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Family Ritual Magic – Audio

Hello and welcome to this month’s VIP topic. Of course, for this month, I’m kind of reminded of my childhood actually. December, Christmas time in the United States. It’s a special time. It’s the most important holiday time. It’s the most important family time for most families, for most families, is December. And for most families it’s Christmas time. I can remember that every Christmas as a child growing up we had these rituals, these rituals.

A ritual is a repeated action, but it’s a repeated action that has some feeling of magic and I’ll explain that after the story. So these rituals, what would happen every Christmas time?

Christmas would come around and maybe we were in school as little children, my sister and I, and of course the school break would come. Schools over, yay! Every Christmas we would go and visit my mother’s family in Indiana. We didn’t live in Indiana, we lived kind of like eight hours away usually, sometimes more and we would have to drive. We would drive to Indiana to go visit my mom’s family, my extended family… grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins.

And, it’s like we always did it the same exact way. That’s what makes it a ritual, because it was always these things and we did the same thing every single Christmas was the same. So, we would wake up… usually my dad and my mom would wake us up at 4:00 a.m., 4:00 in the morning, it was still dark outside. So 4:00 a.m. we’d get woken up and my dad had already packed the car usually. So he would actually carry us, he’d pick us up from the bed, my sister and I, carry us to the car and put us down because we’d still be sleepy. When we got older we had to walk. But he’d put us in the back, we had this big long station wagon.

Now this is a sequel by the way, this lesson, I’ve talked about this topic before in VIP so this is kind of part II, the sequel to the ritual magic. So anyway, he’d put us in the back of the car and this big long station wagon, this long car. My sister and I would sleep in the back. There was enough room for us to just lay out and sleep, so we’d sleep and my dad would drive off, driving in the dark, driving to Indiana an 8 hour trip. Then as we were going to Indiana, of course it would take 8 hours, so it would take most of the day. So the light would come up, my sister and I would wake up and we had these little games we would play, these little cards. You’d have to look out the window and spot different things and if you could see something like a yellow car.

You see a yellow car then you would mark it on your little card.

We only played this game when we went to Indiana for Christmas. We never, ever played that game any other time, when we were in the car going anywhere, only during our trips to Indiana for Christmas. I don’t know why, but I have this strong memory of that game because of that. So my sister and I would play that game and we’d finally drive all the way up to Indiana. We would always arrive at my grandmother’s house. We would stay in my grandmother’s house and my grandmother’s house was always decorated the same way. In her living room in front of this big window there’d be a large Christmas tree with all the lights. Then her kitchen always had Christmas lights and all these other Christmas decorations, the same ones every year. She’d put them in a box, keep them in her garage and then Christmas they’d come out and she’d put em’ up. So again, the same every year, almost exactly the same.

Also, the same every single year would be my whole extended family. So my uncles and aunt and cousins, would all come over to my grandmother’s house and they would eat dinner together each night. And the meals, many of the meals not every meal but especially the Christmas meal and sometimes the Christmas Eve meal, the night before Christmas, would be kind of a traditional meal. For example, Christmas Day, turkey, potatoes, these special eggs that my mom would make. On another night we might have this special kind of ham and we only ate this food on Christmas or sometimes for Thanksgiving, these two holidays.

The rest of the year we never ate turkey, never, never, never and we didn’t eat these special kind of eggs. It was only at this specific holiday time. Another part of the ritual is that the adults would all sit around this one big table and then the kids had a little children’s table. They would bring out these little smaller tables, so there was the kid’s table and the adult’s table. Then after the dinners we would clean up and then the adults would all sit around the adult table laughing and joking. I have these strong memories of my uncles, my dad, and my aunts and my grandparents all sitting around joking and laughing. And I would kind of sometimes sit on the edge and just listen and watch.

Another ritual, another thing that happened every single year we visited is my grandfather and my dad would play golf. They were both golfers. So they always had these golf trips during the day. And then, of course, maybe the most magical ritual of all for a child is the ritual of Christmas– you’ve seen it in the movies I’m sure– Christmas Eve all the gifts are under the tree and you think Santa Clause is coming and it’s hard to go to sleep. We would shake the presents if we saw some and then we would wait, we’d look out the window looking for Santa Clause coming in the sky. We’d finally fall asleep. We’d always wake up early in the morning the next morning and, of course, all the adults were still sleepy and tired.

Again, it was this kind of ritual of us always trying to wake them up, but we were not allowed to open the gifts until all of the family was in the room at the same time. So we’d all get into the room finally, we’d wake everybody up, pull them into the room and we’d start opening our gifts together, and the adults would watch us. And the adults had gifts too.

So here’s the thing about that, you can tell it’s a magical memory for me. One of my most powerful childhood memories, these Christmas’ and these Christmas trips created a very strong connection, love and connection between me and my extended family. So again, extended family means… we have what we call the nuclear family… mom, dad, brothers and sisters.

Your very close family. And then we say extended family… that’s your grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins… and then later nieces and nephews. That’s extended family.

So extended family, these Christmas trips created a very strong connection, very strong love between myself and my extended family, and what’s amazing about this is I realize now as an adult when I look back and I really think about it, is that I only saw those people one week per year. My uncles, my aunts, my grandparents, one week per year, seven days per year that’s all, that’s all. That’s not much. One time per year for seven days that’s it? That’s a very short period of time to create a very strong connection, and I realize now that’s kind of amazing actually, that I grew up feeling this really close connection with my grandparents, uncles and aunts and yet, really I didn’t see them very much, not at all. We lived far away from them, you know, eight hours driving; quite far. So we didn’t see them the rest of the year.

I started thinking about that more, it’s like why? Why? Why and how did this connection develop? Why do I feel and why did I feel, even as a child, such a powerful connection with my extended family, despite this incredibly short time spent with them? Why do I have such powerful memories of them, despite this very short time? Of course, I realized it’s because of the ritual nature of our visits that there was a kind of magic to them that created a very deep, powerful, emotional connection. Like I said, even now when I think about it, there’s something magical about it.

When I’m saying magical I really mean, like this very deep positive emotion of love, of connection, of awareness and then as I started thinking about this I started thinking, wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could consciously create these kinds of experiences let’s say, in our own families, even our own nuclear family’s. Maybe you have children, of course you have parents, so with your parents, with your children, with your brothers or sisters or with your extended family even, or even if you have very close friends, or even you can take some of these ideas and use them in other types of groups; teams and even at work. You have to change how you do it a little bit, but some of the basic ideas can be used regardless.

Now, of course, with our nuclear families, our mom and dad, brothers and sisters, strong connections develop simply because of time, if for no other reason, time. You’re with them every single day growing up, so you’re going to form a connection. But still, we can improve the quality of those connections, of the love, the depth of the love, the positive feelings, if we think consciously and create family rituals. Family rituals that are magical, that have this magical, emotional feeling to them. You can create, for example, your children magical childhood memories. Some of them happen automatically and accidentally, but it’s even better, why not design more of them? Why not create more of them, because they’re so positive, they’re powerful, they create so much love and connection, why not do it?

So, what are the necessary ingredients? What is the difference between a routine and a ritual?

They both have the same idea of repeated action, repeated action. For example, brushing your teeth every day, say every day before you go to bed you brush your teeth. That’s a repeated action. Is it a ritual or is it a routine? Well, usually it’s just a routine. Why? There’s no emotion involved usually. Brush your teeth. You don’t have incredible magical memories of brushing your teeth as a child, probably. Maybe you do, but most people don’t. I don’t.

So how do you turn a routine, how do you make a routine become a ritual? How do you take something like that that just seems ordinary, it’s happening all the time repeated, a repeated action; how do you make it more magical, more positive? How do you create strong connections and love using that repeated routine? That’s our topic this month that’s what I’m talking about.

Here are the necessary ingredients. There are some necessary ingredients to turn a routine into a magical ritual.

Heightened awareness, increased awareness - Another way to put this is to say, increased mindfulness, increased presence. It means you’re not distracted and your family or the people doing the action or ritual are not distracted they’re fully focused on the present moment and what is happening. Right, so a lot of time when we’re brushing our teeth, for example, but we’re not… we’re thinking about other things, we’re talking about other stuff we aren’t really in the moment, focused on the moment. Whereas, let’s say at the Christmas dinners I had with my extended family, like I was there. I was listening carefully to everything that everybody said. I didn’t see those people very often, so everything seemed new and special and magical, so I was very focused on the present moment, I was not thinking about the future or the past.

Another ingredient, love and connection, which I’ve talked about already. There’s a feeling of increased love and connection. You’re doing it together. It brings you closer together with your family or with other people. That’s another important ingredient of a ritual and why it’s different than just a routine. So it’s not done just alone.

Increased positive emotion. This is a really big one. In addition to connection and love, just an overall increase of happiness, good feelings, laughter, any positive emotion actually. So, for example again, those Christmas dinners, I can remember just my uncles they’re kind of funny and they’re always joking around, so I just remember lots of laughter at those dinners because they’re all joking and having fun, so all this positive emotion and laughter created a very strong, strong, strong feeling in me.

And finally, especially for families, any kind of group is that the ritual somehow communicates without words, somehow communicates or strengthens your family’s values or the groups values. It somehow communicates that the family’s important or things that are important to your family are somehow communicated within that ritual, within those actions. Maybe it’s generosity for example. Christmas is an act of generosity. So, for example, with our Christmas gifts the rule was, of that action, of that ritual of opening the gifts; the rule was that everybody had to be in the room. I couldn’t just run in there as a child and start opening my gifts by myself. So the value that was communicated was that this is something we all do together, we’re all together. This is not about you individually, we’re all together and this is about the generosity of your family. Your family’s giving you these gifts, you have to thank them. So it’s about generosity. It’s about being together as a group.

So, the great thing is you can design these rituals. Most people don’t think about these things.

Luckily, a lot of us have a family history of naturally doing these. Our families did them and then we naturally do them with our own families and that’s great, but why not consciously think about these things? Why not create even more of them? For example, if you have kids, they gotta brush their teeth every morning or every night, so why not make it more magical, more meaningful, instead of just done. Why not start adding in little things, little details that turn it from just a boring routine that means nothing, into something that shows your family values, something that creates more connection, that makes it more magical, that makes it more special, that creates a little more connection between you and your child or children every single evening.

Rituals can be very small and they can be daily or they can be quite big and special like the Christmas example.

All right, so in the commentary I’m going to teach you how to do this, how to specifically design rituals for your family or, as I said, you can use these same ideas for even a team at a job or any other group, a group of friends. I’ll talk a lot about families, just because I think they’re especially powerful for families, but you can adapt these very specific techniques and ideas for any group.

So I’ll see you in the commentary, see you in the interactive lessons and you’ll learn more about the specific ways to turn any routine into a magical ritual.

All right, see you then; bye.