
What is your first memory of a precious ritual in your life? The Sunday family brunch, the bath time routine — or ritual are examples (coined by my culture, of course). The only thing that separates routines from rituals are the attention and meaning we gave it then — or now. We could re-write our childhood memories and elevate certain routines to then become rituals, I think. Try it out.
Map out your past and current rituals — Include routines and what distinguished them.
Another illustrious example is that of picking fingers and a manicure. The picking, someone does habitually, mindlessly, and with little meaning. The manicure, however, is a ritual that includes tools, products, and a certain chain of behavior. And above all, the meaning that a person gives to the manicure. Is it a family ritual? A way to express self love? To save money? To service a loved one? I know of a capable adult who still has his fingernails clipped by his mother, and since recently now wife.
Designing Your Ritual
For today, “hack” yourself (trick yourself good willingly and kindly) into more mindful and self serving behavior. Pick a behavior that is dear to you for a reason. For instance, “eating a vegan dinner”, “expressing your love for significant other”, “journaling your BIG IDEAS daily”, “celebrating a completed project”.
Next, visualize and externalize this behavior. You can write it black on white on a piece of paper, start with a large mind map, then elaborate. Transform the content. Or use your kid’s window colors and share it with your family right there on the window. Or use a figure and doll space set up to play out the chain of actions. You will soon have spectators.
Narrow the first designs down to your preferred, your 2nd and 3rd choice ritual designs. Write out the ritual for someone innocent to follow or perform in your place.
Add theatrical property, such as a certain sound or music, a beverage or food, an outfit or styling for yourself. Words and theatrical behavior and gestures, too. Imagine yourself as a visitor in a foreign culture, and design something similar.
Lastly, perform it, test and try it, and maybe invite a visitor to your spectacle. Aim for a minimum of 5 receptions or record your video and watch it 5 times or watch 5 different performances.
By now you may have noticed that Designing your Ritual is a process — ritualizing — and tremendous fun!
