Create meaning by turning routines into rituals

Rediscover a sense of meaning in your life by turning routines into rituals.

Show notes

When the familiar roles and identities fade away, especially during transitional periods like midlife or retirement, a loss of meaning in your life can result. 

As we search for a new sense of meaning, it’s important to realize that meaning doesn’t necessarily require grand gestures but can be found in the small things.

For example, by examining your routines and infusing them with intention and significance, you can rediscover meaning, presence, and joy in your daily activities. 

In this podcast episode, we look at how you can turn routines into rituals in order to cultivate a more meaningful and rewarding life.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion –

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska –

Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.

This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.
Kate: Hello, and welcome to Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I’m Kate.

Sara: And I’m Sara.

Kate: And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how you can create more meaning in your life through turning routines into rituals.

Okay, so this is one of my favorite topics, actually, and it’s the work that I love to do with women, and it’s about actually creating a sense of meaning in your life. Because what a lot of things that happen is that we reach a certain age and we kind of like, you know, stereotypically, we go through an existential crisis, we give up all our worldly possessions, we’ say we’re going to spend the rest of our lives living in a yurt or something, but we don’t actually need to do those big grand things to find meaning. We can actually find meaning in the small things, and that’s going to be our focus on today.

And so the reason why I picked this topic for us is that when we hit midlife and often this happens when we become empty nesters, okay, so I mean, at any sort of transition point in our life, when we’ve had a great sense of identity from something, that identity has often come with a sense of meaning. So, you know, I am a mum, I’m a mom, therefore, you know, I get my meaning through taking care of my child through doing these things. I am this particular, you know, I think it actually often happens in retirement as well, you know, I have been a doctor my whole life. Now I am no longer a doctor, who am I?

So, when we lose that sense of identity, we can lose that sense of meaning. And I think in some ways it can be distilled down to the simplest thing, which is like, why we get up in the morning? You know, why are we actually waking up and getting up in the morning? And so like, I said, when we go through those transitions, we can feel like we’ve lost our reason for being.

And in addition to that, sometimes it’s that we’re not getting meaning from those things, so they might still exist in our lives, like the job still might be there, relationships might still be there. But maybe they’re not giving us the meaning that we expected them to give us. We don’t feel fulfilled by our job, for example. And an example I was thinking of in my own life the other day was when I was saying like to my husband, I can’t control this particular situation that’s going on in my work right now. But I can actually create some meaning in my day by doing something that makes me feel good. Does that kind of make sense to you?

Sara: Yeah. So what what I was curious about, when you say meaning, and – what do you mean by that? What do you mean by meaning?

Kate: What do you mean by meaning?
Okay, so when we are talking about what we mean when we talk about meaning, what we’re talking about is that what we are doing with our lives, the experiences that we have, they actually kind of make sense. There’s a sense of like coherence or you know, yes, I am going to do this job because I’m going to make this money and this is going to pay for my house and that’s important to me to provide this environment for my family. Yes, I went through this terrible experience where I suffered, but actually I can make meaning out of that because there was a lesson that I learned from that that inspired me. actually I’m just thinking, Sara, when you were talking about in other episodes, like your divorce, that’s a classic example. So you could look at a divorce and you could say this was a really terrible experience. It ruined my whole life, it ruined my whole identity as a woman in this family, married to this man. People can go down that path, right? What I know about you is that you chose to turn that experience and to make meaning from it and use it as an opportunity in your case for growth to go forth and experiment with actually looking at who you were.

Sara: Yeah, it’s so interesting.

Kate: Yeah.

Sara: Because one of my biggest, like as you said that, I had a picture of someone that I knew as a child and she was so bitter after her divorce and she was bitter till the day she died and to my child’s eyes it literally seemed to eat her alive and she never got over it. And I think that’s one of the reasons that I was like, I am not going to let anything do that to me. I’m going to choose how I turn out from this. I’m not – And I think that’s… And something you said, of, it’s like that idea of meaning is what really kind of came to my head when you said that was like being present to our life. Like it’s not just making it mean something. It’s like it does mean something. And I’m going to be present to it.

Kate:Yeah. And I was actually having this discussion with my husband earlier today because I was saying like in my work with coaching, part of that is actually what is my life mean? Why am I here? What am I doing? You know, those big questions. And because in the past, when society was a lot more controlled by say the church, for example, people were given their meaning. You know, they were given like a framework in which to operate and how to be a good person, how to be a good community member, how to fit into society, like that was all provided. So a lot of the meaning was given to you. And then since we have kind of like moved away from that in general in society, it’s actually become up to us to make sense of our own life experiences because I mean, if you think about it, life as a whole can be viewed as quite meaningless, right? I mean, we’re born, we die, that could be the end. If you choose to live that way, you’re not going to experience the same richness, the same satisfaction as someone that chooses to believe that they are here on this earth for a reason and the things that have happened to them make sense in some kind of cosmic way.

Sara: Oh, okay. Yeah. So because I was just thinking because so much of what we do is just ordinary, like most of our life is ordinary moments. And I read something that like really resonated with me. It was like, like, when somebody has lost a partner through death or through something else, we don’t remember necessarily all the big moments. What we remember is like, oh, they brought me coffee every morning to bed. Or they went out and picked up the paper for me. Or we remember the little things. Or we remember sitting on the couch and watching a certain show. So, I’m going back to you. What I think you’re saying about meaning is it is being present to your life.

Kate: And you just provided the perfect segue because what we are talking about today isn’t about those big things. And again, part of our journey in life is unpacking what those big things mean to us. But it is about if you do feel like your life doesn’t have meaning, if you don’t feel like you have purpose, if you don’t feel like you matter or what you’re doing matters. it’s just like a grind. It’s just being on the hamster wheel. It’s just like nothing’, nothing’s giving you any joy, nothing. You aren’t present to your own life. You’re going through the motions. Then it is through those very small things that you do. And what I’ve called it here is the easiest way to bring that meaning into your life is to look at the daily routines that you’ve got and actually turn them into really a bit of a ritual.
And so what I mean by that is that when we talk about routines, we have these things that we do in our lives and they’ve been below a very predictable pattern. And it’s often around set times of the day, like I was thinking about, when we wake up, we might get up out of bed, go to the shower, go to the loo, we’ll have a particular order in which we do things. Often when we go to bed, we might have a routine about what we do, even if it’s not conscious. There’ll be practices that we engage in, things around food. Also, when I’m thinking about when you’ve got more than one person in a house, how you greet each other. How you say goodbye to each other, that kind of thing.
So, you mentioned at the beginning, like you weren’t super confident that you knew what we were going to get into when we talked about meaning, so Iguess with my teacher hat on, I’d get you to tell me what are a couple of like daily just routines that you do at the moment.

Sara: Oh, okay. So, when I wake up, it doesn’t matter what time my first appointment is or my first thing, I always allow enough time that I can fix a cup of coffee, get back into bed, and that’s when I journal. So, I journal, I do some intentional thoughts, I really try to set up my day mentally first, I do a little prayer. So, I have this routine I do every single morning, and it usually takes about half an hour, but I feel like when I made it a routine and I made it daily, that’s when my life really began to change.

And having this conversation is so interesting because now that I’m articulating that, I’m like, that is when my life began to change. When I really made this like, yes, this is important, this is time I’m going to spend on it. It’s valuable. I didn’t know how it was valuable, but I believed it was.
And then on the other end, which is a little bit more when I go to bed, so one of the things I do, and you might help me see the meaning in it, but I like to go to bed with my dishes done, things tidied up and ready for the next day. So it’s not a crazy thing, I’ll go like, you can see, listeners can’t, I have a couch behind me. if I’ve messed it up watching TV, like I’ll put the pillows back and everything so that it looks right for the So that’s my evening routine. It’s just kind of like putting my house in order.

Kate: Well, they are actually fantastic examples of someone that’s done what I’m talking about successfully because you have essentially taken a basic routine that could just be as simple as getting out of bed in the morning or going to sleep and you have turned it into a ritual. Because how I’ve defined it here is that it’s something that gives you both energy and enjoyment.
And so like you said, the fact that you wake up in the morning and you spend that time being intentional with your journaling, with your thinking, with your prayer, you know, those things help you like have energy to go forward into the day with a clear idea about what it is that you want to achieve, how you want to feel, how you want to be, and then also probably some enjoyment as well. ‘

Sara: It’s my favorite time of the day.

Kate: Like it’s funny, it’s funny you said that because, you know, that was one of the first things my husband and I did too, to turn our lives around because we used to just get up in the morning, the alarm would go off, one of us would jump in the shower, the other one would take the dogs to the toilet, and it was just like hustle hustle hustle hustle.

And maybe three, four years ago now, we decided not to do that. was actually after I’d read Hal Elrod’s book, The Miracle Morning, which contains a lot of elements that you talked about. But we did it on a much more simple level in the end, how it worked out, and that now we wake up 30 minutes earlier than we used to. But one person goes down, makes a cup of coffee for the other person, gets the dog food.

We are very, we’re very empty nesters. We hand feed our dogs, their cookies, as we call them. So, the coffee maker brings up the cookies and the coffee, and the non-coffee maker hand-feeds the dogs their cookies. then there’s a bit of reading, and that’s actually when I read my non-fiction. I love reading, but I don’t really make time for nonfiction. So that’s my nonfiction reading time. When I’m good, I meditate. I haven’t been good for a long time. But and so we tuned this like rush, rush, rush into more of a ritual that, like I said, gave us, gave us energy, gave us enjoyment, same thing at the other end of the day. Like I just, I love reading and I actually love going to bed when I’ve got a good book to read. That’s just always so exciting.

Sara: 100%, me too.

Kate: Yeah. And like you said, that process for you of making sure that the house is in order is a way of providing yourself with energy. Yeah. Sorry. And yeah, you know, the next day when you get out into that space, you’re not feeling distracted or anything like that by the state of your environment. Because 100% your external environment mirrors your internal environment. So that just helps you go into the day feeling calm, collected, because you’ve set that up for yourself.

Sara: Yeah, like I’ve never quite thought about it that way. And so that’s what I love this conversation because as I’m thinking about it, I’m like, oh, yeah, like, because morning is my favorite time. Like, and I know a lot of people and it’s not just because of what I do and everything. I think it’s because I’ve created this, like in your words, a ritual that I enjoy so much, even if it means getting up a half an hour or an hour earlier, it just gives me so much meaning. I haven’t thought about that way, but it just really fills me up. then I have something to take into the day.

Kate: I like that idea of actually thinking about meaning. Yeah, meaning when you have meaning and you’re like, you are filling up your cup, you are giving yourself joy, you are giving yourself energy. And you kind of just touched on three of the things to do as well. Like if you are looking at your routine, you’re thinking, Oh, gosh, how can I make this more of a ritual, how can I have more meaning in it, being mindful is definitely one of those strategies. So when we talk about mindful and you used the word yourself about being present, actually paying attention to what you’re doing, focusing on your senses.

This is a bit of a joke, but for an English teacher, I don’t really like reading literature very much. I like reading a lot of what some people might call trashy, trashy fiction. And Lee Child is one of my favorite authors, and in his book, The Affair, he, I even wrote down this quote in preparation for this episode, he said, I sniffed the steam and took a long first sip, a little ritual, nothing better than a just made coffee early in the morning. Now, I don’t know why, whether that quote was in my head, but one morning when I had my first up of coffee, my first sip of coffee after being brought in to me, I said, nothing like the first sip of the day.

And he just thought that was hilarious.

And it’s become like a little joke. And now it’s like, meaning also comes from the stories that get built around the rituals. So not only is it a ritual that we have around what we do in the morning, but when I jokingly say, nothing like the first sip of the day, that kind of like creates shared meaning. Which in couples is, because the other thing I really love with coaching is working with people, couples in the empty nest and how they reconnect after that, so like actually actively working to create that shared meaning together is super important.

So yes, being mindful, being present, then the second thing about turning your routine into more of a ritual is that feeling of gratitude, which you also expressed.

Sara: Yes. Like I wake up every morning and I talk to my house. I live alone. But I’m always like, thank you. Or I’ll say I love you and one of the things that kind of the word that came to me as you’re describing, these kind of things that we experience is like the word touchstone. It’s like, I don’t know if that’s a term that you use, but it’s like, you know, it’s something we can touch and it brings us to the present.

Kate: I like that.

Sara: You know, like your cup of coffee. Like when Ben brings it and you say first sip of the day.

Kate: Nothing like the first sip of the day.

Sara: But it’s a touchstone. It just brings you into that moment.It’s just this little reminder. Like, yeah, this is the moment I’m supposed to be in. Because I feel and you I don’t know whether this is where you’re going or not. But I feel like we’re all just rushing through our lives. Like, like, oh, I need to get through coffee shower and everything so I can get to work. Or I need to not, yeah, I just don’t want to talk to my neighbor who wants to say hi when I go to my mailbox. I feel like these things are what grounds us so that we’re not missing on life. Because we think we’re hurrying to get to the next thing and we’re not appreciating the moments we have, which I’m kind of, I’m convinced that’s what life is about. There’s no finish line.

Kate: That’s so true because you’re in that endless hurry to get to the next step. are completely missing out on the joy of the moment and to be a bit whatever on it. But we don’t actually have any guarantees that the most future moments are even coming.

Sara: We don’t. When you’re telling me about you and Ben and your mornings, you’re not going to ever, you get to the end towards end of your life, you’re not going to be like, man, I wish we just jumped out of bed and got in the shower. Those are going to be like the sweetest moments you remember is like one of you feeding the dog cookies. But having coffee and that’s what’s going to like when you look back those are going be the things that you remember.

Kate: Yeah.Definitely.

Sara: That’s what’s going to have like that’s what’s going to be like. Yeah, that’s what the meaning of my good life was, was I could like actually enjoy these moments with my husband and my dog and my coffee.

Kate: Yeah. And so the other thing I thought about in relation to that too is as well as being grateful for what we’re experiencing and being present, you can also kind of like up level your experience as well.

So let’s say for example, you do really love coffee, then maybe it’s actually about well I’m going to buy a coffee machine. so that first cup of coffee of the day is going to be a really amazing coffee made from my coffee machine.

And I was thinking about one thing that Ben and I did recently that was lots of fun is that we like drink tea. So when you start to do this for yourself, it’s really useful to look at what you were saying that term touchstone, to look at those key points that happen on a quite regular basis in your day and how you can make them more meaningful through doing these things that we’ve talked about.
But like, yeah, we love our cups of tea, and we were introduced to a new tea shop and they sell samples. And so, what I did was I went through and I read the reviews of like all the different kinds of tea that they were and I ordered about 10 different samples and then when it was our working from home days and we were like having our post lunch tea cup, I brewed like a new one and then we had to like rate it on its like taste and make a comment and things like that and so like that was just a really fun way of taking something that was a regular habit of having this cup of tea after lunch, but up leveling the experience by bringing in some different flavors.

And then again, you know, one of the things too, I think about is life is always about expansion. It’s always about making the bigger life. And so, you know, I can sit there and I can drink my same cup of Earl Grey from now until I die. Or I can actually try these different flavors, try these different things. I might really enjoy it. But then I’ve just made my world a little bit bigger, even if it seems something so trivial.

Sara: Yeah. And the other thing I’m hearing is, you know, with partners, you can be having parallel experiences. Like Ben could be on the phone, drinking his tea. You could be grading some papers, having your tea. But by that one little change, now it’s a shared experience.

Kate: Mm-hmm.

Sara: Like, sometimes we miss out on these intimate moments because we’re looking for the big moments. And I just… That just really resonated with me like, oh, instead of having two parallel experiences, you and Ben have made it a shared experience and something like that you’re going to remember. It’s like, you know, you may not do it forever like that, but like you remember like, yeah, remember when we were doing our tea ratings, like it’s also going to become a shared memory too.

Kate:That’s right. That’s right. That’s, a lot of meaning comes from, yeah, those shared memories too, because we, when we talk about them with other people that are shared with them and what they meant to us, and again, to go right back to the beginning, kind of how that fits into your story about who you are and who you are as a couple, who you are as an individual and these things that you did that helped to express yourself.

Sara: Yeah, you know, because for me as a single, it’s really interesting that by having these rituals and these things that I do because I love them, I have I have no other way to describe it, but I just have fallen in love with my life. I love it. I love having that time in the morning. I love my house. I love taking care of it in those ways. I’ve taken this life that I described that person that did not love her life and she just looked at all the bad meaning of it, where I’m like, yeah, I lost a lot, but I gained a lot. I did it because I chose to look at it differently and to find meaning in it. Not what anyone else said you should do. I’m just going to do it my Sara way..

Kate: Yeah, and that’s such a key part of it as well, it meaning is very much an individual journey? And it’s not something that other people can say, yeah, this should mean something to you. The whole business of life is actually working out how we respond to things.

Really what we’ve talked about today is getting clear on what it means to have meaning in our lives and to just reinforce though that it doesn’t have to be… about all the big things, it doesn’t have to be about giving up your life or burning it all to the ground to go on, find spiritual enlightenment, although that might be what you want to do too. Like you can find meaning in the way that you get up in the morning, in the way that you arrange your couch at night. And it’s totally 100% doable for everybody to create that meaning by, like I said, looking to see the routines that you do during your day. And then thinking… how I can be more present when I’m doing this routine. How can I incorporate that feeling of gratitude towards it? And how can I uplevel that experience so it actually becomes richer in some ways? And when we do that, we’re actually able to create a much more meaningful and rewarding life for ourselves.

Sara: I love that one. It really helped me make sense of what I’m doing. And now I actually feel even more gratitude. So thank you. Loved it.

Kate: Yeah. my, my blogging history. Um, my recap for my listeners then would be, think about the benefits that, uh, you know, be being happy and taking time for yourself has on your life and your health. Look at those activities that you enjoyed as a child that you no longer do, and think about just a small way that you can bring them back into your life now.

Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can’t wait to see you next week.