The power of ‘self-imposed’ rituals

I am a staunch advocate of daily ‘journalling’. It is undoubtedly the most effective tool to retrospect, reflect on the day, and align back to the desired trajectory. This activity dives inward and strikes an honest conversation with self. Arguably the best feedback and coaching one could have. And like every other great thing in the world, it costs nothing! 

However, every once in a while, we come across some blunt feedback that shines a light on some of our own blind spots. Areas of our own behavior we are not aware of ourselves, that can be annoying or even hurtful to others. Here I am narrating such a story from my own experience and the tool/technique I designed, as a result, to work on the ‘blind spot’ behaviors. 

This incident dates back more than a decade. As a new people leader, I received great support, encouragement, and validation of my leadership skills and was obviously feeling great about it. Every passing day, I would rate myself a little better than the previous in terms of my ability to blend the IQ and EQ in the right proportion.

After a casual discussion with a young engineer one day he mentioned, “It’s so easy to have a conversation with you. However, when I read your emails or listened to your town hall talks from the back row, I always thought you are cocky and arrogant”. 

That was certainly a blind spot for me. I summarised this as my non-interactive/one-way communication needs change. And I knew, just a day’s worth of journaling is not going to build this to my muscle memory. 

That is when I made a small tweak to my email signature. I used to sign off my emails with ‘Thanks, -Bibs’. And I changed it to ’Thanks -bibs’. Just the first letter of my name changed to lowercase. 

A self-imposed ritual!

Emailing is something I do dozens of times every day. And every time, the signature with the lowercase ‘b’ in ‘bibs’ goes out, it reminds me of the feedback I got years ago.  

This ritual helped train the sub-conscious so that I do not have to consciously try ‘not to sound cocky’.