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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

Harvard Professor: How To Reset Your Life, Find Purpose & Make Life Exciting Again | Michael Norton

Have you ever thought about the role that rituals play in our health and wellbeing? Whether it's a morning routine, a pre-game warmup, or a cultural tradition, rituals can provide us with structure, meaning, and connection.

Dr. Rangan ChatterjeehostMichael Nortonguest
May 15, 20241h 41mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 1:14

    Why rituals improve wellbeing: emotional richness, awe, and “emo-diversity”

    1. RC

      A lot of people listen to this show because they want to improve their health. You've written this fantastic new book, The Ritual Effect. In your opinion, how do rituals help us improve our health?

    2. MN

      I think one of the key things with rituals is that they provoke a huge range of emotions. So we did this research a few years ago. We ended up calling it emo-diversity, which was a shame [laughs] because people think emo like music. [laughs] But really it's just this idea, it's like biodiversity almost, but with emotions. So we, we tried to show that it's true we all wanna be happy, but we also wanna have a rich emotional life. Sometimes sadness is good. We grow when we're sad. We learn things when we're afraid. And so the idea was that when you have this mix of emotions, that can actually be very good for your wellbeing. And one of the things that rituals do for us is they almost, they're like a shortcut to many, many different emotions in life. We, you know, marriages and funerals, very different emotions that we're getting from those kinds of rituals. Something like awe, which is an amazing emotion that we can get. Again, we can't get that easily, but rituals are one of the ways we unlock it. So for me, they're just this wonderful opportunity to unlock many, many different emotions in our lives.

  2. 1:14 – 3:06

    Ritualizing habits for consistency: elite runners, shoe-tying, and stress scaling

    1. RC

      Yeah. If we think about health habits that people are trying to introduce into their lives, let's say exercise, movement, meditation, journaling, you know, whatever it might be, do you think ritual or ritualizing those practices can help people stick with them for longer?

    2. MN

      You know, it's funny, I was talking to some, um, elite runners, uh, the other week and about their rituals. First off, if you ask any elite person who does anything, singer, athlete, whatever, they will almost always have really, really elaborate, [laughs] fascinating rituals-

    3. RC

      Yeah

    4. MN

      ... that they do before, during, after their performances. And one of the things they all talked about was their shoe tying. Very, very specific, [laughs] very elaborate shoe tying. Now shoe tying is probably the most boring thing we do. I mean, you know-

    5. RC

      Mm-hmm

    6. MN

      ... put your shoes on, tie the laces, and then, you know, you're off to go.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. MN

      But they do it almost as a, it's almost like a religious [laughs] ceremony that they do before they run, and one of the things it does is it makes them feel that they're ready to go. So when you have these kinds of, you know, it's left foot, then tie it twice, then right foot, then very, very funny-

    9. RC

      Yeah

    10. MN

      ... what they do with the socks, which socks, all this kind of stuff that really gets into it.

    11. RC

      Do they do that for practice or just for, you know, the main events, the main A race of the year, or every time they go out?

    12. MN

      Amazingly, they often have littler ones for practice [laughs] and then really elaborate ones for races.

    13. RC

      Wow.

    14. MN

      So, and we see that in a lot of domains, that you amp up your level of ritual as the stress increases.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. MN

      But they really do say that when they're doing that ritual, that is a thing that gets them in the place they need to be to go and do it. And I'm not an elite runner unfortunately, most people are not. But there is something to that where when you have the ritual to get you going, it does make you feel, "Now I'm at the moment when I can go and do that thing."

  3. 3:06 – 4:38

    Morning and bedtime rituals: creating control inside daily chaos

    1. RC

      Yeah. When I think about that, I think about the way I have often described morning routines to people. Why I believe certainly that for many people a morning routine, or dare I say it, a morning ritual, might be really beneficial because it grounds you. It means that no matter what is going on out there in the world, all of the uncontrollables, there's something that you can control, what you do with the first 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes each morning. And I feel that that gives you a sense of control so that whatever you need to go and do that day, you're better prepared. Maybe a bit like those runners.

    2. MN

      Yeah, I mean, we're w- in many different ways we use these little things to try to get us to a place we wanna go. It can be many different emotions that we're unlocking when we're engaged in rituals, but one of the key ones is this sense of control that you're talking about, where life is chaotic. [laughs] You know? If you have kids, the morning is chaotic. The world is chaotic. People will often go through their morning, I would call them rituals, but we can chat about the difference-

    3. RC

      Hmm

    4. MN

      ... between routines and rituals, in order to just get to a place where they feel that they're ready to leave [laughs] the house without being completely stressed out of their minds.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. MN

      Or at the end of the day, people have their bedtime rituals as well, where they're trying to, the opposite in a sense, they're trying to wind down from all the stress of the day so that they can actually get to sleep.

    7. RC

      Yeah. I've been stuck in your book for the last 48 hours.

    8. MN

      [laughs]

  4. 4:38 – 7:37

    Secular life and replacing inherited rituals: Burning Man and new communal ceremonies

    1. RC

      There's so many interesting stories in it, and I think this idea of rituals is fascinating because there are annual rituals, things like Christmas, if you live in the UK or US, I guess it's big. Whether you're Christian or not, actually it's a big cultural celebration. I guess if you lived in certain countries, Ramadan each year for one month where everyone around you is engaging in a communal practice of fasting. These are all rituals that religion have given us for many, many years. We've also talking about perhaps daily morning rituals that we might engage in. So there's a big variety, isn't there? But I guess there's a wider point for me, which is as many societies are becoming less religious and more secular, are we losing important rituals or are we inventing new ones to replace them?

    2. MN

      I think a little bit of both, actually. So you can think of the religious or cultural ones that are often received or inherited. Our, our parents teach us how to do it, or our faith teaches us how to do it. Then there are the ones that we come up with ourselves as well.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. MN

      Our little morning ritual that we might do. But we also see people inventing new ones at a cultural level. So one of my favorite examples is Burning Man, which is if you really break down what happens at Burning Man- A group of like-minded people do a pilgrimage [laughs] to the desert where they gather, sometimes take some substances, for example, together for a while. There's music. There's a lot of communal activity. At the end, there's a giant wooden thing that they burn [laughs] .

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. MN

      And that's the end of the... If you didn't think it was Burning Man, it can sound like a religious ceremony. So we often actually are creating. They don't have the faith element that other rituals might have.

    7. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MN

      But they have many of the other elements as well. So it's almost as though when we lose some of them, we don't just say goodbye, we either create new ones at a cultural level, or we come up with these ones in our own lives or in our own groups or in our own families.

    9. RC

      Yeah. Or could it be if, if we look across society and see these growing rates of mental health problems, of course, there's many different reasons for that, and I'm not here to either be pro-religion or anti-religion. I understand that religion serves a very important role for many people. For others, it doesn't. But I do wonder sometimes what these religions often gave us was a structure, a framework on how we should live our lives. You know, let's say every Sunday you do this, or on the Jewish Sabbath you do this. Whatever it might be, you have this framework, and as we become more secular, could it be that the loss of some of these cultural rituals is perhaps making us feel a bit lost and rudderless in this kind of world where there are endless things that we could be doing?

  5. 7:37 – 9:51

    The value of “church” without belief: community support and the Seattle Atheist Church

    1. MN

      I think that's probably right. You know, one of the funniest examples we encountered in the research, uh, on the West Coast of the US, there's this thing called the Seattle Atheist Church, which kind of is hard to parse because atheist and church don't usually go-

    2. RC

      Yeah

    3. MN

      ... together. But you can see exactly what they've done. So they've said, "What's good about church?" For them, they don't, they happen to not believe in a higher power, so they're atheists. But at the same time, they recognize there's amazingly good things about religious gatherings.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. MN

      They bond you together with other people. They literally get you out of the house. They give you an excuse to get out of the house and gather, which when you're struggling with depression, that's a big ask.

    6. RC

      Yeah.

    7. MN

      This is something that gets you there with people who care about you, who share similar values. And at this church, they actually go around and share how they are doing in order to get social and emotional support. So they are, it's true, lacking the, you know, faith in a God or God, but they're getting all the other-

    8. RC

      Yeah

    9. MN

      ... benefits of it because they recognize so many benefits from these kinds of gatherings.

    10. RC

      Yeah, it's fascinating. As you were describing that story, I was taken back to my youth. I used to be a mega Bon Jovi fan back in the day.

    11. MN

      So sorry. [laughs]

    12. RC

      [laughs] And I remember as a teenager, maybe, I don't know, 16, 17 maybe, I can't remember when now, being at a, a big Bon Jovi concert in a stadium. And at the start of Lay Your Hands on Me, Jon would come on stage, and he would say, "Welcome to Jon's Church of Rock and Roll."

    13. MN

      Uh-huh [laughs] .

    14. RC

      Which I thought was the coolest thing at the time. But I think it speaks to this idea that these, you know, we gather together in community to, you know, to bond, to experience something together. It has real value, doesn't it? But I guess it speaks to this wider idea as to what is a ritual, because you could argue that, well, going to a concert is going to a concert, right? Is that a ritual? You know, um, having a morning routine where, let's say, you, I don't know, you work out for five minutes-

    15. MN

      Mm-hmm

    16. RC

      ... or you write in your journal. Is it a habit? Is it routine? Is it a ritual? Does it even matter?

    17. MN

      Mm-hmm.

  6. 9:51 – 17:27

    Defining rituals vs routines: why “how” matters more than “what”

    1. RC

      So let's sort of really establish how you think about rituals. What's the definition of a ritual, maybe is a good place to start.

    2. MN

      Yeah. I think about rituals and routines as, um, routines and habits are kind of things that we do in order to get them done. We kind of have to cross them off our list. The example I always use, even though it's silly, is brushing your teeth and showering, which order you do those in, in the morn- Do you have an order, by the way? Do you brush and then shower or shower and then brush your teeth?

    3. RC

      I would brush my teeth and then shower.

    4. MN

      And how would you feel if I said, "Hey, tomorrow, can you flip the order of those two and do it in the opposite way?"

    5. RC

      Yeah, no problem if I had to flip the order. So I-

    6. MN

      To- totally fascinating about, first off, half of people in the world brush and then shower [laughs] and half shower and then brush. So humans have not decided on the optimal order. But more importantly, half of people are like you. They say, "Why would I care? I'm, I gotta brush my teeth. I gotta shower. I don't care the order." And half of people will say, "I'd rather not." And I say, "Really? Why?" And they say, "Well, I don't like it. I would feel weird. I would feel uncomfortable. I wouldn't feel ready to start my day." And if you think about kind of a habit versus a ritual, a habit is really the, these things, I gotta brush my teeth, gotta shower, order doesn't matter. As soon as you start caring about how, exactly how things are done, not just what you're doing, but how you do it, that's when they start to move toward being a little ritualistic. Not like people in robes and candles chanting [laughs] and that-

    7. RC

      Yeah

    8. MN

      ... kind of ritual. That's further away. But it is this sense of when you do it the way you want to do it, it provokes more meaning and more emotion. And we know that because if it gets disrupted is when you start to feel off. So they both help us in the sense if I can do my morning ritual, I feel good, and if it gets interrupted, I feel bad. Whereas if it's my habit, if they get interrupted, I can just do the other one later, and it's not that big of a deal to me.

    9. RC

      Yeah. It's an interesting example, that. Okay, so do you brush first and then shower, or do you shower first and then brush?

    10. MN

      By the way, some people do them at the same time, I should say, which I find very disturbing, but that's just-

    11. RC

      [laughs]

    12. MN

      ... a personal opinion.

    13. RC

      That's personal. That's not your research.

    14. MN

      Exactly.

    15. RC

      That's a personal opinion. Okay.

    16. MN

      That's not a scientific fact, yeah. [laughs]

    17. RC

      When I've thought about rituals or even written about rituals in the past, I've always felt that they are habits or routines which have meaning. Okay? So it's not necessarily the what, it's the how, right? And so, for example, and I've spoken about this many times, I do like to have a little morning ritual. Okay? It works for me. It works for my family. It's something I've put into place since I had young kids-

    18. MN

      Yeah

    19. RC

      ... who would get up early, and I realized that I'm a better human being when I have some time to myself before the rest of the family are up.

    20. MN

      Literally, we often insert them in times of chaos. I mean, we [laughs] -

    21. RC

      Well, there you go

    22. MN

      ... we almost say, "I need to do something. Everything's out of control. Let me just try this before everybody wakes up and get a little handle on it."

    23. RC

      Yeah, I love that. Because I can't now honestly say I can remember when it started.

    24. MN

      Mm.

    25. RC

      But that kind of rings true. Like, if I didn't get up and I hadn't, you know, nourished myself in some way, I didn't feel I was the best dad or husband or human being, frankly, right? So my morning routine, which at the moment encompasses a few things-

    26. MN

      Mm

    27. RC

      ... like breathwork and, um, coffee and, you know, I'm very ritualistic with how I make coffee, and we can talk about tea ceremonies and things in, in a moment.

    28. MN

      I know. Yeah, yeah.

    29. RC

      But I just wanna compare that to this brushing and showering because I don't... I... To me at least, I don't feel the same thing. So I do my morning routine, I do my morning ritual because I like what it says about who I am. It says to me that no matter what's going on in the world, I've found at least 10 minutes to nourish myself each day.

    30. MN

      Yep.

  7. 17:27 – 25:21

    Ritual ‘sprinkles’ for habit-building: temptation bundling and meaningful add-ons

    1. MN

      Yeah. One of my favorite, uh, studies in the, in the last little while on exercise is by, um, Katie Milkman-

    2. RC

      Oh, yeah

    3. MN

      ... uh, who's at Wharton, who's... just does amazing research. But she has this thing called temptation bundling, which is in and of itself just a great name for anything. But what she does is she wants people to exer- People say, "I wanna exercise more, but I can't bring myself to the gym 'cause I've got stuff to do, and I lose the moti-" Just like all of us humans. And so what she does is she says, "Well, here's how it works. Anytime you go to the gym, you can watch or listen to your trashiest preference," [laughs] like the worst show, the worst pod, whatever it might be, your guilty pleasure. "But you can only do it-" ... when you're at the gym exercising. You can almost even think you can just leave the thing there-

    4. RC

      Mm

    5. MN

      ... and only be able to access that when you're there. And the idea there is what you're doing is you're building this, you know, you might have a ritual where you listen to your favorite podcast every morning, but you could do it wherever you want. She's saying, "No, no. If you're gonna have your ritual of listening to your podcast every morning, you can only enact that when you're at the gym exercising."

    6. RC

      Mm.

    7. MN

      So it is this case of trying to layer on a ritual that we already have onto a habit that we're trying to do, and she shows in the research that actually does help people stick with it for longer because they've paired something else meaningful with a habit that doesn't necessarily have meaning for them quite yet.

    8. RC

      So there's an extra reward element. So you, you, let's say you're at the gym, you're on a treadmill or a bike, whatever you like to do, and you're associating being at the gym with something maybe you struggle to motivate yourself to go and do with your favorite trashiest soap opera that perhaps you wouldn't watch at home.

    9. MN

      Uh-huh.

    10. RC

      So, yeah, so it's, it's that reward. It's the reward part of the habit loop?

    11. MN

      For sure, and you get this kind of, um, identity with it as well. Like, th- this is my favorite show, and I'm gonna pair it with this habit that is not my favorite habit at all [laughs] and see if I can link them together so that I can enact it even more.

    12. RC

      So does that make it a ritual, would you say?

    13. MN

      I think it works best for people who are, in a sense, taking a ritual that they have. In other words, this is my favorite show, and I watch it at this time every week.

    14. RC

      Mm.

    15. MN

      You know, we all have our favorite things that we do.

    16. RC

      Yeah.

    17. MN

      Many people do have a favorite podcast they listen to every morning. That's kind of their breathing exercise or their-

    18. RC

      Yeah, yeah

    19. MN

      ... coffee making. And so the idea is that you import that ritual onto something else that's a dry habit and see if you can pull some of the meaning of the ritual onto the habit and link them together-

    20. RC

      Yeah

    21. MN

      ... in a way that makes you hopefully keep going a little bit longer.

    22. RC

      I- if someone's listening to us, Michael, and they, they're saying, "Okay, look, l- let's pick a habit." Um, I don't know. I mean, coffee's not a great one because people who drink coffee generally don't need motivation to make coffee [laughs] or buy coffee.

    23. MN

      Right. [laughs]

    24. RC

      Right? So, but let's say, um, I don't know, let's say journaling, for example. Let's say someone has heard about the many, uh, benefits of journaling, and they just can't get it going, and they're thinking, "You know, I know I keep hearing about this journaling thing. I've got a journal sitting there or someone gifted to me, but I'm not in the habit of doing it." I know your book's not on habit change per se. It's more about rituals, but I wonder, is there anything you can advise that person to do to try and sprinkle a bit of ritual magic on top of it, let's say for the next seven days to see if it changes their relationship with it?

    25. MN

      Yeah, no, I love this. I think, um, I was talking to, um, a journalist a couple weeks ago who was saying, uh, "I don't have any rituals."

    26. RC

      [laughs]

    27. MN

      Uh, and I was a skeptic in rituals too, so that resonates with me, like what is this guy talking about, this ritual stuff? But she said, "I don't have any rituals at all." And I said, "Oh, well, let's, you know, let's explore that a little bit." And she said, "Well, look, I have coffee every morning, but it, I'm just having coffee. There's nothing to it." And she said, "Well, how would you help me make it a ritual according to your research?" And I said, um, "Well, I don't know you that well, but I'll give you some examples of what other people, you know, have done." And I said, "You know, for example, some people, the coffee or tea that they drink has an emotional tag to it. It's what their grandmother drank or their grandfather drank."

    28. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MN

      And then I said, "Other people, the mug that they use has meaning to them. It's, it's a family mug or it's something-"

    30. RC

      Yeah

  8. 25:21 – 33:09

    Why meaning beats perfect habits: variety, cultural punctuations, and ‘going through the motions’

    1. RC

      There, there's a section in the book which I, I noted down, right? Because it, for me, it really spoke to such an important point that I often think is getting missed when we talk about health or happiness. If you don't mind, I just wanna read to you a section from your book. "Is it always a mistake to fail to execute on your good habits? Or is the experience of savoring a decadent dessert simply a different kind of success?" Michael, I love that. I absolutely love that. Can you explain what you meant when you wrote those words?

    2. MN

      I thought about a person... I mean, let me say, I am very pro habit. I wish I had better habits. We all should have good healthy habits-

    3. RC

      Mm

    4. MN

      ... just to be very, very clear. At the same time, if I think about s- imagine starting today you had perfect habits for the next 40 years. You know, you got up at the same time every day. You exercise. You did everything exactly as you wanted to do. If you ask people, "What kind of life would that be?" They say, "Well, I would definitely be very healthy, for sure, but I'm not sure that would've been a rich and interesting life." Or if you ask people, imagine being married to someone [laughs] who has completely rigid habits that they execute the same way every single day forever. Does that sound like a fun relationship, or does that sound like a problem? And people say, "Yeah, no, I guess they'd be healthy, but, you know, I wanna mix it up. I wanna travel."

    5. RC

      Mm.

    6. MN

      "I wanna do all these other different things." And so it really started to occur to me that for sure good habits are good, but is that the life that we wanna lead more broadly? If we look back at our life-

    7. RC

      Mm

    8. MN

      ... do we say, "I'm so happy that I always ran at 6:00 AM," or do we say, "I'm so happy I had a range and variety of experiences in my life"? And I do think sometimes rituals are the thing that remind us to do more than just habits. And that's true both of our own private rituals that we come up with-

    9. RC

      Mm

    10. MN

      ... but even cultural rituals you can think about. You know, it just gets to be every day is the same. We do the thing. We go to work. We just humdrum-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. MN

      ... over and over. Culture gives us punctuated things. They say, "Not today. Today is Christmas." [laughs]

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. MN

      And on Christmas, you do something very, very different. For example, you have to gather with family on Christmas, whether you like it or not. But they're telling us family's important. You gotta take some time for it.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. MN

      So that day, maybe we can't do all of our habits exactly the way we usually do.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. MN

      But I think that's a positive thing. So both culturally, we get these punctuations to remind us. If you think of marriage, you know, you have a wedding, that's one day, and then you're married for 50 years. What do you do all the other days? Well, we have Valentine's Day. We have anniversaries. We punctuate them with, "Hey, don't forget, this person's really important to you. [laughs] You should celebrate this relationship."

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. MN

      They do serve as reminders, too, do more than just go through the motion. We have this phrase-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. MN

      ... going through the motions, and it's a very negative phrase. Rituals are always more than just going through the motions.

    23. RC

      Yeah. Thank you for explaining that. I mean, I think the point about this phrase that really speaks to me is I think sometimes with science, we have reduced things down so much, and we draw conclusions that aren't actually that relevant in real life some of the time, and I'll, I'll explain what I mean by that.

    24. MN

      Mm.

    25. RC

      So we could, for example, look at all of the blue zones, these areas around the world where people are living to a ripe old age-

    26. MN

      Yeah

    27. RC

      ... apparently in, in really good health and, you know, with, with high levels of happiness as well. And, you know, Dan Buettner will write about this in his books-

    28. MN

      Yeah

    29. RC

      ... about that they, these guys drink coffee. They have, uh, probably a glass of wine every evening, in some of them. And then so often the conclusion is, I would say in the West, is that, "Oh, well, coffee is good for you then because of that." You know, there are lots of correlation studies showing some benefits-

    30. MN

      Yeah

  9. 33:09 – 35:29

    The curse of counting: measurable metrics vs the unmeasurable parts of life

    1. MN

      We had a project a few years ago that, uh, we were calling the curse of counting, and, uh, in the domain of wellbeing, and the idea was that, um, we'd like to feel that we're making progress in life, and sometimes that's very hard to know if we're making progress in life. So, uh, we use things that we can count because then we can say it's more or less. So salary is a great example. If I'm making more money, then I'm probably doing better than I was before. Step counts are a great one. [laughs] If I'm taking more steps, that's better than taking fewer steps. So these things that we can measure, we really start to rely on them because of co- we're human, we wanna know where we stand.

    2. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MN

      But a lot of the most important things, and, and you just reminded me of this, are you a good dad?

    4. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MN

      There's no s- metric. You know, there's no scale-

    6. RC

      Yeah

    7. MN

      ... where it's one to 10 and your kids have a knob, and they rate you every day, and you can track your progress. It's just something that has to matter to you or not.

    8. RC

      Yeah.

    9. MN

      And you could say, "Well, I'll increase the hours I spend with my kids. I'll count them." That's not it either, right? It's, it's not about the amount of time you spend, it's what you're bringing to it when-

    10. RC

      Yeah

    11. MN

      ... you are with your kids. And I do get concerned actually that when we measure things, we start to focus on the measured ones instead... And, and those can be really, really important. I mean, steps are good, like your exercise is good, as you said, but what about the fuzzier things-

    12. RC

      Yeah

    13. MN

      ... that we don't have good metrics on? Do we lose sight of them because we can't measure them? Instead of thinking, "Actually, I really need to invest in that."

    14. RC

      Mm. 100%. I'm so on board with you. But I, I would say I'm now starting to prioritize the unmeasurables. You know, I realize now that a weekend with no work, if I'm able to-

    15. MN

      Mm-hmm

    16. RC

      ... with my wife and kids, and we go out for walks and have meals together, I can't measure that in any way, but the feeling it gives me i- is just, you know, you know, it, it's like nothing else.

    17. MN

      Yeah, we don't have words almost. Yeah.

    18. RC

      Yeah. And so I've, from having made mistakes in the past, I'm now very clear on a few things, like whenever I'm weighing up a new offer, engagement, speaking, whatever it might be, I'm always going, "Okay, that was the upside. What's the downside?"

    19. MN

      Yeah.

    20. RC

      And because most things have got a downside as well, we're just- we're very good at looking at the upside. So yeah, fascinating. Let's get back to this idea that rituals are subjective.

    21. MN

      Mm-hmm.

  10. 35:29 – 40:31

    How scientists study something subjective: meaning depends on the person and shared agreement

    1. RC

      Or I think they are, at least. How do you then, as a scientist, go about trying to study rituals?

    2. MN

      It's very annoying and frustrating. [laughs]

    3. RC

      [laughs] Okay, fine.

    4. MN

      Is, is the short answer. Um, in part because, uh, as you said, two people can be doing the exact same thing, and for one of them, it's a meaningful ritual, and for the other person, they couldn't care less. So even with something like, um, religious services, for example, if I'm taking a bird's-eye view, I'm Irish Catholic, so imagine I'm watching a Catholic mass. Everyone's doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. You know, they're kneeling when they're supposed to and standing-

    5. RC

      Mm

    6. MN

      ... when they're supposed to, and singing when they're supposed to, and talking when they're supposed to. You know, so everyone understands.

    7. RC

      Mm.

    8. MN

      For some people in that church, what they are doing is an incredibly deep expression of their faith. It's connecting them to their parents, to their grandparents, to their shared history.

    9. RC

      Mm.

    10. MN

      Other people are there because their parents made them And I can't tell who's who by looking.

    11. RC

      Hmm.

    12. MN

      They're doing the exact same thing. It appears to be that they're engaged in this kind of ritualistic behavior. The only way I can really know is if I ask people straight up, "Hey, what were you doing in there?" And some people will say, "I was practicing my faith and feeling this connection to a higher power." And other people will say, "I was literally counting the minutes until we could leave, 'cause I wanted to go play football." [laughs]

    13. RC

      Yeah.

    14. MN

      And so we have to actually get these subjective impressions from people in order to understand, is what you're doing more than just the actions, or is it just the actions? And what we, what, uh, is particularly frustrating is, you could imagine that what we would find is that if you clap three times and stomp 10 times, that's a ritual. But two claps and 11 stomps is not.

    15. RC

      [laughs]

    16. MN

      You know, so we can actually figure out, these are the motions that make it a ritual, and these are the ones that make it not a ritual. And that, and, that, it m- there may be some sequence of actions that works for everybody, but we never have seen that. In other words, it's not that the specific actions are the ones that are the key. It's actions that you have imbued with more meaning. [laughs] If you imbue brushing your teeth and showering with more meaning, other people do not, like you. If you imbue your coffee with more meaning, 'cause it connects you to things, that works for you as well. But the only way to know are you just drinking coffee or are you enacting something is for me to say, "Hey, how were you feeling when you were drinking that coffee?"

    17. RC

      Yeah. There's this idea, isn't there, in your book, about rituals are a way of turning ordinary events into extraordinary moments. And you give a really beautiful example, I think, of two couples and their Saturday shopping. [laughs]

    18. MN

      [laughs]

    19. RC

      Maybe perhaps you could explain that.

    20. MN

      It's very sad. So we, um-

    21. RC

      Very, one of them was very sad, actually

    22. MN

      ... so we, yeah, we did this research. Um, Jimena Garciaroda was the lead author. She studies decision-making in couples, which in and of itself is just an incredibly fascinating topic.

    23. RC

      Yeah, for sure. [laughs]

    24. MN

      We worked together on this research on rituals in romantic couples. And if you ask couples, you know, "Is there anything you do..." We usually don't say, "Do you have a ritual?" 'cause people think people in robes with candles. So we say, "Is there anything you do that's special to you, that has meaning for you, that you make sure to do every day or every week or every so often?" And, uh, people say yes or no, and then they tell us about them. And what we see is most couples have something like that, usually between two-thirds and three-quarters. But when we ask people se- so what I can do is I can interview you and ask you about it, and then I can interview your spouse separately, so they can't hear what you said-

    25. RC

      [laughs]

    26. MN

      ... and ask them about it. And what we find is very often both people agree. They say, "Yes, we do have something like that," and they tell us about the same one. A smaller number of people say, "No, we don't have one," but at least they agree. They both say, "No, we don't have anything like that." But the very sad, to me, the very sad couples are the one where we ask one person and they say, "Oh, my God, yes. We have this wonderful thing," [laughs] you know, "that we do every week. It's very special-"

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. MN

      "... and here's why." And we go to the other room and ask the other person, and they say, "No, we don't have anything." Those are ones where there's a mismatch. And we see, even on something like shopping on the weekend, we see some couples who say, "You know, every Saturday morning, we go to the market and we explore together. You know, we explore new foods. We explore new cuisines. We're foodies, so we love to do that together, and then bring it home and cook together, and it's a really important part of our weekend." And other couples say, "Yeah, we gotta go to the market every weekend to get food." And there's nothing- [laughs]

    29. RC

      And it, and it, and it's a pain

    30. MN

      ... nothing else in it at all.

  11. 40:31 – 53:35

    Rituals under stress: parenting sleep routines, modern isolation, and work-group values

    1. RC

      Since you started studying rituals, is there anything you learnt that you wish you knew sooner?

    2. MN

      [laughs] I think actually, um... So when I started studying, I mean, as, as you know, I am a scientist from Harvard, so I'm supposed to be very objective and things like that. And when I started studying rituals, I had a sense that they were, uh, very ubiquitous in human life. Uh, and I kind of knew they were in my life too, because you know, that's birthday parties and things like that that I was doing. But I really didn't think that I was a ritual person. I wouldn't have said, like, I'm the kind of person who's into that. And speaking of the chaos of the morning when you have kids, [laughs] so the, the moment when it really hit me was when my wife and I had our daughter eight years ago now. Uh, when you have a kid, [laughs] if you've ever had a kid, what happens is, um, you go to the hospital, and then a little while after that, they give you a baby and they say, "Go, go away and take care of it forever." [laughs] You know, it's a very, very stressful moment, uh, in life. And so what do parents do? I mean, it's about as chaotic and stressful as, as you can have in your life. And so what parents do, and we did it too, but I didn't realize it until in retrospect, was we bring rituals to bear almost immediately.

    3. RC

      Hmm.

    4. MN

      Just intuitively. It's not in a book or anything like that. But we start to do things like when you ever talk to a couple with new, it's like, "Is the baby sleeping? Are you sleeping? Who's sleeping? When are they sleeping?" You know, that's the conversation about it. And what parents do is they develop rituals around sleep almost instantaneously.

    5. RC

      Hmm.

    6. MN

      It's, you know, and it's this book and then this song, and then we do the bath, and then these two songs, and then we do the swaddle.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. MN

      And then it's these songs and this book and with this person, and then that, and then these three stuffed animal. I mean, it's a very, very elaborate sequence of events in order to try to get the kid to sleep. And we did that, but I didn't know I was doing it at the-... time.

    9. RC

      No.

    10. MN

      Until later, it suddenly hit me talking to parents. All parents develop their own special-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. MN

      ... sleep ritual for their kid. And I think what was so important for me that even after that realization was that it wasn't that, um, it was necessarily helping her. It might have been, but it might not have been. In other words, we didn't try 12 different rituals and figure out which one was the best. We just ended up with [laughs] one that seemed to work. And I think what it was is it was helping us, not so much helping her. [laughs]

    13. RC

      Giving you a sense of control.

    14. MN

      Exa- exactly. And that I think was such an insight, which is sometimes we're doing a ritual for a seeming purpose.

    15. RC

      Mm.

    16. MN

      But in fact, it might be helping us in a completely different way.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. MN

      And that started to pop up in more places that I had never thought of until I got into the research.

    19. RC

      Yeah, that, that's fascinating. It also, to me, speaks to this idea that we're now creating rituals that maybe we didn't need to before because of the way culture has changed. And, and if I think about that specific example, the nuclear family is quite a modern-

    20. MN

      Mm-hmm

    21. RC

      ... invention really. The way, the way many people now live, certainly in Western countries, is not the way that we've ever raised kids for years.

    22. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    23. RC

      You know, it's always been in groups. There's been a community, a tribe, there's been a family there. So I guess maybe 100 years ago, baby's born, and the grandma is providing that wisdom and insight as to this is what you do. This... Do, do you know what I mean?

    24. MN

      I do. [laughs]

    25. RC

      All those things are there. But now, because for many people that's been lost because their parents live miles away, or they've moved for opportunity, for work, actually it is chaos. And if you don't know what you should be doing, you're gonna create something to give you that sense of control, aren't you?

    26. MN

      Completely. And you know, we have... It is one of the hardest things, hardest shifts that we make in our life, and there are people who are really expert at it.

    27. RC

      Mm.

    28. MN

      There's like doctors and nurses and people who have had kids before and grandparents, all of these people, and we remove all of them from the environment. [laughs]

    29. RC

      Yeah.

    30. MN

      We just say, "Let's have two rookies without any support at all, just try to figure this out." I mean, we rarely do that in life, where we say, "Here's something that's very, very important. Let's get a couple of novices on it [laughs] and see what they can do," instead of get an expert in the room who says, "That's not how," you know.

  12. 53:35 – 1:18:25

    Rituals in performance and emotion regulation: Nadal, team rituals, failure, grief, and “divorcery”

    1. RC

      fall off track? That's the self-awareness that journaling is gonna give you. When people ask the right questions, they get the right answers, and those right answers allow them to change their life. Take up journaling today and watch your life start to change. Let's talk about rituals for performance. There's a section on this in the book, and I mean, I guess some famous examples of athletes we might know, like Rafael Nadal and Tom Brady, Serena Williams, these guys all have quite particular rituals, certainly habits-

    2. MN

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... and routines, and perhaps you could explain what they are and why you consider them to be ritualistic.

    4. MN

      I gave a, a talk a couple weeks ago that was pr- maybe 60 or 90 minutes or something. My daughter came. My wife brought my daughter, and, uh, she sat, actually very patiently sat through it, which I was shocked.

    5. RC

      How old is your daughter?

    6. MN

      Actually, both my wife and my daughter patiently sat through it. [laughs]

    7. RC

      [laughs]

    8. MN

      Both were shocking. My daughter's eight.

    9. RC

      Okay.

    10. MN

      And, uh, so and I talked about all kinds of-- almost like we've been talking, all these different domains of life-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. MN

      ... rituals and all that stuff, holidays, all that stuff. And at the end, my daughter had one piece of feedback. She said, "Does that tennis guy really pick his wedgie?" [laughs] That was the only, the only thing she took from the whole thing. So Rafael Nadal, if you're a tennis fan, you know, you can already envision what he does before he serves every time. I mean, extremely elaborate tugging and wiping and all this kinds of stuff.

    13. RC

      How long does it take? It takes quite some time, doesn't it?

    14. MN

      It depends on whether it's his first or second serve and how stressed he is, but it does take s- He often runs into the clock.

    15. RC

      For people who aren't tennis fans and have never seen Nadal play, can you just sort of put some color on what it looks like when he's doing this?

    16. MN

      I mean, with Nadal, he, um, he's got a headband that he likes to play with. He's got his hair he likes to play with, likes to wipe his sweat off.

    17. RC

      Yeah.

    18. MN

      He does stuff with his shorts. He does stuff with his racket, with the ball. Basically, any object that's around him [laughs] he incorporates into his pre-serve ritual.

    19. RC

      And why does he do that?

    20. MN

      He said... It's so interesting because he has said he knows he doesn't need to do it, but when he does it, he feels like he's ready to go.

    21. RC

      So it's a feeling. It's a feeling.

    22. MN

      For sure. So we don't know if, you know, if, if he doesn't pick his wedgie, we don't know if he's gonna double fault every time. [laughs] We, we don't know that, right? But for him, it's this way of g- I mean, he's gotta do one of the hardest things that humans do physically, and he's gotta do it over and over and over again perfectly.

    23. RC

      Mm.

    24. MN

      So for him, he's got this very elaborate sequence so that he feels, at that moment every time, "I can do this. I've got this."

    25. RC

      Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Because at what point do... At, at what point does a ritual, does a helpful ritual start to tip over into being something unhelpful? Now, I obviously can't speak for Nadal. His success speaks for himself. It's clearly working for him. But let's say that routine currently takes 30 seconds, and let's say it started to edge up to being five minutes, which is probably not allowed.

    26. MN

      Yep.

    27. RC

      I'm guessing there is a time limit-

    28. MN

      Yep

    29. RC

      ... which, you know, I'm sure five minutes between each serve is gonna cause problems. You know, if, if we think about... Y- you know, there's a tension, isn't there, where we can use a few things to ground us and give us a sense of control. Let's say my morning routine-

    30. MN

      Yeah

  13. 1:18:25 – 1:38:27

    The IKEA effect and commercialized rituals: owning what you make and how brands exploit ritual

    1. RC

      Talk to me about the IKEA effect. What is it, and what is its relevance to rituals?

    2. MN

      We've, a few years ago, uh, started noticing in myself but also in others, uh, if you ask people or their, actually, their romantic partners especially, "Is there something in the house that is homemade that is ugly?" [laughs] People will say, "Yes, there is."

    3. RC

      [laughs]

    4. MN

      And you say, "Well, who made it?" And they say, "Well, my, my spouse or partner made it," and it's this watercolor or this terrible bowl that they made in a pottery class or a terrible bookcase or whatever it might be. It- nobody has one of themselves, of course. It's just their partner who has one.

    5. RC

      [laughs]

    6. MN

      So you ask their partner. And then the question was so, including, I have this terrible, terrible stone sculpture that I made, it probably thir- 25 years ago now, that I still have. Every time I move, I pack it up very carefully, you know, this whole thing. It's terrible. But I made it. I chiseled it and all this kind of stuff. And th- this question was like, well, what's, what's going on there? Why do we- ... keep objectively not so great things if we made them ourselves. We ended up calling this the IKEA effect because, of course, you make your own furniture at IKEA. And it's funny actually because people say, "But I don't like my IKEA furniture after I make it." And the test is actually not so much, you know, do you love your IKEA furniture, but the same looking thing that somebody else made. So you know, yours is lopsided and you lost some of the screws and it doesn't hold together very well.

    7. RC

      I don't know what you're talking about. [laughs]

    8. MN

      Exactly. But and you don't, you don't think this is the greatest one ever. But if I said, "Would you trade with me for the one I made that looks the same?" People say, "No. I'd like to keep the one that I... Even though it's not good, I'd like to keep the one that I made because I made it." And they actually imbue it with some of their identity. That's me. That's something that I did. And we even do, I mean, I do this funny thing with, um, when I teach executives at the Harvard Business School, which is a very fancy place. These are very accomplished executives. I'll have them, I'll give them Lego sets that are meant for small children, six 10-piece Lego sets, and I'll have them build little things like a little dog or a little frog or something.

    9. RC

      Yeah.

    10. MN

      And they're, you know, I mean, they're thinking, "What? I'm paying all this money for this guy to make a, [laughs] build Lego set?" And then, uh, they put them together kind of grudgingly, and then I say, "Okay. Can you everybody take them back apart and turn them back in?"

    11. RC

      [laughs]

    12. MN

      And I mean, the, the rage, you know, the horror.

    13. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MN

      Like, "What do you mean? This is my little frog that I made. I'm not gonna take it back apart." And, you know, I can even have them bid on it and stuff, and they'll pay money to take the frog with them. And of course, you know, they could afford Legos anytime they want, but it's only after they put it together that they say, "No. I'm gonna keep it. This one's mine." And if I say, "Well, will you trade your frog for someone else's identical frog?" Absolutely not. I mean, you-

    15. RC

      Wow

    16. MN

      ... you just wouldn't, right? There's no way.

    17. RC

      It's unbelievable. It's totally unbelievable.

    18. MN

      It's mine. This, this one's mine. It's obviously better in some way. And so we, again, again, we call this the IKEA effect because we have this thing where when we imbue things with ourself, more is attached to them. Maybe more than is deserved, like my sculpture's very ugly. But who cares? It's something that becomes valuable to us that really gives us a lot of meaning.

    19. RC

      Yeah. I, I love that. I mean, I don't know if this is necessarily the same thing or not. You can tell me afterwards if it is. But this kind of links to what we were saying before about the unmeasurables in life. So let's take this podcast, for example. Now, I'm very meticulous with how I do my research and preparation for each conversation. Like, I fully invest in every single conversation. And many of the other big podcasts out there have got researchers. Not all of them, but I know a lot of them do have researchers. So they'll, you know, compile the, the guest's book and their work and give them some sheets. Now, I've never done that. I've always done the research myself for every single conversation. Why I think this is relevant or perhaps relevant in this conversation about rituals and the IKEA effect is you could argue that it's a more efficient use of my time to have someone do the research. So instead of me spending almost two days, which is often what I spend researching a guest-

    20. MN

      Yeah

    21. RC

      ... one to two days, you know, I could maybe spend an hour reading the research notes and then have the conversation. So-

    22. MN

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... in terms of the measurables, I'm saving time. But I've never been interested in that because I've realized that I want to do the research. I enjoy doing the research. And so the question for me has been: How do I want my experience of life to be?

    24. MN

      Yeah.

    25. RC

      Well, I don't really care if that saves me time. The experience of life that I want leading into this podcast is to myself immerse myself into the life of my guest.

    26. MN

      Yeah.

    27. RC

      Watch some videos, read their articles, read their book, and really tap into who they are so hopefully I can have an interesting conversation when they show up in the studio. And so to me, you know, and I have a few things that I do. And about an hour before the guests arrives, I sit at my kitchen table. I like it all clean.

    28. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    29. RC

      Frustrates me if it's not clean.

    30. MN

      [laughs]

  14. 1:38:27 – 1:41:29

    How to start using rituals without overdoing it: take inventory, then experiment where it matters

    1. RC

      You know? Maybe this isn't necessarily what I need, it's what I'm being told. And so yeah, fascinating. Look, Mike, I think you've written just a, a, a wonderful book about a topic that I'm so fascinated by, rituals. Right at the end of our conversation, I guess for people who have heard what you had to say and thought, "Yeah, you know what? I think I'm missing ritual from my life. I think ritual would help me with my health, with my happiness, with my relationships," what are your final words to them?

    2. MN

      I think, um, it isn't the case that adding 71 new rituals tomorrow is, is the way to go. Number one, who has the time to be [laughs] to be adding all this stuff? I think actually a really helpful first step is to take an inventory of what you're already doing. So I find when I talk to people about this topic, like w- we've been talking, what happens is people say, "Oh, you know, I actually am doing something in that." Or, "You know, I actually do do something with my spouse," or, "I do do something with my ki-" It'll kind of occur to you-

    3. RC

      Yeah

    4. MN

      ... that you have these special practices that you're already... Or, "I do something in the morning that's important to me." And so the first thing actually is, is literally just take inventory of what's already happening. Because when you do, you can appreciate them a little bit more. You know, if you have something cute that you do with your kids, now that you see-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. MN

      ... that it's a regular practice, each time you do it, it actually can get a little more meaning in it. You, you might even also laugh at yourself a little bit, like, "Oh, here we go doing this, this thing."

    7. RC

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    8. MN

      But it enriches it, I think. So looking just to see where they are now. And if you don't think you have any, you can ask your spouse, [laughs] you can ask your kids, you can ask your coworkers, "Hey, do I have any?" And they'll say, "Oh my God, you do, and here's 19 things that you do." So you can get some social information as well. But I do think actually that this is a wonderful first step is just to see the role that they're already playing. And then if there's domains in life where you think you could use a little bit more, think about trying them there. So if you don't get nervous at all before performance, you don't need to experiment with a pre-performance ritual-

    9. RC

      Mm

    10. MN

      ... because that's not something that matters for you. But if you're worried about your connection with your family, think about trying something at dinner. You know, it, it may or may not stick, it may or may not work, but when they do stick, they really do work and add meaning. So it's kind of a think of domains in which a little something extra might be needed, and think about experimenting in there.

    11. RC

      Yeah, I love that. It could be as simple as lighting a candle before you have your evening meal, or maybe a simple gratitude exercise that you do that I've spoken about many times on the show that I do with my family each night over dinner. Mike, I really appreciate you writing the book, appreciate all your research into rituals. Thanks for making the journey out to the studio.

    12. MN

      Thank you so much. It was really great to chat.

    13. RC

      If you enjoyed that conversation, I think you are really going to enjoy this one about five simple things you can do that will improve your health and happiness immediately. I wanna share with you some really practical, effective tools. If you can start implementing them into your life, it's gonna help you with your health, your happiness, and the quality of your relationships.

Episode duration: 1:41:29

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