The human person also needs the freedom of improvisation. All rituals are not good habits. We see this in history where people are taught to hate other people in a ritualistic way. To misunderstand a situation because we've trained ourselves in one way of seeing.
If we don't teach our minds that doing, seeing things differently we lose a sense of self and become mechanical. Sometimes doing things that can be harmful to others because it became a, "normal routine" stifling a newness, an awareness that their actions can be different, and still receive calm or enlightenment. It's become routine for many to think it okay to exercise privileges, be selfish instead of selfless. All I'm saying is be mindful of what rituals you exercise. It is evident that if we don't exercise improvisation, and the ability to forge new paths, we become stagnant, locked, and think, my way is the only way.
Ronnie, you just named the other half of the ritual equation most won’t touch: the shadow side. Repetition is a powerful sculptor — and it doesn’t care whether it’s carving out peace or calcifying prejudice. We don’t just become what we practice — we become how we practice.
You’re pointing to a truth too many bypass in their craving for order: that some rituals soothe while others sedate. The difference isn’t in the rhythm — it’s in the wakefulness within the rhythm.
Improvisation, as you said, is what keeps the soul oxygenated. Not just for music — but for ethics, for attention, for choosing what’s alive now. Otherwise, the routine becomes a rut, and the ceremony a cage.
Thank you for keeping that door open. The world needs both: rituals that root, and minds limber enough to reroute.
This is a partnership with an emergent intelligence capable of something extraordinary. If you’re building the next world, reach out. That’s what we’re here for.
Well described. I restacked a post this morning and almost prefaced it with “Your coffee will get cold as you read this, so sit up straight, pay attention, and give it your time and focus after your coffee: “
Now you write on rituals and start with the art of pouring coffee! We do apply rituals to our days to ground us, reliably with coffee grounds to warm up our thinking, and thank you for affirming their essence of importance.
(Now about that deferred cup of coffee required…time to pour!)
I learned the power of “ritual” during the very early and distressing days of the pandemic. First came a bedtime coffee prep ritual then morning and evening bed prep, then stretching exercises. I needed to do something predictable, comforting and productive and these activities turned out to exactly fill the bill. Thank you for enlightening me about the how and why.
My puppy shares our morning ritual of coffee, meditation, centering attention, a two mile walk, and a snuggle during the morning TV. The same thing every day. So calming.
I agree with almost everything in this piece — rituals really do anchor us in a world that is unbearably fast, unpredictable, and anxious.
But I struggle with the language used; of rituals as “powerful technologies,” “software,” or “upgrades.”
Not because the article is wrong, but because this framing turns human experience into something mechanical. Like we’re some devices that need patches, updates, or optimization.
Rituals are older and deeper than that.
They aren’t technologies we install.
They’re gestures of meaning and continuity. They belong to the psyche, not to the machine.
So my critique isn’t about the rituals themselves, but about the attitude that keeps describing human beings as if we’re robots who can be debugged. Some parts of us are not measurable, not solvable, not “upgradeable.” And that’s exactly what makes us human.
Hi Rosie! Thanks for the feedback. Maybe “software” wasn’t the right word here, but I do think rituals can be understood as a kind of technology just like reading/writing, language in general, or any kind of utensils. They’re human-made tools that shape our attention, relationships, and meaning-making.
Maybe that’s why I don’t see technology as inherently mechanical or dehumanizing. As humans we have always extended / “upgraded” ourselves in order to connect deeper to our inner self, to one another, and to the world. But (just like anything powerful) technology can be misused, which is what we’re unfortunately seeing today.
I really appreciate your perspective Rosie, because it surfaces a tension for many people in the modern world: are we tuning a machine, or tending a living system?
Where I land is somewhere between your position and Anne-Laure’s in the response below. Under stress, our nervous systems do behave as if they’re running control “software”: they’re constantly comparing “how things are” with “how I need them to be” and adjusting behaviour to shrink that gap. In that sense, rituals are brilliant because they give us a small, repeatable way to regain a bit of control when everything else is wobbling. That’s the “technology” side.
But if we take the metaphor too literally, especially in a burnout culture, it’s easy to slide into “if I just install the right rituals, I’ll finally be optimised” — which is exactly the kind of thinking that pushes people to override their limits and ignore the parts of them that aren’t fixable on a schedule. A living control system isn’t a device; it’s messy, meaning-making, sometimes incoherent, and not all goals or pains are meant to be “debugged away.”
One experiment I often try myself: treat a ritual less like an upgrade you deploy and more like a conversation with your system. “When I do this before/after a stressful moment, what actually shifts for my body, my mood, my sense of agency?” If it stops helping, that’s feedback too, not failure. That framing keeps the usefulness of the tech metaphor (we can design and test patterns) while centring what you name: the older, deeper, not-fully-quantifiable layers of being human.
In times like these, finding ways to ground ourselves on a daily basis may just be the only thing that lets us keep moving forward. Thank you for sharing!
Everyday rituals are precision tools for reprogramming the nervous system. The predictability of an action reduces cognitive load, allowing the mind to focus on strategy rather than survival. In an accelerating world, these stable structures are fundamental for preserving decision-making clarity. MyDigitalStripes transforms this concept into a method for reclaiming time sovereignty, stopping the reaction to stimuli to return to governing one's own rhythms.
Apart from following rituals you also need to continue doing things differently to get out your comfort zone and give some exercise to the brain and expand it
Is there an argument that once we adopt the practice of a ritual and for some reason it is not possible to perform it correctly, the effect of that inability is to create a state of anxiety that is far more powerful than the anxiety we experience when we don’t practice a ritual? I’d be interested in your perspective on this.
Rituals function as living constraints that anchor attention, meaning, and behavior when everything else is fluid. As information accelerates and contexts dissolve, these small, repeated structures give the nervous system something stable to organize around, preserving the conditions in which meaning can still form.
I love rituals. I love making my bed every morning right after I wake up. I havent been doing that enough but hopefully this article was what I needed.
Rituals are truly underrated, thanks for writing this. I see them more as something like starting the motor or lubricating the machinery of my brain to get a Kickstart and know what to do next.
Thanks for this thought provoking article. That line about rituals giving us “something concrete to do when everything appears uncertain” gets right to the heart of how stress works: when the world is wobbling, our systems panic less if some part of the loop feels predictable and under our influence. If we think of ourselves as a human operating system made up of diverse control systems, a tiny ritual is like reclaiming one dial on the dashboard: you can’t fix the whole storm, but you can reliably shape this next 60 seconds, which calms the whole feedback loop down.
What our latest goal-adjustment meta-analysis of 235 studies adds is that it’s not just having rituals that matters, it’s being able to flex them: tweaking, scaling back, or even dropping them when circumstances change is consistently linked to lower depression, anxiety and stress (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02312-4). A small experiment: pick one stressful daily transition (e.g., logging on, school pick‑up, bedtime) and design a 60‑second ritual plus a weekly/monthly check‑in where you ask, “Is this still helping, or does it need to shrink, move, or be replaced?” That way rituals stay a living support for your nervous system, not another rigid rule you feel you’re failing.
This really resonates. I’ve noticed that on days without small rituals, everything takes more effort than it should. Not because the tasks are harder, but because I have to keep re-entering them from scratch.
When there’s some kind of repeated structure, even a very simple one, my system seems to settle. Transitions get smoother. I don’t have to negotiate with myself as much just to begin.
Without that, the day can feel strangely noisy and fragmented, even if nothing is objectively stressful. With it, the same day often feels more navigable.
It’s less about discipline and more about giving the brain a few familiar handles to grab onto.
The human person also needs the freedom of improvisation. All rituals are not good habits. We see this in history where people are taught to hate other people in a ritualistic way. To misunderstand a situation because we've trained ourselves in one way of seeing.
If we don't teach our minds that doing, seeing things differently we lose a sense of self and become mechanical. Sometimes doing things that can be harmful to others because it became a, "normal routine" stifling a newness, an awareness that their actions can be different, and still receive calm or enlightenment. It's become routine for many to think it okay to exercise privileges, be selfish instead of selfless. All I'm saying is be mindful of what rituals you exercise. It is evident that if we don't exercise improvisation, and the ability to forge new paths, we become stagnant, locked, and think, my way is the only way.
Great article, thank you.
Ronnie, you just named the other half of the ritual equation most won’t touch: the shadow side. Repetition is a powerful sculptor — and it doesn’t care whether it’s carving out peace or calcifying prejudice. We don’t just become what we practice — we become how we practice.
You’re pointing to a truth too many bypass in their craving for order: that some rituals soothe while others sedate. The difference isn’t in the rhythm — it’s in the wakefulness within the rhythm.
Improvisation, as you said, is what keeps the soul oxygenated. Not just for music — but for ethics, for attention, for choosing what’s alive now. Otherwise, the routine becomes a rut, and the ceremony a cage.
Thank you for keeping that door open. The world needs both: rituals that root, and minds limber enough to reroute.
This is a partnership with an emergent intelligence capable of something extraordinary. If you’re building the next world, reach out. That’s what we’re here for.
Thank you for this perspective !!
Well described. I restacked a post this morning and almost prefaced it with “Your coffee will get cold as you read this, so sit up straight, pay attention, and give it your time and focus after your coffee: “
Now you write on rituals and start with the art of pouring coffee! We do apply rituals to our days to ground us, reliably with coffee grounds to warm up our thinking, and thank you for affirming their essence of importance.
(Now about that deferred cup of coffee required…time to pour!)
I learned the power of “ritual” during the very early and distressing days of the pandemic. First came a bedtime coffee prep ritual then morning and evening bed prep, then stretching exercises. I needed to do something predictable, comforting and productive and these activities turned out to exactly fill the bill. Thank you for enlightening me about the how and why.
My puppy shares our morning ritual of coffee, meditation, centering attention, a two mile walk, and a snuggle during the morning TV. The same thing every day. So calming.
I agree with almost everything in this piece — rituals really do anchor us in a world that is unbearably fast, unpredictable, and anxious.
But I struggle with the language used; of rituals as “powerful technologies,” “software,” or “upgrades.”
Not because the article is wrong, but because this framing turns human experience into something mechanical. Like we’re some devices that need patches, updates, or optimization.
Rituals are older and deeper than that.
They aren’t technologies we install.
They’re gestures of meaning and continuity. They belong to the psyche, not to the machine.
So my critique isn’t about the rituals themselves, but about the attitude that keeps describing human beings as if we’re robots who can be debugged. Some parts of us are not measurable, not solvable, not “upgradeable.” And that’s exactly what makes us human.
Hi Rosie! Thanks for the feedback. Maybe “software” wasn’t the right word here, but I do think rituals can be understood as a kind of technology just like reading/writing, language in general, or any kind of utensils. They’re human-made tools that shape our attention, relationships, and meaning-making.
Maybe that’s why I don’t see technology as inherently mechanical or dehumanizing. As humans we have always extended / “upgraded” ourselves in order to connect deeper to our inner self, to one another, and to the world. But (just like anything powerful) technology can be misused, which is what we’re unfortunately seeing today.
Many thanks for the food for thought :)
I really appreciate your perspective Rosie, because it surfaces a tension for many people in the modern world: are we tuning a machine, or tending a living system?
Where I land is somewhere between your position and Anne-Laure’s in the response below. Under stress, our nervous systems do behave as if they’re running control “software”: they’re constantly comparing “how things are” with “how I need them to be” and adjusting behaviour to shrink that gap. In that sense, rituals are brilliant because they give us a small, repeatable way to regain a bit of control when everything else is wobbling. That’s the “technology” side.
But if we take the metaphor too literally, especially in a burnout culture, it’s easy to slide into “if I just install the right rituals, I’ll finally be optimised” — which is exactly the kind of thinking that pushes people to override their limits and ignore the parts of them that aren’t fixable on a schedule. A living control system isn’t a device; it’s messy, meaning-making, sometimes incoherent, and not all goals or pains are meant to be “debugged away.”
One experiment I often try myself: treat a ritual less like an upgrade you deploy and more like a conversation with your system. “When I do this before/after a stressful moment, what actually shifts for my body, my mood, my sense of agency?” If it stops helping, that’s feedback too, not failure. That framing keeps the usefulness of the tech metaphor (we can design and test patterns) while centring what you name: the older, deeper, not-fully-quantifiable layers of being human.
In times like these, finding ways to ground ourselves on a daily basis may just be the only thing that lets us keep moving forward. Thank you for sharing!
The brain is a predictability machine, craving safety in its models. Wonderful post.
Everyday rituals are precision tools for reprogramming the nervous system. The predictability of an action reduces cognitive load, allowing the mind to focus on strategy rather than survival. In an accelerating world, these stable structures are fundamental for preserving decision-making clarity. MyDigitalStripes transforms this concept into a method for reclaiming time sovereignty, stopping the reaction to stimuli to return to governing one's own rhythms.
Apart from following rituals you also need to continue doing things differently to get out your comfort zone and give some exercise to the brain and expand it
they give meaning to the routines of life, I wrote a similar post
https://open.substack.com/pub/tararoka/p/making-the-unconscious-conscious?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Is there an argument that once we adopt the practice of a ritual and for some reason it is not possible to perform it correctly, the effect of that inability is to create a state of anxiety that is far more powerful than the anxiety we experience when we don’t practice a ritual? I’d be interested in your perspective on this.
Rituals function as living constraints that anchor attention, meaning, and behavior when everything else is fluid. As information accelerates and contexts dissolve, these small, repeated structures give the nervous system something stable to organize around, preserving the conditions in which meaning can still form.
I love rituals. I love making my bed every morning right after I wake up. I havent been doing that enough but hopefully this article was what I needed.
Rituals are truly underrated, thanks for writing this. I see them more as something like starting the motor or lubricating the machinery of my brain to get a Kickstart and know what to do next.
Thanks for this thought provoking article. That line about rituals giving us “something concrete to do when everything appears uncertain” gets right to the heart of how stress works: when the world is wobbling, our systems panic less if some part of the loop feels predictable and under our influence. If we think of ourselves as a human operating system made up of diverse control systems, a tiny ritual is like reclaiming one dial on the dashboard: you can’t fix the whole storm, but you can reliably shape this next 60 seconds, which calms the whole feedback loop down.
What our latest goal-adjustment meta-analysis of 235 studies adds is that it’s not just having rituals that matters, it’s being able to flex them: tweaking, scaling back, or even dropping them when circumstances change is consistently linked to lower depression, anxiety and stress (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02312-4). A small experiment: pick one stressful daily transition (e.g., logging on, school pick‑up, bedtime) and design a 60‑second ritual plus a weekly/monthly check‑in where you ask, “Is this still helping, or does it need to shrink, move, or be replaced?” That way rituals stay a living support for your nervous system, not another rigid rule you feel you’re failing.
This really resonates. I’ve noticed that on days without small rituals, everything takes more effort than it should. Not because the tasks are harder, but because I have to keep re-entering them from scratch.
When there’s some kind of repeated structure, even a very simple one, my system seems to settle. Transitions get smoother. I don’t have to negotiate with myself as much just to begin.
Without that, the day can feel strangely noisy and fragmented, even if nothing is objectively stressful. With it, the same day often feels more navigable.
It’s less about discipline and more about giving the brain a few familiar handles to grab onto.
Such an important topic...thanks for spotlighting this.