I’ve found myself avoiding resolutions this new year. They feel so separate from the actualities of daily life and just plain not fun. Instead, I’m focusing on creating moments that are enjoyable to replicate. I’m intentionally inserting joy in the form of rituals.

The beauty of a ritual is that it’s positive, unlike resolutions that often involve planned deprivation.

Your resolution to ritual formula

It’s easy to build rituals from your well-intentioned resolutions. It involves reframing and a little magic from creative thinking. Just follow the steps below:

1. Write down your resolution.

2. Write down one or two of your key positive motivations behind it.

3. Brainstorm a few activities linked to these core motivations that you would enjoy.  Add a dash of ambiance and intentionality while you’re at it. This package will form the foundation of your ritual.

4. Link the ritual’s occurrence to something you already do regularly, like getting off work or walking your dog.

5. Now you’re ready to drop the resolution and replace it with your ritual.
   
   

Recipes for rituals

Here are some examples of swaps for some of the most common New Year’s resolutions.

Resolution: “Lose weight”

Key motivation: Health + Mindful eating

Ritual: At dinnertime, light a candle. Serve healthy whole foods on your favorite plate with cloth napkins. Take a moment of appreciation for your food. Set a timer for 20 minutes and slowly enjoy your meal without rushing. Finish your ritual meal with your favorite tea.

Read next:

Mindfulness through your senses

Resolution: “Exercise more”

Key motivation: Ease with your body

Ritual: Every Friday after work, put on your most comfortable outdoor play clothes. Go to your most treasured hike or greenspace. Walk to a resting spot that you enjoy and sit there a moment, taking in all that nature has to offer. Take off your shoes and ground yourself. Write in a pocket-sized journal about what fills up your heart about this place. Do some easy, simple stretches that feel good and head back home.


Resolution: “Get organized”

Key motivation: Peace through order 

Ritual: Every Sunday morning after breakfast, take a photo of a small area that you would like to declutter. Using a basket made of a natural material, carefully remove each item that doesn’t belong there into the basket. Set a timer for 10-20 minutes. Gently put each thing away with care, and as you do so, feel gratitude for each hardworking item. Take your after photo and then grab a cup of your favorite warm drink and admire the freshly cleared space.

Include others

Resolution: “Reach out more to family and friends”

Key motivation: Love + Community 

Ritual: Every Thursday evening, after responding to your last work message, light a candle, grab a cup of your favorite tea, and head to your favorite cozy spot. Bring your hands to your heart for a minute as you think of a person you’d like to reach. Contact them in a way that brings you joy (call, create a postcard, or write a letter). Share one thing that you appreciate about them. In a beautiful small notebook, write the name of who you want to call next week. Blow out your candle as you silently say “Thank you” for having people you love in your life.

Resolution: “Go to bed early on Sunday”

Key motivation: Soothe Sunday scaries + Rest

Ritual: Pajama party time! Each Sunday before dinner, invite everyone in your house to get ready for bed dressed in their favorite pajamas. After dinner, relax in your living room by firelight, play a game, or do tarot. When anyone feels the slightest bit tired, head straight to bed.

(We’ve had success in our house with this last one). 

There is a sort of magic that rituals cast our state of mind. Join me in trying out new habits for a more joyful transformation.

Embrace the beauty of this new year 💖

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“Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.”

—Rumi

With November comes the beginning of colder weather, a signal to your body to stay home and go within. It’s a great time to do an at-home retreat and really give yourself some TLC.

Cozy up

Set up a peaceful environment at home. Maybe that looks like creating a little nest for yourself with your softest blanket. Use that space to curl up with a good book, write in your journal, or take a nap. If you’re by a window, watch the trees change from your little slice of refuge.

Retreat from the everyday

Prevent burnout. Do a mini-retreat (use the one-day creative retreat guide from the resource library), take a day off, and devote it to creative expression.

Put at least one day on the calendar where you’ll turn off your phone for a minimum of four hours and do your creative practice in the most luxurious way possible. Give it to yourself as a pre-holiday treat.

Read next:

One-day creative retreat

Adjust your circadian rhythm for daylight savings

Adding an hour to your schedule sounds like a bonus, but can upset your circadian rhythm. Make daylight savings less disorienting by getting ready the week before. It can help to adjust your eating and sleeping times starting the last week of October.

Getting lots of bright natural light during the day and then limiting it along with bright screens at night can help you, even weeks into the time change. (Read more about this in my post about the best ways to adjust to the end of daylight saving time).

Journal prompt for this month:

How can I use creative expression to explore my deepest emotions?

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Light has almost invisible effects on your life. While you’ve likely grown up under the glow of artificial light, it hasn’t even been common in households for an entire century. Having light so cheaply available to us after dark is a newer phenomenon in human history.

Our anciently-developed bodies have not yet evolved to adapt to the circadian rhythm disruption brought on through electric lighting (documented through the dramatic adverse health effects of shift work). 

This has certainly been true for me. I’ve gone through periods where I’m susceptible to light sensitivity (mostly artificial light, which I have slowly readapted over the years but sometimes am rudely reminded).

In the past, I needed to live in an intentionally dark world (as much as I could) due to chronic health issues, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It had profound effects. I lost friends over it (living without light is truly a radical choice that makes you less available) and adjusted my career path. I’ve experienced what a considerable disadvantage it is to live in a world built on artificial light when you can’t use it.

Nevertheless, as much as I’ve suffered ill effects of this artificial light dependency, I love technology and the other freedoms brought by it. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I find it almost impossible now to cut it out for an entire hour each day.

It feels unmanageable to live without artificial light and screens. Anyone who has experienced a prolonged blackout knows, it can feel like your entire life (and sanity) is dependent on it.

It feeds into the modern illusion that humans are made to live an electronically powered day. The luxury of cheap electric light is so easy to take for granted. You work in front of an artificially lit screen all day and watch a different flashing screen throughout the evening without even thinking about it as a choice. The modern technology age and entire economies are built on electric light. 

I have since learned that many of my peers experience symptoms from artificial light dependency. Vertigo, migraine, light-sensitivity, headaches, eye-fatigue, nausea, and sleep disorders are very common side-effects from spending over three hours locked to a screen. And to top it off, our screen use has only become more addictive over time, dramatically shifting our social and political structure.

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The best self-care routine for fall

Access to light can be used as a way to control the hours in your day. Daylight saving time was invented as a policy to control consumer use of readily available artificial light and reduce energy consumption. The (patriarchal) thinking was, people would use the extra hours of sunlight in the evening spring through summer for activities and spending. 

This bright idea has been dimmed through scientific research showing its negative effects on the human body. Stop playing games with our circadian rhythms!

The hypothesis that there would be hours in each day where artificial light use would be reduced has not proven to be true in the case of modern energy. Instead any energy savings tend to come from decreased appliance, heating or A/C use.

What you can do this daylight saving time

I used to look forward to having an extra hour of sleep each autumn, but last year I still felt groggy well into November and heard from some friends who were having trouble adjusting too. It turns out there are health implications for messing around with your circadian rhythms even when it seems to be in your favor. 

So this year, I’m trying something new. I’ve made a daylight-saving self-care calendar to assist with a gentle transition out of daylight-saving time (that really just shouldn’t exist).

I’d love for the circadian rhythm disruption of switching times to end forever, but in the meantime, this is the next best solution. Calendars can help you infiltrate your own screen time and get you into a healthier routine. Let’s use them to adapt to incremental changes.

Here’s how this calendar can help you:

1. Light therapy. Use your body’s natural sensitivity to the light to help you make time for more natural light and begin taking intentional breaks from artificial light.

2. Baby steps. Using small increments, you can adjust your sleep schedule to prevent that jet-lag feeling.

3. Establish a routine. Establish cues using self-care so your body can more easily understand transitions from rest to waking. Building your healthy routine involves: cleaning up your existing sleep hygiene, setting up a nighttime routine, and turning off screens 1 hour before bed.

4. Awareness. This time of change can bring underlying health issues to light. I’ve added a day to reflect on how your body feels throughout this time change.

(Share this post with a friend who could use some extra self-care but is too busy to take the time to make a calendar.)

While artificial light itself can cause circadian imbalance, daylight saving time has not decreased this effect -- instead, it has added to it. It’s a flawed patriarchal concept that treats our bodies as machines that can be calibrated to the desires of the dollar (historically retailers fought to keep it going to increase evening sales).

Barring a complete daylight saving time revolution, the best self-care we can do until it is overthrown is to use this time as a reminder that our bodies need natural light. Stay aware of its potential effects on our moods, bodies, and minds and help others adjust with you.

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“To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world.

To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

For many, preparations for the holiday season officially begin now. Plan your holiday spending this month to prevent being swept up in the “must buy!” consumer feeling of December. It’s also a great month to start a holiday card project if that’s something you enjoy. If not, then nix it and put your creative energy toward something you want to do!

This year especially, enlist the help of your own creative nature by establishing a regular creative habit. It will help you process the angsty anxiety that can show up during the end of an election season and from holiday planning.

Begin an old fashioned correspondence

Invite communication with loved ones by sending a bundle of hand picked pre-stamped postcards to someone who could use a little joy in their mailbox (pretty much everyone now).

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Fall focus: Resilience

Plant future moments of delight

It’s the perfect month to plant some bulbs for spring in your favorite colors. Or go to a loved one’s house and do it as an excellent physically distanced activity. In six months, they’ll be reminded of you, right as winter is thawing.

Remember to stay grounded

October is a valuable time to make sure you’re sticking with your self-care. News doesn’t need to be a 24/7 spiral. Quiet your social media by turning off all phone app notifications. If everything is feeling too much, forest bathing is a lovely practice to help ground you if you’re feeling too heady.

Prep for Daylight Savings this month

Make Daylight Savings less disorienting by getting ready the week before. It can help to adjust your eating and sleeping times starting October 29th or earlier. Getting lots of bright natural light during the day and then limiting it along with bright screens at night can also help.

Journal prompt:

Who brings warmth to my life?

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“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Staying in the present moment can be a challenge.

Your mind protests, because it’s impossible to measure a moment. There may be a longing to understand presence logically.

But your body wisdom knows and understands time in a way our mind can’t fully comprehend.

We’re culturally encouraged to sacrifice our depth of understanding for short-term productivity. We’re taught to model machine-like efficiency, to stuff down our feelings, and work hard.

But there’s a better way to coexist with time that works in harmony with our body.

Discovering an organic rhythm

Nature makes excellent company on the path of recalibrating your inner clock. Seasons remind you to slow down and tune in.

Deciduous trees slowly let go of their spring abundance in the fall so that each tree can save energy for the winter.  Speed would be problematic under these circumstances. If a tree lost all its leaves in a single day, it indicates an imbalance or health issue in the tree—no need to hurry it up.

Use your senses to ground your body in the present

Sensory awareness is the foundation of mindfulness. Paying attention to what is happening around you through your senses can help you slow down. The best part is it’s incredibly simple.

All you have to do is bring your attention to what you are touching, hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling, and feeling right now without judging.  

Read next:

37 tips to build your creative stamina

Other easy techniques you can do that encourage mindfulness include:

• Being kind (which has been proven to help complete your body’s stress cycle).

• Moving your body or exercise

• Sharing a long hug or kiss with someone you love

• Tensing and releasing your muscles

• Taking a deep breath

The common thread through each of these activities is that they must happen in real-time. Each one supports your quest to wholly occupy your body.

Pace yourself

Try taking some time to notice the earth’s rhythm through your senses. Your mind may judge it as too slow or unproductive. But there is so much power in engaging the senses; simple observation, listening, and opening up.

Give this simple form of care to yourself, to one another. Do it to restore your body and create a sense of spaciousness. It is a celebration of life. Sync up with the powerful energy of this precious earth.

Give yourself the gift of healing presence to help your heart soften and release.

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“To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity.

Your resilience is your humanity.

The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak.

To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.”

— Hannah Gadsby

Self-care is especially crucial around transitional seasons. Fall brings the magnetic pull of busyness and productivity.

With a little mindful planning, we can meet this transition with grace. You can plan to make time for things that perhaps wouldn’t have made it to your traditional calendar: the quieter moments.

Invite gentleness into this autumn. Allow creativity and mindfulness to transition you into this season’s cooler coziness.

Focus on openness and resilience

Embrace change and let go of ideas that aren’t serving you. End some projects you started earlier in the year in favor of ones that nourish you.

Instead of ruminating on what you can’t change, work on changing the narrative. Try freewriting, express your deepest feelings on a particular issue, writing continuously for 20 minutes. This 1988 study shows that doing this for four days in a row has a marked improvement in your immunity and health.

Be mindful instead of impulsive

Autumn can bring an influx of inspirational ideas and clarity. You can use this to your advantage by developing more emotional awareness through contemplative activities like journaling, enjoying nature, meditation, or spending quality time with others.

Read next:

Soothing and warming fall elixirs

Keep your energy moving

Balance your contemplative time with active movement: dancing, yoga, and hiking are great, and as a bonus will contribute to improved sleep.

Expression and creativity are especially important to clear any stagnant energy and improve stress. Try revisiting a creative practice from childhood—no need to get overly serious with your expressive practice. Have fun and approach it with humor and carefree abandon.

Remember this

Live in tune with the season of autumn. Start incorporating these seasonal ideas into your daily routine (if you need ideas I have a post on the best self-care routine for fall that puts this into actionable steps throughout your day).

Feed your body and soul this season!

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Recipes

Cozy up with these two health-promoting fall tonics.

Masala rooibos chai

Prep time 15 mins/serves 8

Ingredients

• 2 quarts (8 cups) filtered water

• 2-3” knob of ginger, peeled + roughly chopped

• 3 tablespoons cardamom pods, split open and seeded

• 8 whole star anise, broken up

• 15 whole cloves

• 3 cinnamon sticks

• ½ tsp whole black peppercorns

• 6-8 tablespoons rooibos tea (or 8 teabags)

• 1 tsp. Vanilla extract

• 1 (14 oz.) can coconut milk or milk of choice

• 4 tbsp coconut sugar or preferred sweetener

Tip: To save time, pack spices and tea loosely in a muslin bag to make straining it easier.

Instructions:

• Combine and brew all of the spices plus the rooibos tea in a slow cooker (2 hrs high/8hrs low), saucepan (simmer 30 mins), or instant pot (high pressure 5 mins with natural release).

• Strain through a fine sieve. Add back to the pot to keep warm. Stir in the vanilla and coconut sugar.

• Drinking it all today? Add all the milk. Otherwise, take what you won't be drinking today and store it in the fridge as a chai concentrate. (Milk and tea may separate when stored together). Then add milk to taste.

Mushroom *POWER* hot chocolate 

Prep time 10mins/serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1 cup boiling water

• 1/2 teaspoon Chaga powder 2g

• ¼ tsp Reishi powder 1g

• ¼ cup of coconut milk 

• 1 teaspoon cacao powder

• ¼ tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp coconut butter for extra creaminess (optional)

• 1 teaspoon maple syrup or to taste

Instructions:

• Steep Chaga powder in boiling water for a few minutes, then combine all ingredients in a blender and blend for 30 seconds.

• Optional fancy step: dust foam with a little cocoa

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The best self-care routine for fall

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Why you need a seasonal routine

Our bodies and the natural world are closely intertwined, something that’s easy to forget in our modern industrialized world. But many cultures have long known the importance of living with the seasons to maintain optimal health and wellbeing.

One that stands out as having been the most transformative for my health is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

The autumn routine

The routine I outline below is heavily influenced by TCM as well as natural healers that have been part of my health management over the years.

When I have a routine to plug into I feel so much more centered, especially when it creates moments of pause that give space to celebrate the natural changes happening around me. It’s so simple but profoundly affects my energy levels. Come join me!

Morning

• Wake early

• Open windows

• Freewrite in your journal

• Get outside for sunrise

• Take a morning walk

• Nurse a warm drink (like one of these healthy fall favorites)
  

Afternoon (~3 pm)

• Move and get active: dance, walk outside, do yoga
  

Evening

• Unwind with relaxing music

• Candlelight dinner

• Turn off the phone and unplug

• Warm (not hot) shower

• Go to bed early

Other blog posts you might like…

Free ways to nurture yourself in September

Fall elixir recipes

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"Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.

Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence."

― Yoko Ono

September is the month where you notice summer coming to an end and the transition into the cool crispness of autumn begins. It’s a really great opportunity to bring some mindfulness to how you want to begin the new season.

In the past I’ve just charged through these transitions, and my body paid the price. I used to get the worst migraines like clockwork, each time fall rolled around. But since I’ve intentionally followed the flow of the season my fall migraine has been unremarkable, if it happens at all!

There are plenty of ways to intentionally nurture those fall feelings without buying a thing. Here are my three favorite (and free!) ways to start the transition:

Natural light is your friend

Now that the days are getting shorter, it’s a good idea to help your body adjust. Go outside first thing in the morning and at sunset to help your body adapt to the changing light balance.

Limit the influence of the light of your screens on your biology. Leave your phone at home on occasion and use this time to notice the energy of the outside world transitioning. Set a bedtime for your devices this month. Make sure you choose a time you can stick to for the entire season.

Check out this post on a healthy autumn daily routine.

Get grounded in nature

My favorite time to hike here in Northern California is in autumn because the temperature is perfect. But wherever you are, don’t fret too much about the cold weather keeping you housebound.

Set up your warmer hiking gear this month for cooler inspiration walks through winter: boots, layers, waterproof clothing, handkerchiefs, and thick socks are all great. 

Ground yourself in nature or at the closest park while it’s still warm enough to be barefoot. Take off your shoes and connect to the earth. Feel it’s energy flowing through you, helping your body harmonize with nature.

Wrap up projects

A transitional season like spring, fall is prime time to begin decluttering from all your summer work. Clear away and wrap up projects. Clean out and organize your workspace.

 Tip: Use any remaining pages of old notebooks to begin a morning journaling habit.

Set aside 10 minutes, a few days a week, to catalog photos, work, writing, and other odds and ends from the summer while you still remember what’s what.

Journal prompt:

What projects can I let go of right now to increase balance and harmony?

Other posts you’ll love….

Fall elixir recipes

The best self-care routine for fall

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