How do rituals help us when we are confronted with a big goal?

Concept — An unseen-passage question is settled by textual evidence, not by outside knowledge and not by whichever statement sounds most reasonable in general. Treat the stem as a search key: identify the exact relation it names — which agent, which action, under which condition — then locate the sentence in the passage that states that relation, and pick the statement that reproduces it.

Applying it here — The stem's search key is rituals + help + a big goal in front of us. The second paragraph of the passage states that relation directly:

When we have only a big goal in front of us, we might feel lost or overwhelmed by it; rituals help us by giving us the process, the substeps, on the path to achieving a goal.

That sentence names exactly two things rituals supply in this situation — the process and the substeps — which is the content of the statement that rituals provide a clear process and substeps to achieve the goal. The lines around it point the same way: rituals give us clear rules and objectives, and the closing advice is to break the big goal down into parts and attack each part one by one.

Cross-check against the other statements

• Rituals make us feel more stressed — the passage attaches being continually stressed out to a workplace with unclear goals set by bosses, and presents the ritualistic workplace as the contrasting case, so stress is what rituals are set against rather than what they produce.

• Rituals eliminate the need for goals — the goal is retained throughout; rituals supply the path to achieving a goal, which presupposes that the goal still stands.

• Rituals allow us to ignore the goals — the closing advice keeps attention on the goal, directing the reader to break it into parts and then attack each part one by one.

Result — Rituals help by converting one large, overwhelming objective into clear rules, a process and substeps that can be worked through one at a time, which is what makes a state of flow reachable.