We all have our little life rituals.\u00a0 Sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we don\u2019t even realize we do them until something causes a break in our ritual and we suddenly realize how important they were to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We start out each day with our morning rituals.\u00a0 For me it includes having my alarm go off 30 minutes before I actually need to get up so I can hit snooze a few times, flip on the TV for a few minutes, and whine about how badly I wish I could stay in my comfy bed.\u00a0 I pretty much repeat that exact same thing each morning without even noticing it until one day my alarm doesn\u2019t go off and it throws off my entire day.\u00a0 It is as if the world has been thrown from its axis that day because there was a break in the ritual and now nothing is going to go as planned.\u00a0 Sounds silly right?\u00a0 But it\u2019s genuinely true for so many of us.\u00a0 We become attached to our little life rituals because they give us a feeling of comfort and security \u2013 I personally think the reason they give us comfort is that these rituals tend to give us a sense of perceived certainty in a world that is filled with crazy amounts of uncertainty.\u00a0 The ironic thing is that these rituals don\u2019t really give us any more certainty than anything else in life can \u2013 they are as exposed to risk and change as much as everything else is, but somehow our brains are able to block that fact out and they become a calming influence in our lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of us have emotional rituals with food.\u00a0 My diet coke in the morning is my ritual that helps me feel focused and ready to conquer my day.\u00a0 My popcorn at night comforts me because it reminds me of when I was a teenager and I would come home at night from a date to find my mom eating a bowl of popcorn and reading a book as she pretended that she hadn\u2019t been up waiting on me to get home safely.\u00a0 A bowl of ice cream is a ritual that instantly cheers me up as it reminds me of going to Baskin Robbins with my dad when we were younger and how happy that made me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of us have rituals with tasks or events.\u00a0 Sunday we go to church.\u00a0 Saturday may be\u00a0date night.\u00a0 Thursday may be laundry night.\u00a0 Friday night is watching our favorite TV show Shark Tank.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 Having these rituals gives us a schedule and a plan and it helps us to feel confident in what we will accomplish.<\/p>\n
At times of extreme stress or anxiety, rituals can provide a much needed calming effect.\u00a0 During times of sadness they give us something to look forward to.\u00a0 During times of change they can give us something to count on.<\/p>\n
The most important thing to recognize about rituals in our lives are the negative ones.\u00a0 There are so many positive rituals we have each day and they are a fabulous thing in our life.\u00a0 But just as the positive rituals are a good influence in our lives, negative rituals can be incredibly destructive.\u00a0\u00a0 For many it can be rituals that affect your good health, such as smoking or drinking, or overeating.\u00a0 For some it can be excessive playing of video games, or excessive internet surfing, or excessive technology addiction, or any destructive addiction that takes you away from being the best you can be.\u00a0 For me I have a negative dieting ritual where I diet to lose weight, and then when my weight goes down I instantly decide its okay to indulge again and the weight comes right back again and then I start the cycle over.\u00a0 It\u2019s a ritual in my life that I am finally realizing is an actual ritual, and it is a ritual that I am determined to get rid of! \u00a0I do not want to be held captive by any negative rituals in my life. \u00a0What are the negative rituals in your life that you want to get rid of?\u00a0 Do you have a plan for how to do that?\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely something to evaluate about yourself.\u00a0 Identify the negative rituals and then set a plan to get rid of them for good!<\/p>\n
Now let\u2019s get back to the happy rituals! They are so much more fun to talk about.\u00a0 Speaking of which, tonight is one of my very favorite rituals each week. My daughter and I have a TV show that we look forward to all week long and each Monday night we get our dinner ready and snuggle up to watch our favorite show together while my husband makes fun of us for watching silly girly television shows. \u00a0He is just mad that his ritual of playing X-Box with our son on Monday nights while we watch our show got put on hold while our son is gone serving his mission for the next 18 months.\u00a0 Now he ends up sitting in the family room with his computer out trying to pretend he isn\u2019t watching our girly TV show with us, but he isn\u2019t fooling us, we know he is just trying to protect his \u201cman card\u201d by acting like he doesn\u2019t enjoy it. \u00a0\u00a0Ah, yes, how I love my Monday night ritual, so I am off to enjoy it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enjoy the Little Ritual\u2019s in your own Life.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s a good time to add a few new rituals as well.\u00a0 Here\u2019s to a Happy Day Tomorrow!<\/p>\n
~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all have our little life rituals.\u00a0 Sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we don\u2019t even realize we do them until something causes a break in our ritual and we suddenly realize how important they were to us.\u00a0 We start out each day with our morning rituals.\u00a0 For me it includes having my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[632,174,224,76,55,464,64,651,112,275],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accomplishment","tag-anxiety","tag-confidence","tag-goals","tag-happiness","tag-joy","tag-life","tag-routine","tag-self-improvement","tag-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2656,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}