The Power Of Ritual
By: Daniel Caruana Smith
Tags: Life Lessons, Emotional Intelligence, Self Improvement, Mental Health, Psychology

In a previous article, we explored our innate talent for forgetting things. No matter how tough or sobering a life lesson we may go through, time has an uncanny ability to help us forget all about it. It may be a good thing — can you imagine dwelling on the mistakes you made ten years ago with the same level of emotion as the day after?

“A ritual doesn’t have to be religious. A ritual doesn’t have to be public. All it has to do is invoke a certain emotion or mood.”

One of the key elements to developing a strong emotional intelligence is learning to remember, or even better, re-live past experiences. This can be used to develop a pattern of behavior to change or, at the very least, adapt our emotional focus at a particular time. It’s a powerful skill to develop as it can reduce the level of emotional anxiety over a particular decision or experience. It can also serve as a guideline in possible repeat scenarios. By referring to similar past experiences, the feeling of “what should I do?” can be replaced by a sense of “I’ve got this, even if it’s probably going to mean a tough decision down the line.”

“But how can we bring up past emotions? Haven’t we established that they fade over time?”

Yes, they do.

“So does our mind have some sort of ‘replay’ function, where we can re-experience events as though they have just happened?”

To my knowledge, no.

The next best option would be to trigger emotions through a ritual. A ritual doesn’t have to be religious (although most religions use them very effectively). A ritual doesn’t have to be public. All it has to do is invoke a certain emotion or mood.

Imagine a congregation of parishioners, praying silently. What gives them their attitude of respect and devotion? Chances are, it’s the ritual which they have subconsciously gone through; entering what they consider a sacred space with others of an assumed common intent. Without realizing it, we are surrounded by informal rituals that guide our behavior and, more often than we notice, our emotions.

“subconscious rituals play a very large role in our emotional states.”

So how can we use rituals to our advantage? Can we use them to ‘hack’ our minds into feeling a certain way? If done correctly, a ritual can be used to invoke a particular emotion. This, in turn, can be used as an internal, emotional learning experience.

“Without realizing it, we are surrounded by informal rituals that guide our behavior and, more often than we notice, our emotions.”

Let’s take anniversaries and breakups as working examples. Anniversaries serve as reminders of strong commitments. The rituals we attribute to them (things like throwing a party or going out on a date) are aimed at triggering warm emotions, similar to those felt during the first date. In contrast, sitting on your own at the same table where you were told it’s over will probably leave you with a very different set of emotions. Perhaps even the mention of the event is enough. The fact is, subconscious rituals play a very large role in our emotional states.

So what’s the moral of the story here? Should we avoid places that make us feel sad and throw parties every day? Whilst that in itself would be futile (see Developing Emotionally), rituals can be used as indicators on our way towards emotional intelligence.

We subconsciously attribute meaning to rituals that bring us joy, and use them to re-establish meaningful connections. We tend to avoid rituals that make us feel bad, or insignificant. By recognizing such patterns, we can move on to creating new rituals to counteract those we wish to forget. The final piece of the puzzle (which is a ritual in itself); informal rituals can be used as rehearsals to re-establish what we value or attribute meaning to the most. This allows us to re-experience significant life events, as well as the emotional growth attributed to them.