The 7 Rituals: Number 3
Calming practices that help bring more harmony into your day
Ikigai is about experiencing your essence and purpose in harmony with whatever you do.
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
Days filled with stress, anxiety, and worry separate us from the harmony required to live out our Ikigai.
Here are seven rituals of calmness that you can practice to help bring more harmony into your day.
In this ongoing series, I will list all seven and detail each in this and subsequent posts.
If you missed the first you can find it here.
The Rituals
These seven rituals will help you cultivate an attitude of calmness:
A calm morning.
Observe your response.
Take things without judgment.
Express gratitude.
Create stress coping habits.
Mono-task.
Reduce noise.
Take Things Without Judgement:
Often, the response (Ritual 2) is to take things personally.
📌 When someone does something we don’t like, we interpret this as a personal affront.
📌 Someone cutting us off in traffic becomes a personal attack or insult.
📌 Is the boss short with us? Our minds can conjure all sorts of awful scenarios. How could they treat me this way?! They don’t think I’m doing a good job; I might get fired!
More often than not, it isn’t intentionally directed at you at all.
Usually, it’s the other person’s issue they’re dealing with in their own lives.
Many people are doing the best they can.
Learn not to interpret events as a personal affront.
🌀 Reflection:
Next week, build on what you learned in Ritual 2, noticing your response to frustrations, injustices, or disappointing events by eliminating judgment.
Here’s a personal example.
Earlier this week, I was short with my wife when she asked me a question.
Instead of getting angry, she quietly and without judgment asked me if everything was alright. I told her it was and wondered why she asked.
She explained I had answered her in a sharp and almost angry tone.
That wasn’t my intention. Distracted, my sharp answer was an expression of frustration at myself for trying to do too many things at once.
She didn’t jump to the conclusion that could quickly have escalated the issue. Her question helped me realize I wasn’t being present in anything I was doing. I slowed down and focused on one thing, and my energy evened out.
Framing something as a non-personal allows you to acknowledge it as happening with no need to respond.
