Seven Lessons On Rituals

Ritus (Latin): custom, usage, ceremony, religious practice.

Spiritus (Latin): breath, soul, life force, inspiration.

Spiritual (modern): A state of meaning, inner harmony, or well-being.

Lessons From Leaders On Rituals

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

“Small daily improvements, over time, lead to stunning results.”

Robin Sharma.

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Seven Lessons On Rituals

Doing the thing is so underrated. This morning, I almost didn’t do the thing, which is writing right now. My mind got sucked into preparing for holiday, working on a keynote I have in two weeks, and using time to tie up loose ends. I am writing what could turn out to be my life’s work, or it could not be, it is uncertain, and humans run away from uncertainty.

The greatest achievements in our life are not reached through daily epiphany and daily mountain top climbing. They are achieved with everyday actions. I dream of reaching mountain tops. As I encourage you to as well. The whole purpose of this blog is to get you outside, to get you exploring, to get you dreaming of impacting the world in the way you know that you can.

But, it always comes back to today. To tomorrow. If you go to the gym today, and tomorrow, I can assure you, you will notice no change to your body, perhaps it will even feel worse, it will feel sore, tired and the aches will make you want to pack it in. Today you can take a small step, you can’t finish.

Doing the thing is underrated. Doing the thing every day is what Warriors do.

First, Warriors create their own arena. The place they go to do battle. My thing is writing, and my place for battle is quiet solitude on my balcony, the kitchen table, a quiet place in a hotel resort, undistracted. There is no WiFi in my arena.

Second, Warriors operate on a schedule. Much like the English Premier League, my arena is scheduled far in advance. My time to create is anchored to finishing my daily yoga in the morning at 7.30am. Warriors don’t operate with surprises when things such as waking up are entirely in their control.  

Third, Warriors approach their practice with a serious intention. Many of us feel deeply responsible to the work we do. But we are human. Put some smartness behind your intention. Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now. We must appreciate we are in a world of distraction – turn off the WiFi when you are doing the thing.

Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now.

As the arenas shift in our life, so can our intention. Bruce Springsteen would always blow away his children, until his wife, Patty, said, you are missing the children at their most beautiful. So he decided to fight more in the arena of fatherhood, to be there to cook breakfast, and to allow his writing to be distracted.

Fourth, Warriors don’t fight those people around them when things get tough. They fight their own inner demon telling them to ‘stop, it isn’t worth it, what you are writing will amount to nothing, that future you’re studying for, someone else has already done it, really they have, remember you saw them on Instagram last night?’ Warriors understand that the quickest path to positive self talk is through Self Awareness and Self Management. Recognise that you are talking s*** to yourself. Manage and regulate yourself through practices such as yoga, meditation, breathwork and exercise. Doing the thing after any of these practices is a super smart thing to do.

Fifth, Warriors approach life with humility. Much like John D Rockefeller comments in letter #36 to his son, rich people should give money away quietly. Those of us with the gift of time to focus on doing what we love should do so quietly, without ego, without arrogance. It should be dedicated to the betterment of humanity, not to the elevation of our Instagram feed.  

Sixth, Warriors approach their practice as students. I follow my one hour of writing everyday with one hour of studying. I study where I feel gaps of excitement in my knowledge. In the last month it has taken me down the path of philosophy, Buddhism, Aristotle, Plato, shamanism, the smartness of New Caledonian Crows, hospitality, dopamine, adenosine, cortisol, agricultural revolution, Neanderthals and many more. Leonardo Da Vinci lived through the Renaissance – he is most famous for his painting of Mona Lisa and recently becoming the artist to have sold the most expensive painting ever, Salvator Mundi. Did you know he also made great leaps in military engineering and anatomy? He would sit in the morgue and understand the anatomical structure of corpses so he could better paint his Mona Lisa’s smile. Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Seventh, Warriors know that practice hurts. We aren’t fair weather warriors. We do the practice when we feel bored, like shit, like the world hates us, we still sit down for one hour to do the thing. We exercise when we are tired because we know that’s when we grow and become amazing. We judge our effort not our output. Because, hurt is effort. Leonardo Da Vinci posthumously sold his Salvator Mundi painting for $430m. He would have been hurting to create that, painstakingly, with then no output. Who would say he didn’t achieve greatness?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on rituals:

1.        Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

2.        The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

3.        The Wealth Money Can’t Buy by Robin Sharma.

4.        Atomic Habits by James Clear.

5.        Podcast - Bruce Springsteen and Obama on Renegades Born In The USA.

What Is Your Wildest Dream?

Dream (Old English): joy, mirth, merriment. 

Dream (modern): A cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.

Welt (Indo European root for Wild: 4500 BCE): woodland, untamed land.

Wild (modern): not domesticated or cultivated, uninhabited, emotionally intense, or enthusiastic.

Wildest Dream: a bold and aspirational ambition, sitting in the uninhabited part of your mind. In its purest form, it is unconstrained and deeply personal.

Lessons From Leaders

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

TE Lawrence.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.”

Henry Ford.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs.

Wildest Dream

What does wild mean? It means uninhabited, inhospitable, impassable, unknown. Wild. You can only be brave enough to get there when you are totally uninhabited by restricting thoughts, negative people, dreary circumstances of reality. In Thailand on our annual leadership retreat, we answered the question ‘what is your Wildest Dream?’ We answered the question in the sea with the rain falling on our shoulders. The preparation was critical.

We finished eating lunch an hour ago. I look around at everyone, seven good men at the table, all fully bought into the change process. I’m so excited for the next part. I want their lunch to go down and be digested properly. 

The rain starts, often that would be a hindrance to leadership development. Perfect. I stand everyone up and I just say, ‘to the beach’. ‘Will we get wet?’ Asks someone, ‘yes,’ I reply. We walk, with me speeding up, to the beach – it is just 20 metres. Down on the beach I gather everyone in a circle. I want to pump the blood up, get people moving. 

“The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

TE Lawrence.

‘Max, give us an exercise to do.’ Max obliges and gets us to hold our arms horizontally, making the shape of a cross for one minute. Aching arms, ‘Patrick give us another exercise.’ We run on the spot doing high knees. Carter, Luke and Rami all give us push ups, squats and lunges. I’ve left Nate to last before me, he usually has a wild card. ‘Do roly-poly’s’ says Nate.

My eyes get wider as I see Nate doing one, getting covered in sand. I love it. It feels almost primal, childlike, and hilarious, watching everybody getting sand in their hair, down their back. It’s my turn. ‘I want everybody to jump in the sea, and I want you to grab the shoulders of someone opposite you in the sea and just shout! Shout and whoop in their faces!’ 

We get so primal, so wild, so unknown versus our usual environment. 

‘Come in close guys, get in the circle, let’s just float here in the sea.’ Everyone comes in, a bit tense from throwing themselves in the sea, but ultimately relaxed, a thousand kilometres away from sending emails. I say, ‘what is your wildest dream?’

‘What is your wildest dream?’ 

Your Wildest Dream. This question is best thought about after a deep period of reflection, a quick period of dopamine release, a total reset of our brain. The magic, the courage, the uninhibited dreams that flowed from my friends’ brains and came out of their mouths was wild. Creating solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges, building an independent architecture practice, creating an interactive documentary to change a million lives, taking a business franchise to Africa from Turkey. Wild. Crazy. Totally out there, yet in that moment, we all believed it, we all felt it, we all knew we had the courage, creativity and grit to achieve it. 

Your Wildest Dream is what sits in the rusty recesses of your mind. It is the tiny thought that you might have entertained once, but perhaps not shared with many people, if anyone. It’s that crazy thought that seems completely unachievable. It might be as crazy as flying to the moon, or as down to earth as living by the sea. We all have them. We all have excuses we tell ourselves that means we don’t entertain the thought. ‘I have a mortgage, I need to hold onto this job, I don’t know what will happen, the other candidates are more qualified than me.’ 

It is the tiny thought that you might have entertained once, but perhaps not shared with many people, if anyone.

I just finished reading Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly, the CEO of KPMG who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 53. He quit his job right away and lived out his final 90 days with the positive intention with which he led his company. “After I was diagnosed, I came to consider consciousness king among virtues. I began to feel that everyone’s first responsibility was to be as conscious as possible all the time.”

Creating a Wildest Dream doesn’t mean fanciful living in the future. It means stopping to reflect, to think, ‘where do I want to go,’ because only then can we know and be truly conscious that the steps we take today, and tomorrow are in that direction. 

Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time to go back to that thought you once dismissed, the one that felt too bold, too uncertain, too ‘not me.’ Maybe it’s time to entertain the possibility that it’s not crazy – it’s just unclaimed.

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on finding your wildest dream:

1. Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly.

2. Podcast - What your dreams are trying to tell you about your waking life with Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Dr Rahul Jandial.

3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo.

4. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.