Megan Hyatt Miller: Hey, guys. This week on Lead to Win we have something really special for you. You may know that we have another highly rated business podcast called Focus on This. Well, this week, we’re trading places so you can get a taste of both shows. Today, we’re bringing you one of our most popular episodes of Focus on This. It’s called Two Rituals to Start and End Your Days. I know you’re really going to enjoy it.

Michel Verbs Boyer: Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the Internet so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays, with your hosts Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton.

Courtney Baker: Hey, Blake.

Blake Stratton: Hey, Courtney.

Courtney: Sometimes I wish people could actually see all of the crazy things that happen in this room when we’re recording.

Blake: I know. Verbs, I’ve never seen you dance on a table before, but I’m so glad you chose this moment to do that.

Verbs: We need a Focus on This cam.

Courtney: So true.

Blake: It’s impressive.

Courtney: Do you know what’s more impressive?

Blake: What?

Courtney: What we’re going to be talking about today.

Blake: Wow. Great segue. What are we talking about today on this Monday? Get people going. They’re on the treadmill. They’re tuning in. They’re waiting for me to sing some stupid rap or some 90s song. I haven’t given it to them yet. So, what can they look forward to in this episode, Courtney?

Courtney: Well, if you’ve ever experienced just not being able to get things on track, like, you always feel like there’s this obstacle of establishing habits or maybe you find yourself at night always Netflix binging, and then you’re like, “What just happened tonight?”

Blake: Yeah. Or you set your alarm because you’re like, “This is the day,” but then you snooze. You get up late, so then you’re running a little bit late almost to every appointment, and then you get home from work late, and you do some work because you didn’t get it done at work, and then you go to bed late, and then that makes it harder to get up the next day. It’s a cycle.

Courtney: And then the next day you’re like, “I’m so tired. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

Blake: I hear this from people a lot because I’ll share about what I do for a living and the Full Focus Planner. They look at me, and they go, “Man, I wish I was that disciplined.” What I want to tell them is, “Oh, you actually are already disciplined. You have all the discipline you need. It’s really not about becoming more disciplined. You don’t need more self-discipline. What you need are solid rituals.”

Courtney: This is literally putting your life on a template. I mean, I don’t know a better way to put it. Like, put it on a template, and you just run the template. It’s pretty straightforward.

Blake: That’s right. Today, specifically, we’re going to talk about two rituals that will become transformative for every day. Workday, non-workday…these rituals will be great.

Courtney: I think it’s good to point out now we’re going to spend this episode and the next episode talking about rituals.

Blake: Yeah, we’re going to go deep.

Courtney: I know there are so many people… We get a lot of people who come on the show asking us questions about rituals, so I’m really excited about being able to have these two episodes where we really dig in on rituals.

Blake: I think people have questions about it because they want to feel relaxed. They want to feel in control. They want to set themselves up for success and become the type of person they dream of becoming ultimately, but they get stuck trying to piecemeal together habits or do better or kind of willpower their way to that destination. So, I think getting out the scuba gear and going deep on rituals these next two weeks will be awesome. Then once you dial this in, you’ll have people going, “Wow! You’re so productive. What do you do? You must have so much discipline.”

Courtney: And actually, it’s just like, “No. I just have this ritual. I have a playbook I’m going by, and it’s really easy.”

Blake: I like that term better: a playbook. Maybe because I’m more of a sports guy.

Courtney: That is a little cooler.

Blake: You hear people talk about this. Tom Brady will always talk about this with the Patriots. They win so much, and he’s like, “Oh, well, we take time to study film, and then we create a game plan.”

Courtney: “I just run the playbook.”

Blake: “We just run the playbook, and we know we can execute on that.” Let’s move on. We’re going to dig into rituals today. Before we do, though, I want you guys to hear from our producer Verbs. We know you love him. We love him too. Verbs, say hello to the people.

Verbs: Hello to the people once again. This is where I come and speak to you about your invitation, your specific, special invitation to join our Full Focus Planner community right there on Facebook. All you need to do is search inside Facebook for “Full Focus Planner community,” and you will be right in the midst amongst other planners, domestic and international, talking about challenges, talking about hacks and tips they may use to increase their planner usage. It’s a really good time in there, so please make sure you join it today.

Courtney: You can take control of your day with two simple rituals. These are two core rituals we’re going to dive into today, and then next week, we’re going to hit two additional rituals. The first ritual we’re going to talk about today is the morning ritual.

Blake: The morning ritual. I would say this ritual gets the most glory. When people think of a ritual, they tend to think of waking up in the morning. So we’ll start there. We’re going to go deeper into other rituals, but I think this is a critical one, because what you do when you first wake up sets the tone for the rest of your day.

Courtney: Actually, before we go any farther, we have a tool that will help guide you through this process. I want to go ahead and give you the link for that. It’s going to take you step-by-step, in addition to listening to this podcast.

Blake: You’re giving them the link right now.

Courtney: Yeah, I’m just going to go ahead and give it to them.

Blake: Oh, wow.

Courtney: It’s focusonthispodcast.com/ritual.

Blake: I love it. A morning ritual, simply stated, is a set of activities you do every morning. A ritual… Sometimes there’s an association with spirituality or something like that. It’s really just what you are going to do every morning, and the goal is to automate the start of your day.

When you automate the start of your day, it saves you the mental bandwidth of “Oh, what should I do next? Should I make breakfast? What shall I have for breakfast? I should probably get dressed. Well, I should probably think about this. Should I check my email?” There are so many decisions we can make if we don’t have a ritual in the morning that will just sap us and make us feel defeated and overwhelmed before the day even begins.

Courtney: Actually, there are a lot of studies about habits, and anytime you have to stop and think and make a decision, it’s not a habit. So, installing this ritual where it’s on autopilot is really important.

Blake: The nice thing about a morning ritual is that it’s up to you. You get to decide what needs to go there. I think the place, when you’re creating your morning ritual, is to decide how you want to feel. “How do I want to feel? Do I want to feel relaxed? Do I want to feel at peace? Do I want to feel excited, inspired? How do I want to feel?” Sometimes people, when they think of a morning ritual, will look up, “Well, what does Oprah do as a morning ritual? I’ll do that.”

That’s not a bad place to start for inspiration, to look at what someone else does. I think that’s okay. But ultimately, you need to own “How do I want to feel?” and that’s the starting place. You don’t want to just do things, like, “Oh, I should walk for a mile, because that’s what a good productive person does. They walk a mile in the morning.” Decide “How do I want to feel?” That’s step one. Then, next, write down what you already do.

I think this is a little counterintuitive, Courtney, because sometimes we think, “Oh, what do I want to do as a morning ritual?” and we just think, “Oh, I’m going to read half a book, and I’m going to run a mile, and I’m going to do this thing,” and then we get up in the morning and it’s like, “Oh my gosh! I’m so exhausted from my morning ritual.” We need to decide how we want to feel, and then, before we start writing down a list of activities, start by writing down what we’re already doing.

Courtney: As you start writing down what you already do, I think asking yourself the question of, “Does that contribute to the feeling I want to have each morning?” Then you can say, “That needs to go” or “I need to add something in addition to these that are going to get me the result I want.” If you use the Full Focus Planner, you’re going to see an Ideal Week in your planner. It’s on pages 26 and 27. But a really great tool for you to use…it really walks you step-by-step…is the Ritual Builder, and that’s at focusonthispodcast.com/ritual.

Blake: Yeah. Even if you are familiar with rituals… I still use that every quarter. As a part of the Quarterly Preview, you take a look at your rituals. I think that’s a great time to review “Is this ritual producing what I want?” I’ll go through that Ritual Builder, because it forces me to slow down and own, ”What am I already doing?”

An example of this, for me… I can remember when I needed to revisit my morning ritual. I wrote down what I was already doing, which was hard to be honest about, because the first thing I did when I would wake up was I would pick up my phone and I would open my email or I would open Instagram, and then I would scroll, scroll, scroll mindlessly or I’d think, “Oh, right. That person emailed me with this. I should probably do this.”

And before I knew it, I already felt a little bit overwhelmed. I didn’t feel good doing that. I felt like, “Hey, I have time to do this. This is a little bit of ‘me’ time.” I’m still under the covers. I’m just scrolling. But when I wrote that down and asked myself this question, “What does that produce?” Well, it actually increases my stress level. It makes me feel more tired. I want to just stay in bed. It doesn’t make me want to get out of bed, and ultimately, it doesn’t make me feel good.

So, I had to eliminate that from my morning. I was like, “I need to replace that with something else.” The trigger for me… It was hard to break automatically picking up my phone, so instead, what I did was I gave myself something different to do when I picked up my phone. So, I picked up my phone, and I just hit “play” on an affirmation I had recorded. It’s kind of nerdy, but listening to it made me feel great, and it helped remind me of what was important, and it made me want to get out of bed and start living my life.

Courtney: Once you’ve written down the things you’re already doing, I think there are two questions to ask yourself: Are you allowing enough time for these things, and are you wasting time on things that distract you? I think your story is probably resonating with a lot of people out there. I don’t think that’s uncommon. That’s a trap a lot of us fall into. This little tiny device is the king of distraction for all of us. So, figuring out ways to be intentional and making sure that’s not the case every morning of our lives.

Blake: What’s something you’ve cycled into your morning ritual, Courtney, that has helped you?

Courtney: Well, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but when you have a young child at home, especially in the very early years, it’s chaos. You’re basically in survival mode. You’re just like, “Okay.”

Blake: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was sleeping through the night three days after she was born.

Courtney: I think you get to a point where you can make the choice to do a couple of different things. You can allow the day to just happen to you. I had a season where every morning it was chaos, trying to figure out, “How do I keep a child entertained while I get in the shower and get ready?” It was just chaos.

When I finally realized, “Okay. My morning ritual has to be I am ready to go when she gets up,” for me… Again, this is just me personally. Not everybody has the same situation. That was the key. When I figured that out about my ritual and shifted things so I was ready when she got up, it totally changed my life, literally.

Blake: You probably felt more in control. That’s how I felt for the longest time as a new dad. I felt kind of reactive from the start. I think that’s part of the power of a morning ritual. You feel more in control, more in charge of your own life, and as a result, it really has a cascading effect on the rest of the day.

Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of times what we do, even if we have rituals, sometimes we fall into the trap of when things get stressful or things become overwhelming or maybe we’re just in a busier season, the first thing to go a lot of times is our rituals. It’s actually the direct opposite of what we should do.

I have to check myself with this, to hold on tight to those rituals, because that’s what allows me to feel in control and have that sense of accomplishment, that I’ve done everything I can to go about the day the best way possible. But again, when things get stressful, it’s like, “Forget the morning ritual. I’ll just wake up and try to do all the craziness,” and it’s a hot mess.

Blake: Yeah. Your rituals in that way are kind of an anchor to keep you grounded. So, the first ritual is the morning ritual. Now let’s jump to a ritual that I think is often overlooked, which is the evening ritual. Like a morning ritual, it’s just a batch of activities, a set of activities you do but in the evening. The goal of the evening ritual versus the morning ritual is you want to shut down. You want to tidy up and close the day so you can call it done, so you can truly rest and ultimately wake up rejuvenated the next day.

Courtney: I actually think this ritual is probably the one that gets the least amount of love. For me, this quarter, I have a goal of sleeping eight hours a night 90 percent of the time. This has become really important for me right now, because I realized if I need to wake up at 5:00 a.m. for my morning ritual, that means I have to go to bed at 9:00.

There’s just not a lot of time in the evening, so I have to be really intentional about my evening ritual. For me, I was falling into this trap of doing what you were doing first thing in the morning. I would get on Instagram, and then 30 minutes later… I think for other people maybe it’s Netflix. You’re just like, “Where did the time go?”

Blake: Yeah, Netflix asks, “Are you still watching?” Are you still watching old episodes of The Office, Blake?

Verbs: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Blake: It’s such a shame screen.

Verbs: They should be able to program it to say, “Dude, go to bed.”

Courtney: That is true. That would be incredible.

Blake: But you’re right, Courtney. If we don’t start being intentional with our evenings, we just will drift into whatever screen is captivating our attention, and then that has a cascading effect.

Courtney: Yeah. Then the next day, your morning ritual, you’re like, “I didn’t sleep, so I’m just going to…” It cycles around, and it’s hard to get back on track.

Blake: So, what are some things that would go into an evening ritual? I think it probably starts the same way. What does a normal evening look like, but then what kinds of things would you even put in an evening ritual?

Courtney: One thing you might consider doing is just closing screens 30 to 60 minutes before you actually want to go to bed. For me, part of my evening ritual is to load the dishwasher and start it. Maybe you want to prepare your sleep space or lay out your workout clothes for the morning.

Blake: This may be something to talk about with your family. If you have family, if there are other people depending on you in the morning or at night, communicating about this is really powerful. I made the mistake when I first started doing an evening ritual of writing down, “Here’s my evening ritual,” and I didn’t happen to mention that to my wife. And it’s like, “Oh, wait a second. Are you mad at me right now?”

Talking through this and going, “Well, what would it look like? What would be ideal? What do you need? What do I need?” and discussing that together is really powerful, because you may want to add some things, shift some things around. You mentioned dishes. We recently had to shift around when that happens so we have more time to really connect. Otherwise, we end up doing that same thing, where it’s like, “Oh, let’s just turn on the TV and see what happens.” But dialing in what those activities are for you, to help you be rested and rejuvenated, is so powerful.

Courtney: Do you know what’s really interesting? We do this for kids naturally.

Blake: Yeah. You’re right.

Courtney: My daughter eats dinner, and then she has a bath, and then she picks out her three books, and then we do the final teeth brushing, and then she goes to sleep. She has a ritual. We naturally do it for kids, but I think we’re like, “We’re grown-ups. We don’t need a ritual.”

Blake: What happens when kids start doing that is they sleep better. That’s why we do that.

Courtney: So true.

Blake: Guess what? We’re still humans as adults. You will sleep better, get the best rest of your life, when you start having an intentional evening ritual.

Courtney: Maybe this goes without saying, but kids have bedtimes, and so should you. I hate to be the one to say it. I don’t really like rules either. I like to sometimes buck against those, but it’s really good for us. It’s good to have a time that we rest and to know when the best time is for us to start resting.

Blake: Rituals really are an optimizer. If you can’t seem to keep things on track… Maybe you’ve been using the planner for a while but mostly just the daily pages or Weekly Preview. You feel like, “Man, I’m waking up tired. The more I try to hit these goals or do my Big 3, I’m tired, and I need a reset.” It’s time to look at your rituals.

The Ritual Builder Courtney mentioned is a great place to start, because it’ll help you own what you’re already doing so you can get control back and start each day fresh, rejuvenated, excited, energized, and focused, and you can end each day peacefully knowing that, “Hey, I can call this day done, and I can truly rest and relax.” That’s the morning ritual and the evening ritual.

Courtney: All right. So, Verbs, what do you have for us?

Verbs: Thanks, Courtney. As you know, this is the time on the show where we like to dig in and scroll through some of these reviews we’ve been receiving in iTunes. We’re sending a shout-out to jkormanik19. J says, “This podcast is the bomb! It is chock full of useful information for using the Full Focus Planner or just goal setting and goal achievement without the planner.”

You guys are going to like this one. “Hosts Courtney and Blake are fantastic. However, Mr. Verbs (the smartest guy in the room) adds something special. If you’re struggling with goal setting, action steps, and goal achievement, it’s a cannot miss!” There you have it.

Blake: Wow. Verified in the reviews, smartest man in the room.

Verbs: This is the impact you have on people now. I’m getting referred to as the smartest guy in the room, and I love it.

Courtney: That’s amazing. I love that review too. That definitely offsets that one that said we were the most annoying cohosts ever.

Verbs: If you haven’t had a chance yet to review the show on iTunes, please take a minute and do so, and we’ll look forward to reading your review on the air. For now, let’s get to our next caller: Crystal Langdon.

Crystal Langdon: Hello. This is Crystal.

Courtney: Hey, Crystal. This is Courtney and Blake with the Focus on This podcast. How are you?

Crystal: I am good. How are both of you?

Courtney: We are doing really good.

Blake: We’re doing great.

Crystal: Wonderful.

Courtney: So, Crystal, where are you calling from?

Crystal: We are in Upstate New York, so, Albany area. Nice and cold.

Courtney: Yeah, I bet. It’s freezing down here, so I can only imagine. We heard you had a question for us today.

Crystal: First of all, let me just say I love the Full Focus Planner. That is phenomenal, and it’s such a life-changer. But the one place where I kind of trip up a lot is I have my morning routine down, I have good habits there, and I’m knocking it out through the day, but come the end of the day, that’s where I’m getting lost. So, any recommendations or tips I could use to help so that I bring my day to a successful close.

Blake: Just to clarify, are you talking about the end of your day day or the end of your workday?

Crystal: The end of my day day. Actually, Blake, we could do both, because I’m getting better at the end of my workday, shutting things down. “Okay, I’ve checked. I’ve set my goals for the next day.” But then when I get home, I’m kind of lost. I don’t know if it’s just because I need to search for a routine that leads me to shut down the day, but any input you can give me would be helpful.

Blake: That’s a great question. Actually, what we’re talking about on the podcast today is evening rituals, so it plays nicely with that. Before we dive into an evening ritual, have you done the Ideal Week before? Is that a tool you’ve used in the planner?

Crystal: I have, but where I’m weak in it is, again, toward the night, because I say, “Oh, you know what I could do? I could read a book,” and then I get to the end of the day and say, “No, that’s not working for me.” I scored really good halfway through, but it’s just that you got home from work, and how do you transition from working all day to going back into personal life, relaxing, and then going into your evening?

Courtney: This is such a good question. We actually mentioned earlier the evening ritual is the one that probably gets the least amount of love. I think the first place I would start… You’ve kind of hinted that you’ve done this a little bit, but what is important to you at that part of your day? Another question Blake mentioned earlier in the podcast is: How do you want to feel during this part of your day? What are the things that are going to help you be successful for the next day?

Crystal: Oh, that’s awesome.

Courtney: I think working through those three questions would really help you have a list of things you may want to work into an evening ritual.

Crystal: “What is important to you? How do you want to feel?” And what was the third one?

Courtney: What are the things that would help you be ready for the next day? For example, I load and start the dishwasher as part of my evening ritual. It’s not helping me feel necessarily any better, other than a sense of accomplishment that I’ve gotten something done, and I wouldn’t say it’s that incredibly important for me, but it is really helpful to me for starting the next day. So that’s why I think that question is important in there too.

Blake: I would add to that… One of the resources we mentioned in this episode is a ritual builder. It will help guide you through this process. One of the first steps once you’ve defined “Hey, what do I want? How do I want to feel?” is “What’s already happening? What’s my default? If I were to drift during the evening, what does that look like? Am I just turning on the TV watching Netflix? Is it just putting together dinner and then trying to…? What are the things that are already happening?” And then taking stock of that list and going, “Okay. What needs to stay? What needs to go?”

But for where you’re at right now, I would say, absolutely use that resource to help you get started setting up a new ritual, but to be honest, when you set a new ritual, it is an experiment, and I think it’s helpful to think of it that way, to not think of it as “Well, here’s what I have to do every night,” because you don’t want it to feel like just another to-do list that you’re trying to get through in your evening, necessarily. Recognize it will be like playing an instrument. It’ll take a little practice.

I would challenge you to maybe take a week. Maybe you do that process during your Weekly Preview, and then at your next Weekly Preview, just look back. Say, “Hey, I tried that for a week. What was working? What wasn’t working? Did those activities…?” Maybe it’s reading a book. For me, I think that was something that ended up on my evening ritual. “Oh, I know what I want to do. I want to read.” I think I did that because I thought that’s what smart people did.

Crystal: Right. That’s why I kind of laughed.

Courtney: Hey, Blake, that is what I do, so, you know, I don’t know what that says.

Blake: Well, it is. It’s proven true. Smart people do do that. But for people like me, it’s not a part of my evening ritual. Maybe it will be in some season, but in this season, what really helps is creating dedicated space where there is no TV on but I’m just sitting on the couch with my wife and we’re sharing some gratitudes from the day, something like that, something intentional. Just think of it as an experiment and as a project, so when you do your next Weekly Preview you can say, “Hey, how was that? Do I need to make tweaks? Do I need to make adjustments?” Just give yourself grace over the next few weeks to be tweaking that as you go.

Courtney: The other thing we’ve talked about on the podcast that is really helpful with rituals is, a lot of times, when we’re installing a habit goal, to have somewhere to insert that into our rituals later on. There may be a previous habit you’ve worked on that you might want to think about putting as part of your evening ritual too. We mentioned books. That may be a common one. But there may be something else you’ve installed as part of a habit goal you want to also include as part of your evening ritual.

Crystal: I love this. I so appreciate this. I’m going to download… You said there’s going to be more information on this. I love that one that says, “How do you want to feel?” because then what I’ll do… I’m going to start tonight. As I start winding down my day, I’m going to watch for which of the things is like, “Oh, that felt good. That resonated with me. That was peaceful.” That’s what I’m looking for at the end of the day, to just be able to take a breath, not have to make any decisions, and just relax.

So, I’m going to be more in tune to what’s bringing that peaceful feeling. That’s what’s important for me so that I can shift into sleep, and then the things that get me wired up or just don’t bring that satisfaction, I’ll start highlighting them, like, “Okay. That’s got to go. This isn’t the right time for that.” That was really good. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Courtney: Well, thanks for being on the show today, Crystal. We really appreciate you. I’m looking forward to hearing how this goes, how your evening ritual goes, so I hope you’ll post something in the community after you’ve got it installed.

Crystal: Absolutely I will. Thank you both.

Courtney: Thanks, Crystal. I love that Crystal’s question actually lined up… I said a lot of times people call and ask about rituals, and sure enough, today we got someone asking about rituals while we’re talking about rituals.

Blake: It’s not surprising. If you’re like Crystal and struggle with “Okay. What do I do after work? What do I do after ‘achievement mode’? How do I calm down? How do I shift into relaxation?” just to be honest with people, it is a challenge. So, what we have with the Full Focus Planner, with the Ritual Builder… These are tools to help you develop that. I’ll share with you the same thing I shared with Crystal. If you find yourself in that place, give yourself some grace, revisit it during your Weekly Previews, and you’ll get there.

Courtney: As we close this episode, I can feel all of the people listening out there, and they’re thinking, “Okay. But I’m a free spirit. This feels like too many rules.” How does this work, Blake, for people who are saying that, who are like, “I’m just a free spirit”?

Blake: I think that’s a really valid point. The truth is we’re not robots. No one is a robot unless they are a robot and it’s like secret robot. It’s 2020 now, so you could be talking to a…

Courtney: What year was I, Robot?

Blake: With Will Smith?

Courtney: Yeah. What year in the future was that? It had to be like 2024.

Blake: I know. It feels like it’s next year. Can we get Will on the phone?

Courtney: Can we, Verbs?

Verbs: Sure. One second.

Blake: Okay. Cool. So, we’re not robots, so what do we do when we feel like “A ritual is just programing, and it’s stifling”? I have two responses. First, don’t knock it till you try it, because for me… This especially goes for the morning ritual. It’s wild. Putting yourself into autopilot conserves your energy. It really does. Like, making fewer decisions. There are already some things we do on autopilot we’re not even aware of.

Courtney: That’s the truth people need to remember. You are already doing a ritual. You may be a free spirit, but you are already doing a ritual no matter how free your spirit is. So, it’s how do you be intentional about the ritual you’re doing?

Blake: Yes, exactly. So, that’s the first response. But someone on our team, Mandy, had a genius idea. She felt like her ritual would get stale quickly and wouldn’t give her the desired result. How she wants to feel is maybe inspired, but guess what: doing the same thing every day sometimes didn’t lead to that result for her. Or maybe there are some times where “You know what? I have a flight that leaves at such-and-such time. I don’t have my normal time. I have less time than I have on a typical day.” So, if you have kind of an obscure, different schedule day to day, this tip she created is going to be awesome for you. And it is…

Courtney: Basically, what she created was a menu. She established the different things she might want to do and how much time each one took. She had them in categories, so each day she could say, “Okay. For my spirituality, here are my options for the day,” as well as how long they took. Each day, she could pick from each category and create a new morning ritual every morning. It fed her free spirit heart but also gave her a really solid morning ritual.

Blake: Exactly. It was categories like mind, body, soul types of things. So, something that’s going to stimulate her mind, something that’s good for her body, if it’s exercise or something like that, some movement, and then her soul, if it’s reading or prayer or something like that. I just thought that was genius.

Courtney: It’s totally genius. I think your challenge to people to not knock it until you try it… Just try it out. You’re already doing something, so why not do the best version of that thing? I’m really excited to hear how people use and develop their rituals in the community.

Blake: Absolutely. Give us a shout in the community if you develop or if you shift your evening ritual and it’s working for you. I always love good inspirational stuff.

Courtney: Thanks, everybody, for joining us today on Focus on This.

Blake: It is the most productive podcast on the Internet. You know it, but do your friends know it? Do you need to start using hashtags? I think so. If you do, if you happen to share with people that you like this podcast, use #focusonthispodcast.

Courtney: And just a reminder about the download for the Ritual Builder. That’s at focusonthispodcast.com/ritual.

Blake: Next week, we are going to continue to go deep. Bring out the scuba gear. We’re going deep on rituals once more with, to me, my favorite, most transformative ritual I have ever installed. This one changed my world.

Courtney: Totally agree. Anytime I have a staff member who is feeling overwhelmed, I find that they are missing this ritual or maybe they’ve just strayed from doing this specific ritual.

Blake: I know which one you’re talking about. For me, there has been no singular habit that has changed how well I sleep at night than the ritual we’re going to share next week. So, until then…

Courtney and Blake: Stay focused.