The ritual is when you get to the how.
So how you do them starts to matter,
the way in which you do them, your own personal way,
means more to you, and that's like the very beginning to me
of the difference between a habit and a ritual.
Just the idea that the very same simple boring actions
can sometimes get imbued with more,
more emotion, more meaning, more something.
To me, that's when it moves from kind of the mindless habit
to something a little bit richer.
Have you ever wondered what the difference is
between habits and ritual?
Or maybe you've wondered, why do we do things
like celebrate birthdays with cake and candles?
Why do couples develop special routines together?
Why do you eat or drink or do the same things every day
but in a mindful way?
And what does science say that this actually does for you?
My guest today, researcher and professor Michael Norton,
says, these types of rituals do more than just mark occasions.
They can literally transform our emotional experiences
and connect us with ourselves and others.
And in my experience, rituals,
they provide comfort and meaning,
especially during times of change.
But how actually do they work?
And how can we harness rituals to affect incredible change
in our lives?
And what's even the difference between a ritual and a habit?
Because we've heard so much about habits,
but what about these things called rituals
and the power they hold?
Michael is the Harold M. Brieherly Professor
of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
And he provides fascinating insights in his new book,
The Ritual Effect from the habit to ritual harnessing
the surprising power of everyday actions.
His research shows that rituals are more than just habits.
They're meaningful, emotion-laden actions
that serve important purposes in our lives.
In this episode, Michael and I explore the differences
between habits and rituals.
We go into how rituals help us cope
during grief and transition in so many other times in our lives.
And we consider how introducing new rituals
can enhance our relationships, savoring, and personal growth.
And his insights are equal part scientific
and also just really practical.
With a lot of humor and empathy,
he reveals the hidden power of our everyday actions.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
And one last thing, before we dive into today's conversation,
I want to share a fun new project that I have created for you.
It's a way to feel more alive and less alone.
So after taking a year's long hiatus from public writing,
I'm back and with a new weekly newsletter
and community called Awake at the Wheel.
So every Sunday morning in your inbox,
you'll get a new story and insight written by me,
along with a journaling and conversation prompt designed
to help you feel more alive and less alone.
And hey, even if you're not a journalist,
it'll give you something to think about
so that you can step into your week in a more intentional way.
And just on a personal level,
I am just so excited to get back to writing
in a more personal, vulnerable, long, form way.
It would mean the world to me
if you would support this new project.
So go check out the latest stories and insights
and see what this week's writing and conversation prompt is now.
I think you'll really like it.
I'll see you over at Awake at the Wheel.
Just click the link in the show notes now.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Hi, this is Janice Torres from Yolkieto de Nero.
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I love the topic of your recent work
and your new boat, the ritual effects.
The notion of ritual has been something
that's so fascinating to me for so many years.
It's something that looked at my own life.
It's something that I've sort of thought about.
But the lens that you bring to it is interesting and useful.
It really sort of deconstructs this notion of what it is,
what it isn't, how it leaves into our lives.
And then applies to very specific,
sort of like domains of life that I really want to dip into.
But I think a good opening sort of question for us
is when we're talking about ritual,
what are we actually talking about?
I think I want to preface anything I say by saying,
I'm not anti-habit.
I think good habits are great.
Some of my research is trying to help people.
They want to exercise more. We try to help them
and all this kind of stuff.
But I do think that sometimes we overly focus
on just having good habits.
Because I think if you think about a life of perfect habits,
for example, you know, 40 years where every day
is absolutely perfect habits, exercise, eating, right, everything.
I think you look back and say it was a pretty dry, boring kind of life.
You'd be super healthy.
There's no doubt.
But would you say I had a rich life or an interesting life
or a varied life?
And I think sometimes that's where rituals come in, actually,
is that they help us get out of, I mean,
literally we're going through the motions in our everyday life.
We have this phrase.
I think rituals help us get a little bit more than that
out of everyday life.
A little more joy, a little more meaning,
just a little more emotion than have it driven all the time.
So break down how you see rituals being different from how they're.
Because for sure, a habit has been, you know,
it's been at the center of the zeitgeist
for a chunk of time now.
And there's a lot of conversation around it.
Anytime you write something or record something that has the word
having it, people are like,
that's the thing that will make my life better.
And you're not saying, no, that's not true.
But tease out what is the distinction between ritual and habit?
Can I ask you a kind of silly question?
Yeah.
In the morning, do you brush your teeth first and then shower
or do you shower and then brush your teeth?
Well, that's assuming that either.
To the extent that you've been.
Let's assume that I do brush my teeth every morning.
Whether I shower or not is completely different as you.
But I do have a morning, quote, routine.
How much of that is ritual and how much of it is habit?
You know, like, I guess that'd be, I don't know, interesting to tease out.
You know, I do, I wake up in the morning, I brush my teeth.
I move from there, I don't lie on a couch
and I do breathing exercises and meditate.
That is the way that every single day starts in a has for years.
And how would you feel if I said mix it up tomorrow?
I'm antsy.
Antsy.
And why?
How come?
I think that I have come to look at that as sort of just the way that I start my day.
My brain is tuned to the fact that this is what happens when you open your eyes.
And I don't think about it anymore.
It's become automatic, which I guess is one of the things that really drops it into the habit bucket to a certain extent.
Yeah, I think when we ask people about their morning routine or we can talk about routine versus ritual,
but most people have something that they do in this specific order or something like that.
But then if I say, as I asked you, switch it up, about half of people say,
Sure, couldn't care less, no problem.
You know, if you brush your teeth and then shower or whatever,
if I say flip the order, whatever, they say, yeah, I don't care.
And for me, those are kind of like habits because you need to get them done.
You know, you have a checklist of stuff you're supposed to get done.
You got to check them off.
But the order in which you do them or how you do them just doesn't really matter that much to you.
But about half of people say, I don't want to, you know, I'd rather not.
And if I say why they say, I'm not sure, you know, I don't have a great reason why I want to do it the way I do it.
But I feel good, I feel ready, I feel more alive when I do it this way in the morning.
And as you said, switching it up, they feel antsy, they say, I'll feel off all day.
I'll feel weird, all these sorts of words.
And for me, that means that it's gone from a very kind of dry habit where it really is just,
we think of it as the what?
I'm going to do these specific things.
And the ritual is when you get to the how.
So how you do them starts to matter the way in which you do them,
your own personal way, oddly enough, of brushing your teeth, means more to you.
And that's like the very beginning to me of the difference between a habit and a ritual.
Not a ritual like people in robes with candles chanting like that, that's further away.
But just the idea that the very same simple boring actions can sometimes get imbued with more emotion,
more meaning, more something.
To me, that's when it moves from kind of the mindless habit that you were talking about to something a little bit richer.
So maybe let's stand that morning routine as a bucket to reference a little bit longer.
And if we take that, what I just described as mine, like I wake up by brushing my teeth,
I breathe and then I meditate.
I don't ever think about how I'm brushing my teeth, but I could pretty much guarantee it's the exact same thing every single time.
You know, like right left top bottom up that whatever it is, like...
In fact, my dentist actually said looking in my mouth said,
I know exactly the order that you know your teeth.
I said, how do you know? And he said, because when you start out, you're really like getting into it.
You're brushing your teeth and by the end you're just kind of like, well, whatever.
So he said, you can actually tell the spots that are brushed well is usually where you start,
because you're like, yes, doing it now.
And then by the end, you just don't even care anymore. It's like amazing, you know.
I do my breathing exercises and then I do my meditation.
Here's what I'm curious, because the container of doing those things,
and it's really the step of, okay, now I'm going to do my breathing, my pranayama,
and now I'm going to do my meditation.
That happens like clockwork. I don't think about that.
Like, this is just the way that my morning unfolds.
You know, I could be traveling wherever it is,
as long as I have that like window set aside, it's always going to happen.
But within the container of the behavior,
there are times where I make choices to do it differently.
So one day I may do a different type of breathing exercise,
or on a Sunday morning I might do a meta or loving kindness meditation,
or you know, instead of my traditional breath oriented meditation,
I may look at the app that I use as a timer and say like,
well, maybe I'm going to be guided by Tara Brock or someone else today
and listen to something else.
So am I overlaying ritual and habitat?
Are you using the different variations because you're looking,
what are you looking for when you do it differently?
Like the feeling or the outcome, what are you shooting for when you say,
you know what, today, I think I'm going to do this instead of that.
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
And my sense is that I'll pause, I'll take a beat,
and you know, without consciously using the words,
like, what do I need this morning?
I'll effectively be asking myself that question.
Like, how am I doing?
Am I doing I sleep well?
Did I not sleep well doing you a little bit more energizing?
Do I need something that's just totally chill?
Am I spiraling or feeling really tired in which case I might want a voice to guide me
or do I feel like I can just drop into my breath?
So I think it's more like, you know, like in this moment,
what do I need from this practice?
Yeah, and so it's, you know, it's interesting because you think about
in one way we want habits to become mindless, right?
I mean, we want to just never think about it again,
just do the good thing forever.
And that is good.
I mean, the research shows that's very helpful,
but very often with, even within habits that are,
quote unquote, mindless, meaning you do them every day,
you're still getting more out of them.
You know, they aren't just mindless.
So for you, kind of they're going through the motions in a sense
because you know you're going to do it every day,
but you're also embedding more meaning in it.
How you are doing the meditation is important to you for who you are.
You don't just want to take a ready-made one and always do that.
You want to express something about what you need or who you are
within your meditation.
And there again, it starts to have, it's more than just,
I need to meditate today.
Set the timer, couldn't care less what kind, you know,
I just am supposed to do this.
And you say, no, no, no, how I do it is going to be very,
very important to me because I'm looking typically with rituals
for an outcome after the fact.
I'm doing this in order to feel this way later.
Habits are often I'm doing this to get this done.
Rituals are often, I'm going to do this so that.
And when you get this so that as well,
you start to get more into this emotion and meaning
and what are we looking for throughout our day.
That's interesting.
So can you effectively then have rituals embedded inside of habits?
Because that sounds kind of like what we're talking about here.
Absolutely.
And I mean, one thing that's, as a nerd, I would say,
fascinating as a research I take frustrating
is the very same behaviors for one person can be a boring habit
and for someone else it can be like an incredibly meaningful ritual.
So I mean, even if you think about religious services,
if I'm Irish Catholic, so if I watch a Catholic mass from on high,
everyone's doing the exact same thing.
The whole, you know, they're standing, they're kneeling,
they're doing the appropriate thing.
And in any religion, everybody's doing the right thing.
If I'm looking, everyone looks like they're engaged in a meaningful ritual.
However, when I ask people at the end, one person says,
you know what this, this is the most important time of the week for me.
It expresses my faith.
It connects me to my family, to my relatives,
to sometimes a thousand, two thousand, three thousand year history.
And other people say, yeah, I just went because my mom made me.
I can't tell looking which ones, which we really actually have to get in
same with meditation.
Some people are doing it, you know, I know I'm supposed to do this.
And other people are doing it truly deeply because it means something deeper to them.
And it is frustrating because we can't just say, aha, three claps and two stomps.
That's a ritual.
We have to go to you and say, you know what,
is how you're doing this important to you?
What's the meaning you're getting out of these actions?
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
And even on any given day within the same person,
I'm thinking about that morning practice for me.
There are some days where I'm just like, you know, I'm hitting the button and then I'm doing it at the time.
It's just like my default and I'm just like, I can't wait for like that 25 minute triple chime to happen.
And there are other days where I really drop into it.
And I feel like there's something a little bit more juicy happening.
And what's interesting also, especially in the context of meditation,
is like one of the instructions is always, you don't step into it within expectation.
It's not about like what you want from the practice is simply about doing the practice
and yet you're human. That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
Really hard to let that go.
Right.
When we think about the difference between ritual and habit,
another curiosity of mine is the attention element of it.
I always understood that habits are these things that we start doing in a very intentional and attentive way,
like because we kind of have to to make it happen.
And then through repetition, over time, that the intentionality and the attentional part of it,
it kind of falls away and this just becomes an automatic thing where we're not really focused on it anymore.
And if it were all sorts of justifications for it, you know, like it concerns energy and our brain,
we have to do this with some of the behaviors that we do every day.
It seems like there's also a different intentional and attentional quality to ritual.
I think that's right.
I mean, I will say the idea that habits become automatic and then we just continue to execute them forever,
that can happen.
But for most of us, habits don't become that kind of automatic, especially habits that are effortful.
If you look at people sticking with exercising every morning, we're not great.
We're just not doing that.
Life intervenes and all these sorts of things.
So it's true that it can happen that you repeat habits over time and then they just become built in.
But it is often, they're still in tension, even with habits, because you still got to put your shoes on
and go outside at 6am and start running.
That's part of the, that's why it's so hard to have our habits.
And one of the things that we see is that rituals can help us a little bit with that.
So I was talking to some elite runners and just very simply asking them, how do you tie your shoes?
They just have wonderful stories.
I mean, you know, very different from each other, very complicated when they started, why they started,
it was their coach, it was, you know, I mean, all of these things about how they tie their shoes.
It's probably one of, maybe brushing your teeth is more boring, but tying your shoes is pretty boring.
You know, you just, you put your shoe on and you tie it and there you go.
And for them, it becomes a ritual.
It's part of how they get themselves going so that they'll go and run.
And I do think we see that with not just elite runners, but also regular folks as well.
Sometimes we build in a little bit more of a meaning into some aspect of the habit in order to imbue it with more than just,
oh god, drudgery, but something else, right?
And when I tie my shoes this way, and again, I use silly examples on purpose.
When I tie my shoes this way, I feel ready to go and maybe I'll be more likely to actually go and run whatever they run 20 miles instead of 10 miles.
So it's almost like it's a signal of something else.
So more broadly, if we zoom the lens out, what do rituals do to us and for us that would argue to make them a bigger part of our lives to be more intentional about it?
So when I started studying them, I was thinking actually that rituals would probably, we used them in so many domains of life, you know, weddings and funerals and to get amped up and to calm down.
I mean, almost anything we're trying to do, we involve ritual.
At first, I thought that maybe what they did was they kind of produced the same outcome across these different domains.
In other words, ritual always make us feel X and then X helps us in different domains.
And that's absolutely not what we find at all.
In fact, what we find is that rituals help us often generate the emotion that we're looking for in that moment or in that context.
That's why we use rituals to get super amped up like team rituals before a game.
And people also use rituals if they're nervous about something to try to calm themselves down.
And it's very strange that the same behaviors can produce opposite emotional effects. That's usually not how we work.
But that to me is why rituals can be so valuable.
Is there a, we can produce emotions in all kinds of different ways. You know, you can get joy from hugging your spouse.
But one of the ways people get all of these emotions is via ritual. And in some of our research,
which I'm embarrassed that we called it this, but it's too late.
We studied this thing called emo diversity.
And the idea there is that a lot of focus on being happy and happiness, including in my own research.
By the way, just, you know, how do we help people be happier?
But almost like having a life of perfect habits, having a life where you're a perfect 10 happy every minute of every day of your life.
It's a nice life, but it's pretty one note, you know, I mean, we want to have ups and downs in life.
We learn about ourselves, through ups and downs in life.
We go to sad movies, we go to horror movies to try to get sadness and fear and all of these things.
We like emotional variety.
And we show in the research that that variety of emotions is an independent predictor of our well-being.
There's something good about having this variance of emotions.
And rituals are one of the ways. They're almost like a tool that we use to try to generate different kinds of emotions.
And everyday ones, but also things like awe, which is an amazing, amazing emotion, the emotion that we rarely feel.
And yet, rituals are often involved in producing these kinds of extraordinary emotions as well.
Now, it's interesting you brought up the attic conversation I think last year with Dr. Kelt.
No, great.
And I think it was a great diversity and awe and the time there.
The way you're describing it also is that beyond rituals bringing not just the thing into your life, but an emotion to the thing that it brings a certain, could I use a term activation energy to it?
I think that's right. I mean, the ritual skeptics and I was a ritual skeptic as well. People say, you know, I don't do any, I don't do any of this ritual stuff.
I'm a rational whatever kind of person, but you can ask a question like, have you ever made a cake and carefully frosted the cake so that you can eat it.
And then before you eat it, what you do is you stick wax candles in it and light them on fire so that the wax gets all over the cake.
Then put it in front of someone and have them blow all over the top of the cake and then eat the cake.
And of course the answer is yes, of course I have. But what are we doing there?
We're taking, I mean cake is kind of delicious than its own right. But when we make it into a birthday cake, we're adding so much meaning.
It's just cake, but now it's something completely different. We kind of elevate very basic things into something that has more emotion, different emotions, social connection.
I mean, we make a cake into a right of passage. We're moving from who we were to who we're going to be all with a silly little cake.
So they do actually give us something more than just the thing itself. They allow us to place emotions on things that otherwise we might have a harder time accessing.
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, the cake thing is interesting also right because what you're describing is not just emotions and certain meaning overlay.
But also in telling me if this makes sense to you, it changes the value proposition of the experience or the activities.
So it's like you all the sudden eating a piece of cake now becomes you know, oh, it is a symbol of gathering and of turning the page on another year in life.
And if you were going to say to somebody like, give me a piece of cake like place a value on this piece of cake three bucks, right? And then a slice of cake from like your child's first birthday.
Place a value on that slice of cake. It's it's price less. Do you feel like rituals would like pretty consistently change the value we associate with an experience too?
They do for sure. And I think they really allow us to imbue things with an enormous amount of meaning that otherwise is is hard to get to. I was talking to a journalist who was saying that she didn't really have any rituals.
And not an skeptical way just looking for advice actually. You know, how can I use more of this in my life? And she said, you know, for example, I drink coffee every morning, but I don't care.
You know, it's not like a ritual. It's just I need some caffeine. And so she said, how can I make coffee more than just coffee?
And I said, well, you know, I don't know you that well. We just met, but you know, people will do things like prepare the coffee in a certain way and do that every day so that there's a little bit more effort of themselves invested in it.
And I said, or some people will the tea that they drink or the coffee that they drink, it's the one that they use their grandfather drank or their grandmother drank. So they're in it's the same tea bag, but it now has more meaning.
And then I said, or you know, you drink out of the same mug that has some meaning for you, she cut me off. And she said, oh my god, I never realized this.
The mug that I drink my coffee out of is I got it when my daughter and I were watching elephant seals giving birth. And she said, I use the exact same mug every day. And in fact, last week my husband brought me it in the different mug and I made him take it back.
So you know, what you just it's just liquid and a cup just a cake on a table.
But by doing these things, we actually imbue them with so so much more. And it's I mean, you're on what you could say, what an odd thing that we do. And in another way, what a gift that we're able to do this with these things in our lives.
Yeah, I mean, that's such a cool example too, because it really shows that I guess rituals are in no small part about taking seemingly mundane or ordinary experiences.
And without altering the experience in any observable way, making them so much more emotional and meaningful to you simply because of the frame that you bring to them.
One of my very favorite examples across all of the research we've done across all of these domains, we did look at rituals and relationships and marriage and romantic partnerships.
And we'll ask couples, you know, do you we don't say do you have any rituals because they think we mean people in robes with candles, but we say, you know, are there any is there anything that you the two of you do that's unique to you that you make sure to do it every day every week every month.
And usually two thirds of three quarters of couples say yes. And this one couple said every time before we eat we clink our silverware together.
How is it and it struck me just it's so powerful because you can feel the emotion in it for them, you know, nobody clicks their silverware together except off.
There's no ancient text that says clink your silverware together before you eat, but for them it becomes the tiniest. I mean, what's more boring than a fork.
And yet they've turned to fork into a symbol of their relationship, you know, so it's it's really absolutely right it's the most mundane thing sometimes that we're able by with ritual to create something more.
Yeah. And we'll be right back after word from our sponsors.
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You write about also the notion of rituals for savoring and sounds like this may be one of those that we're talking about you take me deeper into the notion of savoring and how rituals might affect this or bring more of that in torlish because I feel like so many of us.
We live our lives and we open our eyes and then we feel like the day just passed by and you ask somebody what you do and they're like I don't know but I'm tired.
Yeah exactly I think email I don't know I can't remember I've already blocked it out you know this kind of thing.
So another ritual that in addition to birthday cake another very common one is you can say have you ever had some liquid poured into a glass and other people have liquid poured into their glass.
And then before you drink the liquid all of you raise your cups up smash them together and say one or two words and then drink and everybody says oh yeah that's cheers course you do that like everybody is that.
And just like what are you doing.
Why would you take your food and bash it again somebody else's food before you have the food it's like doesn't make much sense of course and yet nearly every culture in the world has something very similar to that.
And it's almost always one or two words and they usually mean health or luck or joy or happiness you know these very basic words.
And what we're doing of course is we're making the beer and you know a lot of cases more than a beer it's a thing now we're all celebrating together we're connected to each other just by the simple act of clinking the glass before we drink whatever we're drinking.
What was born thing in the world again and yet we can imbue it with more meaning.
Now I mean when you think about that in the context of the notion of savoring also it's sort of like it takes any gathering of people and it's almost like it adds a beat to it to say they will be before we just go through this can we all be present for a hot second and just note the fact that we're here together.
Does that make sense and absolutely does and say one word all at the same time that says something about how we feel about each other can we just take five seconds to do that.
Instead of just drinking and eating you know like animals or something for sure we use them in exactly this kind of way.
I'm curious what your senses are if you have research on the notion of whether when we do a sort of like a savoring ritual like that even though it is literally like last a second or two.
Whether that experience tends to stay with people longer or whether it becomes more indelible in their memories I love this idea I don't think we have specific research on the memory aspect but even your example of we did research a while ago where we asked people my colleague ting jong we asked people to either write about February 14th what they did on February 14th.
And then we said how interesting do you think it'll be to read about what you wrote on those two days and people said well be more interesting to read about valentines day than random other day in February.
And a month later we showed them what they written and we showed them the valentines day and they said that's not that interesting and the reason was because they remembered it.
You remember the where you went to dinner with your spouse or your partner that day it was actually the random day that people were fascinated to read that's so interesting fascinated to read because you say oh my god I forgot about that weird weird dude on the subway you know whatever it might have been or forgot I had that sandwich or whatever it is.
And those are the ones that people were really excited to get back in a sense and this ritual it's a time capsule really this ritual that humans have of and it's very weird we take things and we bury them in the ground and then later we dig them up to look at them again super unusual thing that humans do.
But this is exactly what we're doing it right we're taking even mundane things actually and using ritual to bring them back with more meaning we can savor them for longer even things that you wouldn't think you would savor when you bring them back your you know the birthday cake from your kids first birthday.
What an enormous amount of irreplaceable meaning we can get from these kinds of things.
Yeah that's so interesting and the difference between the you know February 13th and 14th for those outside of the US it's I don't even know if Valentine's Day is an international thing or if it's just sort of like a hey commercial US thing like buy a whole bunch of roses and cards but yeah that's the February 14th association and as you're speaking part of me curiosity recently at a conversation with Sharon I'm running an off about memory and like how memory works and I think it's pretty commonly read these days that the higher the stakes with the emotion in the world.
And the emotion in a moment or experience the more likely it is to become sort of embedded in in longer term memory and I feel like it ties into a certain extent of what you're talking about here we've also seen that so if we ask people you know how close are you to your extended family.
Your aunts your uncles your cousins your nephews your nieces people will say you know we're pretty close and if you ask them well how do you know them like when did you get to know them and what context they say.
You know weddings and funerals and if they're Christian you know we got together for Christmas if they're American they got together for Thanksgiving and sometimes they say you know what the only times I've ever seen members of my extended family are on days where there are rituals.
We wouldn't have an extended family many families would not even have an extended family without the binding power of rituals to bring us back together.
So they do have this element you know our memories of our family are completely tied up with our memories of these days that have rituals that are meaningful for us and I do think that's one of the it can be hard because traveling home is stressful and all these kinds of things but at the same time without rituals if we just said let's get the family together on a random day.
A week before people would say I got a cancel I have this other thing you know everybody would drop out but when it's Christmas you know how we got to go and it's it could be stressful on a pain to get there and yes when you're there then 30 years later your kids still know who their cousins are.
I have an extended family those memories matter so much yeah simply because it you know it wasn't just a day it was a there was a ritual.
So staying on the topic of holidays and family gatherings you also write about a different take on this yes it can be wonderful these are the experiences that often bed our associations and how we know people and like those moments when like this happened and this happened in all these wonderful things and at the same time those moments for a lot of people are extremely stressful.
And sometimes benefit from different types of rituals.
I believe some from a large Irish Catholic family so you're going to have a lot of differences of opinion about probably anything any topic that comes up somebody is going to disagree with somebody and so the question is well how do we get through these things without people arguing about politics or bringing up
resentments from childhood you know all of a stuff that can happen in families one of my theories is that one of the things that rituals help us do is they create a structure and an order for these events down to the notion of you know well these two people always make the cake or the pie and these two people go and do this and these
two people always go and watch football and these six people go and play football outside so you have all of these things that are these traditions in your family over the years and your number one you're breaking people up which is good you're giving them something to do which is great and it's
almost like by the time we're done with the whole Thanksgiving you know carving the turkey and the pies and everything the days over we didn't get any fights and we can all go home.
I think in addition to kind of they have emotional meaning and act sort of stuff actually thinking a very practical way rituals can help us through events that otherwise might be very stressful and funerals are another great example you know somebody passes away it's very comforting to have a faith that tells you what you
should do next or to have people who already know how to handle this so that you and your family can have some structure and order over these days that can be the worst days of your life so in many context actually in addition to the emotional part of rituals they really help us coordinate and coordination can be very very important for us to not have things go off the rails.
Yeah I mean it's really interesting also because it's it gives a structure to an experience is what you're describing and I guess especially experiences that are leading with like really profound emotion like loss or grief having that structure I mean especially moments where there's a big loss and you're grieving and you you absolutely you're completely on
morning you have no idea what comes next in every other context knowing what comes next for the next minute the next day the next seven days whatever it may be whatever the ritual the structure that is has got to really provide oh I don't know how much
so less but some level of like at least I know this they also help us in general but also with grief they help us get the social support we need because the funeral is a day when
everyone goes everyone is together and that's just incredibly important and in of itself but I think that they also give us a sense that we might get through this
because this ritual has been used for hundreds thousands of years and those people got through this so acute grief feels like it will never ever go away when you have that that kind of grief
and to literally have something that feels proven by time you know that other people have used this and they have gotten through this horrible experience it also is a little it's almost like social proof that maybe I can get through it too because we have faith in this ritual to really help us with these really difficult situations
yeah no that makes a lot of sense and it's interesting right because that's never spoken but it's a part of the fabric of the experience like everybody knows this is what we do this is what my community my culture my faith tradition whatever it may be has done often for thousands of years
God be a reason it's been around for this long or it's got to help in some way so it's really interesting it's like the underlying assumptions underneath particular rituals especially wrapped around deeply emotional moments
yes even archaeologists how they think about early humans is having culture or not one of the key things that they look for is for burials were people buried ceremoniously or not
so when you have you can think of toot and common I mean you can think of all kinds of ways in which people are buried ceremoniously but if someone is buried with special objects next to them you know that the people in that culture cared about that person and had some shared tradition or practices that they had together they had some kind of a culture
so we literally use the presence of funeral rights as in a sense proof that this was a culture of people that cared about each other that's how far back and deep these kinds of rituals go
yeah one of the other context that you explore ritual and is the notion of change personal transformation and certainly so many of us you know like have been moments of life where
the experience of change especially big disruptive chains is either initiated by us or thrust upon us involuntarily you know like something we certainly in the last five years we have all been like through that that ladder circumstance in so many different ways
take me into how ritual often helps us navigate moments like this you know I signed a contract to write this book in January of 2020
a book about rituals in the role they plan our lives and two months later pretty much every ritual that we practice got completely disrupted
completely disrupted couldn't gather for any of the rituals including weddings, funerals but also things we used to do at work you know everything got disrupted
and so a question is do we just stop doing them or do we come up with new ones it really shows us you know if all the rituals are no longer able to be conducted
do we say just yeah those were kind of silly anyway we don't need them or do we say we got to come up with some new things and what we saw again and again is that people came up with new rituals to cope with this huge impact that it affected so many people
and they were things it can be hard to remember but there were things you know everybody went outside on their balcony at 5 p.m. and applauded for first responders that never existed before nobody
there wasn't like a group of people that decided we were going to do that it comes from the culture in the face of this big uncertainty so we kept saying you know people found new ways to have holidays new ways to have marriages online and all these kinds of things
so we do see that when times are very turbulent it is a time when we actually don't turn away from ritual but turn toward ritual as one of the ways to help us with this incredible
and this case thrust upon us change yeah it's both a way to touch stone and also to make some kind of meaning I mean the example that you gave also everyone throwing open their windows and like we've been up banging on pots and hands we were I'm in Colorado now but we were New York City in 2020 where New York City was the scariest place on the planet
and it was 7 p.m. every day there the New York was a ghost town it was just stopia like there was no one on the roads and but a 7 o'clock it's like every window in the city millions of windows got thrown open people took their pots and pans and started banging and moving I have recordings of that for about a month
I can't listen to more than five or six seconds without just starting to cry here's my interesting question about this so that went on for a while you know and every time you did it like you know like it was my daughter me my wife we go to the
window like this is it was sacred yeah like you didn't miss it even if you were out on this you happen to be out on the street at 7 o'clock one day you stopped where you were and you listened to everybody else and you were just screaming yeah at some point that ended and I've always been curious about
that because it was like there was a day where it stopped yeah and I've always been curious like what happened there like what signal does that it was time and there was no group meeting
yeah you know it just it started with no group meeting and it ended with no group meeting I think that we often turn to rituals when we most need them but that doesn't mean that we'll stick with them forever so in my own life speaking of a well that was an intended shock but still is shocking was having a child you know you go to the hospital and then they after a little while they say go home and they just give you a human
you just take care of the human forever is the craziest thing in the world it's like let's get these carry on completely let's give these to people who have no idea what they're doing let's not send anyone with them that's an expert that would be silly let's just have them figure
out of the well but what happens of course with new parents is and the thing is sleep you know is the baby sleeping are you sleeping is all the conversations that parents have that drive everybody else crazy
and what we did and what so many parents do is in this time of incredible stress when all you want is sleep for the baby you turn to ritual you come up with them and they're very elaborate actually and you if you ask parents to remember what they did when they're children were were very small they remember them exactly knows these two books and then this song and then the swaddle and then this other song and then we did this and then we did that and after all that whole sequence then hopefully the baby was asleep in different parents every parent has their own specific one
that they did but they have some things in common but they're very idiosyncratic and we do those I've now come to believe that we're actually doing those not to help the baby sleep but to our earlier conversation to just feel ourselves that we have some structure and control over what's going on in our lives
but we don't do them forever right so once our kid learns how to sleep they wouldn't tolerate it for one thing we trying to read them a book every night so they're not there these deeply meaningful powerful rituals that help us in this time when we really really need them
we really really need them we really turn to them and then almost when the crisis has passed they drop away we don't need them anymore they're not as applicable anymore and then we might have a different issue in life where we come up with different rituals to help with that
yeah the context of I mean she used to win the crisis has passed as a phrase used and that's a little bit what we're talking about you like with the pandemic and the rituals around that and how they drop away when the youthfulness drops away when we're going through a window of profound change or transformation that we've invited is that qualitatively different in terms of how like how rituals take root and and how they last
you know that this is a random aside but I was talking my daughter is eight and I was asking her about she saw me give a talk on rituals and in fact her first off her only feedback was does that tennis player really pick is wedgie every time
that's not the dog the dog the rough on the doll the perfect question for eight year old after that and it's just like I was a and it probably was the most interesting thing I said so she I you know she was spot on but I was also asking her about birthday could back to birthday cakes and I said well why do you think we put candles on on cakes you know thinking
as I said why would we light things on fire and a cake so I said why why do you think we put candles on cakes and she thought for a second she said so we know how old we are
and it was just an amazing moment where why do we put the right number of candles on a cake I mean why do we put a five and a two when returning fifty two on a cake it's a very weird thing to do
I mean if you think about it at a very basic level we make something we have the thing symbolizes that we're a new age and then everyone kind of tears apart
of the thing in a communal kind of way and then there's no evidence of it anymore and it's like okay well now I'm not seven now I'm eight because there were eight candles on the cake so even in these changing from seven eight is not a difficult transition because nothing really changes in your life
but even on these we have the intuition as humans that we should mark them that something should be done between this and that in order to help us go from who we were before to who we're going to be next
and it's across so many domains of life that we turn to ritual I mean if you think about other people who say I don't have any rituals it's like have you ever put on a weird robe and a weird hat that was either a square or poofy
and walked across the stage and gotten a piece of paper and everybody claps then you sit back down of course people say oh yeah well that's just a graduation
I mean why do we have graduations but you've already finished all the course work but we have this intuition no we should mark it
we really should make sure that this is an event where we're before that we weren't graduates and now we're graduates so many cultures have exactly the same kinds of things
where there's something where you go from this to that and it does seem for people to kind of demarcate that identity in a way that's helpful
yeah it's interesting you're describing that also I'm thinking about how people receive different sort of milestone moments that would normally be associated with rituals very differently
so like one person might be turning 50 and they're so excited to bring all their friends together and have that cake that's with the five in the zero candle on top of it
and then another person might be turning 50 and they might be thinking to themselves okay I'm turning 50 like we can't put that off a day or month until more ready like it's happening
yeah and normally like you gather people to acknowledge it to save or to celebrate it but I don't want people
like I want to break the ritual for this one because there's something about this one particular thing where the fact that having the ritual that has happened every year for the last 49 years
up until now like repeating that same ritual on this particular moment it's triggering for some reason instead of savoring
yeah it's almost like you're in denial like if I don't if I don't do the thing I'm not really 50 maybe I can stay for a day
it's not like really first that I'm basically still 49 I wonder if it's so interesting I wonder if we do use them as a delay tactic
yeah yeah and we'll be right back after word from our sponsors
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so you used graduation as an interesting ritual also do you make a distinction between rituals and what what often people call rights of passage
is having conversation not too long ago with chip connolly who runs this like wonderful experience modern elder academy me a
and the whole notion behind that is that we had these things called rights of passage for all these other major milestones in life
you know like graduating high school for partnering with someone if you're you know the you partner with someone for graduating this for
for moving from one season of life to the next unit of life we have all these established rights of passage yet for
you know moving from sort of like middle aides into a more seasoned you know part of life where the lot of just that happen
there's no ritual there's no right of passage and that we suffer because of that are we talking about kind of the same thing here
when we use the phrase rights of passage and ritual I think that rights of passage are one almost like a subcategory of
ritual we can think of other subcategories as well but they are one that they're very very common across different
transitions in life and I think they're extremely important and I have been very interested in these cases where it
appears that we need one but the humans have not come up with it and one of them is in fact the transition from
working to not working at retirement you might have a little ceremony or something and you get a watch
something like that but you know it might not be sufficient to say I'm no longer the person I was for the last
45 years whatever it might be and you see people struggling so much with the transition to retirement
would a ritual solve the you know of course not but could it be helpful I think so the other place that I think
there's really sorely lacking is when relationships end with divorce we have nothing there's no cultural thing that we do for
people when they get divorced when they get married we do lots of stuff there's you know what I mean there's a bridal
shower the bachelor party of all these things set up for the beginning and we have nothing for the end and of course the
end can be a lot more challenging than the beginning and yet culturally we don't have something but people freelance some
people who do for exactly what they call it but on the day of their divorce every year they get their friends
together and just make fun of the person they divorced you know so you can you can make an anniversary out of a
negative thing as a way of owning it so we're capable I think of coming up with things to address these gaps but I haven't
seen one really that feels like it would help with the transition that you're talking about.
Yeah and I think that's what chips start doing what is doing because it is so profound but there's no it's
like at that point culture just says you know like keep on keeping on like you think you're saying whatever like
like now you get to relax but it isn't interesting as you're describing that many many many years ago
it's working for a big federal government agency and every time you like somebody left the agency you
know everyone would gather and the head of the agency would come and and present a plaque and a
letter opener or a pen or whatever his and there's this drizzle the old investigator who used to
crochet a dinosaur that he believed most matched the qualities of the person leaving and presented to them.
I love that.
During the ceremony and but what's so funny about that is like I remember that this is like 30 years ago
and I remember like those moments not because of the plaque or because I remember and I don't I couldn't tell
you the people but I can tell you I remember the stories because of that one goofy thing.
Yeah yeah and he invested himself in it you know to create them for people it's much more meaningful than just
getting a watch off Amazon or whatever it might be.
Yeah you also explore I mean it's interesting sort of like the the notion that sometimes it
worked but also I think in culture these days the notion that all rituals aren't necessarily positive
like there are rituals that heal but there are also rituals that separate us that divide us.
And I think this is so important because rituals provoke a lot of emotions and it would be wonderful if all
of them were positive but they're not what rituals do is they provoke strong emotions and those can be
awe and joy and they can be anger and fear as well.
I wish I could write a book that said just add rituals and you'll be happy and it's just not how they work at all.
You know they they increase the diversity of our emotions but it's not unidirectional and we do see I mean when we do
research on teams at work for example we can bring people into our lab actually and have we can take
strangers and have them do a team ritual or a different kind of team ritual and then we can ask them at the end you know how
meaningful do you think this group is and we can see that when teams do things that are more ritualistic even though
we just made it up they do start to see each other as more meaningful compared to teams that don't do
anything like that. So we see these real benefits of these rituals and yet at the same time in other
race and you trust them as more as well. So this would be like a classic sort of like simple team building type of
exercise or something completely completely and you're in unison you know you're doing all the stuff together.
So you have to work together to get the thing done. Exactly.
So that's great right you get the groups meaningful you trust each other more it's wonderful except then sometimes in the
research we'll say oh here's another group and they do it differently from you and if you didn't do
anything of your own you don't care what anybody else does but if you as a group have gotten a ritual in place
well now it's not just that our ritual is good it's that our ritual is correct and as soon as our
ritual is correct it means any deviation is incorrect and we actually show that when you see groups
engaging in something different you distrust them you're not neutral you actually distrust them now
because they're and people say this they're doing it wrong and we say but we just did the
ritual for the first time you know I mean this is a new ritual that you just started this week and they say I don't
care they're still doing it wrong so very very quickly they can produce this positive element in groups
and they can also produce this negative element as well about groups that we're not a part of who now we
think need to be corrected. That's so interesting and I would imagine even like okay now somebody
knew comes into the group they didn't go through the original exercise where it's like this is how we do it
together and they're like I have a bit of a different idea of how to do this and it's like that is not
how we work here and I wanted to have that also like affects people being locked in to a state of mind
and assigning a certain meaning to like this is how we do things that creates a level of rigidity
and a lack of innovation and creativity and all sorts of other things. For sure I mean I think they
put up barriers at the same time that even as they help us could help us you know coordinate and be creative
and all these lovely things they put up barriers and in context where you really can't have barriers
you can see how they would not just be neutral but actually harm us.
If you think about rituals across all different domains are you able to identify sort of a
common set of elements or like like step one step two or just like these are the five things
that tend to make for a successful ritual. I have to the answer is very frustrating not really.
So what would have been amazing is if we had discovered that you know clapping seven times
and stomping six times you somehow magically that transformed us into whatever you know
and we just don't see it because again the same exact actions for one person that are so meaningful
can be completely irrelevant to another person. It is true actually that a physical component is important.
So only in your head is not as good as also doing something physically.
It tends to be the combination that there's some psychological element of meaning something attached to this.
And then the physical element that you're really actually doing something in the service of that.
But what's so fascinating is the something that you do can be almost anything.
I mean I don't want to over claim. You know I haven't looked at every single thing in the world but when you look at the
examples people use they're pulling from everything in the world.
A woman who's we asked to think of someone you lost she wrote I washed his car every weekend the way that he used to.
There's definitely no ancient text that says wash your car. There's no cars.
We use things in our environment and build ritual around them.
Washing the car might do nothing for you or me.
But for her it's a deep expression of something that's important about the person that she lost.
And one way it's frustrating that we can't point to you know these are the behaviors.
On the other hand it's very liberating because we're actually very free and what we use and what we build into these kinds of rituals.
You had it. So then if somebody is listening to this and they're thinking okay I see there's value in this thing called ritual.
And I'd like to have more of this in my days and my months in my life.
Where do we start? Like what are some questions that we should start asking ourselves?
The first easy one is actually to you know saying add 19 rituals in your day tomorrow is like I don't have time for that you know or meditate for four hours.
And say you know I don't have time for that.
So the very first step for me always is actually almost to take an inventory of where they're already happening in your life.
Often as people are listening to us chat they might in some domains they might say what I don't have anything like that.
And then the very next domain that you and I chat about they say oh actually yeah my wife and I do this.
So we so or we did this with our kids when we were putting them to bed.
So we have these different domains of life where we have them in place.
But we might not have really recognized them or own them in the way that we could.
And so that really is the first step that you actually just take a beat as you said earlier you really say you know this is our little special thing that we do.
And really kind of appreciate it even more and we see that you all sometimes will laugh at yourself.
But in a very kind and lovely way like oh my god here I go with my foreclinking again you know or whatever it might be.
So that really is the first step actually is just to see where they are already and appreciate them a little bit more.
And then the next step I think is thinking of domains in life where you might want to experiment.
So you know if you're somebody who doesn't get nervous before meetings at all don't experiment with a pre performance routine because you're not going to do anything for you right because you're already just fine.
But if you are somebody who gets nervous before meetings try something out as a ritual to see if it can help you you know they're not magical like you snap your fingers and you're perfectly calm.
But they're an interesting thing to try out across these domains in life if your family dinner time is terrible try to think if you can come up with something that might make it a little more meaningful or a little more connecting than just everybody staring at each other in silence.
And I love that simple and individual feels a good place to come full circle so in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up.
The word that came to mind is generosity actually I think if you lack generosity I think life is actually a lot harder for you because I think not only is it repaid but just in the service of other people is such I mean in our other research we've literally shown that when you help other people or spend money on other people it makes you happier.
And I think that's just a small case of using money to help other people I think in general generosity is lacking that makes it very hard to have a really rich and meaningful life and when I think of the people in my life who are very generous.
They're often the people that I respect the most and who seem to have the most figured out as well.
Hey before you leave if you love this episode say that you'll also love the conversation we had with James Clear about habits.
You'll find a link to James's episode in the show notes.
This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del for her research on this episode.
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And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable and chances are you did since you're still listening here would you do me a personal favorite, a seven second favorite and share it.
Maybe on social or by text or by email even just with one person just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know those you love those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy.
Tell them to listen then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action that's how we all come alive together.
And that's all for today's episode of Good Life Project.
Thank you.
