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So you know your values and you've done the work to identify them. But the busyness of life, it's actually hard to live them. We get drawn into all kinds of different things. Some of them are values aligned and some of them are not. So there's a gap between knowing what your values are and actually living them. And one of the easiest ways to bridge that gap is by creating rituals and embedding rituals that we kind of make the practice of living our values automatic. And that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. So welcome to the Values Lab, a podcast series for founders and portfolio career professionals seeking inspiration to live a more values-led life. And I'm your host for today, Virin Tugrah, founder of In the Game and Values Map. And the inspiration for today's episode is based on my recent podcast chat with Megan, where Megan talked about this ritual of setting intentions in the morning in line with the value of best self. And it got me thinking a little bit about how we can use rituals more broadly to live a more values of life. Now, when I speak to a lot of people about kind of integrating their values into their life, one of the things they find really challenging is that life is really busy. There's a lot of things diff going on. We get pulled in a lot of different directions. And sometimes it's hard to keep our values at the front of mind when we're making these decisions and making these actions. And so we kind of slip into autopilot. So even though we know what matters, even though we might know what our values are, it's actually a little bit difficult to act on it because we're competing against all these other forces. And this is where I see rituals playing a really powerful role, where we have these moments of time, either during the day or during the week, where we've kind of created this container for living in line with our values. And it makes the process of living in line with our values a little bit more automatic. So something rather than something we kind of have to remember and think about all the time, once we've kind of embedded these values, it makes things more natural. And I really liked uh, Megan, there's a phrase used which was you need to practice your values outside of stress to access them under stress. And I really do believe this. I think in order to get better at living in a more values-aligned way, it's kind of we almost need to practice it. And so when things do get really busy, we've all almost it doesn't really matter because we've all we we know how to live in line with our values. It's something we've kind of practiced. And so I think uh rituals also help us practice this. Now, for today, we're going to be talking about two types of rituals. Uh one similar to what Megan discussed, which is around intention-setting rituals, and the other one is looking more at kind of values-led rituals. So we'll start with the intention-setting rituals. So this in this might be something you do um daily, might be something you do you do weekly. Um for me, this is actually something I practice uh quarterly. Um so it's it's basically around creating a container of time to think how am I going to live in a more values-aligned way. And this I think this works particularly well for people who perhaps already journal or you already have a morning routine that you can anchor this to. I think this works well for people that like spending time reflecting and planning. So I think these types of intention-setting rituals are really useful for people that maybe have got some of these practices in place already and you can kind of build on top of them. Um, so when Megan shared this practice, it was about asking, what's my intention for today? What's coming up for me? Where's my head at? Where's my heart at? And then given all of this, how can I live my value, and in Megan's instance it was best self, in this context today. So I think there's a number of ways in which you can kind of adapt this value. Uh, I think if you can center it around a couple of your values, it's handy. You don't need to do it for all of them, and maybe pick pick one or two. And maybe if you're someone that's using something like this in the morning, is to go, how will I live with this value in mind today? Or what's one thing I can do today that honors this value. Another version of this might be looking at it a little bit more of like a weekly intention setting. So when I spoke with Steph Clark, Steph does this well, where she'll take a calendar and look at the value of fun and think about what are all the fun things I want to do this week. And so you could do a practice like that, which is what does a, you know, fun-aligned week look like for me and replacing fun with whatever your value is. Now, I actually take this practice and I do it quarterly, roughly, uh roughly quarterly, um, when I will sit down and I'll take each of my values and I'll give them a one-to-five score on how well I feel like I'm living in line with that value at the moment. So I'll take fun, creativity, growth, achievement, and give it a one-to-five score of freedom, shouldn't forget one of my strongest ones. Um, give it a one to five score in terms of how well am I living at the moment. And then based on where those scores fall, the ones which are maybe a little bit lower, and typically it's the ones which are a little bit lower, I'll give a little bit more attention to that quarter. And I'll go, how can I um, you know, let's say funds come out a little bit on the low side, I'll go, how can I kind of infuse more fun into my life? Or let's say I think I've mentioned in a couple of episodes uh prior that freedom had come under um, you know, a little bit of attack from the nature of life. So it's like, how can I inject more freedom into my life? So I think I do it on a quarterly basis. So the intention setting really is around kind of sitting down and kind of going, how can I live in alignment with a particular value uh over a given period of time. Now the next one I'll talk about, which is values-led rituals, which are daily or weekly practices that are the value. Basically, by by instead of thinking about the value and what you're going to do, you actually the ritual is you doing the value. And you build rituals that embody the value itself. So, again, for fun, is a what can I do each day that's fun, or what can I do each week that's creative. And so these things don't need to be, they don't need to be huge things. They can be really kind of small and specific things. There can be things that are a little bit bigger. Um, the importance is they're kind of happening on a regular, regular cadence. So to give you a silly example from a the fun perspective, um, and this was when the kids were a little younger, and I dropped them off to school. And I kind of, you know, they dropped off, you drop the kids off and go, have a good day. It's fine, you know, a little bit boring. So I said, how can we make just that little tiny thing? Can we just make it a little bit more fun? And we end up doing this thing where we'd go through the alphabet, and instead of saying have a good day, it would have to be something like have and then the it would have to begin with A and then it would be B, and then it'd be C. So have an amazing day might be one, and they'd come back with something else that begins with A. And then being kids, they'd probably use silly words, or they did use silly words. Um and so we kind of worked through the alphabet. So it kind of made that drop-off slightly silly, slightly more fun, and it took like 10 seconds. So these things don't have to be huge, they can be absolutely micro, but it was a way of kind of injecting just a little bit of fun into the day. And sometimes we'd even wrap it up when I'd pick them up, and if um we'd we'd kind of ask them, especially if it was a bit of a uh a silly word. Um, you know, I think I remember saying to have a cantankerous day for C. And at the end I was like, Did you have a cantankerous day? And it just creates a little bit of a giggle and it creates a little bit of a fun moment. And it was something that happened daily uh for drop-off. So it can be really small. Um bigger version of this is for me, for the value of particularly for creativity, it does tap into fun a little bit, is my wife, she does a lot of like extracurricular stuff. She's uh part of the Muay Thai community, she runs a lot of shows, and so pretty much once every fortnight, she'll have something on. And I'm a kind of ambivert. I look I like going out and doing stuff, but it's not like I also need time to myself to recharge. And I find actually, because of the nature of the work that I do, I the often offset is I I don't often get as much time to myself as I'd like. So instead of me kind of going out and doing something once every two months, we came up with this thing of like, well, I just need a container of time where I don't have the kids, but I can I've got space to be creative and do fun things. And so we called it Tricky Time. Reason is my my gamertag is tricky, so it's become tricky time. And I've got this basically every fortnight, I've got this um day where I could just spend doing fun and creative things. So I've got this container of time for creativity. So in that creative time, it there could be a bunch of stuff that I end up doing. Um it's often as I say, it's a blend of creativity and fun. So sometimes I'll spend it watching movies, and I'll talk about that in a moment. Um I like DJing. Um I like sometimes from the growth perspective, I just like spending a whole day learning a new piece of software or trying it out. There's, you know, sometimes it's hard to pick up software and just like half-hour stints. I remember a while ago to kind of tap into my values of growth and creativity. I spent that day trying to learn Ableton Live to make some music. So I ends up it's a container, I end up doing a whole bunch of random stuff, but it's this container of free time where I can focus. Usually it's something to do with with creativity, um, and I've got that container of time to do it. And my wife will spend that one day a fortnight doing the other things that align very well with her values. Um so we've kind of created this space for each other to do that thing once every couple of weeks. So very micro example, and then a much bigger example there, but essentially it's about ritualizing it, you know, give it a fun name if you need to, and then um trying to make it specific is really important and scheduled. I think they're the kind of things that are that are key. But often what happens, and I find when I talk to people like that doing this is there'll be some things that kind of get in the way. There's barriers. And I say I sometimes think when we're building out these rituals, it's worthwhile thinking a little bit about what the barriers are and being proactive to removing those barriers. So when you try these things out, think what are the things that actually get in my way? Um, now there's a whole bunch of barriers, which I say are common barriers. So decision fatigue is one. Like sometimes we get to that point and it's like, I don't even know what to do. Um sometimes it's like we don't actually prioritize the time. So it's not just about putting it in your diary, but if it is in your diary, you kind of stick, stick to it. And it's, I think it's really that's really key. I often find as well the barrier is we haven't created any structure around it, so the intention's a little bit vague and it makes it again har again hard to act on it. And sometimes there's friction, there's too many steps to doing the thing. So, you know, when we think about habits that least people try and put in place, like exercise is one, but if there are too many steps to getting to the gym or going for a run and there's too much friction, the thing doesn't end up happening. So I'd like to think like you to think a little bit about in a moment when you're thinking about putting in place and rituals, what are your what are your barriers? And I I mentioned I was going to mention my movie watching one, uh movie watching practice um as an example. And I'll kind of talk a little bit about that because I love watching movies. Movies for me is an expression of fun. When I think about fun things, I love getting like sitting down, getting some nice snacks and switching on a really good movie. I love it. And I found actually the biggest barrier were for me watching more movies is just like sitting, once I sit down, and then it's like, what am I gonna watch? And I'm not- I know a lot of people have this habit. You kind of end up scrolling for ages. You end up scrolling more time than you do watching, or you end up not watching because you spent so much time scrolling. So what I ended up doing was I ended up building a watch list. I kind of went systematically, okay, I'm gonna build a watch list. I now use Letterboxd. So if you use Letterboxd, let me know. I'd love to kind of add you one. Um but I went through and kind of popped all the films I want to watch. They built this watch list, and I thought, this is great. Now I've kind of narrowed it down, so I'm never going to like have to scroll randomly. I've got the things I want to watch. Axe the scrolling. But what I found is my my watch list is ginormous. It's 200 movies. And so I'd end up in a bit of decision paralysis before choosing a film. So even though I've got it whittled down, it's still there's too much, still too much from a decision perspective. I was getting too many options, too much decision fatigue. So I end up what I've done now is I I have a running list of up next, which is roughly 15 movies that are the ones I want to watch next that I know this is key, that are nowhere available on like services, streaming services, or whatever. So again, what used to happen with the 200 is I land on a movie and then I find it's not available in Australia or it's at the cinemas, and it's like, ah, I'm not like it was frustrating. So I've got 15 which I know I can actually watch. And then from the 15, it's much better. I I need a bit of choice because I need to be able to pick a movie based on my mood, my vibe, what kind of um genre I want to watch, like how much time I've got available. There are some things which dictate what I fancy watching, but I've basically removed a lot of the barriers. And so it's much easier now when I sit down, I just go to that list of 15 and pick one of the 15 because they're up next. And so I've removed that barrier. So I've systematized the uh process. So thinking a little bit, you know, if I'm thinking through examples that people have shared with me, like people who value creativity, for example, but they don't know what to work on next. So it's things like maybe keep a running list of the creative prompts and ideas you've got, uh, or set some constraints. One of my favorites is um uh struthless. Um I hope you don't butcher this example, but he was like, he he was like, I want I want to draw more, but it's so hard to think of what to draw every day. And so he set a constraint of, I think he said he's gonna draw a bin chicken every day. And I I'll try and link it in the comments because I think it's such a good example of it's a daily ritual, it's a practice that always happens, and he's removed the big thing, which is like I don't know what to draw. Sometimes we're like, we value connection. It's like I don't know, everyone's busy, it's hard to get time and calendars. And I know people that just go, hey, and I think this is a really great practice, is once every month, this thing is happening. Whoever can make it can make it, whoever can't, can't, but it's going ahead no matter what. And I think then making it automatic and scheduled, it just means that you're removing a whole bunch of friction from the process. So I think the key principles here is if we want to kind of really get those rituals working, is remove the barrier and remove the thing that stops you from doing it. So something I'd like you to have a think about now is maybe pick one of your values. And I think you don't have to pick all of them, just pick one, one value to start with. And I think we'll focus on kind of values-led rituals here. So think about one of those values and think a little bit about what is a small practice that you could do, maybe daily or weekly, that would embody this value. It can be a really small thing, can be a really big thing. Something to help you think is what are some of the things that kind of get in your way from living this value? So, say, for example, you've got your value around creativity, what are the things that get in the way from living this value? Is it decision fatigue? Is it you feel like you don't have time? Is there a lot of friction or no structure? And then so think about your ritual and think about how you can design the ritual in a way to remove the barrier. So, do you need to build a bit of a workflow around it or a system around it? Do you need to be a little bit more specific around it? Do you need to make it a little more accessible? So let's say I this is something that's come up for me as well. It's like it's even making this podcast, how can I make it as easy as possible? Well, I've got a box with my podcast equipment in it. So anytime I'm ready to record, I just pull the box out and that's got all the stuff. So I don't need to go finding the stuff is there in a box. How can you make it a little bit more accessible? And then start small. So pick one ritual with one value, find your cadence, and then just see how you go. I think a lot of this stuff is experimental, experimental. We need to find what works with us. I think, you know, even with my movie watching, I I thought the big watch watch list was the way to go, and I had to kind of refine it. And I think that's a lot of it, you've got to start, and then you'll figure out how to refine it and what works for you and what doesn't. So I think knowing your values often isn't enough. We need to figure out how we're going to live them. And I think rituals are the a great way to create a container to do it. We just need to make sure we're designing those rituals with the barriers in mind. Give it a crack. Start with one value or one ritual, or maybe you've got something you do already. And I'd love to know if you've got a ritual going or you're starting a new one, what do you do or what are you putting in place? And really keen to hear what types of things um that you're experimenting with. Um that's all for this week. Thanks for tuning in, and I'm really looking forward to the next one. See you then.