The unexpected beauty of simple traditions

Yet another case for where more effort is not always the answer

I’m coming back from my annual pilgrimage to LA, and the thing I can’t stop thinking about is the beauty of traditions.

Which is honestly surprising because I’ve never been a huge traditions person.

I mean, I’m the classic Type 7 enneagram— I thrive off of spontaneity, novelty, and change. Beyond seeing my family, the idea of committing to the same thing year after year has always felt hard to swallow.

To me, traditions were just kind of boring — I thought the only way to make them otherwise was by putting in a shitton of effort and planning.

But this trip showed me something different. On this trip, I fell in love with traditions.

Lei Out: a beautiful tradition

This whole “pilgrimage” thing began when my friend asked me to join her frisbee team for Lei Out, a beach ultimate frisbee tournament/party down in LA.

I had never meant for it to become a tradition. It was always something I seemed to join last minute when someone would finally convince me to play.

But this year, something felt different. As we repeated the same patterns for the third year — staying at the same airbnb, hanging with the same people, following the same loose schedule— I found myself filled with certain sense of glee. I, Kelly Liu, was genuinely excited for the team to once again buy shrimp for Phil at Costco, play the drinking game baseball, and eat late night shin ramen and dino nuggets. To know that once again we’d don glittery makeup, witness the boys piling into a too small bubble bath, and eat at BCD Tofu House Sunday afternoon.

These silly moments had become our treasured rituals. And for the first time, I found myself already committing to next year before this one had even ended.

So….how do great traditions take root in the first place?

What blows my mind about this weekend is how this tradition took root without any fancy event planning or forced bonding exercises. I’ve been noodling on what it was that made this tradition possible, and this is what I think made the difference:

Who you invite to start really sets the tone

While my friend claimed she just chose people based on "vibes”, her intuitive group selection was actually pretty strategic. She carefully chose a mix of people who shared a similar approach to fun, sprinkled in a few "moodmakers" who naturally love bringing people together, and made sure that everyone felt like they had someone who made them feel comfortable. All of this together created a strong foundation for good vibes and genuine connection.

A simple structure creates space for magic

Getting the same airbnb started by chance, but I now see it as a critical part of what made this tradition happen. Because when we combined that with the same people and same general schedule, we had a structure with just enough familiarity for people to build upon past memories.

And that was it. There were no other overly structured activities or forced bonding moments. We left some breathing room. And with just the right balance of structure and space, we saw our silly team rituals organically come to life.

Buy-in can’t be forced

The thing that transforms a silly moment into a ritual, or a one-time event into an annual tradition, all comes down to people’s buy-in. Their genuine desire to run it all back again. I think people (especially new community builders) sometimes try to force traditions to create shared context, but these become heavy and burdensome. But it’s when we let traditions naturally arise from shared joy that they feel light, special, and extra powerful.

There IS joy to be found in consistency

As much as I love change, I’m starting to realize that there is a lot of fulfillment that comes from chosen consistency.

And what’s cool is: it doesn’t have to be hard. Building consistent traditions can be as simple as noticing what brings us joy and creating space for it to happen again.

So this year, I think I’m going to try it. I’m going to see what happens when I pause and ask myself: what moments did I really love today that I’d love to see happen again? Because that chosen repetition might be the very thing I need to allow deeper connection and meaning in my life to blossom.

Three cheers for Floppy Discs - the most lovely Lei Out team <3