E163: Habits VS Rituals

What is the difference between habits and rituals? Do all our habits have to be rituals? How can we stay consistent with our commitments? This podcast episodes answers these questions and more…

Hi there and welcome back to the women’s empowerment podcast, I am buzzing with excitement because we have just started our first ever Elevate Your Life 21 day commitment to healthier habits aka the 21 day healthy habit challenge and over 70 of you have joined in for the next 3 weeks! WOW!

If you’re listening to this episode and you are also in the challenge I want to say THANK YOU so much for being a part of this, it is so meaningful to me that you’re here.

And if you’re listening to this episode I am so grateful for YOU and that you are here with me during this show. If you weren’t able to be part of the challenge, I am collecting feedback to learn if people are interested in joining the next round. If you are, you can send me a note on instagram @vallavignelife and I will set something up for the second quarter!

[1:28] Now, onto our episode. Today’s topic was inspired by a mastermind I was invited to speak at and I talked about Habits versus Rituals. These two things are sometimes said interchangeably, and although they are similar, they do have a key difference. Habits are an action that is done repeatedly. Rituals are done repeatedly with a purpose that is outside the action itself.

Here are some examples:

A habit of stirring your morning coffee; The ritual is stirring the intention for the day into your coffee

The habit of taking a shower; The ritual of washing off the day in the shower

A habit to get dressed; The ritual of putting on clothes that elevate your energy and self worth

The habit of your daily skin care routine; The ritual of saying self-love affirmations when you look at yourself in the mirror

If you were to see yourself stirring your coffee, taking a shower, getting dressed, or performing your skincare routine, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the habit and the ritual, because the actions are the same, but the meaning or purpose behind the action is what separates habits and rituals.

[2:57] During the mastermind there were a few questions that popped up. The first one was, does every habit we do have to be a ritual?

And the short answer is no. Whether we realize it or not, every single one of us has heaps of habits that we do each day. If each of those habits were rituals, then we would probably be living very mindfully, similar to Buddhist monks. And although this is an incredibly powerful lifestyle and practice, it isn’t always realistic to have every single one of our habits be a ritual.

[3:33] Now that being said, if you can think about some of your daily habits, which ones are already a ritual, or which ones could you make a little more meaningful or bring more purpose to?

I think the most common and helpful examples of these types of habits tend to be in our morning or evening routines. Because the morning is an opportunity to decide how we want to spend our day, or how we want to feel and show up for the day. And our evening routine is our time to close the day, wind down for the night and prepare for a quality sleep. The morning and evening routines are what I like to call the bookends of our day. They may be separate, but they actually support each other as well as our events and our experiences.

Take a moment to consider your morning and evening routines and habits. How can you incorporate purpose into these current routines?

Perhaps you have a habit of stretching for 10 minutes in the morning, the ritual could be to create connection with your physical, mental, and emotional self as you are stretching.

Maybe you diffuse sleepy time oils in the evening. A ritual could be that when you start the diffuser you take a moment of mindfulness to allow any negative events of the day to calmly diffuse from your own body. Or any busy thoughts to release so you can have a more restful sleep.

I’d love for you to come up with your own practices and share them with me! Send me a DM on instagram @vallavignelife and share your habits turned rituals with me there.

[6:00] Don’t worry if you are having a hard time coming up with purpose or meaning for your habits. This was another question that came up in the mastermind: how do we make a habit a ritual?

The simplest way to do this is by choosing a feeling word. I guess I should say, it’s really the best place to start. How do you want to feel? Here are some of the responses of our challenge members:

Empowered, authentically happy, free, tranquil, peaceful and at ease, healthy and energized, resilient, invigorated, alive, refreshed, young, fit, calm, healthy, present, centred, focused, strong, productive, optimized, grounded, connected, and motivated.

The next step would be to think about different actions, behaviours, moments, or experiences where you already felt connected to your feeling word?

I have felt empowered when I put on clothes that make me feel good, I feel happy when I spend time with people I love, I feel peaceful and at ease when I am in nature, I feel young when I dance like no one is watching, I feel present when I practice breathwork, etc.

Now I am giving all these examples, but I’m not saying do them all at once or start all these new habits and rituals! No, no no!

Choose one or two feeling words and go from there! Once you have your feeling word and your action, you can decide where this new ritual would best fit in.

Maybe you already play music while you make dinner and you want to feel young. So you make a sweet playlist of all your favourite songs from back in the day and while you’re making dinner you listen to this music and dance like no one is watching!

As another example, if you want to connect more to happiness and spend more time with people you love, you could carve out time or schedule time in your calendar to have family members over, or create family time in your home and during that time you are present with the people around you. Maybe you ask them what brings them happiness or joy or their own word and incorporate the things that they like too! Perhaps it’s a family game night or movie night or everyone doing their own thing in one space together.

[8:27] So now you understand the difference between habits and rituals, have your feeling word, your new ritual, and you might be wondering how do I stay consistent with this new commitment?

Great question. I will start with the short answer: effective practice. The idea for our new habit starts in the front of our brain also known as the prefrontal cortex. This is only the idea, decision, and planning of our new ritual, however it has not become habitual yet. It is not automated.

Our voluntary motor movements, and routine behaviours are associated with a deeper part of our brain called the basal ganglia. This is the area of the brain where our automatic habits come from.

So right now, we are creating a new ritual and this podcast episode is activating your prefrontal cortex, however the habit of how you sit in your car, put on your seatbelt, and start this podcast to listen on a drive are habits that you have repeated effectively again and again over time and now are automatic. I would actually bet that you get in your car the exact same way every time or in the same habitual pattern every time.

You might be driving and listening to this podcast episode and you probably weren’t even consciously aware of how you got into your car or whether your seatbelt went on first or you started your car first, because you didn’t have to think about it, you just did it!

This makes forming rituals more mindful and purposeful, and in turn your daily activities and habits are more conscious and can improve/elevate your life. In the book Atomic Habits, the author James Clear talks about how if you were to improve your life with a small habit every day by 1%, after 365 days - or one year - you would have been able to improve yourself by 365%. That is of course if you effectively repeat the habit every day for one year.

[12:40] This long answer so far explains what it takes to create a new ritual or habit and why it’s so important but HOW? How do we stay consistent?? And it’s really about taking action again and again!

A lot of people think that habit forming is all about our minds and our mindset, and yes that is a huge and important part of it. However since the habit is so deeply rooted into our brain, it is our physical body that is actually performing the habit, even when our mind knows otherwise.

My favourite example of this mind-habit vs body-habit is when you leave a room and turn off the light automatically, but someone is in the room and needs the light on.

You KNOW, your brain KNOWS, and your body knows that someone is in the room - you were just interacting with them! But your body turns the light off as you exit anyway. And what do people usually say when this happens? “Oh sorry! Force of habit!”

Your physical body does all the things it needs to do for the whole day automatically. You could be - and there are many people who are - on autopilot day in and day out. When you start to have these incredible ideas of shifting your habits and swapping bad behaviours with empowering rituals, your brain is all excited and your physical body might be in the moment, but when the time comes to actually make the move your physical body starts to reject this.

And here’s what happens... Let’s say your new commitment is to turn off Netflix after 1 episode and go upstairs to bed to read a chapter of your book. Your idea lights you up and you are excited and eager to complete this habit.

Fast forward to you on the couch and you just finished an episode, and your brain says “okay time to read!” Your physical body does not recognize this information from your brain and then sends signals to your brain to say “quick tell her all the reasons why we shouldn’t go upstairs, and that we should just watch one more episode on the couch.” Your BODY is doing this, but of course we can’t hear our body so instead we hear our brain and all of the sudden our brain is like some toddler throwing a tantrum of why we shouldn’t be leaving the couch.

And then you’re telling yourself “okay just one more episode!” Mind quiet, body happy - for now. And then… four episodes later your brain is like” whoa whoa whoa, what in the?? How did we not read a single page?” and thennnn the guilt and shame and everything else piles on and we start this vicious cycle of noise that ultimately isn’t helping us move forward in the direction of our new goals.

Trust me, I’m getting to the how part! The best way to stay consistent is to stay in action. Using our example:

Episode finishes. Action one: turn off the TV. Body/mind might be upset. Everything will be okay. Small action. Leave no more time, action two: stand up. Action three: walk upstairs. Action four: get the book. Action five open book, and I think you get the point.

[17:02] Mel Robbins describes this really well when she talks about her countdownt 5-4-3-2-1. With her story she gives herself this countdown to stop the brain from communicating to you that this new behaviour is going to happen, and after one its lift off and you are physically taking action.

Over time, and with this practice you and your body will start to sync up with these new habits. The more you can repeat this, the quicker the habit will form. It does take some time. It does take small actions, it does take repetition. How many days? Well that depends. Everyone is different and it will depend on how frequently and how consistent you will be throughout the time.

I was joking with my friend who is a dental hygienist and I said it took me a few weeks to start the daily flossing habit, but it really took me 30 years! LOL When it came to me flossing it was a simple mindset shift that put me in action, and then I was able to consistently take that action and have made flossing a habit. HOWEVER I tried so many times and with so many different techniques to start flossing. And with my other habits a lot of these techniques had been successful, but not for my flossing apparently. So anyway. All that being said, I encourage you to give yourself grace.

Be mindful when working at forming a new habit, try different things, experiment with what has worked in the past and be the observer of your thoughts and connect with yourself to understand you better and how the habit will form.

If you are looking for more accountability and connection, I would love to invite you into my Make a Habit Mentorship Program. It is a 1:1 coaching program that runs for 4 weeks with options to continue forward. We connect with weekly calls and focus on your specific habit, needs, and obstacles that arise. If you are looking to work with me and build better habits to improve your life and make a bigger impact, you can learn more and sign up at www.valerielavignelife.com/mentorship

Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode, we have some really wonderful guests joining us this month and next month including some past clients and mindset coaches. I’m really looking forward to introducing them.

For now, I wish you much success with your new habits and rituals! The purpose and intention behind your rituals are going to be huge for taking action. Remind yourself of them when you’re feeling stuck or avoiding the new ritual.

Okay beautiful human. That’s all for today, slide into the DMs @vallavignelife with you new habits and rituals or screenshot this episode and tag me so I know which episodes you’re listening to and can cheer on your new goals!

See you next week!

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!