5 Daily Rituals That Will Improve Your Health and Your Life

"The human soul can always use a new tradition. Sometimes we require them." 

~Pat Conroy~

I have daily rituals that help me think clear, improve my health and reduce stress. I'm betting that you have daily rituals too. The word ritual is usually associated to religious practices and ceremonies. But I promise that I'm not going to go there.

I'm more interested in the practical definition of ritual: A detailed method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed.

Daily rituals are powerful because over time they become deep-seeded habits. Do you wash your hands before you eat? Do you even have to think about it? You've probably practiced the ritual of washing your hands before you eat so many times that you now do it automatically with little thought. It is a habit.

The cool thing is that you can create new daily rituals and therefore new habits. You can also get rid of destructive rituals and habits.


A resource for you to check out is the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I've read the book and found it to be a useful tool for understanding and changing habits. Here's a video from Charles explaining how to break a habit.




You can also checkout this flowchart explaining how to break a habit and this flowchart explaining how to make a habit.

Establishing a new habit is the act of creating a new daily ritual that you practice over and over again. For better or worse, eventually you have a habit. Let's look at 5 Daily Rituals you can start today to create powerful habits that will lead to health, clean energy and reduced stress levels.

5 Daily Rituals for Health, Vitality and Longevity
1. How you start your day is a major influence on the rest of your day. One daily ritual that I've found increases my energy and helps wake me up is to drink a tall glass of cold water as soon as I wake up. 

I've found that drinking a glass of cold water first thing in the morning wakes up my mind, increases my energy, helps with digestion and ensures my body is getting all the benefits of drinking water.

Instead of running straight to the coffee pot in the morning to get a shot of caffeine have a glass of water. Soon you'll wake up reaching for your water glass without thinking about it and you'll be enjoying all the health benefits this new habit brings. I'm not suggesting you skip your coffee. Just make sure to have some fresh water first.

2. Another ritual to practice first thing in the morning is to show gratitude. I keep a gratitude list in my journal. Usually my journal is on my nightstand and I can grab it as I go out to the kitchen for my glass of water.

There's no set number of things you have to write down. All you need to do is write one thing in your journal that you're thankful for. It could be as simple as being thankful that you woke up today.

I used to believe that I could just think about things I'm grateful for and that would be good enough. But the truth is that there is something more significant about actually writing these things down.

I've not made this an actual habit, yet. I have to make a conscious effort to write my gratitude list every morning. But taking that time in the morning to concentrate on what I'm grateful and happy about puts me in a more productive state of mind for the rest of the day. I also find that I appreciate my life more and it helps me realize that I'm surrounded by abundance.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” 

~Oprah Winfrey~

Sorry to sound a little new age with this gratitude stuff but I believe that I have to tell my mind what to focus on or else it finds things on its own... and what it finds is not always good. A cool site to checkout is Gratitude Log which is coined as "The Happiest Place on the Internet."

3. Get outside in the afternoon for a walk and some Vitamin D. This might sound crazy but I think you would actually do your body, mind and spirit more good by skipping lunch and taking a walk outside with fresh air and sunshine.

Lunch is one of those meals during the day that I feel is more of a ritual then it is a necessity. Do you have to eat lunch? I'm not convinced that you do.

If I follow my regular schedule of eating a high protein and fat breakfast I find that I'm usually not hungry until late afternoon around 5 o'clock. If I'm staying hydrated by drinking plenty of water my energy levels actually improve as the day progresses and I might even make it until 6pm, or later, before I'm actually hungry.

I hear from a lot of people that they feel sluggish after lunch. They might even need a nap! This is especially true for people who eat the typical sub sandwich for lunch with a bag of chips and a cola on the side.

Lunch or no lunch one thing is certain, we sit too much. I also think that most of us don't get enough natural Vitamin D from sunlight. Usually you're inside eating lunch during the part of the day where you can get the most Vitamin D from the sun.

I encourage you to try a new daily ritual. Get outside at lunch time. Take a walk. If you want to eat something take an apple or a handful of nuts with you along with a water bottle. I promise you it will be the best lunch ever and you'll have more energy for the second half of your day.

Bonus points if you grab a friend and have fun talking as you take your walk. Of course, everyone is different so test it out and see if it's right for you.

4. Practice mastery in an endeavor outside your normal work and obligations. I've had the goal to learn to play guitar for a while. I've dabbled and picked up some chords but I haven't really dedicated myself to practicing a little each day.

When I was practicing on a regular basis I felt a calm and presence that is hard to come by during "normal" daily activities. I get this same type of feeling playing sports or going to the gym. It comes from having a clear mind and focusing on one objective.


Think about something you've wanted to learn and go do it. It's exciting to learn new things and to become good at them. To learn more about practising mastery I encourage you to read Mastery by George Leonard.

"How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself." 

~George Leonard~

5. Turn off your phone, computer, laptop, tablet and TV at least 90 minutes before bed. This is another ritual that has been hard for me but I'm persisting.

When I practice the no screens before bed ritual I find that my body naturally winds down and I get sleepy. If I'm on the computer or reading on my phone my mind starts going and I could stay up until 2 am. This leads to not getting enough quality sleep and the next day my energy and productivity suffers.

Instead of staring at a screen that two hours before bed you could practice mastery in your new subject from ritual number four. You could spend that time reading a new book or writing in your journal. It could be a great opportunity to spend time with your family and loved ones. The possibilities are endless.

Good sleep is so important to our overall health and well-being that it deserves serious attention. Here's a great article from Mark Sisson on how light can impact your sleep.

"Blue light regulates our secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Exposed to blue light, we limit the production of melatonin, and we stay alert and awake; in the absence of blue light, melatonin production ramps up, and we get sleepy." Mark Sisson

Turn off those screens and immerse yourself in something "offline." Disconnect and let your mind wind down naturally. Sometimes deadlines and obligations get the best of us and we have to burn the midnight oil. But if you're able to make this ritual part of your normal day to day life it will pay dividends.

5.5. Here's a quick bonus ritual that you might want to try. Meditate or practice positive visualization for at least 5 minutes a day. It doesn't matter what part of the day you do this as long as you do it for at least five minutes every day.

I like to visualize the goals I have and picture what it will be like to achieve them. It's actually a lot of fun trying to see how bright and clear you can make the pictures in your mind. Take this five minutes and do some deep breathing as well.

Sometimes I find myself taking shallow breaths. This is especially true when I'm stressed out. Taking deep, mindful breaths can relieve stress, increase energy and boost your immune system. Check out this clip from NPR.

Going forward be mindful of the daily rituals that are part of your life. Have you consciously chosen these daily rituals? Do you have habits that have chosen you that you would like to change? It all starts with recognizing our current daily rituals and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of.

Make sure to share these ideas with your friends. Good ideas and good health are worth sharing.

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How to Stop Self-Sabotage Behaviour

5 tips to get you out of your own way

"Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn't happen." 

~ Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

A talkative mouse, a rat, and a small shrew were trapped in a flood, desperately clinging to the side of a lily pad - and sinking fast! A helpful owl came to their rescue, first telling the rat to clamp its teeth onto its talons as the owl flew to safety and then returning for the shrew, who received similar instructions. Finally, as the tides rose ever higher, the owl came back for our talkative mouse.

"You are rescued and will live!" said the owl. "But I've noticed you talk a lot. Promise me you'll keep your mouth closed around my legs and on no account open it, or you'll fall to your fate!"

"Of course!" said the mouse, who proceeded to clamp his mouth onto his feathered rescuer's landing gear.

They took off and flew across the floods. The owl was about to land on some high ground, but the mouse decided he wanted to alight some other place to get dry.

"Not there..." shouted the mouse, but those were the last words he ever spoke as he fell into the swirling waters below.

We can all laugh at such a silly tale because we never behave in such self-destructive ways, do we? Of course we do - although perhaps not as obviously - but why?

The main reasons for self-sabotaging behaviour
Okay, the mouse's behaviour came from ignorance and heedlessness; he just didn't think. But we mess things up for ourselves in other ways, too - and for other reasons, which include:

• The familiarity of 'failure'. Maybe we're so used to situations not working out or to being around 'dysfunctional people' that it feels easier to 'put a spanner in the works' by behaving in some way that either worsens or destroys something promising - a kind of 'better the devil you know'.
• An unconscious need to be in control. If we feel something is bound to fail because it's 'too good to last', we might engineer its failure somehow so as to maintain a sense that we are still in control (because we caused it to fail).
• Feeling unworthy. Low self-esteem may drive people to feel they 'don't deserve' success or happiness.
• Bad habits such as excessive drinking, smoking, or uncontrolled anger.
• Need for excitement. It might be an otherwise perfect sunny afternoon and seemingly out of the blue, Joe picks a fight, goes into a silent mood, or drags up some unrelated contentious issue from the past. Suddenly, the afternoon turns into a battleground. The desire for 'excitement' can take different forms, not all of them constructive.

But surely if people know they are doing this, they wouldn't do it!

So is sabotaging ourselves an unconscious affliction?
People seldom mean to sabotage themselves. It's not generally a conscious decision to spoil things - and that's a problem. We can be left with the feeling: "Why did I do that?!" Many of our emotional drivers remain unconscious, which is why chronic self-saboteurs will often use conscious justification (or what seem like excuses) to explain why they had to:

Yell at their professor and get kicked off the course.
Break off contact with a friend who was about to offer them a great job.
End a promising relationship.
Early learning - or should I say mis-learning - can create the habit of self-sabotage and 'things going right' may seem like a scary and foreign country. If you feel you are prone to this sort of behaviour, then these tips may well help you (as long as you let them).

1) Observe yourself
Forget justifying why you did (or didn't do) this or that; just watch yourself. The adage "don't listen to what people say, but watch what they do" to see what they're really like can be applied to yourself equally well. Imagine you're someone else whose behaviour you're watching. Ask yourself: "What did I do there?" and "What was driving it?" Was it fear, spite, the need to be in control (even if that control is related to making things fail), the need for excitement through conflict, or the desire for attention through sympathy?

One client who did this realized that he had been unconsciously reluctant to earn more than his (bullying) father had done when he was alive: "As if I couldn't betray him by being better off than he had been." This realization helped him overcome this limiting belief once he had observed it operating within himself. He decided to actually ignore it until the old compulsion not to succeed became a faint whisper, then died away all together.

What do you sabotage and how? Get to 'know the machine'. Seeing your own behaviour more clearly has nothing to do with over-applied self-blame, but rather being more objective.

2) Remember that success isn't black or white
Strongly imagine (and get into the habit of strongly imagining) what true success will be like, because it may be different from what you'd been unconsciously assuming. Successful relationships, for example, don't work well all of the time; earning good money doesn't solve all problems. Success isn't black or white; it's all relative. So remember that becoming successful (in whatever way) won't feel so strange when it happens, because it is a natural part of being human - but the idea of success may feel strange.

3) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
People often self-sabotage because of perfectionism - if it isn't perfect, then what's the point? You may have heard about recent research (1) which showed that people on strict diets, trying to lose weight, will more likely overeat if they feel they have veered off their diet even slightly: "What the hell, I've blown it now. I might as well completely binge!" People not on diets don't do this so much. So if you have a little setback or mini-failure, consciously stop yourself from throwing it all away and seeing the 'whole thing as just ruined' and then really ruining it.

4) Think beyond yourself
Most of us don't like to consider ourselves as selfish, but it is also true to say (not from a judgemental perspective; more of an observational one) that self-sabotage ruins stuff for others and is therefore a selfish behaviour. People so often deny they are behaving selfishly because they don't intend to be selfish. But behaviour is behaviour.

So the lover who feels compelled to end a great relationship hurts another, the co-worker who sabotages a project scuppers it for everyone else, the father who sabotages financial opportunities spoils the chance of a better standard of living for his family, and so on. Once we get into the habit of seeing the needs of the wider group rather than just our own emotional impulses, it actually becomes harder to sabotage situations.

5) Explore life
All of life is an exploration. Imagine if Cinderella had decided she really couldn't go to the ball, even when she had the opportunity; or if the ugly duckling had concluded it wasn't 'good enough' to fly high with the swans. Being open to life means seeing where certain experiences will take you and accepting openly the good as well as the bad. Of course, if something really isn't working or it genuinely isn't for you, that's fine; but if it's really a reluctance to explore life and to experience the good and healthy, then it is an area that needs some self-work.

The mouse in our story failed to observe the bigger picture when he felt compelled to talk, but you're not a mouse (I'm presuming) - so you shouldn't live like one.


1)Research by Janet Polivy and colleagues at the University of Toronto (Polivy et al., 2010) found that in experiments, it turned out that those who were on a diet and thought they'd blown their limit ate more cookies than those who weren't on a diet. In fact, over 50% more! This is an example of self-sabotage as a result of perceived 'failure', which hadn't been that bad anyway.

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