Rituals and routines with frills: embedding your new positive habits

Musings about rituals and routines: turning routine from ‘everyday and ordinary’ to ‘strong and beautiful’

Recently in a couple's coaching session my clients set the intention to create a ritual to help anchor a new practice of appreciating the beautiful, in amongst the chaos of life. And it got me thinking.

Turning everyday routine into a thing of strength

Research shows that anchoring a new habit to an existing one makes it more likely that it will stick long enough to actually earn the title of ‘habit’.

Probably the only thing I do with reliable regularity at this precise point in my life is brushing my teeth, and this is my go-to anchor for a new practice until it’s strong enough to survive alone. So for example if I want to make a habit out of gratitude reflections or squats, I can do them while brushing my teeth at night because that's something I won't forget.

I tend to go for simple (cutting corners if I can get away with it) ways to get benefit without burden. Realistic and sustainable.

But as so often happens, I was inspired by my clients. Yes, they were looking for a practice that would be simple and realistic, but they also wanted a practice that was flexible and had scope to elaborate depending on the day, to create something more special: a ritual.

So much more magical than routine.

Turning everyday routine into a thing of beauty

I drink tea fairly often (being a Brit) but it’s normally chucking tea bags into non-matching cracked mugs with water straight from the kettle. The extra-special tea experience in this photo was during a night glamping in the mountains near Chiang Mai, Thailand, as part of a last trip before moving back to England. Obviously this particularly fancy tea experience was a one-off, but sometimes adding a few more frills (or in that case, a lot more frills) to a normal experience can make it impossible for you to do it without paying attention and appreciating the moment. Like occasionally sprinkling seeds on your porridge, lighting a candle for dinner, playing music while you wash up, or wearing lipstick to go to the corner shop. When you pay more attention to what you’re doing, and feel better about doing it, it might feel more like a habit that you want to keep.

So I'm curious, what new positive habit do you want to embed in your life? Do you need to anchor it to a new ritual or can you piggyback onto an existing routine? And what frills can you add to your routine today to make it a bit more extraordinary?