Routine as Ritual

Rituals are desperately lacking in our modern world. And yet they are precisely the medicine needed for dark and trying times. Rituals provide touchstones and comfort yet require attention and pause—which can feel like they are in short supply. But we have access to these capabilities any time we can shift our focus, ground ourselves, and fortify our connection to the present moment.

Rituals can sound intimidating, time-consuming, esoteric, and overly dramatic. But the mundane can be ritualized. Our routines are the perfect place to look to when we are longing for more ritual in our lives. Routines can be elevated to the status of ritual and in so doing, we create a greater sense of meaning and connection—putting our values into action.

“Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored.” Terry Tempest Williams

As business owners, we must come into a rhythm with our routines and our rituals because this provides the container for the work that we do with our clients, our mindset, our personal growth, and our businesses. As women, as coaches, as business owners, and as seekers, we need to feed and nurture our own entrepreneurial spirits to move forward in a way that is sustainable and profitable.

Its important to use a holistic framework as we think about rituals and practices that create greater ease and clarity. We need to be clean, clear, and functional in body, mind, heart, and soul. And that requires a daily practice for each. The daily practices, the discipline, the routines become rituals that pulse with meaning.

That meaning weaves a thread throughout the days of our lives, throughout our work with clients, throughout our own inner work. The meaning provides us with a grounded sense of who we are and what we are doing here. But also, these practices—these routines that we are elevating to ritual—they create for us greater productivity, greater focus, more calm, and more well-being. There is much more ease as you go throughout your day. As a business owner, that’s a welcome feeling.

As coaches, we can model the discipline that daily rituals require. We can walk the talk by living and breathing daily rituals and practices that keep us clean, clear, and functional in body, mind, heart, and soul. We cover ‘routine as ritual’ in the 90 Day Coaching Confidence & Marketing Mastery Course. Its important that as coaches we have these skills and that we teach them to our clients so they get the benefit as well.

Yoga, meditation, long walks. Journaling, inspiration, looking at art, reading poetry. Connecting with loved ones. Tidying the house. Balancing the checkbook. A cup of afternoon tea. Doing any and all of these things in a reverent way, in a sequence of steps, in the same order each day. Those are the routines, the rituals, and the practices that can provide the medicine we need spiritually and practically speaking so that our days are filled with touchstones of comfort, focus, and connection. These practices create a psychic container for our growth, the growth of our coaching practices, and the growth of our clients.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams

“Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect so much from myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase. And the energy we expend emotionally belongs to the hidden side of the moon.”