Harnessing Regular Social Rituals for Resilience: How Consistent Practices Can Help You Navigate Life’s Challenges
Kevin Frick is the Vice Dean for Education at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. 
He has been an avid runner for the past 11 years – participating in 9 marathons (including Boston in 2013) and one 55 mile ultra marathon in South Africa. He has spoken about mentoring to the Carey Women in Business student association and for TEDx JHU DC. You can follow his personal blog where many of his poems appear as well as his professional blog
Many months have come and gone since my family’s kitchen fire and we are still not back in our permanent home. Adding to the stress, we relocated to a second temporary residence over a long weekend.
Numerous people told me they neither knew of the fire, nor that I’d moved a second time until I posted something online. This left many wondering “how did you just keep going as if nothing had happened?”
Having written about resilience and patience previously, I wanted to share a thought on resilience when facing changes and challenges: regular social rituals.
I’d like to elaborate on each word, in a slightly different order…
- Rituals—While many definitions of ritual focus on religion, think of the word ritual more broadly. Generally, rituals involve a series of actions following a specified order. When facing unexpected changes or challenges, focus on something that provides order.
- Regular—Accentuate the sense of order by performing the ritual regularly. Setting those actions into the rhythm of your life gives you flow.
- Social—Performing rituals regularly with others helps build a network of individuals with whom you can share your thoughts and fears about the changes and challenges. Receiving thoughtful and constructive feedback is critical to reducing the tensions that arise when facing changes and challenges.
How does this manifest in my life? In the midst of the move, I took time out to run with a training partner and then walked a local farmers’ market afterward. And I’ve done that every week consecutively for months now. Running is an orderly activity. The order in my life was accentuated by doing it at the same time repeatedly. I was able to release tension by sharing my thoughts and concerns and having my training partner listen and provide feedback.
Not everyone is a runner, and I wouldn’t prescribe a specific ritual, but you should think about whether you have regular social rituals that provide a foundation of support for your dealing with changes and challenges. If not, what could you do to initiate at least one?
