My obsession with the idea of habit & rituals led me to do an informal survey of my friends and family about their habits and routines. The answers offered fascinating insight into some of my closest people that I didn’t know. Got me wondering if I wonder if they recognize the powerful effect their rituals have in their lives. There is so much power in habit/ritual/routine…. So I wanted to share some of them with you - and show you their impact.

I was recently invited to do an exercise where I had to visualize the end of my life and look at my “older, wiser self”. I had to imagine - as if watching it on a screen - where she was; the feel of that place, the smell of it. I was asked to contemplate as a curious outsider - what does her life look like?  What would she want me to know? What would she say were her greatest experiences, joys, sources of gratitude?  What might her regrets be? Here’s what Big Anne showed me:

I was gone for a week, and it wasn’t a total news blackout for me – I got the headlines. Upon my return home, the stressful news of the world hadn’t changed much. Climate change was still making the weather scary. Political parties still sniping at each other and starting culture wars. Bad guys around the world are still being greedy and cruel to the less fortunate. People still frightened by things that they don’t understand about each other. It was not made better or worse by my lack of consuming the details.

Also as a professional organizer for over ten years, I know all to well what it’s like to take too much of your parents' stuff. I can’t count the number of clients whose initial call with me includes the phrase “...oh and I’ve got a bunch of things in my basement that came from my parents’ house that I need to figure out what to do with…”  That was a burden that I did not want for myself. I was very deliberate about what I chose to keep take home with me.