The Rituals that Make a Magical Life with Michael Norton Harvard Business School professor and author, Michael Norton, discusses the role and importance of rituals in everyday life–and how they can bring meaning, control, and emotional richness to individual lives, relationships, and communities. -The key difference between habits and rituals—and why rituals hold unique power -The surprising truth behind why you really have rituals for your children’s bedtime -Why chasing happiness is a trap—and what you should aim for instead Michael Norton is a professor at Harvard Business School. He is the author of The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, and the co-author - with Elizabeth Dunn - of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. His research has been the answer to Final Jeopardy and his TEDx talk, How to Buy Happiness, has been viewed more than 4.5 million times. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why are rituals important in everyday life?
And it's as though something is keeping track of us too. If I do my ritual correctly, the good thing will happen. Who's monitoring if we're doing the ritual correct? You know, there's nobody looking. It was superstition as well. Something is monitoring whether I walk under a ladder and then the next day making sure something bad happens to me.
Again, the psychology is very unusual and yet it completely resonates and I do the same thing myself.
Yeah. I've never thought of that. The ladder thing assumes that there's someone monitoring, some greater being monitoring that we go under a ladder, but we would choose to believe in the kind of being that would torment us for walking under a ladder.
That's what religion is. I mean, I'm spiritual, I'm religious, whatever the hell that means. And I always think, is this just a bunch of superstitions we're doing? Like, at what point does prayer and religion go over to... Okay, here's how I, in my life... Michael's like, don't ask me that question.
Yeah, religion, let's get away from religion.
Okay, anyway, this is how I, in my own self, monitor when I'm keeling over towards weird compulsive superstition as opposed to ritual. Which is, for me, when I'm in ritual, it's because I am there to remember a reality that already exists. When I move to superstition, it's when I start believing I am creating a reality with the action. So it happens to me.
If I have a weird morning and I can't do my candle and I can't do my meeting and I can't do whatever, and then I'm like, well, I'm fucked. Or if anything goes bad that day, I'm like, well, what did I expect? I didn't do my candle.
And had I only done my candle, this would have been amazing.
Could we have like a temporary thing? Like, let's just hypothetically say, because I'm an optimizer, unfortunately, but let's just hypothetically say that you don't have time to do your candle or your meeting or whatever in the morning. Is there a replacement ritual that you can do that can be like, bam, we're still going to be good today?
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