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080: Unlocking meaning in the everyday with Casper ter Kuile
3k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Mia and Dinah interview Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Ritual and co-founder of The Nearness, about infusing meaning and ritual into daily routines to transform how we approach life admin tasks.
The inspiration for his book, The Power of Ritual, came from his secular upbringing and his curiosity about intentional living.
- Casper highlights the need for intentional community-building in a world with fewer traditional religious structures.
- The conversation delves into the scarcity of meaningful rituals in modern life, with weddings becoming one of the few grand moments.
- Casper shares an example of his personal ritual, the "State of the Heart Order of the House" meeting, as a way to bring intentionality into daily life.
- Rituals are defined as habits with added layers of meaning, serving to remind us of what's important and fostering gratitude.
- Casper suggests reframing daily habits, like brushing teeth, with intentional practices to turn them into rituals.
- He suggests starting with habits that already have some joy or meaning.
- The three key steps to create meaningful rituals are: intention, attention, and repetition.
- Intention: Begin by understanding why you perform a certain task. What is the deeper purpose or meaning behind it?
- Attention: Pay close attention to the task at hand. Engage your senses, and be fully present during the ritual.
- Repetition: Establish a consistent rhythm for your ritual. It doesn't have to be daily; it can be weekly or as suits your lifestyle.
- Casper shares personal examples, like using a moisturizer application as a daily ritual for reflection.
- He highlights the importance of creating a communal aspect to rituals, where people can share their experiences and challenges.
- Find ways to make tasks less lonely by involving others, such as co-working sessions for administrative tasks.
- Rituals connect us and make us feel part of something bigger, even in a virtual setting.
- Consider how rituals can bring people together, foster support, and add meaning to routine tasks.
- How a tech sabbath embraces traditional sabbath ideas in a modern way
- How to go 'ritual spotting'
- Connecting with nature and moments of transcendence to bring more spirituality into our lives during daily activities LIFE ADMIN
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Dinah Roe Roberts, an operations manager who worships at the altar of the Richmond Football Club. But after this ep, I'll be expanding my spirituality beyond the realms of the AFL. I'm Mia Northrup, a researcher and writer who will be mowing my lawn with renewed sense of purpose by adding some ritual to the routine.
Interview with Kasper Takal - The Power of Ritual
00:00:31
Speaker
In this episode, we interview Kasper Takal, author of The Power of Ritual.
00:00:38
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. In this episode, we talk to Kasper to Kyle about how rituals can bring meaning to everyday and routine activities. He talks about using intention, attention and repetition to elevate a habit to a ritual.
00:00:54
Speaker
how we can go ritual spotting to deepen connection with ourselves, the people around us, nature, and the transcendent. If you're curious about how spirituality could bring more meaning to your life, even if you're not religious, this ep is for you.
Preparing for Christmas - Essential Checklists
00:01:09
Speaker
And if you celebrate Christmas, you might like to bring more intentionality and spirituality to it with our Essential Get Ready for Christmas Checklists. These checklists help you prepare for the festive season at a calm and steady pace.
00:01:23
Speaker
And for advanced players, include steps to host Christmas lunch or dinner smoothly at your home. Head to lifeadminlifehacks.com to download the checklists so you can share the responsibilities, drop the mental load, minimise your stress and maximise the joy of the season.
Kasper's Work and Projects
00:01:42
Speaker
Dr. Kyle shares insight and inspiration on the future of community and spirituality. His work explores how we'll make meaning, deepen our relationships, and experience beauty in the 21st century. He's the author of The Power of Ritual and the co-founder of The Nearness, a dedicated space to explore life's big questions with like-minded people. Casper previously co-created the HIT podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, co-founded the soul-centered R&D agency Sacred Design Lab,
00:02:11
Speaker
and co-author of the influential paper, How We Gather. Kasper holds Masters in Public Policy and Divinity from Harvard University, where he served as Ministry Innovation Fellow. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Sean. Kasper, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you
Adding Meaning to Daily Routines
00:02:28
Speaker
both.
00:02:28
Speaker
So I read The Power of Ritual last year after hearing you interviewed on a podcast. And there were a few passages that leapt out at me as being particularly relevant to our listeners who are attempting to get their life admin under control. Because Diana and I talk about life admin being the homework of adult life. It can be tedious. It can take up too much time. It can stress people out. And the idea that you can take these daily or there's no routine activities
00:02:53
Speaker
and layer them with meaning can help people approach it with an entirely different mindset and get something more out of it. And I wanted to read a few bits from the book that really got me thinking, get your take on it. So you say, this is what this book is all about. Taking things we do every day and layering meaning and ritual onto them, even experiences as ordinary as reading or eating by thinking of them as spiritual practices. Where did the idea for this book come from?
Kasper's Background and Journey
00:03:20
Speaker
Oh, wow. It's always funny to hear your own words read back to you. I'm like, yeah, that is a great point. You know, this book really came from my own life experience. I grew up in a very secular upbringing in England. You know, no one I knew went to church. God was not talked about in our household. You know, I certainly as a gay kid, religion was irrelevant or cruel. Like it was just so far away from my life. But I ended up as a gay atheist going to Harvard Divinity School.
00:03:48
Speaker
Usually everyone in my life. And the reason why I ended up there was that I became more and more interested in how the way in which we are together and the way in which we shape our lives, it influences everything.
00:04:04
Speaker
And so why would we not be intentional about how we live and who we live with? I became completely obsessed by thinking about, you know, as more and more people are less and less religious, where are people going to find community? And as we don't have these rhythms of life, you know, on Sunday you do this, on Wednesday night you do that, in the springtime you do this, in the autumn you do that, we've ended up kind of not just watching lots of streaming services, but life just feels like one big stream and there's no end or pause or,
00:04:33
Speaker
rhythm to it. And so how can we draw on the wisdom of these traditions to shape a life that we really want to live? I ended up researching both the practices of community and the spiritual practices that help make meaning of our lives and trying to find a way in which that might be relevant and useful to people who would never go and walk into a congregation.
Living an Intentional Life with Rituals
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:54
Speaker
I think there's such an interesting connection between that idea of wanting to live an intentional life and wanting to be intentional about how you use your time. And a lot of the people who listen to this show, one of the reasons they want to get their life admin under control is that they have time for other things that are more meaningful. So there's this interesting, you know,
00:05:14
Speaker
tension between big M meaningful things and you talk about the lack of those actual practices or rituals in our lives these days. Actually, there's another bit here about how weddings become the one grand moment, I'll read this bit out.
00:05:30
Speaker
More than that, the number of occasions that we deem worthy of ritual are embarrassingly small. It strikes me that as the constant stress of weddings has gone up, the number of other rituals and celebrations has gone down. If we no longer celebrate spring or harvest time, the new moon or a young person's coming of age, is it any wonder that our human hunger for meaning gets amped up on the one day in our lives when we're actively engaged for designing a ceremonial experience? I read that and I was like,
00:05:59
Speaker
Getting industrial complex. Yeah, I mean, but it's true. I think there is such a dearth of those big moments that when we find one, we kind of hang on to it. And so I'm always, yes, looking at those, looking for more of those big moments, but also looking at what are those everyday things or every week things or every month things that I think about one practice in my home life. I'm a planner, like I love planning.
00:06:20
Speaker
Oh, you're preaching to the choir. I feel like we're on the same page. My husband, not at all. There was a dynamic in our relationship where I kept saying like, what if we do this, you know, in three Thursdays time or like, there's this show that's coming, I'd love to get tickets or what if we went, you know, on this trip. And the only time I would be asking him is at like 10pm when he's trying to fall asleep. I'm like, but babe, what about?
00:06:43
Speaker
Clearly, something needed to change. And I had been talking with these incredible numbs who I got to know, women in their, you know, 70s and 80s, who talked to me about a practice in that community, which they called a state of the heart order of the house. And it was basically a kind of monthly gathering in which the community would sit down and talk and be like, this is what's going on with me. Let's talk about what's, you know, the health of our community.
00:07:07
Speaker
And so I kind of adopted that. And so once once a month in my calendar, there's a state of the heart order of the house meeting with my husband, where I get to add to the agenda all the little things that I want to ask about running. And, you know, and friends of ours said, well, you know, the way we do that is we always have wine and cheese.
00:07:24
Speaker
And so it turned into something that was something to look forward to and had a joyfulness to it, even though there was still, you know, spreadsheets to look at or calendars to navigate. And suddenly it shifted from one of those, you know, have to do to want to do things. And so for me, that's the potential of virtual is to lift up those moments that are going to come back time and again and just layer a little meaning onto them so that there's a bigger purpose that we're connecting those conversations to.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, we love that. Because in our book, we talk about having what we call a momentum meeting where you sit down with the members of your household and you talk about how do you make sure that you're all on the same page and keep your rhythm going. And yeah, we recommend in the book making sure you pair it with something enjoyable like wine or like even specialty or whatever it is, you know, go out for breakfast, whatever it is, so that it's something that you can look forward to, but also get all those things under control that make your life more meaningful.
00:08:20
Speaker
State of the heart, order of the house is very poetic. So Kasper, how do you define the terms ritual and spirituality in the context of
Understanding Spirituality
00:08:28
Speaker
modern day life? Because as you said, a lot of people, you know, grow up in religious households, they don't consider themselves religious, but they do like the idea of being spiritual. And then a lot of people are not sure what that actually even means. How do you define those terms?
00:08:41
Speaker
Well, so for me, the way I think about spirituality is that it's all about connection. And the way I structure the book is to look at connection with yourself, connection with other people, connection with the natural world in which we live, and then connection to something transcendent, you know, whatever language we have for that. And so thinking about those four layers of connection is a great way to think about, you know, more and more people in the medical field are starting to talk about something like spiritual health, because it's really, yes, it speaks to those social connections, but also our sense of meaning, our sense of purpose,
00:09:12
Speaker
that's how I think about spirituality is that quality of our connection in those different domains. And as for ritual, you know, sometimes I think English can be a little bit of a word soup, you know, we'll say habit or routine or ritual, kind of all in the same fuzzy language pile. And really what I mean is that a habit can be a little bit of a word
00:09:28
Speaker
habit is something that we do habitually right we do it over and again not necessarily every day might be every year but it's something that fulfills a functional purpose so brushing your teeth and ritual may also have a functional purpose but really it has a meaning purpose that there's a layer that's put on top of that
00:09:45
Speaker
functional element and it helps remind us of the things that are most important. The love we feel for our family, a sense of duty to the people we care for, cultivating gratitude. Daka Keltner, who's an academic at UC Berkeley, talks about practices that enact moral emotions.
00:10:05
Speaker
And so that's the kind of scientific language he uses to talk about that meaning layer that you put on habits. Now, what's really interesting is that over time, the kind of initial habit, the kind of functional purpose actually falls away. And all you're left with is, you know, that kind of meaning layer. And I think over time, and this is one of my kind of analyses, I guess, of a lot of religious traditions, is that over time that can fossilize.
00:10:30
Speaker
and you kind of lose both the functional purpose and the meaning purpose, and you're just left doing something over and over again without everyone really being clear about why it becomes empty or kind of just a convention, as Thomas Merton would say. So for me, it's really helpful to think about, okay, brushing your teeth is a habit, but if I, you know, every time that I brush my teeth, spend those two minutes thinking of the three things that I'm grateful for, then suddenly it's become a ritual and it's no longer just a habit.
00:10:57
Speaker
I'm thinking about this, you know, different strategies people adopt to do things that are either tedious or uncomfortable. And what comes to mind to me is mowing the lawn. I've got to make a blocker about it. And as you were saying that, I'm thinking, you know, I could just reframe that as like a walking meditation and put some intentionality around it. I don't know, I'll have to think about what the bigger meaning would be. But that would be an example, right? Where you're taking something that's
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah. Is that what you mean? Well, let's use mowing the lawn as a great example. So why do you mow the lawn? Why do you do it?
00:11:33
Speaker
two main reasons. One, because it looks nicer. Yeah, I look at the backyard and I think, yes, my home is lovely and well-kept and it just makes me feel calm. And secondly, because my son plays soccer and he can't kick his, the ball won't roll if the grass is long. So I want him to be able to enjoy the yard and play soccer. I love that. I think those are two beautiful reasons. So what I'm immediately hearing in those answers are
00:11:57
Speaker
there's a gift yourself right like i get to look out the window and appreciate the view and maybe now i'm i'm i'm digging here a little mia so tell me if i'm i know that when my bed is not made i kind of don't respect myself that much like i'm like yes yes it's part of it you know what i mean so maybe there's some of that in there and then i love that it's a gift for your for your kid
00:12:18
Speaker
who gets to play outside and enjoy, you know, picking a football around because the lawn is more so I'm wondering like yes it might be a it might be a meditation but maybe there's a sometimes the thing itself is just not that fun and you have to do it and so maybe the ritual moment comes before or after.
00:12:36
Speaker
So I'm wondering if there's something like, after you finish mowing the lawn, you know, maybe he's at school. So maybe what you do is you kick the ball across the lawn and you say like, I did it, you know, I don't know your son's name, but I did it, you know. And so you see that ball glide across the lawn and suddenly, you know, the reason why you're doing it is centered on top of the functional, now it's done. Something like that might be a place to start. I love that. I literally nearly teared up as you said that.
00:13:05
Speaker
That's why I have to find a solution to getting this log bug. Not at all. It's how much you love your son. You know, that's that's what all of these things are about. And, you know, I think life admin is such it's such a good way into this conversation because, yeah, a lot of stuff is hard and boring.
00:13:22
Speaker
There's no two ways around it. Like, who wants to do a household budget? Not me. But what does that enable us to do? How does that enable us to live? And I think one of my great sadnesses in looking back at religious traditions and communities over time was that we did not used to have to all make it up ourselves. And I think there's a great loneliness
00:13:43
Speaker
in having to navigate these tasks because there isn't a structure for us to fit in, right? Monday was washing day, Tuesday was whatever day. And like, no one wants to do the washing and it took eight times as long as it does now. But you knew everyone was doing it and it was part of a rhythm of life. And I really love the washing machine. Don't get me wrong. I do not want to go back to the world.
00:14:06
Speaker
spending eight hours washing our clothes. But I think there is, as part of this conversation about meaning and ritual, is this question of loneliness because I think we feel isolated and we feel like we don't know how to do it because there aren't these structures of support. And so I love that you have a show exploring these questions because we don't feel alone when we know other people are asking the same questions and struggling with the same challenges.
00:14:31
Speaker
that's always an interest for me is like, how can these rituals not just be for me, but how can they be for us? And so finding ways in which maybe mowing the lawn is not an easy example to make that social, but like that, how, what are the ways in which we can encounter one another again in these rituals too?
00:14:47
Speaker
Well, that's really interesting about also one of the things that I find in terms of motivating me to do difficult things is the idea of having like this accountability partner or, you know, someone who I'm sharing that difficult thing with often. And I do think that's kind of an interesting idea, particularly for areas of life admin that people really strike, like, you know, they keep putting off, they keep putting off and how they might be able to think about having a ritual.
00:15:13
Speaker
and also involve others in that ritual because it might give you also that kind of feeling of accountability. Absolutely, and there are amazing projects. I'm thinking of one organization, oh gosh, who's recently gone through a major rebrand, so I can't think of their new name.
00:15:28
Speaker
But they're in Boston, Massachusetts, here in the U.S. And their mission is to help move families living in poverty out of poverty. And their strategy is give money, which is great. But what they also do is they ask those folks to have a monthly gathering with other families in the same position and to all share data around their education, their health and their finances.
00:15:51
Speaker
And it is incredible how those families not only feel that accountability and feel that sense of responsibility and encouragement, but also the way in which those conversations practically mean they help each other. Like, oh, let me introduce you to so-and-so. I talk about this in my work as building a container, a relational container,
00:16:13
Speaker
where when we step into this conversation or this monthly household meeting or this small group of other families, that we know that during this conversation, during this time, there's an additional level of care and love and responsibility and encouragement that we give each other. That means that we end up doing things that we would never have been able to achieve ourselves. And so finding, you know, that would be another way to think about mowing the lawn is like, you know,
00:16:36
Speaker
Is there a mowing the lawn club and it's just a WhatsApp group and you get to post a picture of the lawn afterwards and everyone sends, I don't know, grass emojis or something? It'd be suckable emojis at least. I do love that. It's interesting. We just opened our first course. We have a course called the Art of Adulting. And part of our vision for that course was to bring people together, to go through this stuff as a group, to give that support and have that
00:17:03
Speaker
space where you can share your progress, share your wins, share your challenges, share resources, because it really does make a difference when you're all sort of focused on similar things and you can all support each other in that way. One of the things that came up was sort of, you know, we have this idea of the hour of power.
00:17:19
Speaker
which is once a week, we sit down and you get stuck into the boring life admin things. And it was suggested that maybe that's like a co-working thing where people agree, all right, we're all going to do our Hour of Power Sunday, 10 a.m. And we get on and we know we're there and we can chat to each other if we need to. But it is that communal element. I love that. You know, you said about you don't have to do all this stuff by ourselves and make all this up by ourselves.
00:17:42
Speaker
I want to pick up on that because I first of all, sign me up, I need it. I love that. And, you know, what's so interesting about ritual is the way in which it connects us, sometimes even without words. And so often when we think about how do we build a relationship, how do we build a sense of connection, we think about conversation, which is beautiful, right?
00:18:00
Speaker
and storytelling and getting to know each other. But it is so interesting when you look at even something, again, in my world, looking at kind of religious practices or how congregations worship together, so much is about embodied practices. It's singing together, it's dancing together, it's eating together, it's lighting candles, it's, you know, marching through some, you know, whatever it is. These are practices that help us move from me to we.
00:18:26
Speaker
And something as simple as, you know, even if sitting behind a keyboard is maybe not the most embodied experience, there is even the sense, even across Zoom, that we're in this together, we're doing the same thing at the same time. And so through that kind of ritualized activity, you have a sense that you're part of something bigger than yourself. Without that, I think we get hopelessly lost. So I love that example. That's another way in which rituals can help you feel like you're part of something bigger adds that layer of
00:18:54
Speaker
Can you give us some more tips about how people might create their own rituals to kind of support these personal and these life admin tasks?
Creating Personal Rituals
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. So my little triptych, my kind of three steps that I always go to is to think about if you've got a habit that you want to turn into a ritual. And I will say it's easier to start with a habit
00:19:14
Speaker
that already has a little joy in it or a little meaningful moment in large, but who knows? Maybe it can work for things that really are just on the to-do list is to think about intention, attention, repetition. So to start, what is that intention, right? What I'm thinking about, I want to make a space where my son can play soccer. That's why I'm doing this, right? You're putting the reason at the heart of the practice right at the center. And so taking just a moment to remind yourself of that. I think about this with tax day.
00:19:41
Speaker
Why is there not a national campaign that just says thank you on like tax deadline day of like, here's what we've done together today? Like, anyway, put me put me in touch with the Prime Minister's office. I love that. They should have like co working sessions with people to do their tax. Everybody would file on time. Turns out the large corporations here in the US want to make the tax thing as difficult as possible. So you need as much professional help as possible.
00:20:03
Speaker
But that's a different conversation. So start with intention. Here's the one that I think often we get lost in. It's the second one is how do you pay attention while you're doing it? And the lawnmower is a great example because one thing I might want to do is listen to a podcast or I want to distract myself. I want to not be present or it's just easy to, you know, I'm also multitasking by texting or cooking or whatever else is going on.
00:20:26
Speaker
So if we really say, I want this to become a ritual, we have to be present to it. You know, the way into that is to try and find as many different sensations. What can you smell? What can you touch? What can you taste? What can you see? What can you hear? That's why we have incense and stained glass windows and, you know, liturgical kneeling and praying and swaying. And all of these things are there to help us be present to the thing that we're trying to do. So finding some way, I've talked about this before, but I think it's a good example is like I put on
00:20:56
Speaker
moisturizer in the morning, as I'm aging. And, you know, that's, that's a moment where I'm looking in the mirror, and I have this lovely, you know, smells like something delicious, and I'm putting it on my skin. So I've got, I've got sight, I've got smell, I've got touch. And I've just I just started saying into the mirror every day, because I need to remember this, you know, life is full of joy and suffering, and today will be no different.
00:21:18
Speaker
And it was just a moment in which I was really, you know, I've got literally the cream on my hands, can't be on my phone. I'm there. I'm looking at myself and I'm saying the thing I have to remember, you know, not to get too overexcited or too sad. Like there's always joy, there's always suffering. That's just how life is. And so finding some ways to keep your mind, keep your spirit, keep your energy paying attention while you're practicing the ritual.
00:21:42
Speaker
and then over time repetition now the instinct that we have is to repeat things every day and i am always amazed at people who are able to maintain daily practices with such rigor and you have six hundred day streaks nor the rest of it i am not that person i have found that for me the right rhythm is often weekly and so whether it's.
00:22:01
Speaker
you know, keeping a texture bar where I turn off my phone and my laptop, whether it's, you know, checking in with a particular friend who lives far away, texting them once a week, just having that rhythm, some form of repetition that I know will always come back. And that also leaves enough space to not become this big millstone around my neck. For me, that's been really, really helpful. So intention, attention, repetition, that's kind of the bridge to walk across from it, from a habit to a ritual.
00:22:26
Speaker
Tell us more about your text Sabbath. Is that what you said? Yeah, the text Sabbath. Tech, or tech. Exactly, yeah. So I don't know about you, but when things get difficult, I like to escape into my to-do list. And so going to my inbox or doing email isn't just about being good at tasks. It can be a bit of a distraction. And I found myself just being constantly on. It wasn't good for me, for my relationships.
00:22:51
Speaker
And so when I read this wonderful little book by one of the great kind of Jewish teachers of the 20th century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, he's got this wonderful short book which I encourage everyone to read called The Sabbath, in which he basically explains within a kind of a Jewish context what the Sabbath is all about.
Tech Sabbath Practice
00:23:08
Speaker
And one thing really struck me where he basically reminded me that the idea of Sabbath is not that it's rest because you finished your tasks, it's that it's dark and you have to stop now.
00:23:20
Speaker
Like it's not up to you. And so I will literally write, I'll say it out loud or I'll put it on Twitter or social media. When it gets dark on a Friday, I'll say the work is not done, but it is time to stop. And I turn off my phone and I turn off my laptop and I literally have to hide them in the bookshelf because otherwise they're just there. They're too distracting.
00:23:37
Speaker
And I want to say 24 hours. That shifts a little bit now and then, depending on, you know, getting Google maps and things. But at least for the Friday night and Saturday morning, I really keep them off completely. And what I found was that having that rhythm of a real break from both social media, but also basically anything that's not here and now and right in front of me.
00:23:58
Speaker
allowed for a daydreaming to write a bad poem, to sing a song just for the joy of singing a song, to draw a picture, to have a nap, to stare out of the window. And I feel like so often it felt like I was catching up back to my life, and there was just a joy in that rest. And I could not do it while my phone was on. I'm just too addicted to the thing.
00:24:23
Speaker
What I love is that it's about interrupting our kind of doing life and giving space for being. And that's, you know, the Sabbath traditionally is all about the pleasures. You have a delicious meal, you get together, you're supposed to make love with your partner, right? Like these are all kind of biblical commandments of what to do on the Sabbath. And so really leaning into those, just the joys of being alive and reminding ourselves
00:24:46
Speaker
what it's all about, which I can lose track of now and then. Yeah, I love that. It's a great example of one of those practices you can adopt that, you know, if you're not religious, but you want to be more spiritual, if you want to bring more ritual into your life, that is a way of doing it. And, you know, there's the use of the term Sabbath there gives it that
00:25:04
Speaker
you're gonna respect and honor what you're trying to do.
Enhancing Everyday Rituals
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'd love more examples of those kinds of everyday practices that can really help people feel like they are being a little bit more sort of transcendent. Yeah, I think, you know, it's really about, I talk about kind of going ritual spotting in your life. Yeah, beautiful.
00:25:23
Speaker
You know, just something lurking, maybe even beneath the surface, you know, talk to friends of mine who are parents and ask them, you know, what are some of your favorite moments in the day? And it might be like giving my kid a bedtime story and snuggling before they fall asleep. And I'm like, what a great moment to ritualize, right? Like maybe, maybe it's once you close the door and you leave that room, you just close your eyes and you take a deep breath and like say thank you that you got to be this kid or his parent, you know.
00:25:48
Speaker
maybe it's making waffles on a Saturday morning, maybe it's going to the art museum every Friday, first Friday of the month, because it's free. Like, what are the places where there are that, where's that nascent joy? And how can we honor those moments? Because I think we kind of consume them in this endless stream. And it's, it's so easy to not just not be
00:26:07
Speaker
not stop and appreciate them, but I think we lessen our own worth and life itself when we don't honor them. If you live in the world and you're thinking, well, every tree is a god or every river has a spirit, you're looking around the world very, very differently because everything is alive and therefore worthy of respect. I think we sometimes look out at the world and it's
00:26:30
Speaker
I don't know, maybe because I live in the city, everything's so concrete, it's so easy to think of everything is kind of dead. And I'm, I'm the the action hero and the central player. And that is not true, right? We are part of this incredible cosmos and planet of living things. And when we get to remember that suddenly, it's so clear what's what's important and what isn't.
00:26:50
Speaker
That's what these rituals are there for. It's to draw us back to the things that we know in our deepest selves and to remind us of who we want to be and how we want to be together. Amazing. It's making me think I walked with the dog this morning. So I got a dog a year ago and it's done all the tests. It's been quite the journey because I've never had a dog before and just the whole change, the rhythm of life, the changes when you get a dog.
00:27:13
Speaker
you probably see here frolicking in the background. And this morning I took her for a walk and we saw a fox. A fox, and I live like in the suburbs, a fox just trotted out from this bush and just sat on the side of the road and just sat there looking at us, just calmly. The dog was like, what is that? I'm like, it's a fox. And it was beautiful. It was this little moment. I kind of
00:27:36
Speaker
these moments where you're out in nature. And actually, as you're saying this as well, I'm thinking about how much, and we have that section of the book about connecting to nature and how much of latest wellbeing research is all about how important it is for us to connect with nature and how we can put rituals and that can be a spiritual experience as well.
00:27:56
Speaker
Do you know what's really brought to mind for me though? I feel like I'm at the journey Casper, my kids are now teenagers. And I feel like when they were younger, we had lots of rituals in our house and the rhythm of our week was really predictable and
00:28:14
Speaker
And it was, you know, I do feel like the bedtime stories and, you know, the bath time and the kind of how they were probably more than habits. I do feel like there was a lot of ritual in there when you think about it and you think about it. But now it's going to be really important for me to try and be more deliberate, I think, because
00:28:32
Speaker
the teenagers are less interested in the ritual, much more interested in the technology. Even getting them to sit for a family dinner, which was something we used to do all the time, which does have a feeling of ritual about it in terms of who does what and how it happens and how it unfolds, is increasingly difficult to maintain. It's a good reminder of thinking about how to bring that into our family at this time of transition as they
00:28:58
Speaker
become more and more independent. You know, that feeling of community is more important than ever, probably for them more than they will ever care to admit. Absolutely. Well, that's what I was going to say is that I was lucky to grow up in a family, it sounds a lot like yours, where, you know, we had family dinner frequently, even in my teenage years, and they were mostly really boring.
00:29:19
Speaker
You know, I think that's something really important to say. Not every ritual is going to be this transcendent, beautiful moment where, like, things burst into bloom because how gorgeous. Not the reality. Even, you know, some of the most famous kind of spiritual teachers will talk about the dryness of their prayer life for decades.
00:29:39
Speaker
The point is not that the practice is always going to make you feel a certain way. It's smoothing the curves of our lives. And I feel like my life is a testament to it, which is like having grown up with all of those family dinners, nothing makes me happier now than welcoming friends around our dinner table. And I will literally make them sing the little song that we always sang as a family before we ate together. And although it feels so embarrassing when you're 15 and your mother's like, OK, we've got a friend from out of town. We're going to sing the song.
00:30:09
Speaker
Now I'm like so glad I get to share that and my friends were like this is adorable. I love it. It's just an incredible amount of depositing into a spiritual bank account that you're doing right now. The fruit of that will take some years to show and it's just it's so worth doing because I think one of the ways in which we get to feel at home
00:30:31
Speaker
in our own lives and certainly in our families is when we have that shared rhythm together. I think it is one of the biggest gifts we can give children is that rhythm of life that people know, that we all know how to be in the world when we're no longer all under the same roof.
00:30:48
Speaker
Hmm. There's so many ideas here on how to connect with people in your own home and how to connect with people in your community. And you talk a lot in your book about, you know, the loneliness epidemic that's global. A lot of what we sort of talk about on the show to do with sort of planning your week and your time and social life is part of that planning. Making sure that it's enriching, whether you want to socialize as an individual or if you're in a couple or as a family. Tell us more about the nearness. Tell us about this project and helping people connect.
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah, so that that focus of connection is really a big part of my my life.
The Nearness Initiative
00:31:24
Speaker
It brings me so much joy. And one of the things I realized was absolutely that that structure is often missing for us, both in terms of the people who we do it with, and also the time when we know we do it. And so what we do is we we develop the
00:31:38
Speaker
which is really a tool for deep connection through rich conversations. And folks sign up for an eight-week journey, and we match them into a small group of strangers. And in some ways, and you know this, it can be so much easier to talk about what's really going on with people who have no stake in who we are or what our life is. And there's often a permission to just be really radically honest with each other and with ourselves.
00:32:03
Speaker
And the way we structure these small groups is that they follow a very clear kind of map through the 90 minutes. So it's on Zoom. And each small group will have what we call a guide sheet, which takes you through just a series of practices that help you connect with yourself, one another and something larger than yourself, whatever language you use for it.
00:32:21
Speaker
And so some of those are things like, you know, mindfulness practices, journaling prompts, reflection questions and rich conversation, really fun kind of embodied practices or visualizations, just all sorts of ways that help us enter into that spirit of deep connection. And so my favorite things that people have said is like, this is the only Zoom call where I leave with more energy than I started with.
00:32:42
Speaker
Well, you know, we started out as strangers, but we left as spiritual friends or just that sense of remembering what life is really all about. And what's so cool is that we've just heard over and over again that people who practice this because it is their practices.
00:32:58
Speaker
Then it changes the way you show up with your husband or your children or your coworkers, you're more patient, you're not giving advice straight away, you're asking questions, you're leaving space for silence to invite people to share more than maybe what they thought they could. They're all practices that help us build that sense of trust and understanding. And again, like not every conversation is always gonna be the most thrilling one, but when you have those skills and you're building that sense of connection,
00:33:25
Speaker
when people need it, then it's there. And that's what's so important. The impact of not having these skills, not having those structures of connection, whether it's loneliness, whether it's depression, whether it's anxiety, whether it's suicide, you know, the data is really, really clear that this is not just difficult, it's life-threatening. And so I think these connection practices and the intentionality of seeking out ways to connect with each other is part of our health and wellbeing in this really profound way.
00:33:55
Speaker
I want to make sure we have a link to that in the show notes for people want to find out more about that. Head to the show notes and take a look. Thank you Casper so much for elevating our thoughts around life admin and ritual and routine and habit. I'm sure there are a lot of listeners out there who now will go ritual spotting, hopefully picking up on some of the things already that are bringing them some joy and taking them to the next level or reframing things that are
00:34:22
Speaker
that happen in their life or approaching them with different sort of level of intentionality and attention. I certainly am. I'm going to be reporting back about my lawn mowing. See if I can. And I was thinking about meal planning around thinking about that. I think it's a really interesting one around having at making a little ritual element to meal planning to think about. That's the admin task of making the family dinners happen. Yeah.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You're putting together the building blocks that will then bet fruit. I love that. Well, thank you for making a space in which we get to learn together and commiserate now and then, and really, really appreciate being with you today. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeandminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan,
00:35:09
Speaker
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