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I just launched a wine app, which means I’ve spent the last six months thinking obsessively about one thing: how do you remove friction from decisions that shouldn’t be hard? The answer taught me something bigger about rituals, and why so many of the ones we create at the end and beginning of the year fail us. Here’s my founder story, but from the wine aisle. Last December, I was standing in front of a wall of bottles, paralyzed. Not because I don’t like wine. I do. I was paralyzed because the entire experience was designed to make me feel small. The sommelier energy, the gatekeeping language, the implied message that if I couldn’t name the terroir, I didn’t deserve a good bottle. So I did what I always did: grabbed the same safe choice, went home, and told myself I’d “branch out next time.” But here’s the founder insight I missed: I wasn’t actually going to branch out. The friction was too high. The stakes felt too real. So I’d repeat the same ritual, the same bottle, the same outcome, because at least it was safe. This is exactly how most people approach their end-of-year and New Year rituals. They feel obligatory. Performative. Exhausting. You’re supposed to reflect deeply, set 10 ambitious goals, create a vision board, establish a meditation practice. It all sounds great in theory. In practice? Most people abandon their resolutions by January 15th. Here’s why: we’re designing rituals for the person we think we should be, not the person we actually are. As a founder, I’ve learned that the best products remove friction around what people actually want to do. The same principle applies to rituals. So instead of telling you to rethink your entire approach, here’s what actually works: 1. Audit Your Rituals for Performance vs. Authenticity Before the New Year, write down your current rituals and practices. Your morning routine. Your goal-setting process. Your end-of-day wind-down. The commitments you’ve made to yourself. Now ask: Which of these would I do if nobody was watching? Which ones feel authentic to how I actually want to live? If your answer is “honestly, not many,” you’ve identified your problem. You’re living someone else’s ritual. I built Theodora because I realized I was performing wine expertise instead of just enjoying wine. Once I removed that performance, everything changed. 2. Replace Goal-Setting with Three Core Questions Instead of your 10-goal action plan, try this framework: What do I actually spend time on when nothing is required of me? (What you’re naturally drawn to.) Who do I want to spend more time with? (What relationship matters.) What outcome would make 2026 feel like a win, stripped of all performance? (What success actually looks like to you, not what it’s supposed to look like.) Write these down. These three answers are your real ritual. Everything else is just context. Most people I know abandon their New Year’s resolutions because those resolutions were designed by someone else’s standard of success. When you build from what actually matters to you, the rituals stick. 3. Identify Your Friction Points and Remove Them As I was building the app, I asked myself: What stops people from choosing wine they love? The answer was friction: too many options, unclear labels, judgment if you didn’t know the language. So I removed it. Simplified the decision. Let people be honest about what they wanted. Do the same with your rituals. What gets in the way when youre setting your goals? Dont judge yourself for not being disciplined enough and instead build systems that are easy for you. Is it that you hate planning spreadsheets? Don’t use them. Is it that you feel guilty about not journaling? Don’t journal. Find the practice that actually works for your brain and your life, not the one that looks good on Instagram. The people I respect most aren’t the ones with the fanciest routines. They’re the ones whose rituals are so well-designed for their actual life that the rituals almost disappear. They just work. Here’s the bottom line for anyone building a 2026 strategy, whether that’s business goals, leadership development, or personal goals: Stop designing your rituals for who you think you should be. Stop performing. Audit what’s actually working, build from what you genuinely care about, and remove the friction that’s keeping you stuck repeating last year’s choices. Good rituals don’t feel like work. They feel like they were made for you, because they were. As we head into the New Year, that’s the framework I’m offering: Stop trying to look the part. Start designing the rituals that actually move you forward. Everything else is just noise.
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E-Commerce
Porsche is recalling 173,538 vehicles in the U.S. as the rearview camera image may not display when the vehicle is placed in reverse, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Wednesday. This is one of the largest single safety recalls issued by Porsche Cars North America in recent years, following a 2022 recall pertaining to missing headlight adjustment screw covers that affected 222,858 vehicles. The current recall affects certain 2019-2025 Cayenne, Cayenne E-Hybrid, 2020-2025 911, Taycan, 2024-2025 Panamera, and 2025 Panamera E-Hybrid models. The regulator flagged that the vehicles fail to comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard’s requirement for rear visibility. Dealers will update the driver assistance software, free of charge, the regulator said. Earlier this year, the NHTSA also issued recalls of Hyundai Motor America, Ford Motor, Toyota Motor, and Chrysler vehicles over similar rearview camera issues that may fail to display, increasing the risk of a crash. Ruchika Khanna and Aatreyee Dasgupta, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Below, Ben Swire shares five key insights from his new book, Safe Danger: An Unexpected Method for Sparking Connection, Finding Purpose, and Inspiring Innovation. Ben is a former Design Lead at the innovation firm IDEO and co-founder of Make Believe Works, a team-building company that uses creative activities to accelerate connection, deepen trust, and fuel collaboration. His methods have helped organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to public school districts, build healthy, productive workplace cultures. Whats the big idea? Most of us think of risks as a threat to our safety. But what if theyre the best way to create the kind of safety that matters mosttrust, creativity, and connection? What if safety itself doesnt come from avoiding risk, but from taking small, smart risks together? Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Ben himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. If youre ready to change but afraid to rock the boat, try a little Safe Danger. Most people tend to think safety and danger are opposites. But its more useful to think of them as dance partners. Safety gives us solid footing; danger gives us movement. The emotional sweet spot between the twowhere you feel safe but challenged enough to discover something newis something I call Safe Danger. I base entire team-building and community-building workshops around moments of safe danger. In that zone, you can take small, meaningful riskslike sharing a half-baked idea or owning up to an embarrassing shortcomingin ways that build trust, empathy, and connection. The trick to making Safe Danger effective is not to ask a lot. This is not about big confessions or life changes, but rather asking enough to make future risks feel less intimidating. For example, I might base an activity around the person who inspired you to become who you are today. Or about a hard-earned life lesson. These ask you to risk sharing some personal details of your story, but are not so private as to be intrusive or uncomfortable. These are manageable risks. The trick to making Safe Danger effective is not to ask a lot. Every time you take a small risk and it goes well, your nervous system updates its prediction: Its safe to be a little braver here. Thats why Safe Danger works. It rewires fear into trust, step by step. And trust is contagious. When one person shares a personal story or asks an uncomfortable question, others feel permission to follow. This isnt about bullet points. Its not about telling. Its about showing. Its about the feeling. Safe Danger works because you feel the risk, you feel it pay off, and your brain starts to build an appetite for more. 2. Build Safe Danger by leveling the playing field. Most workplaces celebrate what people do, not who they are. Thats efficient, but brittle. If your value depends on flawless output, everyones going to hide their messier truthsthe exact truths teams need to share to collaborate and innovate and grow. If you want to practice building a space that celebrates people for who they are, there are three principles I use in my workshops to create the safe danger that makes people feel able to lower their guard. These three principles help level the playing field so that no one has to worry about embarrassment, and everyone is set up for success: Intention over execution. When I have people make something in response to a prompt, I dont focus on what people make; I focus on why they made it. Whether someone has labeled themselves as creative or uncreative doesnt matter. Talent is out of peoples control. I reward the choices within their control: generosity, effort, and thoughtfulness. We dont grade the drawing; we use it to focus on the ideas its meant to express. Curiosity over comparison. Instead of saying, Thats beautiful, which immediately builds a hierarchy and starts everyone else wondering if theirs is as good, Ill say, I see you used all bluewhat made you choose that? That neutral curiosity says, This is valuable, and I want to know more about how your mind works. Journey over destination. The goal of having people make things is the story behind it: what mattered to you, what you noticed, what you felt. Safe Danger is not about the creation, its about what you learn in the making and what you reveal about yourself and others in the process. When someone feels seen for how they show up, not what they produce, they feel safe to be more themselves. Suddenly, even the most resistant introvert or battle-worn cynic starts participating more fully. This is how you build psychological safety in minutes, not months: make it safe to be seen, and worth it to share. 3. Fun isnt enough for connection. My specialty is helping people connect quickly and meaningfully. That falls under the heading of team building. Even though there can be lots of fun in the process, most traditional team-building activities dont actually build the team. There are three pitfalls in a lot of team-building ideas: Competition. Lots of team-building leans into competition because its a quick, easy way to get people fired up. But competition inherently divides people, pits them against each other, people start showing off, and most people lose. Not a great mindset for authentic connection. Passivity. Guest speakers or cooking classes can be easy and pleasant, but people dont really contribute any value to the experience themselves. You never want someone to walk away thinking no one would have noticed if they had skipped that. Everyone needs to feel that they matter. Old news. This simply means you carried old dynamics into a new room: fun stuff, like happy hours and escape rooms, where the loud people get loud, the quiet get quiet, and cliques stick together. People leave as they arrived, with no new insight or feeling. Fun matters. It just isnt enough on its own. If nothing new was revealed about who we are, we didnt build a teamwe filled a calendar. Thats why I like to use play and creativity to help create safe danger. Creativity is like an oven mitt. It lets you handle dangerous material without getting burned. People believe theyre talking about what they made, but theyre actually sharing their values, priorities, and perspectives on life. They get to be vulnerable without feeling threatened, to feel seen without being judged. One of my favorite examples of this is an activity called Orchestra of Optimism. I ask people to think about how it feels for them to go from being stuck to being inspired. Then I have them sketch that out on a pice of papera tornado? An EKG? A plate of spaghetti? Next, I ask them to compose a 30-second soundtrack of that journey, using whatevers at handstaplers, coffee mugs, plants, carpet, its all fair game. The performances are short, wordless, and totally unique. Everyones inner process is different, yet that individuality can get lost when we all use the same words to describe ourselves. But translating feelings into sound forces us out of our usual shortcuts. Its a little playful, a little vulnerable, and surprisingly revealing. In 15 minutes, youve learned something real about how each person navigates challengeinsight that transfers to work. With a little safe danger, fun stops being a diversion and becomes a delivery mechanism for understanding. 4. Soft stuff gets solid results. Leaders often ask, Does this soft stuff, like trust and connection, actually move the numbers? Yes, because the soft stuff enables the hard stuff. Psychological safety is the top predictor of team effectiveness. Amy Edmondsons research shows that teams in which people can speak up without fear learn faster and perform better. Gallups Engagement data consistently links high-trust cultures with better retention, productivity, and profitability. A major productivity study by the University of Warwick suggests that when people genuinely enjoy their work, output skyrockets. Building cultures around the soft stuff is not about being nice. Its about reducing the hidden tax of fear and loneliness so brains can do their best work. Psychological safety is the top predictor of team effectiveness. Ive seen this translate in rooms that care deeply about resultslike competitive sales teams. One leader told me after a Safe Danger activity, We still love to push each other, but this showed us the difference between competing against each other and competing with each other. That shift can unlock more pipeline suggestions, more honest post-mortems, and faster iteration. If you want speed, use Safe Danger to build trust. If you want better ideas, use it to lower the social cost of being wrong. If you want accountability, use it to normalize admitting reality. Safe Danger activities arent a detour from performance; theyre a secret shortcut. 5. Small risks can yield big returns, no matter who you are. Im a deep introvert with a healthy cynical streak. For years, I would have rather run for the hills than do a team building skit. But Safe Danger creates the space for everyoneeven skeptical introverts like meto engage. It works for anyone who wants to grow, connect, or stop feeling so alone at work or home. Safe Danger can even adapt from the everyday to the extreme. Recently, I worked with a team ten days after a colleague was murdered in a workplace shooting. Theyd had time off and counseling, but this was their first time back in the office. At lunch, the mood was light but carefulpolite armor. Chit chat. But during the Safe Danger session, that all shifted with a simple prompt: How do you want to grow as a person this year? The first person held up a small, funny gift a colleague had made for him: I want to live differently after this. Shoulders dropped. People leaned in. The room became deep but not heavy, meaningful but not morose. It wasnt therapy; it was permission. After that, one by one, they all spoke about the changes they hoped to make and how they were going to help each other get there. But you dont need a crisis. The principle is the same whether youre an introvert during a Tuesday stand-up or a team carrying unspoken weight: create a container where a small, honest risk is obviously worth it. Do that repeatedly, and you get compounding returns in trust, candor, and creativity. Taking small, brave risks can make a real difference at work, home, or anywhere. Anyone can practice Safe danger in daily life by taking one small risk that reassures your brain that honesty is worth it here. Taking small, brave risks can make a real difference at work, home, or anywhere. Pay attention to the moments that you hold back, like the joke you almost made or an honest thought you edited out. Those are opportunities to change course. Most of us are living someone elses life. Were following expectations we inherited instead of choices we made ourselves. We learn early on to hide or diminish the qualities that make us unique in order to fit in. Safe Danger allows us to risk showing up as our real selves instead of someone elses version of us. Its a chance to rekindle our dimmed light, so we can rediscover and express the parts of ourselves that may have been scared into silence. If youre not speaking with your own unique voice, the world is missing out. The people who mean the most to you, look up to you, and people you may never even meet, are all missing out if youre not standing out. The risk you take is never as big as the reward it returns. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
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