Visiting the park to blow off steam after losing a game. Burning a letter you wrote to an ex. Celebrating a lost loved one at a memorial service.

Rituals are used all around the world to help us mourn loss. And research from Michael Norton and his colleagues have shown the power these rituals have in actually making us move through grief. Moving through ritual gives us back a sense of control, making us feel better.

It’s not so much the ritual itself, but the act of performing it that helps us.

Now, I’ve written about ritual in the past, and how we should be celebrating our beginnings in addition to our endings. And today I want to expand our scope, into how ritual fits into the story we tell about our lives.

If we’re not careful, life can just move forward without us noticing. Days, months, even whole years can pass and we look up and say, “Huh? Where did the time go!?”

Rituals help us mark the big moments.

They also help us tell our story. And recent research demonstrates that there are psychological benefits to doing just that. Creating a narrative around your own life is therapeutic. It’s kind of like a ritual for your mind. And research also demonstrates that when we actively construct and reconstruct our personal story, particularly around big events in our lives, we experience less stress and have better mental health all around.

Some people find it useful to journal - I know many people who write their Morning Pages every single day. Some people use Tarot cards. Some people find structure in Astrology. If the ritual you choose helps you see meaning, appreciate your growth, and feel a coherence in your life, then it’s absolutely valuable.

On Friday’s episode, I explore a question we rarely ask: Is our destiny coded in the algorithm? We often feel like the algorithm controls us, but the truth is it mirrors the parts of ourselves we’re not paying attention to. It learns from our weaknesses, but it’s also shaped by our choices. And when we understand how it feeds, we realize we’re not stuck. We can interrupt old patterns and choose what we want to amplify. The algorithm may predict our behavior, but it doesn’t get to define our future. We do.

If you want to feel inspired, learn practical tools, and hear powerful stories, follow and listen to On Purpose on Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

I am willing to bet that you’ve experienced something relatively big in your life that you haven’t properly celebrated (or mourned). Let’s fix that.

Try This: Think about a big moment in your life that happened this year. Maybe you lost a job. Maybe you found one! Maybe a relationship ended. Maybe you achieved a huge personal milestone. Open up your calendar right now and block off a time, it could be 15 minutes, to hold a ritual to honor that moment. What you do in your ritual is up to you. As long as you hold some kind of ceremony to honor what has passed.