We all have things that we do each day; having a shower, washing our face, applying makeup ( for the ladies), doing our hair and a myriad other similar activities. But what if we decided to make them a ritual instead of a routine? What if we turned all those mundane, every day activities into a ritual of self-love and self-care? What, if anything, would change?
Let’s start by taking a look at the words ritual and
routine. Routine is all about structure, discipline and sounds kind of boring.
In fact our routine can be deadly. We become so habituated to our normal
everyday routine that we overlook important details. Our daily commute to work
can feel like we are on auto pilot and studies have shown that we actually are.
We can arrive at our destination with no memory of how we got there.
In one sad case a father was tasked with dropping his infant child at the day
care but this was not the normal routine. Normally he was in charge of picking
her up from day care and this is what he dutifully did at the end of the day
only to be informed that the child had never been dropped off. This jogged his
memory and he ran out to the car only to find the child dead in her car seat
from heat exposure.
Sadly this is not an isolated incident and they have even come up with a name for it Forgotten baby syndrome. In fact in doing research for this article I had to stop myself from reading all the cases that came up in Google. In one state there were three cases in one day.As I said routine can be deadly.
What about ritual? Ritual straight away sounds more sacred,
sounds more intentional rather than automatic and mundane. We tend to associate
ritual with ceremony; the lighting of candles, setting the scene and creating
the right atmosphere. It has quite a different flavour to routine doesn’t it?
With a few small tweaks and adjustments you can turn your daily routine into a self-affirming, self-love ritual.
Here are five simple steps to transform your life:
(1) Set the intention to make your day different; at the start of each day set the intention of what and how you would like your day to unfold. “Today I set the intention for my day to be peaceful and loving.” “Today I set the intention to be more active about my health and wellbeing.” When you set an intention you are declaring to yourself and the Universe that this is where your attention will be for the day, you are stating a focus for your day.
Simply by declaring an intention for your day will give your subconscious mind something to focus on and will begin to attract to you more of that kind of energy.
You may not notice a change straight away but if you commit to stating your intention every morning for the next twenty-one days you will begin to find more ease and flow in your day.
(2) Turn your shower into a cosmic emotional cleanse. When you step into your shower ask your angels to bathe you in a golden shower of light to cleanse and clear your aura of any negative vibrations and attachments. Release anything and everything from your auric field with love and light and affirm that you only attract to you people and situations for the highest good of all.
(3) Create a vision board of how you would like your life to unfold and place it on the outside of your glass shower so you can focus on it while you shower. As an alternative to this create it as movie (Windows and Macs come with movie making capabilities already installed). Watch this throughout your day to refocus you on your core desires.
Studies have shown that those who write out their goals and look at them throughout their day are amongst the top 1% of achievers in the world. Creating them in a visual format is a great way to have them seep into the subconscious part of our mind which is governed primarily by symbols.
(4) Speak lovingly to yourself. While you wash your
face, apply your make up or just doing any other part of your daily ablutions
take the time to tell yourself just how much you love you. Yes, it will feel
weird at first. Yes, it does get easier and most of all, yes, it is worth it.
Too often the way that we speak to ourselves is with a litany of complaints,
put downs and harsh judgements much worse than we would ever speak to anyone
else.
The long term effects of this are low self-esteem, depression, self-doubt and a
general sense of dissatisfaction. By changing the way we speak to ourselves we
start to acknowledge our own value.
(5) Turn your daily commute into a learning
adventure. Listen to some self- improvement audios. Choose what it is that you
want to listen to rather than just listening to the latest outrage on talk back
radio or the same songs on your favourite radio channel or the litany of
disasters broadcast every hour on the hour.
There is a saying that we become like the sum of the five people that we spend
the most time with so choose to surround yourself with inspiring , uplifting
mentors. And yes, spending time listening to audios counts as part of those
five people that you are spending time with.
I hope these ideas have given you some ideas of how you can start reshaping your daily routine into more of a series of daily acts of self-love, self -care and wellbeing. Sure, you might think to yourself “I don’t have time to do all this” when the reality is that you are just making tiny adjustments to what you are already doing and surely you are worth that.
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