Episode 249: Routines, Rituals, & Rhythms
Routines, Rituals, and Rhythms
Especially in a year like last year and maybe the beginning part of this year, where we haven’t done a lot of traveling and exploring outside of home, it feels really fun to remember some of those beautiful times. I look forward to them again in the future.
Let’s dig in to talking about routines, rituals, and rhythms.
What comes to mind when I even say those words, routines, rituals, and rhythms? Doesn’t that feel different than if I say goals, resolutions, or milestones?
I feel like maybe one of the differences for me is that routines and rituals and rhythms all feel like things that are ongoing, that they didn’t begin now and end later. There’s something that you can, you probably already have some in place. There’s things that you might not even recognize as being part of your regular routines. We all operate–most of our lives–on autopilot.
That’s the way that our brains are built. In order for us to really understand what’s important, our brain has to take most of our life and just put it in the background. That’s why we have reflexes. That’s how we get in the car and drive to the school without even remembering how we got there. Because we do it so often. Our mind just has these pathways.
One of the things that I want to focus on this year for myself and that I’ve been working on over the last year or two already, is becoming aware of what those pathways are and then making the small tweaks necessary to bring even more ease into the rhythm itself and the routine itself. And also to make sure that I’m headed for the outcome that I desire. Sometimes when we’re on autopilot, we just go where we have gone. Rather than recognizing if we want to go somewhere different or we want something to feel a little different, we’re going to have to make an adjustment in there some way in that pathway.
I’m going to talk about routines and rituals and rhythms a little bit all separately because, while they have some similarities, I think that the distinctions are important.
Routines
I’m going to start with routines. A routine is simple thing that you are able to do in a habit with ease.
It’s something that just happens once you kind of set it up. It can go on autopilot. It helps things to feel automatic in your life, which is a huge benefit. If you can set yourself up on some positive routines, you’re going to feel like your life is so much easier.
When I think about the word routine, one of the first thing that comes to mind is that I grew up as a dancer. I was on Dance Company. I was on the drill team. I had lots and lots of different routines growing up. And still, to this day, a song might come on in the grocery store on the radio and my body will want to do the dance moves that I knew that were the routine that went along with that song when I was in junior high and high school, 20 years ago.
That’s how strong some of these muscle memory pathways are that the song comes on and I just start to do these moves. And it’s so funny if I ever happened to be–it doesn’t happen very often–but if I happen to be with an old friend who was on one of these dance teams with me and we play a song, or one of those songs comes on, how funny that it’s the same for them. We’ll look from across the room and start doing these dance routines because they’re so automatic.
Now imagine the things in your life that you brush up against all the time with friction that feel like “I wish that this was automatic.” Or “this is kind of annoying that I have to do these things.” And that feels like a lot of work over and over and over again.
Imagine if you could turn on a routine, make it an adjustment so that it feels more automatic, and you create some simplicity and ease so that some of the things in your life that don’t require novelty, that don’t require a lot of creative energy, that some of those things can just begin to operate almost in the background.
Now, just because something is created into a routine doesn’t mean it doesn’t take any effort. Every single time I did one of those dances as a dance team member, it was exertion. It was a lot of energy I was spending. I was moving my muscles, using my body, breathing hard, raising my heart rate. There was a lot of effort put in, but the effort was in the accomplishment of the task, not in the figuring out what to do.
I think sometimes we get this idea that if we have habits or we have things set up in routines that then they will be completely effortless and that’s not true. The effort, the actual energy that it takes to accomplish a thing, will still be there unless you have a robot that does it for you. That won’t take any of your energy. But if you are the one making dinner or doing the laundry or cleaning up the house or going on the hike, that is actual energy that you have to use.
Where we can take away a lot of the friction is in the choices, in the figuring out what comes next, and in the motivation that you need in order to begin the routine itself. You can get to a place where you turn on the music and your body knows what to do.
Minimal Meal Plan
One of the areas where I’m really proud of the job that I’ve done in my own home with creating a routine, to reduce all of that motivation and friction, is with our meal times. I’ve talked before–I have an episode all about my minimal meal plan. I have been using some version of the same idea of choosing meals and putting them on repeat for years since about 2014 or 2015.
It has worked so well for our family. That’s why we continue to do it. If you want to listen to that episode, I’ll link it in the show notes. I also have a very inexpensive and short Seven Days, Seven Dinners e-course all about simplifying your family’s meal plan and it comes with the worksheets to get your family involved. It’s really fun. I also use some of my background as a diabetes and nutrition educator and share some basic nutrition facts, how to put together a healthy meal, in that course. So that will all be linked in the show notes.
What I’ve done for my family this year, that’s a little different. Every three or four months we redo our minimal meal plan, new meals to put on repeat. And this time, not only did I create all of the meals, but I added all of the ingredients into a weekly grocery shopping list on a grocery pickup.
Now this may feel like, “Oh yeah, I already do that.” I really like to grocery shop. I know that I’m probably in the minority. I love shopping at the farmer’s market. I love going to Trader Joe’s. I love walking around Costco and smelling the produce and seeing all the cool things. I really like grocery shopping.
This year, in particular, I’ve noticed how much additional friction it causes, because my time is so different. I don’t have full days that my kids are in school. It’s kind of a hassle to go in and out of the grocery store. So, rather than trying to keep up my regular grocery shopping routine, I decided to just get our meals set and input that entire weekly grocery shopping list into a grocery pickup service. And I can just click it–just one click the whole list populates. With a quick glance I can see if we need to add something or take something away.
I am keeping a little list in my Golden Coil. I have a place to write grocery things. So if I run out of something that isn’t already on that list as a weekly grocery shopping thing, then I can add it. But for the most part, this is going to be like a one-stop shop. Click.
Dave is going to pick up the groceries once a week for me. So this tiny adjustment to the routine already has made such a difference.
Now this is a couple days ago that I got started with this. I know that the meal planning works for us. We’ve been using that for years. So I know that having the same delicious meals that our family loves and having those on repeat is already going to work. Taking it one step further and importing all of that so that the grocery shopping is no longer part of my routine and I don’t even have to think about it–I know automatically that everything will be in the house when I need it–is fantastic.
And I kind of took it one step further. Because I had a little bit of extra energy and time over the weekend, and I knew what my meals were and we already had all of the groceries for the meals for the week, I went ahead and prepped three full meals for this upcoming week. One of them used the instant pot, so I could toss all the ingredients in there and have it ready to go. The other one, I could do prep of the different ingredients. And so when it comes to Tuesday, when we’re going to have this meal, then I will just assemble. It’ll be so much easier.
I know some people do this like clockwork, they prep their whole month’s worth of meals in one day. But I am so excited to take an already easy plan of my minimum meal plan and make it just a little bit easier. My routine will be to just create that ease that I know what I’m making, I know I have on the ingredients, and I also know that half of the work has been done for me because, on a day that I had a little bit more time and energy, I did the prep work ahead and gave my future self the gift of having the meals even easier than they were going to be.
Homeschool
Another example of a routine that has felt really good, that I’m excited to kind of get back into right now, is homeschool.
Now I know not everyone homeschools, but I’m sure that there some parts of your schedule that just need to be similar day after day. And if you would take the guesswork out of it and just make a decision about what the schedule is for yourself, that would feel really good because it would feel like relief.
I designed a homeschool schedule as we began. And one thing that’s fun to note is that I’m just making this stuff up. I am not a certified elementary educator. No one said this is the way that it has to be. And I think sometimes we forget when we’re building our own personal routines, that there isn’t a specific way it’s supposed to happen. It’s just up to you. And the most important piece of creating a routine is the decision that you make to put something into a routine rather than saying, Oh, I’ll just decide later, or We’ll see how it goes, instead saying, Oh, I’m just going to make this decision, and this is the way it’s going to go as default.
And if I want to adjust and be flexible with it later then that’s great. But at least I know what the default plan is. That’s been the beauty of our homeschool routine that we’re just getting back into after the holidays. We know when we begin, we know what the order of the lessons are. And if we choose to deviate from it or take a day off or start late one day, that’s great. But as a baseline, my kids know this is when we begin, this is how it goes. We start with a walk, we do our morning journal pages, then we move into reading.
Everyone knows kind of what’s happening. It takes all of that activation and motivation energy away and allows such ease. Now, like I said, the effort is still there. We’re still adding energy. We’re still actually having to sit down and work and learn and study together and play together. And it’s so fun. And it does still take energy. It does not take near the amount of energy as it would to make a new decision every single time we sat down to do it.
I know some people love having a morning routine. We’re going to talk later in this month about a bedtime routine. Some of the things that you want to do in your life on a regular basis that you don’t get do. Think about how you can make a decision now to set in motion a routine so that, after a few weeks or months of doing it regularly, it becomes second nature. It becomes simply the way that you do things.
What a relief that is to have some of the things that are important to you, that you want to be part of your regular life, already added in. For me, 2021 feels much more like a year of routines than it does of conquering massive singular goals. It’s about encouraging ease and peace in my daily life on the micro level. And as I do that, knowing that any of the bigger things that I want to do will be so much more fun and so much simpler because I have a baseline of a life that feels like it flows really well.
Rituals
Okay. So let’s move into talking about rituals.
What types of rituals do you have in your life?
I love this word. I was just talking to one of my creative mentees. I do a creative mentorship program. There are a couple of spots available. If you’re interested. You can look that up on Patreon. I’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s a monthly coaching practice where I help people with their creative projects. A lot of them are entrepreneurs. Sometimes it’s just lifestyle and helping people, one-on-one, get a handle on the things that they want to do and live their best life.
And I was talking to one of my clients and she asked about rituals and we realized that this is the word that means doing something with meaning. It’s not only about accomplishing something specific, but doing it in a way that brings that emotion and that meaning and that depth to it.
A lot of people, for example, drink a cup of coffee in the morning. I don’t drink coffee, but I do drink Perk Energy, which I’ve talked about. And I love it.
I realized that in the last six months that my morning cup of Perk–my hot caffeinated beverage in the morning–feels like a ritual now because I’ve added some meaning to it. I heat up the water and my tea, kettle whistles, and I have my little mug, and I put my Perk in it, and I buzz it up with the little frother. And then I have that mug in my hand or nearby me for the next 20 or 30 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer than that.
And that time is my time to ease into the day. I feel like I created a ritual around this morning mug. Because I needed a little bit of breathing room. I needed a little bit of space in the morning for myself and my own thoughts. This is a time that I don’t scroll my phone. I usually am either doing a journal practice, or sometimes I’m just sitting, looking out the window and a little meditation,
Having that ritual of a morning hot beverage, and the time that accompanies that that’s kind of surrounds it for me. That’s my time. It feels like a mom moment. It has added just to a measure of joy and peace that wasn’t there before. I ate breakfast and stuff like that, but having something really simple like that of every day. I mean, I travel with my mug now. I’m one of those crazy people.
It feels so good. And I used to watch these Instagram videos of people preparing their morning cup of coffee. And I would think, gosh, what an interesting ritual that they have of doing these things in order, and the way that they pour, and all of the stuff.
Whether or not you drink coffee is totally beside the point. It’s about the meaning and taking a moment to really enjoy something. You can create a ritual out of anything. By adding a level of meaning and intention to it. It may be a morning prayer or meditation practice. It may be a journal practice. It may be your exercise routine. If you add a level of intention and depth and meaning to it so that you don’t do it and feel neutral, that as you do it, as you perform this ritual and even think of it as a ritual, that simple addition of depth invites a level of love and peace and self care and awareness that doesn’t exist without the intention.
I think taking something from just doing the action to acknowledging it as a ritual, acknowledging the meaning that you want it to have in your life and the way that you want to feel and sort of surrounding it with all of that meaning and that love, that’s when it turns into a ritual. It turns into something that then can add such depth to your life.
We often think of rituals as being religious and they are definitely. Most religions have many rituals that are part of the practice: lighting candles or kneeling and praying a certain way or a clothing that’s worn. There’s all different types of rites and rituals that are part of religious practice.
Now think of how you could do any of those things outside of the practice. You know, people like candles all the time without any meaning, to have a nice dinner, to have the room smell good, or or if the power goes out, you light a candle.
When you take away the meaning, it’s just an action. Now I think you can reverse engineer that in your own life and add meaning to something that was just an action in order to create the feeling that you want and to create that intention, that depth of emotion.
My goal right now in my life, isn’t to do a lot of things. It’s to feel a certain way. And the things that I do are to help me feel that way. And I think that’s true for a lot of people that maybe not everyone notices or acknowledges that. We think we want to do these things, but why, why do we want to do it? Why do we want to get there? Because we think that will feel different. I’m trying to reverse engineer that a little bit and feel how I want to feel every day, regardless of what I do or don’t do, or accomplish or don’t accomplish.
If I can do that, then the sky’s the limit because there are no boundaries on what I have to do in order to feel differently or feel better.
You may feel like I went off the deep end a little bit right there. I don’t think I explained myself very well. The point is that I think rituals have a unique ability to add meaning and intention to our lives when we decide that we want them to. So I want to invite you to consider what could you add to your routine or add to your life as a ritual that you want to do, and also how you want it to make you feel. Or consider something that you already do regularly and just add a level of meaning to it and turn it into a ritual that feels even better. That kind of heightens the emotion around it.
Rhythms
Okay. The last topic of today’s episode is rhythm.
I love that word. We were laughing the other day on Instagram about words that you spell wrong all the time. This is one of mine. I don’t know why are the M and the N so backwards all the time. Rhythm. I’m going to guarantee in the show notes, it will be wrong before spellcheck changes it to right.
What does rhythm mean? Rhythm is music’s pattern in time. It’s that regular beat that’s repeated over and over again that you can kind of follow through. Some people are naturally very rhythmic. They can hear the beat of the music and they can move along with it.
Some people don’t have that same amount of rhythm. It’s something that can be learned. I remember, years ago when I was studying abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico, I took a salsa dancing class. So twice a week, I took the bus across town and I went into this little salsa studio. This is salsa dancing class in Mexico. This was incredible dancers who are brought up from the time they’re babies listening to this particular style of music and moving their bodies along with it.
I was definitely one of the odd ones out. And I’ve always thought of myself as musical and as rhythmic. Like I mentioned earlier in the episode, I danced my whole life growing up on all these different dance teams. And here I am 19 years old in Mexico feeling like I have seven left feet.
I realized quickly in that class that one of my personal issues was that I want to lead. I tend to be marching to the beat of my own drum. I want to move when I want to move. I want to spin when I want to spin. And when you are dancing in tandem with a partner, or even when you’re dancing alone with the music, if you go off on your own rhythm, it doesn’t look very coherent. Things don’t really work very well.
So moving in tandem with the rhythm, with the external energy of the music, with the partner, that is where you find that harmony and where everything starts to flow and look good and also feel really good.
As I think about that, trying to move my body with the partner, with the rhythm of the music in a salsa dancing class. It reminds me of sort of this same feeling that I get sometimes of wanting to live a long with the rhythm of my life, the rhythm of my household, of my children, of the weather, of my relationship.
And a lot of times we sort of push all of our circumstance aside in order to follow our schedule or do what we think we should be doing. One thing that I’m realizing more and more is the power of finding the natural rhythm of our circumstance, of our life, of our job, of our children in their particular ages that they’re in, and allowing ourselves, or setting ourselves up, to move in tandem with that rhythm rather than constantly moving against it.
I’ve talked about this in the past, a similar thing, by using the words, energy management, and really trying to become aware of where our own personal energy is during the day. And not trying to force ourselves to do really creative things during low energy times. And trying to take advantage of those higher energy times to sort of use that motivation to push through.
I realize with rhythm and the rhythm of our lives, that we can’t only be thinking about our own personal energy. That definitely comes into it. I’ve talked a couple of different times on the show about seasons and hormonal rhythms that happen throughout the month and becoming aware of those as well.
I also like to think about my kids and my family, the weather, just the general season of the year. I talked a lot about this in November with our planning episodes, but can you think of some ways in your life right now where you keep having the same friction, because maybe you’re trying to step outside of the beat. You’re trying to move too quickly or move too slowly.
There’s a rhythm, a natural rhythm of your life, that you’re constantly battling rather than finding a way to move with it.
Everyone’s life is going to look so different, but I’ll just give you a couple examples from my life.
Slower Mornings
Something that’s been really nice with homeschool and with COVID has been slower mornings at home. We are really lucky where we live, even when my kids do go to school in-person, their school didn’t start until after nine o’clock in the morning. So we have been able to, for the last three, four years, have really slow mornings compared to years before when we would be up and out the door by seven to get to preschool and regular school.
It’s been so nice to recognize that in our home and with my family, getting up and having a little bit of time to just sort of relax and have a nice breakfast together and spend some time together, and not having to hurry the kids to get their shoes on and get their backpacks packed and get out the door by the certain minute, every single day, that has felt like a rhythm that I appreciate, that my kids don’t move very quickly in the morning.
For example, this morning, I knew my kids would sleep until 7:30 am or 8 am. So I got up a couple hours early to get some work done on my own. And even that felt like I was moving in the rhythm of my lifestyle because the house was quiet. I had my little mug. And I was able to do a couple emails and get some work done before my kids opened their eyes. And it was just this really, really beautiful, wonderful way to spend my morning where sometimes I sleep in with the kids, understanding what the rhythm of the day might feel like and just allowing some of that or planning to go along with that.
Meal Prep
Another thing I mentioned, the meal prep already that when, on the weekend I have more time and more energy because Dave is home. Maybe we’ve been outside, you know, spending time hiking or doing something fun. I feel like spending time outside always builds my energy. So I come home and I feel really good. We had all these fresh ingredients. I was kind of feeling motivated and excited rather than pausing that motivation, I allowed myself to move through that motivation and accomplish the meal prep for the week.
I felt like that was sort of riding the wave of the rhythm of the weekend. And that has now set me up for having a really nice and a lot easier meal prep during this week.
Moon Calendar
When I was buying my 2021 calendars–I have a couple calendars. One at my office, a big giant Stendig calendar that I love. It’s a black and white, huge calendar that I’ve had for many years and love it. I also have a great craft calendar that I keep all of our family activities and things on. That is at home. And then I was on the website at Schoolhouse Electric, and I saw a lunar calendar where it has all of the phases of the moon for the whole year (no longer available, find similar HERE) on this long strip. I’ll link it in the show notes if you’re interested in checking it out.
I thought it was such a good reminder, as I’ve been learning more about living in the flow and my own lunar cycles as a woman, that it’d be fun to have that hanging in our house. And it also is great way to talk about the moon phases with the kids. And I feel like it’s also a really great, just basic learning and teaching tool.
That is such a good reminder that there are times of work and high energy output. And then there are times of rest. And rather than feeling like I want every single day of the month to be a full moon, I want all the light. I want all the energy. I want all the output.
Seeing just this beautiful visual reminder of the phases of the month, of the different weeks that we go through in our life, of the rhythm that is natural, that there are days that you shine and days that you don’t shine and that that’s all okay. We need to drop the narrative that we are supposed to perform at the same level all the time and that that level should always be high.
We need to rest. We need to cozy up with a book. We need to go outside and be under the starlight. There are so many things that we don’t give the weight or value to that actually add so much to our lifestyle because we don’t think of them as box checks. I think as we live in the rhythm of our lives, we will start to better acknowledged the ebbs and flows of our own personal energy, of the energy of our families, of what we’re pulled to do in different seasons, and know that it’s all good, that it’s all okay.
The high times, and the low times are all part of a complete experience, which is what ultimately, we really hope for.
Recap
So routines, rituals and rhythms.
I have three questions to finish up this episode to help you help invite you to consider how to create some more of these things in your life, or build some awareness or acceptance of them.
1. How can I make this task as simple as possible?
That’s talking about routine. What is a way, a small adjustment that you can make, that takes all of the motivation energy or guesswork out of it? How can you make a decision in order to just simplify and create ease?
2. What could I do to bring meaning into my daily life?
That question points to rituals. What’s something that you either want to add into your life with meaning or something you already do that you could surround with meaning in order to just encourage even more positive emotion and depth in your daily life.
3. Am I moving with or against the music of my circumstance and personal energy?
As you think about the times of in your days that you’re feeling friction or that things feel really hard or that you’re frustrated or things are just not working out. Can you stop and consider, am I trained to move against the beat of my daily life and the energies that surround me in the pattern of my life? How can I get in step? How can I accept the circumstance and the energies of my children and the different things that are happening beyond my control? How can I move in step with that, to still accomplish the things that I hope for, but understand that it might happen in a different time that the rhythm might be a little different than my expectation right now?
As you consider these things for your own life, I hope that you’ll recognize that the routines and rituals and rhythms that you build or create for yourself are to invite ease and peace, and release friction and expectation. The more that we can do that, the better we’ll feel. And the more joyful our experience here in daily life will be.
