Self-Care Reset Rituals to Transform Your Day

This week’s episode is all about reset rituals, those tiny, intentional pauses that bring you back to center when life starts spinning. They’re simple, free, and powerful. A few seconds of awareness can shift your whole day. You don’t have to wait for a vacation or a big life change to feel grounded again.
 

Tune in to learn how to build your own reset rituals, supported by science and grounded in self-care, because you don’t need to escape life to find peace, you just need to return to yourself, you just need to return to now.

Transcript

Welcome everyone to our little self care podcast world. If this is your first time, then welcome. If you’ve been here before then welcome again. However you got here for the first time, if you’ve been here every week, if someone sent you this link thinking about you, however you got here, I’m glad you’re taking time to make yourself a priority. I know it can be hard and you showing up for yourself especially when it’s hard is how you keep moving things forward. This week we’re talking about something that jumps right off of last week’s episode. Last week we talked about the pause, how to change from your default initial reaction, that blast of emotion and energy, to a more thoughtful choice, to a purposeful response instead of a reaction. But it’s hard to do that sometimes so this week we will talk about something that helps lay the groundwork for creating that pause, creating that space for you whenever life hits you unexpectedly and that is, reset rituals. These are the little practices that gently guide us back to center when our day starts to unravel, when we start spinning out of control of our emotions, or simply when we just need a soft reentry into presence, into our now.

We often imagine a “reset” as something big... a vacation, a weekend retreat, a major life change. And yes, those are great and can be really helpful if you can afford it and if you have the time, but really, what about the in-the-day moments? The times when our nervous system is running hot, when we feel scattered, when the rhythm of life begins to slip? That’s where reset rituals come in. They aren’t meant to fix everything or require money or large amounts of planning. They’re meant to interrupt the spiral, give us a pause, a breath, a gentle return to ourselves.

That’s where reset rituals come in. These tiny practices don’t fix everything, but they do interrupt the spiral. They give us a pause, a breath, a gentle reminder. It could be the one minute pause between Teams or Zoom calls. It’s stepping outside and looking up at the sky. It’s putting your hand on your heart and saying, “I’m okay right now.” Life moves fast. Our nervous systems get overwhelmed. We go from task to task without checking in with ourselves, that builds tension, stress, and emotional fatigue.

Reset rituals are like mini-anchors to the here and now. They say:

• “Come back to here.”
• “Take a breath.”
• “You don’t have to keep pushing.”

And the beauty is that they are flexible and more importantly, they are easy and free. They don’t require a yoga mat, a quiet room, a full hour of practice. Just intention. So today we’ll explore what reset rituals are and why they matter. We will dive into some science behind how brief rituals actually impact our nervous system, brain, and emotional state. We will offer a set of reset ritual suggestions you can experiment with, and how to make them genuine and natural for you to do.

So what are these reset rituals? A reset ritual is a short, intentional practice designed to shift your state of mind and a state of your body which of course directly impacts your mind, it’s to move you from scattered to grounded, from automatic pilot to conscious presence. The key features are that they’re brief, repeatable, accessible, and rooted in being rather than doing.

And the good news is you might already do these unconsciously, letting your gaze drift out the window and taking a deep breath when you’re stressed, stepping away from your desk to grab a glass of water when frustration builds, closing your eyes for a few seconds in the car before you step into the house. But when you label them as “reset rituals,” you give yourself permission to intentionally use them, and you increase the power of them. You shine light on the self care you may already be doing without even realizing it. You may be subconsciously protecting yourself and your peace already and that’s amazing! 

These tiny reset rituals are not about solving every problem. They’re about recognizing your state, acknowledging your nervous system, giving it the chance to re-calibrate, and then moving forward with more clarity. Reset rituals may feel intuitive, but they’re also backed by research into how our nervous system, brain networks, and physiology respond to small interventions. Let’s highlight three core mechanisms and how they work.

The first is interrupting the stress response. When we feel overwhelmed, our nervous system often shifts into a sympathetic mode, that’s the one that controls fight or flight. Our heart rate goes up, our breathing becomes shallow, our brain loops into reactive thinking and you literally cannot think straight because of the looping. Research shows that taking a short mindful break or reset interrupts that cascading stress response. For example, micro-pauses of 30 seconds have been shown to slow heart rate, deepen breathing, reduce cortisol that stress hormone, and boost feel-good chemistry in your body.

By giving yourself a reset ritual, you send a safety signal to your body, saying “Hey, you’re okay.” and when safety signals come in, the nervous system can shift from sympathetic dominating your day into parasympathetic, or the rest and digest mode.

The second mechanism is one of the most accessible reset rituals from thousands of years and it’s intentional breathing. Slow, mindful breathing influences heart rate variability, it activates the vagus nerve which maintains a healthy heart rhythm and influences your response to stress. This mindful breathing also helps engage the parasympathetic nervous system that we just talked about. Research has found that slow-breathing techniques are associated with increased parasympathetic activity, improvements in emotional regulation, and lowered anxiety. A study in 2023 by students at the Peking University looked at 7-minute sessions of breathing or meditation during micro-breaks and found measurable reductions in perceived stress and fatigue, So the science is telling us that even small, low-dose practices matter. And that’s what we’re always about here...small changes that help.

And finally, there’s also a body of work showing that ritualized behavior, or having a structure, even a simple one, helps to reduce anxiety. Our brains crave predictability and that structure helps with that. Why does that matter for reset rituals? Because when you make a reset ritual, however short, you’re creating a signal, a pattern to your system that there is a pause. Structure allows you to be consistent and you are committing to your well-being and that symbolic shift matters. To sum up the sciences, reset rituals matter because they combine the power of physiology, psychology, and neuroscience in simple accessible ways. Who knew all these things that you were doing without even thinking of them were doing so much for your body and your mind?

And that’s great about the science but how does this really help create peace? If we get right down to it, the reason reset rituals lead to more peace is because they help us shift from doing or reacting to being and responding. And as we talked about last week, that is where calm lives when we can slow things down. Speed breeds anxiety but slowing down allows us to be present. They reconnect us, to our body, to our emotions, to the moment. They lighten the load. When your nervous system is regulated, your brain is less hijacked by fear or reactivity; you have more capacity for clarity, creativity, and kindness. They give us preparation and controls. We don’t wait for a meltdown, we practice returning before the meltdown. And they build resiliency. Over time, consistent small rituals train your system to bounce back faster, feel safer, and recover more easily.

Peace doesn’t always come from solving your problems. Often it comes from pausing long enough to see them, breathe through them, as we talked last week, it gives us more strength to respond rather than react. These rituals become the infrastructure of that peace. Your nervous system responds to consistency and kindness. So let’s talk about a few rituals that you can try before you need them and link it to something, so as soon as you do or say this something, you get into that rested state. 

One could be that you place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and take a deep breath in, hold it, then blow out longer than you held it. Say silently to yourself I am ok, I am safe. Do this 3 times and see how it slows your heart rate and connects you to your body, to acknowledge your care for yourself. So when things get so overwhelming that you feel out of control and unsafe, placing your hand on your heart and your belly can trigger that rested response.

Another could be stepping away and creating a change in your environment. Maybe step outside and face the sun, drop your arms to your side and just breathe in deep and out even longer and say silently, I am grounded, I can do this. So the next time that you are faced with a difficult decision or something you know you have to do but don’t want to, moving out of your space and saying those words can help find a more peaceful strength to take it head on.

And finally, create some sensations that helps to ground you back to the here and now. You walk to the kitchen and purposely feel your feet, you stretch and then splash cold water on your hands and face while breathing deeply. Maybe keeping your favorite smell nearby and you spray the air while you’re doing your deep breathing so that every time you smell that, it creates that calm. This helps you to get back into your body and maybe the next time you are faced with deadlines and so much that you can’t think straight, the cold water or smell can remind you to come back to this moment and you find your mind a bit clearer on what you can do right now.

So as you can see, these reset rituals are very short, very easy and you can use one, you can use all, you can create your own, maybe simply walking to a window and stretching could be the reset you do throughout the day.  The key is to do them sprinkled throughout your day so that you are not waiting for the moment to be overwhelmed, to feel unsafe or out of control...instead you’re preparing for those moments. But create something meaningful to you. Light a candle, play one calming song, stretch one muscle group, whisper a kind word to yourself. The key is to keep it short, keep it intentional, and be consistent so your body and mind knows how to respond calmly when you initiate that positive trigger.

Now a ritual only works if we remember it and value it. Make resets truly part of your rhythm by linking it to something else that happens by default. Identify natural transition points, maybe after a meeting ends that’s when you do your stretch, before you open email you smell the candle, when you get your coffee you take a moment to sip slowly and breathe deeply. Use the trigger to cue the ritual. Remember to keep it short. The power of micro-resets is you don’t need 30 minutes. Even 30 seconds matter, a 30 second pause can shift your whole day. Make them repeatable. Ritualized structure adds power. When your nervous system begins to expect the pause, it relaxes sooner, it learns to look for these positive triggers and pauses.

Now if you forget the ritual one day, no guilt. The purpose is support yourself, not create a new source of pressure for yourself. We are not perfect, we are human. And realize that what your system needs will vary by day by day. Some days you need stillness; other days you will need movement. And you might need both in the same day, whatever reset works is what works for you and what you choose.

When you begin using these reset rituals, even just one a day, you will likely begin to experience more ease, fewer moments where you feel your nervous system running ahead of you. You may find better clarity, decisions feel calmer, less reactive. You’ll have less build up, less of expecting the worst. Instead of waiting for the meltdown, you reset before the pile-up. You’ll find yourself experiencing more self kindness, because you’re telling your system that you matter, your mind matters. And you will begin to feel a more authentic presence, you’re more connected to this moment rather than already onto the next. That is something that I keep working on and I’m sure many of you that are type A like myself need to work on...not already going 5 steps ahead of where I need to be right now.

And peace will come, it isn’t some distant destination. It’s built in the pauses that we create. It’s built in the return to ourselves. Reset rituals give us that return and the more we do them and prepare for those eventual moments during the day where you’re feeling yourself slip, the return is easier, it’s less forced and more a natural response because you’ve reset in those little moments consistently.

Thank you for giving yourself this time today. If you pick one reset ritual this week, just one, I invite you to notice the difference. Try it once a day or more anytime you feel off balance. Notice what changes. After the ritual, ask yourself: How do I feel? What changed? Was it a small difference, barely noticeable? Great. That’s enough. That’s all it really takes to show up for yourself, to give some self care, just a few minutes to keep yourself as a priority. And if this episode and this practice helped, then share it with a friend or coworker who might need to reset. Share with them, You don’t need to wait for a vacation to reset. You don’t need a perfect environment. You don’t need extra time. What you need is intention. A willingness to pause. A willingness to say, “I’m safe. I’m here. I can return.” You are allowed to hit reset, right now. You are allowed to breathe. You are allowed to return to yourself. And in that return, you’ll find that peace isn’t somewhere ahead. It’s right here, right now, as you create it.

Until next time, I hope you take a few more moments today to create your own resets and I hope they help you get thru those crazy moments at work, at home and that you find yourself settling into days with more calm and clarity, with more grace and kindness for yourself and those around you, little by little and peace by peace.