4 work rituals that keep us healthy, sane and in good mood

“We become what we repeatedly do.” ― Sean Covey

Before Tibet, Aaron and I started Terran Collective, we discussed our experience from previous workplaces. We were all united in asserting that lack of intimacy and connection was quite common and was causing a lot of negative emotions: Not feeling truly seen, feeling like you had to leave your authentic self at the door and ultimately, burnout.

We realized we had to intentionally design a work culture around taking care of one another. Things like mental and physical health, emotions, food and mindfulness are all part of it. During the past six months, we’ve come up with a number of work rituals and practices that keep us healthy, sane and in a good mood. I’m excited to share with you a few of them.

We define work rituals as repeatable events that help us connect more deeply with each other.

Daily Sit-down

Right at the start of the day and before our daily standup meeting, we take ten minutes to meditate together. We sit around a low table, close our eyes and each of us meditates as he wishes. I usually count my breath for a few minutes, and just allow my mind to be still. This is the first thing I do before starting work, so often todo lists or problems that require my attention surface in my mind. An important exercise I do when I feel these busy thoughts is to relax and come back to a mindful state. After all, I have a whole day of problem-solving ahead of me and these 10m are for centering the mind, and being present.

I look forward to our sit-downs because starting the day by feeling calm and grounded sets the tone for the rest of the day: The quality of our daily stand-ups have improved dramatically and it is much easier for us to deeply listen during them. When for some reason we don’t get to do the sit-down in the morning, I have noticed we become more communication avoidant during the rest of the day.

Group Cheers

At the end of our stand-up we do a group cheer to launch the work day with high energies. The way it works so far, is that everyday someone in the team steps up to facilitate a different cheer. Here are examples of specific cheers we did in the past six months:

The battle cry

One of us does his best Churchill/Gandalf/Fearless leader impression and tells the rest of us with great pathos about our mission. Hilarity ensues. Related cheer: Halftime sports team huddle and the “captain planet” cheer.

Monkey Chant

Each one of us improvises the cries of a monkey tribe. This one really gets us energized.

Oming

Chanting Om a few times together. This basically means sitting in a circle, taking a deep breath and while breathing out saying “Om” out loud. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaRnhHsDLk

This is good for tapping into the good old feeling connected and united vibe.

Back-rub

My favorite cheer of all-time was on a day where I strained my lower back, and Tibet and Aaron offered me a back-rub as a cheer. I have never felt so cared for and seen in a workplace.

Feet-to-Feet communication

A funny experiment we whimsically tried one day turned out to be quite effective. We use it occasionally when we’re at a particularly playful mood. It is practiced for the first ten minutes of a meeting. The way it works is that we take off our shoes and socks and sit around a low table while pressing our feet against the feet of the people around us. This immediately takes off a lot of the pressure from the meeting. We totally manage to keep a straight face during these and make responsible decisions regarding the future of our company. After a few minutes we usually get tired of this position and return to more standard sitting arrangement.

Gratitude and Feelings Slack channels

Being an emotion-positive workplace, we decided to have dedicated spaces to share our emotional state with each other and offer support and gratitude. Opportunities for sharing arrises when one of us is having a particular challenging day, going through relationship trouble or just feeling stressed. In order to facilitate that we created two channels in our Slack for that #gratitude and #feelings.

That’s about it for now. In total I’d say we spend around 15m a day doing these rituals — and it’s totally worth it!

Please feel free to reuse or modify any of these rituals within your own workplace or community! I Would love to hear what work rituals you practice in your own place of work.

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