Habits. Routines. Rituals.

Part 2 of my 'Alchemy Of Self' audio series. The insights within this audio can help you to understand the true importance of our habits and how they influence our daily lives. You will also learn more about how to turn positive habits into lasting routines and rituals that can enhance or kickstart your personal growth journey.

Transcript

Welcome back everyone.

In our previous conversation,

We discussed the four inner kingdoms,

What they were,

How they directly influenced your character,

And how your character ultimately influences the quality of your life.

Well,

In our conversation today,

We'll discuss habits,

Routines,

And rituals,

And those you can begin to cultivate right now that can form a foundation for a thriving personal mastery practice.

So what exactly are habits,

Routines,

And rituals?

Habits are those behaviors that we do with little to no thought,

And they're usually triggered by a specific cue.

Now,

Did you know that 45% of our activities we do daily are habitual?

Like almost half of our daily lives we're doing on autopilot.

That's pretty crazy,

Right?

And through a process called habit stacking,

We can transform our habits into routines.

Now,

Habit stacking is basically where you group together small habits and they form a routine.

And a routine is a series of actions that we follow regularly.

And these are often developed through a more conscious and deliberate approach.

And they require a little more effort and intention on our parts.

Think something like a daily jog.

Now,

Rituals on the other hand,

Those are much more meaningful practices,

And they have a deeper sense of purpose,

A deeper underlining vibe,

And applying mindfulness to your routines can help you create rituals in your life.

Think something along the lines of meditation or journaling.

And rituals can serve many purposes.

They can help calm you down when you are anxious.

They can give you confidence.

They can strengthen relationships.

They can provide a sense of familiarity when needed.

And habits,

Routines,

And rituals can form an essential foundation for any productivity practice,

But especially for a personal mastery practice.

Now,

The Stoic philosopher Epitita said that our habits and capabilities are confirmed and grows through corresponding actions,

Walking by walking,

Running by running.

Therefore,

If you want to do something,

Make a habit of it.

And if you don't want to do something,

Make a habit of doing the opposite.

When I was still playing professionally,

I had a teammate who used to do push-ups every single day,

Twice a day.

He created this push-up group for the guys on our team.

And basically what we would do is we would do our push-ups in the morning and in the evening.

We would video tape ourselves doing the push-ups,

And then we would post them inside the group.

However,

We were nowhere near as consistent as he was.

No matter if we were injured,

We played late,

Didn't matter.

Every single day,

He posted these videos inside that push-up group.

Now,

As far as the rest of us,

We would miss a day,

Two days,

A week,

Two weeks,

Maybe even more.

Like I said,

We were nowhere near as consistent as he was.

So one day,

We were all having a conversation and I asked him,

How do you stay so consistent with doing these push-ups every single day?

So he told me it originally started with his friends back home as a way to challenge each other,

Compete with each other,

And help one another stay in shape during their downtime.

And he said that over time,

It developed into a habit that he started doing and eventually into a routine where he found that the moment his feet touched the ground in the morning,

He was doing push-ups.

And that was the last thing he was doing before he went to bed at night.

And then over time,

His family got involved,

His wife and his kids wanted to do the push-ups just like him.

And so they began building a ritual around it,

A way to bond and keep each other healthy.

And I found that to be really interesting how it progressed that way.

And that's why I wanted to share it with you because on the journey of personal mastery,

That's what we want to do.

We want to turn those positive behaviors into habits,

Those habits into routines,

And then those routines eventually into the rituals that can help drive our life forward.

So what are those habits that we would like to cultivate that can form the foundation for our personal mastery practice?

Well,

Depending upon the kind of person you want to be,

The kind of life you wish to create,

What you want to achieve in the world,

That answer will lie within you.

But once you have a deeper understanding of those answers,

You'll know which habits are important for you to create so you can have the foundation for your own personal mastery practice.

But what I would like to do right now is just share a few of those habits with you that I feel could be very beneficial to not only your personal mastery practice,

But to any area of mastery that you choose to pursue.

So the first one is the habit of early rising.

You see,

There's something so magical,

Beautiful,

And powerful about the stillness and serenity and quiet that you get when you rise before the sun.

And that early morning hour when the rest of the world is still sleep,

The noise and the speed of our daily lives is at a standstill.

That energy and peace that you get allows you the opportunity to go within and connect with yourself.

In the beginning of my personal mastery journey,

I didn't understand it this way and I struggled.

I did study many of the great spiritual teachers and the wise men and women of the past and I did know the benefits of rising early,

But I only knew it in theory.

Because like most things I was doing for a certain amount of time in my life,

I was dabbling.

And I would do it for a few days and then I would fall off track.

I would do it for a week and then I would fall right back off track.

Because every time I would fall prey to my own mind,

My own thoughts,

To those thousands of thoughts that would come to my mind,

Justifying why I shouldn't get out of bed,

Justifying why I could just sleep for 10 more minutes,

Justifying why it wouldn't hurt just to skip today and pick it back up tomorrow.

And it wasn't until I became really serious and committed about my mastery practice that I understood on a deeper level what it truly meant to rise before the sun.

It wasn't just about waking up early and being up before the sun.

It was about how I leveraged that time,

How I would work on myself,

How I would cultivate my four inner kingdoms,

My inner world.

Once I started approaching it from that perspective,

I began to develop behaviors that would allow me to make waking up at 5 a.

M.

A habit.

And now I use this time to develop my inner faculties.

I use this 60 to 90 minutes to move my body through exercise,

To connect to myself,

Connect to the infinite spirit within me through meditation,

Through reflection,

Through contemplation.

I grow my mind through reading and studying.

And in doing so,

I show up more authentically.

I am more connected to my higher self with more focus,

With more energy and less stress,

Even while being a single father.

I show up with much more positivity and I'm far less reactive and far more responsive,

With more creativity and inspiration to spread into the world.

Now I do realize that you may be saying that,

Bracey,

I am not about that 5 a.

M.

Life.

I do not want to wake up that early.

Now if that's the case,

Then that's cool.

And I respect that.

And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever because on this journey of personal mastery,

It's about what resonates with you,

Doing what works best for you,

What feels good to you.

So before I move on to my next habit,

I just want to say that the habit of early rising is my keystone habit.

It's allowed me to develop other habits that I feel are really important for me and my development.

And one of those habits is the habit of daily silence.

Yes,

Sitting each day for a certain amount of time in stillness and in quiet.

Now this is one habit that I do recommend to pretty much anybody that I meet.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you know somebody right now in your life who hates being in silence?

Whether that's around the house,

Whether that's in a car or anywhere,

They just have to have some kind of noise in the background to break up that silence.

Like they cannot stand to be in silence and maybe that person is you.

But unfortunately in today's world,

That is a pretty high number of people who feel that way.

However,

Sitting in silence daily,

Whether that's to meditate,

Contemplate or to reflect,

It provides you with so many benefits.

Now,

There's been a ton of research and studies done throughout the world to show that meditation and reflection can heighten your gratitude,

Can improve your awareness,

Can improve your mental and emotional health.

However,

From a spiritual standpoint,

When you sit in that silence daily and in that stillness and in that quiet,

You are aligning yourself in that present moment back to the infinite spirit that gives life to all of us,

Allowing it to heal you,

To reenergize and replenish you through that habit of daily silence and connecting back to that infinite wisdom that lives within all of us,

Gaining access to every answer to every question that you could ever have.

You know that saying,

Know thyself.

Well,

In my opinion,

By stealing the mind and the body,

That's the true way to know thyself.

Now this next habit,

It's a habit that I've struggled with for a very long time to find consistency with.

And only through my keystone habit have I been able to finally find that consistency and make it a daily habit.

And that is the habit of journaling.

Now,

First of all,

I do love journaling.

Something about it I've always enjoyed,

But I've never been able to make it stick.

Like I would journal for about a week straight and then I look up and I haven't had a journal entry in about two or three months.

I just didn't know what was going on.

I could not get it to stick.

I physically would write.

I would write it on my phone and tablets.

I would download all these journaling apps,

But they would just take up space on my devices because I would never use them.

But now,

Since I've found the consistency to journal every day,

I love it even more.

And I absolutely love how it's enhanced my life.

So in light of that,

I just want to give a couple reasons why I feel that journaling could be a habit that you would definitely want to incorporate into your mastery practice.

Now,

To me,

What makes journaling so great is that it is wonderful for your emotional health.

Like when you journal,

You can process and release those low emotions and those low energy emotions instead of repressing them and holding on to them.

And that's really key because for such a long time,

I held on to all of those type of emotions because I was not getting them out.

I was just repressing them deep down,

Thinking that if I pushed them down,

They would go away and they never did.

They always come back up.

And now that journaling has become a part of my daily life,

I've been able to work through them in a much more healthier way than before.

And it makes me feel so much better,

So much more clear and calm once I finish getting those emotions out on paper and physically writing them down.

Now,

The next reason that I feel it's great,

And this is a reason that most people are familiar with,

Is that it activates deliberate gratitude.

When you are focused on gratitude in your journaling and you have made this a consistent heaven,

Every single day,

You're finding something in your life to be grateful for,

No matter what is going on in your life at the moment.

And you are starting your morning or ending your day by focusing on gratitude,

By journaling on things about gratitude.

And you're keeping your mind in your emotional state and being grateful and continually being grateful.

And that to me is just amazing because I don't know about you,

But sometimes I do have a tendency to lose sight of things that I am truly grateful for in the context of just living a busy and crazy life.

I have found to help me to overcome this by writing down five small victories throughout my day.

Now these can be something as small or as big as you want,

But I choose to focus on the small simple thing.

Something is holding the door open at the grocery store,

Or I was nice to a neighbor,

Or I was really present with my kid when I was hugging them.

Something simple.

Now that may not sound like much,

But over the course of a year,

That's over 1800 wins that you can look back on.

Now,

I don't know about you,

But when I can look back on my year and see that I had 1800 plus wins,

That's a pretty great year.

And that's just a really neat exercise that I'm beginning to implement into my journaling practice.

Now,

Another reason that I really like journaling is that it promotes learning.

See,

When you're going back over your old journal entries,

You can discover so much about yourself.

You can go back months or years even and see the growth that you have made or see the growth that you still need to make.

You can see where your emotional or mental state was,

And you can learn so much about yourself through journaling.

Now,

This is something that I didn't really understand until I started doing it consistently.

And as I look back over my old journal entries,

Some of them I didn't even remember writing.

And once I started reading them again,

I can see where I was mentally.

Look at the way I was looking at the world mentally.

Look at the way I was allowing my emotions to shape my world.

I could see the patterns in my life,

Whether good or bad.

I could see the steps that allow me to succeed and also the steps that caused me to fail.

And it made me realize just how powerful journaling was.

Now,

Maybe I'll go deeper into journaling at a later date,

But I just wanted to give you those reasons why I believe the journaling habit is greatly beneficial to anyone's life.

Now,

The next habit is one that I also feel is extremely important,

And that is the habit of proper sleep.

Now,

When I say proper sleep,

I mean the amount of time you sleep and your sleep environment.

Research shows that we need about seven hours of sleep,

And that sleeping way more or way less can cause a multitude of problems.

And as much as I'm an advocate for building a morning ritual,

I'm just as much an advocate for building yourself a ritual around sleep.

Now,

We all know of the effects that can happen when you have a lack of sleep,

From the mental and emotional stresses to the physical ailments of your body.

When you're not getting enough sleep or when you're not getting the proper kind of sleep,

There's countless consequences to that.

Now,

As far as the benefits,

I won't go into those really because I believe that everyone listening to this understands why sleep is important and the kind of sleep that we all need as individuals to have for ourselves so that we can function better.

But since a great majority of us tend to drop the ball in this area,

I believe that building a ritual around your pre-sleep is key to getting proper sleep.

Now,

When I speak about a pre-sleep ritual,

I'm talking about all the things you do leading up to the time that you're actually sleeping in bed.

So I'll give you an example of mine.

Between 7 and 8 p.

M.

,

That's when I have my last meal,

My devices go off.

If I can't turn them off,

I try to put them on airplane mode.

And this allows me to spend my few hours left in the day away from distraction,

Spend it with my family and connect back with myself.

Between 8 and 9 p.

M.

,

I'm either reading or journaling or I'm taking care of my body in some kind of way so that I can settle down from a full day's worth of activities.

Now,

Between 9 and 10 is when I really start transitioning to sleep.

I put my kids to bed,

All my devices are off.

Like I said,

I'm doing something that's really helping wind me down even further to get me ready to sleep.

So around 10,

1030,

I'm already ready for sleep and my body and mine have already had a couple hours to kind of transition to sleep.

So that by the time 5 a.

M.

Comes around the next morning,

It's easier for me to get up.

It's easier for me to stick to my morning ritual because I have implemented an evening ritual that's given my body and mind what it needs to transition to sleep more easily without distraction.

Now,

Of course,

Your nightly routine doesn't have to look like that.

It can be whatever suits you best.

But I do feel that getting in the habit of having proper sleep starts with a pre sleep ritual and then by creating your own pre sleep ritual,

You will enhance your ability to get the kind of sleep that you need so you can function in a world more fully so that you can restore,

Re energize your brain,

Your body and your soul.

Now,

This brings me to the last habit that I want to share with you.

And this habit is the one that I feel underlies all the other ones that I've shared.

And this is the habit of self care.

When you get in the habit of practicing self care,

You also get in the habit of practicing self love.

When you slow down and you check in with yourself,

When you really say,

What is it that I need right now?

What is it that I really need in this moment so that I can show appreciation and love and care for myself to myself?

What do I need for my soul?

Now that answer may be different every day.

And if you're being honest,

And you're checking in with yourself in the right way,

It will be different each day.

Because each day is a new day for you to discover what exactly you need in that moment for you to thrive.

And I do realize that that's easier said than done with the way life works and how fast paced it is and the responsibilities and obligations that we all have.

I do understand that.

And truthfully,

Self care has been an area where I have consistently dropped the ball,

Whether it's been I'm wrapped up with my kids,

I'm wrapped up in work,

I'm traveling or just many other responsibilities that I have,

And that you have.

Also in your daily life,

I do get that.

However,

I believe that this is the one habit that's really worth cultivating.

Because those who serve and care for others,

They usually struggle to serve and care for themselves.

But let me tell you this,

When you serve and care for yourself,

The way you can show up and serve for others,

The quality in which you serve others increases exponentially.

No matter what habits you choose to implement in your life or the habits you choose to remove from your life,

I just implore you to be patient with yourself,

To be kind with yourself.

Because there is a saying that all change is hard at first,

Messy in the middle,

And gorgeous at the end.

So if you do find yourself struggling to stay consistent,

Just keep that phrase in mind.

And try to connect back to the deeper meaning why,

To why you want to incorporate this habit in your life.

And then strive to move forward and make it happen.

Now I must give you a word of caution here.

Once you start building up these foreign kingdoms,

Once you have these habits in place,

And you're moving forward,

And you're making these amazing and beautiful transformations in your life,

You will face resistance,

Whether it's from within or whether it's from without.

I love and enjoy having these conversations with you so much.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend some with me.

I hope that this conversation has delivered impact,

Inspiration and insight.

And above all else,

I hope that it has added value to you on your personal mastery journey.

Be well,

Be safe and be blessed.

Reviews

🙏🏽 I really needed this powerful reminder and message today!

Thank you for the insight. 🙏🏾

I can't tell you how much I agree with you about the morning waking up and creating a ritual. I watch the sunrise and wait for the first Birds to start chirping, and then I meditate for 45 minutes. I also started journaling about a year ago, mostly bullet journaling but I do gratitude as well. The last year I have completely changed my life for the better, and it all started because I was extremely sick last year and I turned to meditation. I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep past 3 a.m. so I just got used to being up that early, and now that I feel better I still make sure I'm up by 5 a.m. everyday because I miss those two to three hours for myself in the morning.

I absolutely love this series, thank you for sharing it.

Namaste 🙏