Rituals and Inertia

You wake up and what's the first thing you do?

If you're like most people, do you go to the bathroom?

It's a ritual you complete before anything else. It's a biologically required ritual. But it's a ritual.

I'll bet you have certain patterns around this first ritual of the day, too.

Yes. Even your rituals have rituals inside of them.

Now, imagine waking up and not going through the first biological ritual of the day. Hold it for as long as you can as you start doing all your other daily activities.

It won't be easy. In fact, I bet you wouldn't last long before you had to go back to step one… Sweet relief.

While going to the bathroom is biologically required, you have daily rituals that govern most of what you do. I'd over over 95% of what you do everyday is automatic, something you ritualized.

Big Changes

In July (2017) my daily rituals went through a big change. When I mean big change, I mean all of my daily activities were flipped upside down.

A company I was doing training for offered me a leadership position I couldn't pass up. It was one of those situations where everything clicked and, while it wasn't something I was looking for, I couldn't say, "No."

The last 7 months have been incredibly busy with this new role and family commitments.

My daily emails kept getting pushed off.

I'll do it tomorrow.

And then again tomorrow.

Today, I smacked my forehead with a big Homer Simpson, "Doh!" What's going on?

This is what happens when your rituals change.

It's hard to find the groove that worked for you when everything else has shifted. For the first several weeks in July reminded me of what it was like when I quit smoking, 20+ years ago. There was something that pulled me to sneak a few words into my writing app but nothing felt right. I was so focused on getting the team running my mind was elsewhere and nothing was, as The NY Times says, "Fit to print."

I'm sure you've been through a life change like this…. Everything feels awkward. Everything but that one area where all your energy is focused.

The Comfort of Inertia

Nobody thrives on change. We all have a sense of comfort in the status quo.

Remember this when selling.

When your customer buys from you that first time something is changing. Every purchase after is reinforcing the status quo. And that's the goal.

You want to be the one that's hard to change from but easy to change to.

And, now, my goal is to make the ritual of writing these emails the status quo again.

What daily ritual are you working on?