A ritual is a behavior that we repeat, something that we do almost every day and it becomes our habit so that we unconsciously start doing it. It can be a morning coffee, a warm bath, a walk, a glass of wine, a bar of chocolate… Some rituals are useful for us, such as a cup of healthy tea, an evening walk or meditation, others are not, such as reading the news as soon as we open our eyes or opening the refrigerator before going to bed.
So why don’t we introduce the rituals that make us joyful and turn them into a habit? Research has shown that it takes about nine weeks for a new behavior to become a permanent habit. It takes about twenty days to break an old habit, that is, to cancel old patterns such as searching the Internet before going to bed, then we need next twenty days to introduce a new habit, while the last twenty days represent the integration phase of the new habit, when it slowly becomes easier to do it than not to do it.