Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:02:22: Routines vs rituals
00:06:33: Helen's personal rituals
00:07:36: Helen's company rituals
00:09:20: Sarah's personal rituals
00:11:05: Sarah's company rituals
00:13:45: Idea for action: ritual reflection
00:15:15: Idea for action: feelings make rituals
00:18:11: Idea for action: redefine a routine
00:20:45: Idea for action: intention, attention and repetition
00:25:06: Idea for action: team remote ritual
00:28:53: Union Coffee Offer

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: This is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we work through the ins and the outs and the ups and the downs of work and hopefully give you some ideas for action and tools to try out, to really help you invest in your development.

Helen Tupper: We're really excited, because this episode has been sponsored by Union Hand-Roaster Coffee.

Sarah Ellis: Delicious, I've already had one today.

Helen Tupper: Delicious.  Have you really?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I had one, I had my mid-morning Union coffee.

Helen Tupper: I feel like coffee is just this recurring theme.

Sarah Ellis: I know.

Helen Tupper: Maybe it should be called the Squiggly Coffee Careers podcast.

Sarah Ellis: I feel like there is probably a positive, I don't know whether it's correlation or causation, between number of toddlers and the amount of coffee you need to drink.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I actually think the less sleep I have, the more coffee I end up drinking to give me the energy.  In fact, I had a bit of a slump in the afternoon yesterday and I was doing a session and I now work near a chocolate shop, and I made myself a coffee and then I had some chocolate and I just felt more like me.  I don't know whether sugar and caffeine is more like me, but I felt more like Helen.

I think one of the reasons that we really like coffee in our days is because it gives us a bit of time.  I think it gives us a bit of time to ourselves, because this episode is all about rituals and there's something I think quite ritualistic in a cafetière and brewing some coffee and taking a moment to drink it, it just gives me a bit of time for me and not being in my inbox and all those great things.  Sarah and I are both fans of Union Coffee, I have been drinking it from the little café down the road at my house; for ages they have stocked it and when they approached us to sponsor the podcast, we learned more about the brand and ended up loving Union Coffee a bit more.

Their mission is really to help people discover the joy of speciality coffee and to be able to make the perfect cup at home, which I love, and they are based in East London, and they are 20 years old this year, which I love.

Sarah Ellis: Happy birthday.

Helen Tupper: Happy birthday Union Coffee.  They're also really, really big on ethical sourcing so they pay farmers fairly, they support them to grow their business, they have even won the Queen's Award for their sourcing model; so lovely business, lovely coffee all round.  Union fans!  And they have kindly given us an offer to share with you where you can get £5 off your first three coffee club boxes, so they can basically like deliver it to your house.  We have got all the details on how you can get that at the end of the episode so thank you very much Union Coffee, we love what you do, and we love you for sponsoring this episode.

Sarah Ellis: So, today we're talking all about rituals, routines, why are they different and why they matter.  What we really wanted to start with was just talk about the difference between routine and ritual, because the more I think we have both read about and learned about this, the more important actually the distinction between the two becomes.  Actually, Helen will laugh, because when someone says "routine" to me, I have a bit of an aversion to routine, because one of my values is variety.  I don't ever want to live the same day twice let alone, I always say, "Never live the same year twice", is one of my favourite bits of career advice.  So, I said to her, "I don't want to talk about routines".

Helen Tupper: Do you know the way that you respond to routines is the way that I respond to sandwiches?

Sarah Ellis: Yes.

Helen Tupper: You know I've got a fear of sandwiches, everybody I don't like sandwiches, I don't like cold butter or mayonnaise or salad cream.

Sarah Ellis: That's weirder though.

Helen Tupper: No, it's not, they always creep in, and they are not nice and so I'm like this crab; whenever I see a sandwich on some e table, I'm like a crab sidestepping away from it.  That is like Sarah when you mention the word, "Be good to have some more routines", she's like, "No, it really wouldn't".

Sarah Ellis: But they are important, so routines are basically actions that need to get done.  They are useful for our days because they keep us grounded and they do give us a rhythm and guide our days.  Often in tough times and perhaps even more so over the last year, we have needed some of those routines, because we have perhaps lost some of the routines that felt familiar.  Routines are often things that we do quickly and efficiently, so that is good; and we need routines in the work that we do, but we are going to specifically today focus on rituals.

Rituals are more meaningful in many ways, because they have a real sense of purpose, they are more focused on the experience of a task.  It's perhaps a difference to make it really kind of tangible between, you can do the same activity and it can be a routine or a ritual.  So, if you're going to make a cup of coffee, for example, you can make it really quickly without really thinking about it, dive straight back into work as quick as you can and sometimes, I do make a coffee that way, because I just need it and I've got a five-minute break.  Or there is the, "I've got a half an hour break, I am going to make myself a really nice coffee, I'm going to sit away from my desk for ten minutes, I'm really going to enjoy it".

Rituals are important because they help us to be more mindful; they can actually act as a really useful antidote to overwhelm.  One of the things that I've observed actually, thinking a bit about rituals in the last week, is they're really important for me for recovery.  A lot of the rituals, we're going to share some of our examples and also how you can do them at work, as we go on today's episode, and I've noticed that lots of my personal ones are about those moments where I just need some space to stop and to slow down.  That's where I have most of my rituals at the moment.

They're all performed with purpose, so we have that attention on what it is that we're doing; we're very present.  And I love this quote from Maria Popova who is the founder of Brain Pickings, one of my all-time favourite websites, and she says, "While routine aims to make the chaos of everyday life more containable and controllable, ritual aims to imbue the mundane with an element of the magical.  The structure of routine comforts us, and the specialness of ritual vitalises us", which is so well put and so brilliantly written that it makes me think I should never write anything again, because no one can ever write as well as that.  I just think that's the perfect way of comparing and contrasting the two different things and why they both matter, but particularly for today why rituals are important.

Helen Tupper: To make rituals real we thought we might share a few of ours and hopefully you might reflect for you on a few of yours.  When you think about rituals, they can either be individual, so this is something that you do for you; or it can be collective, so this is something that you do with other people, probably people in your team.  So actually, outside of work there might be rituals you do as a family too.  Maybe, Sarah, if I give some examples of individual and collective rituals that I remember, maybe some that I do today and some that I've done in the past; and then I'll listen to yours.  I actually don't know what Sarah's going to say.

So mine, I don't think she's going to say the same as me, because some of my personal rituals are like choosing my clothes!  I find it really enjoyable to go through my wardrobe and pick out an outfit and put it out and it makes me feel really positive, because I really like nice, bright colours and I'll go in my wardrobe and I'll be like, "Oh this just makes me happy", and so that is something I want to intentionally make time for, because I feel better when I've done it.

Another one of my rituals is breakfast.  I do not understand people that never have breakfast; I think you sometimes don't have breakfast.

Sarah Ellis: I don't have breakfast very often.

Helen Tupper: It's so strange, but I like it so much, I enjoy this ritual so much that I get up really early, like 5.15am early, which is mad; even when I'm tired or the children haven't been sleeping, I get up and I make myself some breakfast and I know it's probably mad to eat that early in the morning; but I sit there with my nice breakfast and sometimes it's a book or this morning; I was watching this really good Esther Perel YouTube talk which I loved, and it makes me feel calm, it's like a moment for me and I really value that quiet, calm time before the rest of the day takes over.  So, yeah, that's two of my personal ones.

Then I was also trying to think about some more collective rituals that I've been part of, and I actually just started going through different companies that I've worked in, because I think there's been some in all of the companies.  I remember when I was at Capital One, one of the rituals they used to have was baps and claps; it has always stuck in my mind.  Basically, it was like a celebratory moment that happened every week. 

Some of the senior leaders would go round; there was a particular project that was supplied to a group that had been brought together for this big transformation project, and the senior leaders would go round with baps, like sausage baps, bacon baps type of things, and everyone would be there for the baps; and then there'd be claps, where they would basically be celebrating some of the good stuff that had gone on the week before.  It was a real, particularly for that team that were going through some really tough transformation, it was a real meaningful moment for them.

I remember E.ON when I worked there, one of their rituals that I really liked was cakes on the desk.  So, if you were a new person on your first or second day, your team would buy loads of cakes and they would put them on your desk and what it meant was that people --

Sarah Ellis: Would come and talk to you.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, exactly --

Sarah Ellis: That's nice.

Helen Tupper: -- come and eat your cakes and they had to say hello, which I thought was a really nice thing. 

Then another one at Virgin, I loved this one.  When you start at Virgin, when they offer you the role, they would then send you out your contract; but what they would do is, not only was the wording of the contract very Virgin, so it was nice and friendly and warm, in the envelope there was a bag of tea, and there was a biscuit, and it was like, "Have a break, we know that this stuff isn't fun, but we want to make it as enjoyable as possible".  You also used to get a birthday card every year that Richard and Holly and Sam Branson would have signed, and actually Virgin was very, very good at rituals, they'd really thought about meaningful moments. 

So, yeah, loads of them I thought about.  It wasn't until I reflected that I realised they had been rituals, if that makes sense.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: Walking is a big ritual for me.  Actually, I often start my day with a walk which is combined with dropping my son off at nursery, but I think the difference between just kind of dropping off at nursery and actually since COVID started, actually I drop him off with my partner, we'd go and get a coffee, again coffee.  Then we always go for a walk, and even if we only go for a 10- or 15-minute walk, sometimes, like this morning, it was chucking it down with rain, and we still just walked.  We didn't walk straight home, we just went round a few of the very lovely streets that we wished we lived on, essentially, had some house envy and then walked back home again and it definitely is a ritual because I don't take my phone, it feels very meaningful, it's just that moment before your day starts.

I also go for other walks when I just need a bit of space to think or if I just need to recover.  If I've had a really full-on morning, I don't cope particularly well with than having a very full-on afternoon.  I'll often kind of think, "I'm going to get one more task completed" and then I kind of reward myself, my rituals are often quite about rewarding myself, and I'll think, "I'll go for a longer walk, an hour walk, a 90-minute walk", go to my local park and places like that; so lots of my rituals seem to involve walking.

I was thinking the ritual that probably is my longest standing one and the most important one to me, is ending my day reading and it's always reading fiction.  I never read non-fiction, and this is in bed before I go to sleep.  It's very, very rare that I would watch TV and then just go straight to bed and straight to sleep.  I'd rather go to bed earlier and spend half an hour reading fiction.  It's that very present, you've put your phone down, it's probably one of the few permanent things about me that's very personal to me, so that was another one.

Then, when I was thinking about organisational ones, one of my favourite ones, it is interesting how often food, isn't it, comes into these rituals or maybe that's just where we both worked; when I worked at Sainsbury's, which is obviously a food retailer in the UK, every Monday at a team meeting, and team meetings can feel quite routine-like, I think to add a bit of ritual into a routine can be really helpful and make it more motivating, is we would choose a product and then we would do a blind taste test. 

Inevitably that product was like chocolate or cookies or cake, and we would buy one from Sainsbury's and then some competitor ones, and we'd just have them all out and all taste them decide which one we liked best and see if we could guess the Sainsbury's one.  I remember just always really looking forward to that on a Monday, because Mondays were really frantic, but just knowing you've got that moment of probably a sweet treat, and also it was quite fun and everybody got involved and it was easy to sort out, so that was a fun ritual.

Then I was thinking about one of the things that we do, though we don't do it consistently at the moment, but we often come back to it, is this idea of win of the week.  We've probably talked about this on a podcast before, but this moment where we stop as a team and just all say, "What's been your win of the week?"  I think we're good at doing it actually when we've had a hard week.

Helen Tupper: Yes.

Sarah Ellis: So, when we've had a tough time, we have a few go-to rituals, I think, that we know are useful to help us feel good or help to give us a bit of positive momentum after a bit of a tough time.  I think what we're probably not quite so good at is when things are going well or perhaps just more like business as usual, we don't have as many rituals which are week in, week out, if any actually.  I couldn't really think of anything that we do consistently as a group, as in across Amazing if; I think we all have our individual ones, but I feel like that might be an opportunity for us.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I agree, I'm thinking about a combination of sweet treats, just for the sake of eating some nice stuff.

Sarah Ellis: Sweet treats.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and then maybe there's some kind of Squiggly thing, some ritual about like Squiggly spotting.  Each week you've got to try and spot a squiggle in something around you, who knows; my brain is just going off in different places.

Sarah Ellis: As long as it's not routine, I don't mind.

Helen Tupper: Sarah's open new to rituals, just don't mention "routines" everyone.  So, we want to obviously make this as practical as possible to help you find and put rituals into practice in your work.  So, we've got five different ideas for action for you, which Sarah and I will talk through now.  We would love to know actually after today's episode, we will give you our contact details; do let us know which ones of these resonate with you, or you can just--

Sarah Ellis: Or if you've got other ideas.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, other ideas.  There are probably more than five ways, everybody, we are not the gurus of all things ritual, so yeah, let us know, but shall I start with the first one, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: Go for it.

Helen Tupper: Good because it's the easy one.  Number one is about ritual reflection, and this is really what Sarah and I have just done, is about thinking what rituals already exist, either for yourself or in the organisation that you're in.  A good question that I came across when I was reading about rituals, and we'll put some of these resources, if you want to read more about this topic, in the podsheet which you can download from the website.  One of the questions that I found was that a good way of identifying what rituals might exist in your organisation, is to ask yourself what is the most -- like we would say Amazing if, or I would have said Microsoft when I was at Microsoft, ie the name of your company -- what is the most Amazing if thing that your team or you do each week and each month?

For example, if I was going to answer that for something at Virgin, like what's the most Virgin thing that your team or your organisation does regularly?  Virgin had the Rock Star Awards; actually, I hadn't thought about it until I said it but they used to have, probably every month, they had a Rock Star Award, which was just very Virgin language and people would get identified as rock stars and that was just a very Virgin thing to do.  It's when you have those what's a very Amazing if thing to do, what's a very Virgin thing to do; that's when you might be able to spot some of the rituals, if they're not immediately obvious for you.  So, think individually, think collectively, but step one is to work out what rituals are happening at the moment, do a bit of ritual reflection.

Sarah Ellis: Our second idea for action is if you're thinking about a new ritual, or if you realise as you're listening to us, maybe I don't have any rituals or I would like more rituals as part of my working week, rather than maybe starting with the ritual, start with your feelings first.  Essentially, ask yourself the question, "How do I want to feel or what would I like to feel more of?"  Are you trying to create rituals that are going to slow you down, get you to stop in a day, or give you chance to recover?  Or are you looking for rituals that are going to give you energy, motivation, give you a bit of inspiration.  You might want a bit of a combination of all of those things.

But then I think you can think about, what are the rituals that will really help you to achieve that feeling?  Because I think if you were thinking, "Actually, I want to just be a bit more reflective, I want to feel I have some time for reflection in my week", then you might think, "Well, okay, I'm going to try doing…" maybe it's bullet journaling, maybe it's I go, "I've got Friday 15 minutes", and in your Friday 15 minutes, you just do some journaling; and that gives you just that ritual and that moment in time where you're very present to really think about and reflect on your week, and you might ask yourself the same three questions at the end of a week.  You might say, "What's worked well this week?  What is my even better if?  What's one thing that I've learned?"  You might just go, "That just gives me that ritual and creates that time and space to do the reflection".

If you want to feel really energised, you might think also about, do you get energy from being by yourself or do you get energy from being with other people?  I was just thinking actually as I was describing that, I think if Helen and I wanted a kind of energy boost, the rituals that we would create would be really different, because I'm more introverted and Helen's more extroverted.  I feel like if Helen, I don't know if this is right, but I feel like if you were going to create a ritual to give you more energy, there would always be other people involved, is that right?

Helen Tupper: Yes, probably.  I think if it was about energy, yeah, I'd always probably get that from being and talking with other people, so it would be like, "Oh, how could we bring somebody new into our team meeting", or, "How could I go and have a different conversation this week as part of my curious connections", or something like that.

Sarah Ellis: So, maybe to make this very, very specific, have a go at writing down one feeling that you would like more of.  It's almost like you're starting with the kind of end in mind.  What is the outcome that you're hoping for; and then use that to rewind back and think about what ritual do you think you could try out that would support you to feel more of that thing?  And then don't be afraid to experiment.  I think you can experiment with different rituals and figure out what works for you and also what doesn't. 

I think you could go for a walk and for some people walks could be really reflective, for other people walks could be really energising; so figure out what feeling you want and then experiment with some rituals and kind of see what happens.

Helen Tupper: Idea for action number three is to redefine a routine.  As we've talked about, routines and rituals are different, but if you are trying to create some new rituals for yourself, actually thinking about what's something that I already do as a routine today, so I do it often because it needs to get done, and then taking that thing and adding more meaning to it, can then turn it into more of a ritual for you.

For example, a routine might be you have a weekly team zoom every Monday.  It's a routine, you do it every week, it's 9.30am till 10.30am; end of.  What you could do is think, "Well, how could I make that feel like a more meaningful moment with more attention and intention for everybody?"  Maybe that could be everyone sharing a "what worked well, even better if" moment, or maybe it could be a one thing you want to be true by the end of the week that's not true today.  Maybe you even change that question.  

Maybe you have in each meeting a curious question and that becomes part of your Monday team ritual.  Maybe you rotate who gets to ask that question, but it's those sorts of things that enable you to make a meaningful moment out of something that might be a routine that's been going on for quite a long time.

I would start by maybe thinking about what are your existing routines, and then maybe play around with one of them and think about how you could turn that into a ritual.

Sarah Ellis: This just makes me laugh because I think I have so few routines.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, "Where do I start?"  I bet you have more than you think, like you brush your teeth, that's a routine; you do that without thinking.

Sarah Ellis: Yes.  I'm not sure I want to turn it onto a ritual.  I think I definitely have routines because you have to; but actually one of the things, I was thinking about this, because I was thinking, "What routes do I have that I've maybe turned into rituals?"  We were chatting about this before we started and actually there's quite a lot of evidence behind this being a useful thing to do.  Obviously, I start the day with a shower, but I have and probably actually particularly since COVID and because you're at home more and I think this is perhaps slightly easier to do, is I will often have another shower.  I think that second shower is more about a ritual than it is a routine, because it's about I do good thinking in the shower, and I know that, and I know it's a good way to process things.

I was thinking about while we were writing our second book, every time I got bit stuck on a chapter or an idea or we were perhaps debating something and I was finding it hard, I would often have a shower.

Helen Tupper: Did you?  I had no idea.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Honestly, I've known Sarah for over 20 years, and I did not know that showers were your way of decompressing!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so idea for action number four, this is all about the fact that rituals require three things: intention, attention and repetition.  What this really means is that by intention, we kind of know; I think we're making an active choice.  Attention means that we are present and absorbed, you're not on your phone at the same time, you're not trying to multi-task, you're not doing lots of kind of switching in terms of your brain and your focus.  Repetition doesn't mean that you have to do something every day, but it is something that you probably repeat regularly, and we know that rituals have more meaning and become more meaningful the more regularly they are repeated.

Initially, this took me a bit of time to get my head around, because as I talked to Helen I said, "Well, at what point, if I repeat something too much, does it become a routine?"  It doesn't as long as you hold onto, "This feels meaningful for me", and it has the intention and the attention that makes it that ritual.  Perhaps you have a ritual at the moment that works really well for you, but you only do it once a month or you only do it maybe really occasionally or perhaps you only do it once a week.  I think it's really helpful to think about if you were to just do it once more, what would that look like?

Helen and I were chatting about actually a lot of the rituals we have for Amazing if, that we've had for a long time, since 2013 when we first started, are actually very occasional.  So, we're good at getting together for quite immersive moments that are really memorable, where we will go to a place for a couple of days and really get absorbed in where we are with Amazing if, what we want to do and we probably do that every three to six months, do you reckon, Helen?  Something like that?

Helen Tupper: Yes, I think so, yeah.

Sarah Ellis: That's definitely become a ritual for us over the years, that we're always good at creating the time and space for these.  We choose a place that we find interesting and then when we go to those places, we get rid of all of our day-to-day and we spend all of our time thinking about where we are and what we want to be doing, thinking about ourselves and we both recognise that that's really useful. 

Now, we can't necessarily repeat that ritual in exactly the same format more regularly, because maybe the time constraints; but what we could do is recognise, if you think back to that point around feelings, what is the feeling that we get from doing that?  We probably feel a bit more control, we get focused, it probably helps us to just pause and reflect, so that ritual gives us quite a lot of benefit.

So, how could we do that ritual also in a smaller way, so that it doesn't have to be quite as occasional, and it might mean that you do it by meeting up for an afternoon once a month, as well as doing those more immersive moments.  Or it might be that you already do something once a week, perhaps you think, "Well, I'm really good on a Friday at making time to go for a walk at lunchtime, or using my lunchbreak in more of a ritual way rather than eating my sandwich at my desk way".  Then you might think about, even if you were to do that one more time in a week, when do you stand the best chance of success in terms of making that happen.

Perhaps it worked really well on a Friday for you because there's not as many meetings, and you maybe have a bit more kind of space in your diary.  What other day or what other time of day do you think you could include rituals as part of your work and designing your days.  I do think sometimes, we might get a bit frustrated with rituals if we try and do it, you know where there are some days when you just have loads of back-to-back meetings, when it's really hard.  When my ritual gets overtaken by work priorities or my to-do list, it has the opposite effect; I get really frustrated and I get almost like angry, angry at myself, angry at everyone else thinking, "I've lost that thing that is really important to me", but sometimes that's because I've tried to squeeze it in at the wrong times.

I think actually thinking really practically about how do you help your rituals to happen as often as possible, in the context of the sort of work that you do and how you work, can be really helpful.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I agree.  I'm actually feeling a little bit -- you know I was saying about that end-of-day thing, if I don't remember to do it, then I'm like, "Oh I've got to do my end-of-day thing, because I'm trying to build this ritual", and it's like 10.30pm and I'm thinking, "But I want to go to bed, but I've got to build this ritual", so yeah, I think you don't want it to frustrate you, it should be something that feels meaningful and makes you feel better.  So, you certainly have to work that out as you go.

Our final idea for action is all about remote rituals and this is more of a collective thing, so this is about you and your team and it's about recognising that some of the ways that you might have had rituals in the past, when you were in person in offices, it might not be possible; but almost redefining what remote rituals could be for you.  So, maybe it is something that you do in your zoom meetings, so stuff that I've done before with teams is where people talk about, what's a song that represents them, for example?

Or actually I had a conversation yesterday with somebody that I think would be a really good remote ritual.  There was a menu of questions that you could pick off and maybe that being something that a team did, so that I think my questions that I picked off the menu were, "What were my most memorable meal?  What music would I like played at my funeral?"  That's what I picked off from the menu of questions.

Sarah Ellis: That's a bit unique.

Helen Tupper: A little bit but what happens is one person picks the question and then everybody has to answer it, but that could be, it might not be the right thing, but it could be remote ritual that could help you all get to know each other differently and take the conversation to a different place than the day-to-day.  Or it could be something like walk and talks.  Maybe a remote ritual could be, once a month we do a random walk and talk; you just get randomly matched with someone else in your team, get off your desk and away from your desk and you all do a walk and talk.  Maybe not today because it's very wet but that is the sort of thing that I mean. 

So, think about how could we make rituals part of the way that we work, even when we are likely to be continuing to work remotely in some form for the very foreseeable future, who knows what's going to happen next, but that might be an idea for action for you to take away.

Sarah Ellis: Actually, on that, I know that quite a lot of teams have been trying out this idea of curiosity coffees that we've talked about before.  It doesn't have to be necessarily inside your organisation, but perhaps it's a network that you're part of, or a community that you're involved in around a cause or a campaign that you're passionate about.  Often you still end up working with the same couple of people, and because people are not having tea breaks in the same ways or those cliché water cooler moments that people talk about, actually again you've got to be more intentional. 

So, there are apps that you can use, or you can do it more manually, but where again you have a ritual where once a week or every other week, you get randomly paired with someone and you're just going to have a curious conversation with them, a curiosity coffee.

It's a similar principle really, but I think designing rituals that work remotely will only ever stand you in good stead, because I think even as we go to maybe more hybrid working, perhaps we will return to the office in some ways or some jobs you have to go to your place of work, but I think these kinds of things, we've kind of been missing some of these rituals.  It's not necessarily about waiting for them to come back, but I think it's about discovering new ways and new rituals that might be even better than the ones that we had before.

Helen Tupper: We have also unintentionally looped right back to coffee, which is pretty much where we started.

Sarah Ellis: It is, isn't it?  Seamless!

Helen Tupper: So, hopefully you found that useful.  I don't see that much covered about rituals, so I hope that it's brought it to life for you and given you some ideas for action.  We will summarise all of these on the podsheet, we'll give you some coach yourself questions to think about and we'll make these ideas for action really clear for you.  You can download the podsheet for this episode from our website, so that's just Amazingif.com.  If you go to the Podcast Page, you'll be able to get it from there.

As we said earlier, we would love to know if you've got any other ideas, if you've got any rituals that have been really meaningful for you, let us know because we can share that with our community on things like Instagram to inspire them.  If you want to email us it's just Helen&Sarah@amazingif.com and I should also just mention the offer from Union Coffee again.  As we said at the start, they're all about helping people to discover speciality coffee and make the perfect cup at home, and you can try their coffee through their coffee club and get it delivered to your door.

To get £5 off your first three coffee club boxes, you just need to use the code RITUAL and go to unionroasted.com/squigglycareers.  We will put the link in the show notes this episode to make it super easy for you.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you so much for listening, good luck with reinventing, rediscovering or perhaps even creating some new rituals.  Let us know how you get on and we'll speak to you again, soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.