The Power of Morning and Evening Rituals | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 16
The Power Of Morning And Evening Rituals
What are we doing in the morning to set us up for our day and at night to get us ready for the next? The goal is that we start and end our days feeling refreshed, energized, and ready for what’s ahead. That’s why rituals are so important.
Routine vs. Rituals
There is a difference between a ritual and a routine. A routine is a series of patterns, habits, or behaviors. An example of a routine would be brushing teeth and showering in the morning. While a ritual has a level of intentionality behind it. A ritual is a routine with purpose and intention.
Rituals should be sacred, this should be a time and actions that are set aside for a special purpose.
How to Create Meaningful Rituals
A good way to begin to think about what kind of ritual we need is by starting with the question: What do I want to put myself into motion for? What will help me win my day? How do I want to feel?
Let’s reverse engineer our rituals, starting from the end.
What is the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) for our rituals? Or what is the minimum work needed to receive the benefits of our rituals? What few things absolutely have to happen to help me feel the way my morning or evening rituals are meant to make me feel?
Then, what is the Optimal Viable Product for our rituals? If you were your absolute best self what would you do as your rituals for the morning and evening?
Knowing these two things for ourselves will help lay out a plan and a sort of drop-down menu for our rituals that will help prime us to get us into the right state.
A Few Things You Can Put On Your Drop Down Menu:
Reflection
Looking at how life was different from how it currently is. The three-year reflection is helpful.
Big 3 Tasks
We should know what our goals are for the day so we can be prepared to win the day.
Prayer
Rituals can be extremely spiritual, including spirituality in a morning or evening ritual can be very beneficial.
Journaling
Reviewing past entries can be enlightening and helpful when trying to decide what would be most beneficial in our rituals.
Visualization
Vision boards are powerful because we can see our goals consistently in our space.
Music
Songs that trigger certain emotions can brighten up any ritual.
Dance Party
Wake up to music that makes your body move. Starting the day feeling energized and happy.
I Am Statements
Have a list of I Am… Statements, write them every day and then place them in different places within your space.
Getting Plenty Light
Light wakes us up in the morning and helps us feel energized, we should get as much as we can.
The Importance of Evening Rituals
Whatever our attention is focused on during the final 30 minutes before bed replays in our heads six more times after we’ve gone to sleep. So we must be intentional with our 30 minutes before bed.
We need to focus our engagement on something beneficial during this time and stay away from our screens to stay away from the blue light that our technology has.
The purpose of an evening routine is to allow us to pause the constant stimulation and then come to a resting position, as well as get us pumped for the morning. Then the morning ritual gets us pumped to start a new day.
In A Winter Season?
Rituals sound fantastic, but sometimes when trying to apply them we realize that these rituals do take up some time. Depending on what season of life we are currently in, we might not always have time to do every single thing inside our ritual that we’d want to.
That is where the MPV comes in. The most important thing is that you create motion because when you create motion you create emotion. During this time, expressing gratitude during this time is important. We want our energy to be high so we can still show up as our best selves for the people around us.
Expressing gratitude in a winter season is like saying “No matter how challenging this season is right now, I know there is a gift I can find”.
Spring will always come, winter does not last forever. Rituals are critical during these seasons, something is always better than nothing. If we can’t do an hour at the gym, 25 minutes works too!
The goal is to not give up on yourself, knowing you can do the things you say you’ll do, and doing them!