Thursday 18 August 2016

Laura Motes - Healthy Living and Positive Rituals

Laura Motes has been working as a police officer for a long time and she knows about the power of positive rituals.
Great athletes, CEOs, and doctors all rely on positive rituals to structure their lives and achieve their goals. The same is true of people who ground their lives in certain values, such as healthy living.

It is easy to dismiss the idea of rituals because it may seem that they would make your life rigid and extreme.
At the same time, if you observe the areas of your life where you perform exceptionally well, you will notice that you already have a lot of rituals around it. These rituals may include a morning routine of getting ready, a planning session for the day or week ahead, or the time that you spend with your family.


Laura Motes
Rituals do not preclude spontaneity. On the contrary, they provide a level of security and comfort that allows us to try new things, take risks, and improvise. They provide a stable, predictable environment where breakthroughs and records can happen. Think of a great athlete establishing a new record or an executive making progress by coming up with a highly unusual structure for a deal that works for all the involved parties.

Rituals can also facilitate recovery and renewal. By their nature, rituals conserve energy. Will and discipline are resources that have very limited reserves. The unfortunate truth is that we have very little will power, and can control our behavior consciously for only short periods of time.

This is why rituals are so powerful. If you want to take your health to the next level, don’t hope that you will have enough will power. Create rituals that will help you accomplish your goals. As someone who worked as a police officer for twenty-one years, Laura Motes has created a number of rituals for herself, including spending time off on Broad River.