The ceremony is a powerful human mechanism for managing extreme emotions and stress.
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “Harvard Business Comment “(ID: hbrchinese) .
This sudden epidemic disrupted people ’s daily rhythm. Maybe you experienced sorrow and loss, maybe you are feeling anxious, and you feel that you have lost control of life. These are because your sense of ritual is destroyed.
The article that Little Buddha will share today will tell you that our lives are inseparable from rituals. Now you can create new rituals to regain control of your life.
Recently, like many families, our family had a virtual happy hour on a certain night. At dinner time, we chatted to the sky as usual, joking and talking to each other, but these were all done through the screen. In this hour, we talked, laughed, and were all comfortable. Immediately the next day my brother-in-law sent me a message to ask me: When will the happy hour begin?
At that moment I did n’t realize that what we did was to enter a ritual as a way to deal with the anxiety and sadness caused by the current epidemic. It turns out that rituals are a powerful human mechanism for managing extreme emotions and stress, and we should now rely on them.
To understand how rituals work and how we adopt and adapt them, I consulted Mike Norton. He is a professor at Harvard Business School and has done research on ceremonies and their impact on our happy lives. For clarity, we have briefly edited the dialogue below.
HBR: What can the ceremony bring us?
Norton: My colleague Francisca Gino and other colleagues found in the research that ceremonies do play an important role in many ways. For example, in the face of loss, rituals can help alleviate our pain, rituals with family members can make us feel more intimate, and rituals between partners can make our relationship stronger. The rituals we are talking about do not refer to “elaborate religious ceremonies”-through our research, we will find that most people’s rituals are personal and unique to them. No family has Thanksgiving (and ordinary dinner) like yours.He and the couple have the same secret nickname.
The most important thing for people all over the world now is that when we face real and unavoidable pain, these special rituals can make us regain our sense of control over life. When we experience loss, we feel out of control-we don’t want it to happen, but we still have no power to return to the sky. This is a very unpleasant feeling in itself, the feeling that you can’t control your life. The ceremony helped us restore some control.
HBR: How do you study rituals?
First of all, we will remind them of someone they have lost, or the end of a relationship-both of these things will bring pain and anxiety to each other. Then we will ask: What did you do afterwards? I thought they would talk about the details of the funeral and how to move their things out of the room they used to live with. But we were surprised to find that only 10% of the answers revolved around these public events, and 5% of people paid attention to each other-yes, people attended the funeral; but most people talked about their personal ceremonies, which is a bit heartening broken. A man who lost his spouse said, “I wash his car every week like he used to.” Some relationships, although not as heartbreaking, are equally ceremonial.
Someone said: “I found all the photos we took together during the date. Then I tore up the photos (even if I really liked them), and then burned the intimate photos of our first kiss in the park. . “
HBR: Is this sense of ritual useful? Does it really make you feel better?
Useful. It is said that people will feel more comfortable at that moment, even if they just recall the ritual they have done. But we also want to know whether these rituals themselves really make people feel better. It’s difficult, after all, you can’t impose losses on others to verify whether the ceremony really makes sense. We invited a group of 10 people to participate in our experiment, rewarding one of them with $ 200 and telling him to leave, while others must stay to complete our boring experiment.
There is a “loss”, after all, no one else gets a bonus. (We know that a loss of $ 200 is different from ending a relationship, so we see this loss as a fairly minor of the many “losses.”) Then, we arranged these people with “losses” to hold ceremonies-they Draw a picture that expresses the inner feelings, and sprinkle salt on it, and then tear it apart. Those who have done rituals tend to feel a little bit better about money loss than they have never done before.
HBR: So have you created a truly useful ritual?
It is true-this is based on the ritual shared by the participants in our survey work, but for the people in our research work, this is a new ritual that has not been tried before. But you can imagine that when people design their own ritual, the ritual is more about the individual and the symbolic meaning-for example, the wife givesCar wash.
HBR: What makes the ritual a ritual? Is it just because of repetition?
Not exactly. When you repeat these rituals, they do look more and more powerful. But even one-time rituals can be effective—burning photos where you meet your predecessor is likely to be a one-time event. The important thing is that you name it a ritual, you are actually doing it, not just thinking about it. Many things we do every day are a bit ceremonial. We may prepare for work in the same way every morning-you may brush your teeth first, and then take a shower.
If I ask people to change the order and tell me how they feel, some people may not care, but others say they feel a little uncomfortable and a little wrong. For the latter, their morning habits have become a kind of ritual-which is very important to them. When they do it in the right order, they feel they are ready for a new day. (Of course, making too many rituals can also interfere with your life, which is not suitable, just like obsessive-compulsive disorder.)
HBR: Is exercise a ritual?
It is possible. For many people, there is also a ritual during exercise, it is a fixed habit. They choose to walk on the same road at the same time every day, and even tie their shoes in the same way every time; therefore, this sense of full control often reduces anxiety and stress. Every spring I was deeply touched—I live by a small river—the weather became warmer every day, and suddenly all the people here came out to run around the lake. I think they can go everywhere, but they run around the same route. It was a sense of ritual to regain control of life after a long uncontrolled winter.
HBR: Some ceremonies look unreasonable. What are the benefits of burning photos in the park?
The utility of the ritual has nothing to do with its practicality. Absurd rituals can have high utility. If such a ritual can give you a sense of control, it is the most important if it can calm your anxiety. Think of performers who perform strange rituals before performing. They knew that it would n’t do much to repeat the spell while circling three times, but it would make them more calm during the ceremony.
Some ceremonies are considered unreasonable (“This is crazy, why should I do this?”) In fact, it helps to overcome physical and mental disabilities. Research shows that accepting the ritual, even how strange, can improve our happiness. Your family ’s Thanksgiving may be very personal, but this is your Thanksgiving; the way you and your partner say good night may be silly, but this is your tradition. Instead of avoiding it, it ’s better to name it as a ritual, often Implementation.
HBR: Are there any new rituals to deal with this epidemic?
I have seen many new rituals and variations of rituals. People are using technology to reproduce their rituals as much as possible. But they also innovate ceremonies. A familyThe company has started all the virtual meetings, let the participants click on the pictures of Patrick in SpongeBob SquarePants to express their feelings. It’s hard to imagine what is more stupid than this, but think about what this means for the team: it has become a pre-meeting ceremony, it gives people a sense of control and in a new and uncomfortable situation Familiarity.
We lost many public ceremonies, including simple things like drinking coffee or drinks with friends, which led people to naturally find new rituals. People cannot go to church, so they create new rituals to deal with this sense of loss and anxiety.
HBR: So we will intentionally say “I want to create a new ritual”, but does it really work?
It worked, think about it. If we can arrange some rituals in the laboratory, and this ritual is effective, then you can create your own ritual. In fact, you have been creating your own life ritual. Your family celebrates Thanksgiving in a unique way, and you and your spouse or partner have their own unique nicknames. Who has n’t thought of wearing the same hat or socks, or sitting in the same place, will increase the odds of their favorite sports team winning.
They do n’t have to happen organizedly. You can incorporate these rituals into your life. The woman who washed the car of her husband made the story. This is not an established ritual in history, but it does work. Sometimes, the best rituals are individual special rituals.
I also saw people try various rituals, and then said, “Let ’s enter the ritual through video every Tuesday at 9pm.” We are very happy to know that something will happen at a fixed time, which makes our lives regular Change. When many of us feel we have no control, the ritual will give us a sense of control again.
Therefore, I encourage those who feel anxious and sad now to try to invent a ritual, or pay attention to adding the necessary rituals to their work, family and partner life.
Scott Berinato | Text
Scott Berinato is a senior editor of the Harvard Business Review.
Wuyi Léster | Translation Zhou Qiang | School