I have a friend with whom I like to get together for appetizers and drinks after work sometimes. For years we got together on a highly irregular basis – sometimes every few months and sometimes just once or twice a year. Then, unexpectedly, one evening as we were heading home she said to me, “Would you like to make this a ritual?” I didn’t need time to think about my answer. “Why yes!” I replied. “How do we do that?” She suggested that each time we get together, we schedule our date for the following month, making sure our meetings became regular – a ritual of sorts.
There’s a Tony Robbins quote I’ve always loved: “If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real.” Whether or not you’re a Tony Robbins fan, this quote undoubtedly speaks to the power of scheduling the things you want most in life. When my friend asked me if I’d like to make our hangouts a ritual – that is, something that happens regularly in our lives – she knew that making sure it was always scheduled on our calendars was the way to make that happen.
What do you wish you had more of in life? Time for you? Time with friends? Time for passion projects? By making them a ritual – AND making sure they are always scheduled on your calendar – you ensure you’ll get more of them in your life
Below are a few of the things I’ve made rituals for myself:
- Dates with my aforementioned friend
- Monthly lunches with my dad
- Time for guitar – and playing with my pup Hudson – every morning
- Scheduling time to see my nephew every 2 weeks
- Saturday beach days with my friend all summer long
- Weekly happy hours with my mom
- …probably more things I’m forgetting right now!
Whatever it is you want more of, try to make it a ritual. After a while, you’ll stop having that thought that you wish you had more of it – because you’ll simply be living it instead.
Looking for more?
Here are some other quick reads from Janelle (that’s me) at Ellanyze on getting more of what you want in life:
