Week 3

Day 15: Halfway point.

Today marks the halfway point in the workshop. Congratulations! This is huge! You've been reading consistently for two weeks. Likely, the habit is already strongly forming, and your reading practice is beginning to feel like a real ritual. We've spent the past two weeks laying a strong foundation for this specific ritual, and now we're going to shift our focus to start thinking about the role ritual plays in your life in a more general way.

Answer these questions in your journal:

How does it feel to be halfway through this workshop? Has it felt fast? Slow? Difficult? Easy?
Read that initial note to yourself that you wrote on our "motivation" day. Do you still resonate with it? Feel free to add any new thoughts, now that you're halfway through (and two weeks wiser!)

Day 16: Reading as an anchor.

I find that after 2-3 weeks of incorporating something new into my life, two things start to happen: it begins to feel larger and heavier, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Has that happened to you yet? Life will seem to revolve around reading for a little bit. It’s exciting, consuming, and gratifying. It feels as if every other thing that you do is connected to reading by a string. This feeling fades after some time—or rather, it blends in a little better with all of life’s other activities. The weight doesn’t feel so much like a heaviness, but more of a magnetic pull as time goes on, as long as you stay consistent with it. But right now I want to try and take advantage of this heavy phase. I call it the anchor phase.

This reading practice has become an anchor. It’s pulling you earthward, it’s grounding you. It becomes very important to get intentional about what else is attached to this anchor’s string, because ultimately those things will start to become a part of your grounding practice as well. Make sense?

Answer these questions in your journal:

What are non-negotiable responsibilities and practices in your life? Work, walking the dog, taking your children to school could be some examples. These are immutable routines and we will not be messing with them, but it’s good to take stock of what is immovable in your life so that we can see where else a shift can take place.
Think about the activities that have orbited your reading so far. Is there anything there that doesn’t feel necessary or right? Think about how it would affect your life if you distanced your reading from those activities. I used to wake up and get sucked into my phone while checking email/notifications before turning to my morning reading. I didn’t like the connection that was forming there, so now I wait to look at my phone until after I’ve had a cup of tea, done my reading, and started making breakfast. Mornings feel much more nourishing now.
If you drew a little web with reading at the center, what other rituals would (or could) spin off from it? How would you feel if you lengthened your ritual to incorporate one or two more actions? Do you have the time for this? Is there another part of your day where you would have more time if you rearranged some of your habits?

Day 17: Habit stacking.

Yesterday’s prompts essentially primed you to start thinking about a concept called habit stacking. You may have heard of this term already—it's been quite buzzy in the past couple of years—but it's essentially taking the momentum of one ritual and using it to build more ritual into your life. If we take the analogy from yesterday, reading becomes the anchor at the center of a web that can have many strings radiating from it. Let's explore the possibility of what could be attached to those other strings today.

Some questions for you:

We’ve touched a bit on what accessories or supportive materials you may have found helpful as you’ve deepened this reading practice. What are they? Can you think of any other rituals that surround those objects specifically?
Are there ways that reading can support a different ritual in your life? For example, I’ve begun to ritualize the act of taking epsom salt baths. I always bring a book into the tub with me because it makes it more enjoyable. It isn’t part of my daily reading ritual, but it could be!
Think about the natural progression of your day, especially as it relates to your daily reading practice. What happens before you read? What happens after? Do you consider those acts rituals?
Choose 1-2 other acts that you would like to start "stacking" onto your reading practice. Refer to your ideal Priority Grid for ideas, if you need

Day 18: On staying consistent.

Today we are going to focus on the idea of consistency. It may seem obvious, but consistency is at the heart of this workshop, and it's at the heart of all ritual. Without a consistent practice, a ritual simply cannot form. I want you to really think about your level of consistency with reading this month, and get super honest with yourself. Now is the time to solidify these consistent habits!

Answer these questions in your journal:

I previously described a heaviness that comes with the act of forming new rituals, a heaviness that fades into a gentle magnetic pull. Are there other activities in your life that you feel (or felt) this with? Sometimes we take the things that already ground us for granted, and it can be refreshing and encouraging to acknowledge the ways in which we are already on our way to groundedness.
To expand on the above: what other consistent rituals do you have?
It's time to get real: how consistent have you been? If your answer is "not very," what's holding you back? If your answer is "very," how does this consistency feel?
Take a little time to reflect on your relationship with consistency in general. What comes up for you? What, if anything, is blocking you? Can you give yourself permission to release this old pattern of not showing up for yourself?

This is my challenge to you: remain consistent for the rest of this workshop and see how you feel.

Day 19: On sustainability.

I'll be the first to admit it: this workshop is a bubble, slightly removed from real life. You won't have me writing to you every day for the rest of your life ;)

With that in mind, I want you to consider the sustainability of the reading ritual you are forming. Like I mentioned yesterday, consistency is at the heart of a ritual, but to achieve consistency a ritual must be sustainable. That means it needs to fit into your real life, not just the intention-bubble version of life that you've created this month.

Take a look at this current ritual and (again) be honest with yourself as you examine it through the lens of sustainability.

Answer these questions in your journal:

How sustainable is your reading practice feeling to you?
Right now does it seem like something that could become a lifelong ritual?
What shifts could you make to make it more sustainable, be it the time or length of the reading, the material you read, or the ceremony of it all?

Day 20: The sweet spot.

This week you've started to make some small shifts: adding on new rituals as a way to habit stack, getting honest with yourself about consistency and making the necessary changes to commit to your daily practice, and taking a look at the sustainability of your ritual. Now, with everything you've learned, I want you to map out that perfect sweet spot. This is the realistic, attainable vision of your reading practice using all of these new tools. I hope you find this exercise inspiring! This new-and-improved ritual should feel energizing and encouraging; it's meant to fit your own specific lifestyle like a glove.

Today in your journal:

Map out the sweet spot of your ritual. Be as detailed as you'd like. I suggest mapping it out for different kinds of days:
- weekdays or workdays
- weekends or rest days
- days when you're stressed or busy
- days when you have extra time on your hands
How do any other rituals factor into this sweet spot ritual? Does habit stacking have a place here?
Refer back to your ideal Priority Grid—does this sweet spot align? Do you need to tweak your grid?

Day 21: Keep sharing.

You know the drill at this point. Take some time today to reflect on what you've read. Share it with yourself in your journal, or with another. Again, we're doing this each week to reinforce that beautiful sense of accomplishment that's creating all sorts of happy chemical reactions in your brain. The more regularly you can take a moment to relish in all that you've worked on, the more excited you will be to keep engaging in your ritual on a molecular level.

Alyssa Natoci