The Daily Clearing: A Ritual of Gratitude and Appreciation
"Humans are wired for negativity bias—to notice what has gone wrong or what could go wrong. If 100 things are happening and 97 are good, we will call out the three that aren’t. What we focus on influences what comes next.
If you want to create magic and well-being in your partnership, try on a nightly ritual of appreciation. My partner and I learned how to do meaningful appreciations from California-based intimacy coach Taber Shadburne. It’s an extension of the good advice to “never go to bed angry”—but with much more heart. At the end of each day, head on the pillow, phones in airplane mode, we ask: “Is there anything from today that needs to be cleared? Any grievance, request or withhold?” If there is, and if it’s simple, we clear it on the spot. If it needs time, we agree on a later time to clear the issue.
Then we get to the good stuff: the appreciations. An appreciation isn’t generic. It’s highly targeted. Taber says that meaningful appreciations are 1) current and 2) observable. Usually it begins with, “Today, I appreciate you for that moment when…” and continues with something specific, such as: Our eyes met over the breakfast table and you raised an eyebrow and flirted with me, You ran interference with the neighbors on that parking space, You cleaned the mucky pans because you know I hate that job, You sent me pictures of the evening light on that field before your show started Like that. Try to do a few in each direction. Ritualize your appreciation. If you’re like us, once we started this practice, we began to see and store more positive impressions of each other throughout the day, in anticipation of sharing the praise—they were like tiny treasures to carry for later unwrapping."
The above is an excerpt from our book "Reverence: Creating Ritual in Modern Life."
“What we focus on influences what comes next.”
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Frequently asked
What is the Daily Clearing ritual?
What makes an appreciation meaningful rather than generic?
Why do this every night instead of only when something goes wrong?
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