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By Leo BabautaWe’re entering the last month of the year, and for many of us, it’s a darker and quieter season.
It’s the perfect time for reflection.
I like to use December to deepen into reflection, and in my Fearless Living Academy, we do a yearly ritual that I call “Sacred Bow” (as in “bow in reverence to your past year”). In this ritual, we:
- Spend some time reflecting on what we accomplished, went through, and learned for the past year
- Get clear on what goals and projects we fell short on, and what we can learn from that
- Envision our coming year, with goals and intentions
- Create structure to make those intentions a reality
I invite you to join us in Fearless Living Academy and be a part of this Sacred Bow process!
In this article, I’ll share some additional ways I like to deepen into reflection in December …
Reflect on Life & MeaningLife rushes by so fast. Day by day, it feels like a rushing river and I barely have time to notice the water passing by before it’s gone.
Taking some time in quiet and stillness means that I can slow down and reflect on life. On my life, on human life. On what it means, or what I want it to mean.
What have I learned in recent years that adds to the meaning of life for me?
What I’ve been finding here lately is a sense of sacredness and depth to each moment that I often don’t notice, because I’m so focused on getting stuff done or dealing with the situation in front of me or letting myself be distracted. When I slow down into stillness, that depth and sacredness becomes more accessible to me.
Reflect on My Practice & GrowthI find the end of the year an important time to reflect on what I’ve been practicing with in my life. Have I been deepening into mindfulness, practicing with uncertainty and fear, learning to become more aware of my patterns as they show up?
This is an ongoing journey of growth, and it’s immensely important that I take time to reflect on it on a regular basis.
What have you been practicing lately? What are you learning from that practice? What growth have you been noticing?
Reflect on Darkness, Stillness & DeathDecember is a beautiful month to slow down and reflect on three things:
- Darkness: Where I live now (northern California), December is the darkest month of the year. I found that depressing when we moved here from Guam, and that continued for years after we moved … until recent years, when I decided to start to examine my relationship to darkness. It’s a profound reflection for me, and I am starting to open to the beauty and wonder of darkness, both outside of me and within.
- Stillness: It’s also a month when things feel frozen and still, and I’m learning to embrace that as well. I’m someone who likes to move quickly, but there’s so much wisdom in stillness. I have to practice against my default tendency. Sitting outside in stillness, and noticing what shows up in that stillness, is a practice I resist and love.
- Death: As a society, we tend to fear death. That’s understandable. But winter is a death that opens space for new life, and I embrace it as an affirmation of life. I reflect on the loved ones I’ve lost, and how much they still mean to me. I reflect on my own death, and find some degree of acceptance of that.
Do any of these topics resonate with you?
I encourage you to carve out some time for reflection as the year comes to a close.
And once again, if you’d like to be a part of the Sacred Bow ritual, I invite you to join us in Fearless Living Academy!
The post A Month of Reflection appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaWhen I was younger, I had a hard time doing some basic things like:
- Paying bills
- Keeping the house clean
- Running errands
- Doing yard work
- Doing car and house maintenance
- Taking care of my health
- Stay on top of work tasks
I always knew that I “should” do these things, but they felt like too much back then. Avoiding taking care of things always left me feeling like my life was a mess.
These days … I’m not at all perfect at any of the above … but I’m so much better at it. And it leaves me feeling like my life is taken care of.
Which leaves me feeling like I’m worth taking care of.
So how did I transform this? I’ll share that journey in this article.
The Start of the TransformationIn the beginning, I just knew that I wanted my life to not be such a big mess. But it felt too overwhelming to take on everything, and I kept failing at my efforts.
The transformation really started when I decided that I was going to take really small steps. One at a time. In one or two areas at a time:
- Clean my sink (and slowly expand to the whole kitchen)
- Pick up my clothes and put them away immediately
- Pick up one bill from my pile and take care of it (or make a plan to do so)
- Put on my running shoes and get outside, even for just 5-10 minutes
- Floss one tooth
That last one really gets people. But I spent years struggling to get the flossing habit going, and feeling really bad that I couldn’t do it. Then I saw a talk where someone said this is how they formed the flossing habit, and it sounded so easy I couldn’t say no. So I started. Now I floss almost every night.
These tiny steps make a huge difference over time. They won’t change everything all at once, but they do change everything.
The Mindset Shift That Changed EverythingThe real shifts were internal. I had a bunch of mindset shifts:
- It’s easier to do it now than to tackle a huge pile later
- It feels so good when things are getting taken care of
- A cleared surface is so much more beautiful than a piled up surface
- Things that are neglected fall to ruin
But there was a small mindset shift that actually was the biggest shift for me: it can be really lovely to take care of things.
I found that I can enjoy the simple act of cleaning up. I learned to love clearing clutter, or emptying out an inbox.
For me, clearing things out and making things orderly is deeply satisfying.
Once I realized that, it became easy. Joyful even!
The Joyful Way It Looks These DaysSo how do I take care of my life these days? In so many ways. But with a sense of glee!
I start each week by clearing out my inboxes, and putting my tasks in order, and setting my intentions for the week. It makes me feel clear and happy.
I start and finish my day by making sure the kitchen is in order and things are put away. And by flossing and brushing my teeth. This helps me feel that there’s a bit of order to my life.
If I see an area that can use some tidying, I do it during my breaks, so I get a little movement in. I go back to work after the break feeling more satisfied.
If yard or house maintenance is too much to do during my breaks, I save it for the weekend. And then I enjoy the feeling of taking care of my family.
I do a workout almost every day, and feel like I’m honoring my wonderful body.
I make sure my bills are paid and my budget is up-to-date every morning. It makes me feel like my money is happy.
In each area, I’m taking care of my life, my family, my body, my business. I’m bringing a little bit of order to the chaos of the world. And I’m giving myself a lovely, satisfying experience.
May you find this joy as well.
The post The Joy of Taking Care of My Life appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaEating healthy is something I’ve been a bit obsessed with for the last couple of decades, and I’ve transformed my eating in some really fundamental ways:
- I eat way less junk food than before
- I have developed a real love for whole, nutritious foods
- I’m vegan (for ethical reasons)
- I don’t often eat to comfort myself (sometimes I do)
- When I do eat comfort foods, I’m no longer harsh with myself
These are huge transformations for me, and they’ve changed my health and my mindset towards health.
At 51 years old, I feel incredibly healthy — and I’d like to share my thoughts on healthy eating, in case it might help. That doesn’t mean I think I’m perfect, or even better than anyone else — but I always appreciate learning from how others approach healthy eating, and I’m hoping you’ll appreciate my approach.
How I Think About Healthy EatingI used to think about healthy eating as this sacrifice that I needed to make in order to be “good” — whatever that means. Like, if I was eating unhealthy foods, then it was something shameful I was doing to myself.
As you can imagine, that’s not very helpful. Society gives us messages that we should be ashamed if we eat junk food (it’s even in the name), when all we’re really trying to do is enjoy good food, or comfort ourselves. These are not shameful things!
That said, I do think there are foods that are nourishing for my body, and help it to grow into something strong, alive, and prepared to handle life’s challenges.
And so I don’t shame myself anymore for eating sweets, fried foods, snacks … I enjoy them! But I also have found the eating approach that makes me feel amazing in my life, and that’s what I try to do most of the time.
What I Find ImportantThe most important thing to me are to eat whole, plant foods … most of the time.
Those include:
- Vegetables of all kinds (especially greens)
- Beans & lentils
- Whole grains (including brown rice, oats, etc.)
- Potatoes of various kinds
- Fruits of ALL kinds!
- Nuts and seeds
If my meal is almost all whole plant foods, then I feel incredible. These foods are so good for my body.
Now, I don’t think animal foods are necessarily bad for you — you don’t have to be vegan to be healthy. If I were to eat animal foods, I would probably eat mostly fish and some poultry, but I don’t see a need to do so for my health, and would prefer not to harm other beings if it’s not absolutely necessary.
I thrive on these foods, and my health is excellent (I do get everything tested every year or so).
My Favorite Meals & FoodsSo what do meals look like when you eat mostly whole plant foods? Well, there’s a TON of incredible recipes out there, but I’m pretty boring. I eat mostly the same meals every day, because it’s just easier for me to prepare a big batch and not have to think about it.
Some of my favorites:
- Lentils & steamed kale — I eat a big plate of cooked green/brown lentils and kale, and season it all with soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, cayenne powder, and nutritional yeast (a recipe from my friend Jesse)
- Lentil soup — I sautee onions, mushrooms, carrots and broccoli in my Instant Pot, then throw in lentils, kale, cubed tofu and veggie broth with spices (rosemary, thyme, sage, bay leaves, black pepper). High pressure for 10 minutes, put some lemon juice or balsamic vinegar on top to season
- Oats with berries or bananas and seeds, with cinnamon
- Tofu scramble with lots of veggies
- Baked sweet potato with hummus and avocado!
- Bananas with peanut butter is my treat
- Protein shake with pea protein and soy milk if I do a weight workout
I also love vegan chili, veggie burgers, pasta, lasagna, Thai curry, and more. But the meals above are my faves.
How I Learned to Love These FoodsI’ll admit, I didn’t always love vegetables, or things like lentils or quinoa or tofu. I was a meat eater, and loved fast food and snacks.
The way I learned to love the foods I mentioned above is … slowly.
First, I adapted my favorite dishes to be slightly more healthy. I diced up carrots and greens and put it in spaghetti sauce and chili. I would eat a small side salad with my dishes, and season it with crunchy things.
Then I would eat veggies with things that made them taste better — hummus, salad dressing. I’d eat sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon.
Eventually I really embraced veggies, and would eat a HUGE salad for lunch, and would make steamed or raw veggies the biggest part of my meals.
Finally, I slowly started to cut out sugar from many of my meals, fried less of my foods, and cut out greasy things for the most part. And explored more and more delicious healthy foods.
Staying on the PathI’ll admit, I go on stretches where I don’t eat the healthiest … maybe a couple of weeks where we have a lot of visitors and I’ll just eat whatever we’re making for them, or eat out a lot more. I tend to eat less healthily during the holidays, or when I travel. I’m OK with all of that!
I’ve learned to not beat myself up, and just enjoy the food. Why not enjoy life?
But then I’ve learned to just get back on track. Each day is a fresh start, where I can decide what will nourish my body the most. And more and more, I make choices that are delicious and nutritious, and are a part of the life that I love.
The post Thoughts on Healthy Eating appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaI believe in finding powerful practices for transformation wherever we can find them. And the Stoic philosophers Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca are huge inspirations for me.
I’ve found there to be a huge overlap between Stoicism and Zen Buddhism, even if there are also some key differences. The overlap between Zen & Stoicism are things I share below, and they are powerful practices.
- What We ControlOne of the main Stoic principles is to focus on what you can control, and let go of what you can’t. And most of life is what we can’t control: other people’s opinions and actions, the weather, world events for the most part, accidents, loss. Too often we let those things affect our happiness, even if we can’t do anything about them.
Think about how often you get frustrated or stressed by something you can’t control. What if you declared that that was none of your business — your business instead is focusing on doing your best in the present moment.
Zen also focuses on doing your best in the present moment, from a place of compassion. I find this focus to be simple, powerful, and liberating.
- Reminder of DeathThe Stoics would remind themselves that they were going to die, on a regular basis. Buddhists do this too — one branch of Buddhists will meditate in a graveyard for this purpose, something that I do as well.
Life is short and precious, and we take it for granted. We need to remind ourselves of this often, so that we can make the most of each day, and each moment.
- Loving What IsThe Stoics didn’t use the term “amor fati” (that was Nietzsche) but Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus definitely espoused the idea that we should embrace what is actually happening rather than what we wish things would be.
Epictetus: “Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”
This is a Zen idea as well, to embrace reality as it is, and the ways we suffer are based on wanting things to be different.
What if you could learn to love each moment, exactly as it is? To do this, you have to find the beauty in life as it happens. Start with the easy moments (a quiet morning, a nice cup of tea, seeing the face of someone you love) and then slowly work towards more difficult ones (someone is being negative, you have a difficult task before you). Leave the hardest things as an advanced challenge for later (death, illness, war).
- Contemplate MisfortuneSeneca had a practice called “premeditatio malorum,” or contemplating adversity in advance, where you would visualize all the bad things that would happen to you, as a rehearsal.
For example, if you’re about to take a trip, you might imagine all the things that could go wrong — you forgot your passport, you lost your luggage, you got robbed, you got lost, you got sick. Actually visualize all of these things happening. And imagine that they aren’t traumatic, but neutral — there’s no problem. Maybe you actually loved the experience!
Then, if any of them actually did happen … then you’re prepared. Nothing can happen to you that’s worse than what you’ve already experienced in the contemplation! You’ve already gone through it all.
In this way, we have prepared ourselves, like putting ourselves into ice cold water to prepare for swimming in the Atlantic.
The Zen tradition is more about present-moment meditation … but in a way, when we meditate, we are facing everything that comes up for us in the present moment (boredom, distraction, discomfort, frustration, etc.) and so when the same things (inevitably) come up for us later, we’ve already faced them.
- A Higher PerspectiveThere’s a way I like to visualize taking a “God’s-eye view” of humanity — looking down on all of humankind, like we’re the size of ants.
This kind of bigger perspective reminds me that:
- My problems are actually small, even if they seem big; and
- We are all interconnected, even if it feels we’re alone.
This makes my life easier.
The Stoics called this the “higher view.” In Zen, we practice reminding ourselves of our interconnectedness. It’s the “truth” of reality (as opposed to having a separate self) that helps us to feel connected and compassionate.
These practices help me tremendously in my life. They are liberating and motivating at the same time. And they take practice — a lifetime’s worth.
The post 5 Stoic & Zen Practices That I Believe In appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaLast year, I turned 50 years old … and I found myself thinking about aging more than I ever had before. To be clear, 50 years old is still pretty young, but there’s something about the number that had me realizing that my 60s and 70s aren’t very far away, and it was a bit confronting to me.
After all, I’d spent most of my life thinking that growing old was something to fear. It’s a cultural assumption that goes deep into our society — beliefs that being old means you are feeble, weak, helpless, irrelevant. I know that that isn’t really true — but we’re constantly given cultural messages that it is true.
So when I turned 50, I spent some time sitting with this. What does it mean to me to grow older? What are my fears? What are my prejudices? How do I want my older years to be?
As an exercise, I highly recommend that you start to notice your own biases about aging and being old, and notice how often people around you (and in the media you consume) talk about aging as if it’s a bad thing. The word “old” is used as an insult. If you say you’re old, other people will tell you, “Oh, you’re not old yet” as if you were insulting yourself. Or, “It’s OK, you don’t look old.” Or, “You look young for your age!” These are meant to be reassuring, because being old is assumed to be bad.
It’s all around us. And when everyone and everything we encounter treats being old, and aging, as something bad, then of course we’re going to fear it. It’s similar to old cultural messages about being overweight, being gay, or having a mental disability. These are all turned into insults, which means if we are any of these things, we are meant to feel ashamed.
Let’s rebel against all of that! Reclaim being old, reclaim aging. If we can change these messages, at least to ourselves, then the fear and shame lose their power over us.
So here are some things I’ve done in the past 18 months to transform my relationship to aging:
- I started noticing my own biases against aging and old age. And started noticing it in the way others talk about aging and being old.
- I started pointing this hidden agism out to others, lovingly. And changing my language around all of it.
- I started seeing people who are empowered in their old age — athletes, Nobel prize winners, incredible artists, people who are pillars in their communities, monks and sages, gardeners and house builders. I started seeing them as my models.
- I started envisioning how I want to be in my older years. Empowered, compassionate, creative, adventurous, learning, expanding. Gentle, kind, and curious.
- I began to sit with my fears of being powerless. This is the hidden beast underneath our fears about aging — none of us want to feel powerless, and yet we are all descending into helplessness eventually. So I found places where I already feel powerless, and began to bring compassion to myself whenever I feel it.
- I see every challenge that will come to me in old age — physical, mental, emotional, relational, career, spiritual — as exactly the edge for me to practice with, when they come. My strength and wisdom will only deepen as I encounter these challenges, as they have with all of my challenges so far.
And with this, I now feel so in love with growing older!
It’s a magical thing, living into this new chapter of my life. I feel more patient, more compassionate, more connected to others, than ever before. And I look forward to the adventure that awaits me as my body and mind and spirit continue to evolve.
I wish you all love as you progress in your journeys as well.
The post Overcoming the Fear of Aging appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaSometimes we decide not to do something because it feels like there’s not enough time to do the task — it will take me 2 hours to work on that task, and I only have 20 minutes, so why bother starting?
We do this kind of thing more than we realize — there’s not enough time to finish this, so why start? I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it, so why bother?
This feeling of pointlessness is one of our biggest obstacles.
It feels pointless, so why try? Why even start?
This equates the value of trying with the outcome of the activity. In this thinking, it’s only worthwhile if we finish, if we succeed. This diminishes our efforts, because it means trying is only worth it if we get the outcome we want.
What if there’s value in trying, no matter what the outcome?
What if putting ourselves into something is valuable because it expands us, because we learn, or because the activity itself is worth savoring?
What if we start a task and only do it for 20 minutes, and leave it unfinished, and that’s OK? Maybe starting it will move the ball forward in a meaningful way. Maybe not — maybe just starting is a good practice in and of itself, because then we’re practicing overcoming our initial resistance.
Learn to notice this thinking when it shows up: it’s not worth starting, it’s not worth trying, what’s the point?
And then find the deeper meaning for yourself, and overcome this bias of pointlessness.
The post There’s Not Enough Time appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaEach day, I try to get outside for a walk or run (or other sport like cycling or basketball), and my debate with myself is often whether to bring my phone and earbuds to listen to music, a podcast, an audiobook … or to go tech-free.
Tech-free is my favorite option — and I’d like to share why.
I do love listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I’ve had many hours of running or walking listening and learning, and I think it’s a valuable way to spend my time. So much goodness from this.
I also love music, whether it’s grooving to old tunes or exploring new stuff, dancing to what my kids listen to … it lifts my heart.
But going without technology is my favorite of all, and I only recently rediscovered this classic joy.
Without technology, I feel more present, more open to experiences in the world. I feel more connected to nature. I don’t miss out on little kids playing in the park in ways that make me smile. Life is more wondrous, in full color.
And what’s more, I do my best thinking while on technology-free walks and runs. My best ideas come to me. I solve my toughest problems. I have deeper reflections on my own experiences. This is more valuable than 100 audiobooks.
Finally, and maybe even most importantly, I get out of the bubble of my comfort. Most of us are connected to technology all day long, from the moment we wake up. Maybe we have some disconnected time in little pockets, like showering or cooking (although even there, some people listen to music), but even while eating, working out, commuting, we tend to be connected to our devices. I don’t think technology is bad — it empowers so much good — but I do think we tend to use it as a comfort bubble to insulate us from the world. Getting out of that bubble daily is one of the most important things we can do, so we don’t shrink our capacity to be with life as it is. And believe me, I’ve seen it shrinking in many people.
What would it be like to have a daily time to be fully connected to the world, and out of your comfort zone?
The post What Happens When You Walk or Run Daily, Without Tech appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaThere’s a practice that I find to be really valuable, and I call it “Examining Beliefs.”
If you regularly engage with this, it will transform you.
Let’s say there’s something you want to do but you feel stuck — maybe you’re procrastinating a lot, maybe you’re stuck in an old habit. The practice starts with trying to discover the thought or belief that causes your action (or inaction).
For example:
- I don’t want to do this because I’m going to do a bad job (belief: I’m going to do a bad job)
- I’m dreading doing this because it’ll be boring (belief: it’s going to be boring)
- I don’t want to do this because it’ll be really hard and uncomfortable (belief: it’ll be too hard/uncomfortable)
As you might expect, these beliefs don’t help you to achieve your goals.
You might also examine any beliefs that cause you to be frustrated or resentful with someone else:
- They shouldn’t behave that way
- They don’t love/respect me
- They don’t support me
These beliefs cause you to feel unhappy with someone.
So what can we do once we discover the belief? Examine it, and then if we like, practice letting it go.
How to Examine the BeliefIf you can’t uncover the belief that’s holding you back or making you unhappy … get into a conversation with someone else who can help you see what you can’t see. (If you’d like to work with me as a coach, apply for my 1-on-1 coaching.)
Once you’ve uncovered the belief, here’s how to examine it … ask these questions:
- What effect does the belief have on me and my life? Does it make you take action, take care of yourself, or act in line with your intentions? Does it make you avoid, or look for faults, or get frustrated? If you think something will be boring, are you more likely to see it as boring (i.e. seeing through the lens of your belief)? Get clear on what effects this belief has on you.
- Is the belief really true? It might seem really true … but is it true? And if you say, “Yes, it’s true” … then ask yourself, “Can I be absolutely sure it’s true?” The idea is to question the absolute truth of the belief … because if we can see that there’s even the possibility that it’s not true, then maybe we can begin to consider letting it go.
- What would it be like without this belief? Imagine what it would feel like if you didn’t have this belief. Can you imagine it? If so, what you’re experiencing is a moment where you’re free.
Once you’ve gone through this practice of examining the belief … ask yourself if you’d like to practice with letting the belief go.
How to Practice Letting GoFirst, you have to notice when you are being influenced by the belief — when it’s operating on you. If you’re frustrated with someone, or avoiding something, for example … then the belief is operating on you. Notice that it’s happening.
Now ask yourself: what would it be like in this moment without the belief?
Imagine that you could just … “Poof!” … have the belief disappear. Imagine that you are free right now. It should feel more peaceful, more liberated.
Now try to take action from this freedom. Try to live life, with this freedom.
This is the practice of Examining Beliefs. If you seriously engage with it, you will unlock your life.
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By Leo BabautaWhen we’re looking to grow, what we’re really trying to do is step into a new, expanded view of ourselves.
For example, if you want to be more mindful, or live more simply, or be more compassionate with yourself or others, or be more disciplined about your meaningful work … these are all new versions of you. They’re expanded beyond your old way of seeing yourself.
We’re constantly trying to expand beyond an old identity: when we try something new, or try to grow in our relationships, or try to quit a bad habit … what we’re really doing is trying to shed our old self-view.
Unfortunately, the old self-view has a gravity to it, that tries to constantly pull us back into the old way.
So in some of the examples above, you might see:
- Be more mindful — the old way of going through your life mindlessly pulls you back in by having you get pulled into distractions, habitual patterns, etc.
- Living simply — the old way of living a cluttered life tries to keep you there by having fear stop you from decluttering, or by having fear try to have you shop on impulse.
- Be more disciplined — your old procrastinator self will put up resistance to that discipline, and have you want to avoid anything difficult or overwhelming.
- Try something new — your old comfortable self will throw up lots of resistance and thoughts to have you put off trying the new thing and feeling bad or awkward at it.
- Quit a bad habit — your old self will tell you, “Just this once won’t hurt” or “Why are you making yourself suffer” or “You deserve this reward” so that you stay in the comfort of the bad habit.
So the old identity tries to keep us in what we know. How do we expand beyond it?
Here’s what I’ve found.
1: Set the intention of an expanded selfLet’s imagine that you weren’t limited by your old identity — who do you want to be? What would you like to do that feels a bit impossible? It can be something small (“I want to wake up a little earlier”), or it can be a massive shift for you (“I want to put my creative work out into the world in a bold way”).
Set this intention. Get clear on why this matters to you.
Then commit yourself to the actions that this expanded self would take.
2: Practice the actions and beingThe shift in your self-view will come as you take actions that are outside of the old limited self-view. If your old identity is that you are an introvert, but now you’re talking to strangers every day … the old identity can’t survive.
So commit to taking the actions every day — or at least, most days, because it’s OK to give yourself breaks. The practice the expanded self-view by taking those actions as much as possible.
It will likely be hard, because you’ll be pulled back by your old identity (see next section) … but practice doing them anyway!
And as you do the actions, practice the expanded way of being as an inner state. For example, maybe you want to be more joyful as you do your work — then practice that joyfulness!
3: Notice when & how you’re getting pulled backThe old identity will try to pull you back every time you step outside of how you’ve always known yourself. If you want to speak in public, each time you sign up to do a talk, your mind will give you a bunch of reasons why you should cancel.
This is fear in action. It’s a bodily sensation of fear, resistance, dread, overwhelm. It’s also a series of thoughts — rationalizations (“It’s OK to skip it this once”) and mental gymnastics (“Life is too short to put yourself through this”).
Just notice all of this. Take notes! Get curious.
4: Give yourself compassion, but keep practicingWhen you notice all of this, it’s simply fear in action. Just give your fear a bit of compassion. Breathe. Be understanding and loving.
Then take a small action, if you can. Just a tiny bit. Even that will create an opening for a new way of seeing yourself.
The post Expanding Beyond Our Old Self-View appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaMost of our stresses and frustrations come from our unwillingness to let go.
Hear me out: think about something you’re stressing about, or someone you’re frustrated about. What thought do you have about that person or situation that causes the frustration? It’s often an invisible thought, that we don’t realize we have, but if you were to speak it out loud, it would feel really true.
Try writing it out with one of these prompts:
“They shouldn’t …”
“If I fail, it will mean …”
“I wish things weren’t so …”
Then fill in the blank.
What thought or belief do you have that’s causing your stress or frustration? If you can identify that, you are halfway there.
Now think about how true that thought or belief feels to you. It probably feels like absolute truth. This is the part that we’re unwilling to let go of — the truth of that thought/belief.
What if you could recognize it as a thought or belief, and not as an absolute truth?
Could you see ways that the opposite might be true? For example, if you think of ways that someone “always” acts in a certain way, can you see any times when they didn’t? If it feels like you can’t catch a break, can you see times when life gave you a gift?
What would your life be like if you didn’t have this belief?
In the moment when you considered that question, you let go.
Notice how that works: you imagine life without the belief, and suddenly you have peace.
What if you could practice it every time you had frustration or stress?
The post The Practice of Letting Go appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaLet’s imagine that there’s a big task you’ve been avoiding for weeks (or maybe a bunch of them!) … it just becomes this ball of dread that you don’t want to think about, but that you feel really bad that you’ve been putting off.
Sound familiar? Everyone has something like this, whether it’s a big work project, taxes or budgeting, a difficult email, a creative project, or just some regular tasks you don’t want to deal with.
So let’s assume you’d really like to do this task … how do you turn towards it?
I’m going to give you a practice you can take on, turning towards one difficult task at a time, until your whole life starts to flow.
Here’s the practice:
- Notice that you’re avoiding the task. It might be something you keep kicking to the next day. Or an email that’s been sitting in your inbox. Maybe there are a lot of them … but pick one and notice that you’re avoiding it. Set an intention to turn towards it, just a little, as a practice.
- Pause for a moment and sit with the task. You don’t have to do the task yet. Just think about the task for a few moments, and feel the feelings that come up. Maybe dread, feeling bad about yourself, judgment, fear. You don’t have to think too much about the feelings, just let yourself feel them for a few moments. Breathe.
- Take a break if you need to. Get up and walk around. Drink some water, stretch, do a little movement, dance, whatever you like. Then try step 2 again.
- Remind yourself of why this is important. Why do you care about this? Is there an important outcome that will come from doing this? Something that matters to you?
- Try the smallest step. With a big reason, take a small action. Tiny. Can you open it and read the first sentence? Can you write a few words? Just do that, and breathe.
- Celebrate yourself. It’s a start! You’ve turned towards the task! It might seem silly or unworthy of celebrating, but even turning towards something in a small way like this is a huge victory. Acknowledge yourself, and do a little dance.
Then keep practicing! Turn towards the task again, after a little break. Then again.
Take on another task you’ve been avoiding.
Then another.
Soon these tiny steps, tiny turning towards, will unblock a large part of your life. Then nothing can stop you.
May your life become unlocked.
The post Turning Towards a Task You’ve Been Avoiding for Weeks appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaI talk to dozens of people every month — Zen Habits readers, coaching clients and Fearless Living Academy members — who struggle with a feeling of overwhelm from all of the things on their plates.
Overwhelm from tasks, messages, and more is completely normal. It’s based on a fear that we can’t handle everything coming our way. That we’re going to fail at juggling all of these balls, and drop them, and be a failure. It’s a fear of inadequacy, that shows up as anxiety.
So what can we do with that fear? What we can realize is that it’s just an energy, present in our bodies. We have all kinds of energy: joy, love, gratitude, optimism, sadness, hurt, grief, anger, power, and more.
These kinds of energies in our bodies have a few properties we can notice from observing:
- They’re temporary. Energies shift throughout the day, depending on what we’re going on, how much sleep we got, how people are acting towards us, how we’re doing with our actions and intentions, etc.
- We create them. It might seem like the energy of, say, anger, is caused by how someone else acted … but we create the energy of anger as a response to the energy of hurt … which we create because of how we interpret their actions. That doesn’t mean it’s a “bad” interpretation, but the point is that we are the creators of our energy.
- We can shift them. If we’re the creators of the energy, that’s good news, because we can then create whatever we want. Have you ever done gratitude practice? It’s a really simple practice of reminding yourself of what you’re grateful for in your life. Doing this might transform whatever sad or complaining energy you currently have, into gratitude and contentment. That shows that it’s possible to shift things intentionally, with practice.
So if we can shift our energy, how do we deal with the energy of overwhelm? There’s not one way to deal with it, but I’m going to suggest a powerful practice.
- Get present to the energy of overwhelm, in your body. Notice that you’re feeling overwhelmed. You might notice because you’re either avoiding, or rushing to get everything done. You’re feeling anxious about how many things there are. Just pause, and notice how the energy of overwhelm feels in your body. Where is it located? In your chest? What does it feel like? Get curious.
- Play with the energy. The energy of overwhelm is just energy — it can feel like fear, anxiety, panic … but we can also feel it as excitement, adventure, creativity. These are all just labels. How can you use the energy to generate courage? To make you get up and dance? To light a fire under yourself? Play with it, as if it were a fire you could use creatively to whatever purpose you’d like.
In this way, the overwhelm doesn’t become a thing that controls us, but rather is something we can feel, love, and use however we like. It becomes the clay for our creative act.
I realize this all might sound a bit weird to some people, but I invite you not to dismiss it, because you’ll be missing out on a powerful and beautiful way to work with something that shows up for you regularly.
You get overwhelmed because you care. May you never stop caring.
The post Transforming Overwhelm into a Creative, Productive Energy appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaSomething that has long been a struggle for me is when people complain a lot — I really don’t love the negative energy, and I tend to turn away from people who are complaining.
So I’ve been examining this in recent years … and I’ve been learning a lot about myself.
The first thing I realized is that I have difficulty with people who complain … because I have a hard time loving the part of myself that complains.
And so I’ve been learning to find the complainer in myself, and bring love to him. This is transformative! It means it’s OK for me to have complaint, to feel put upon, to not be happy or grateful. This is a permission to just be how I am right now — which is sometimes full of complaint.
The second thing I’ve learned is that I can transform the complaint, when I realize that it has two parts:
- A complaint is actually, in part, a request — could you please do this instead of that? If we complain about someone, hidden in that is really a request for them to do something differently. Getting clear on my request empowers me to actually make a direct and clear request.
- A complaint is also hurt. It’s not simply a request, because embedded in a complaint is that I’ve been hurt in some way. It’s not always obvious how I’ve been hurt, even to myself. But there’s hurt there somewhere. If I don’t like the way someone is acting, that’s usually because there’s something they’re doing that’s aggravating me or causing me pain.
So I can transform the complaint if I can understand these two parts of the complaint: the request and the hurt.
First, I can deal with the hurt — can I notice the part of me that is hurt by the other person’s actions (or by the situation)? What can I do to help that hurt part of me? For me, just noticing it, and giving it some presence and love, can go a long way. Sometimes I might tell the other person, if I can trust that they’ll actually care about my pain.
And by the way, when someone else has a complaint (even if it’s about you), the first thing you might do is notice their pain, and show them you care about it.
Second, I can find the request in my complaint. I can notice what it is I’d actually like the other person to change, or what I’d like to change about the situation. Then I can ask, or take action. This gives me a sense of empowerment.
If someone else has complaint … beyond caring about their pain, you might ask them if they have a request. They’re likely to resist this question, because for most people, it feels safer to complain than to vulnerably make a request. But you can still ask, “Sure, I get that you don’t like that … and I’m wondering, if you could have me change my behavior, what would you like me to do?”
This asks them to take responsibility to make a clear request. They might not be willing, which is OK. But if they are, it can be powerful. You then have to decide whether you’re willing to honor the request, which you don’t have to.
Working with my internal complaints (and the complaints of others) in this way, I can help heal any hurt, but also find a way to take responsibility for creating something new.
How can you recognize your internal complaints, and find a way to work powerfully with them?
The post Transforming Our Complaints into Something Generative appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaAmazingly, we’re headed into autumn, with summer just winding down now … the changing of seasons is always a great time for reflection.
For me, I find that summer often throws of my carefully laid out routines and habits. Travel, visitors, doing more things outdoors … all of this can throw off the regularly scheduled programming.
And this isn’t a problem! It just means that when things start to calm down, we have an opportunity to practice restarting the habits and routines that have gotten thrown off track.
This is a skill — restarting is simply coming back to zero, and embracing Beginner’s Mind.
Today, I’d love to invite you to consider what has gotten thrown off track in your life: exercise, healthy eating, waking early, morning routines, meditation, journaling, writing, productivity, finances?
And then let go of any guilt or judgment — practice having grace for yourself. Practice understanding that you’re always doing your best, with the capacity you have on any given day. Practice forgiving yourself, and letting go of what you think you “should” have done.
Then start again — come back to zero and enjoy the start as much as you enjoy the middle or end. There is a joy to this.
Btw, I’m holding a live workshop for my Fearless Living Academy members next week Wednesday (Sept. 11) at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern on this topic:
FLA Workshop: A Primer on Restarting Habits
If you’re interested, join Fearless Living Academy, and the workshop is included! Plus you can work on your habits with the help of a community and my video courses on creating habits in FLA.
Hope to see you there. And I wish you the best in this beautiful season of restarting.
The post The Season of Restarting Habits appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaA client recently asked me how to get full clarity on their purpose — they don’t feel certain, and that lack of certainty makes it hard to fully commit themselves.
You might be able to relate: if you feel 100% sure that something is the right direction and is going to work out, you’re likely to be pretty motivated. But if you’re not sure … maybe the doubts have you hesitating.
It’s that hesitation that gets us.
The problem is that we don’t get clarity of purpose by just thinking about it. No amount of thinking, reading, or watching videos is going to get us clarity of purpose.
The way to get clarity of purpose is to take your best shot at it — sit and reflect in silence, journal about it, talk to people about it, and then come up with something. Anything. Even if it feels completely uncertain.
And then act as if you were 100% certain. Commit yourself as if you had an answer from the Gods. Take action. Pour your full self into it. And then see what happens.
If you do this, you’ll get more clarity after taking committed action. You’ll learn something. Much more than if you took no action at all, or half-hearted action.
So if you’re looking for clarity about your purpose … stop reading and watching stuff. Sit and reflect, and then choose from the heart. Then commit yourself fully, as if you had full clarity and confidence. And you’ll discover something profound from this.
If you’d like to do this with me, come to my retreat in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Sept. 20 – 22.
Final Day for $500 Discount on September RetreatThe retreat is $2,499 for the 3 days, and includes accommodations in a cabin on Lake Tahoe. But if you sign up by tomorrow (Aug. 31), you get a $500 discount — so take action now!
I’d love to have you there.
We will deepen into purpose. And deepen into play and wonder. And deepen into nature, and ourselves.
We’ll hike, meditate in nature, and I’ll coach you. We’ll share meals and conversations. It’ll be freaking beautiful!
Come join me.
The post Getting Clarity of Purpose (plus: final day for $500 retreat discount) appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaOne of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of our personal progress is discouragement. Whether you’re trying to form a new habit (reading, meditation, exercise, waking early) or taking on a meaningful project, or just getting your life in order … discouragement is one of the biggest reasons you’ll get stopped.
Here’s the “bad” news: discouragement is unavoidable. You will encounter it on your path, if you’re taking on anything challenging or meaningful. It’s a part of the meaningful path. I actually don’t think it’s really bad news, it’s just how the path looks.
And here’s the good news: discouragement isn’t a problem. It’s a property of learning, of growth, of trying. Just like heat is a property of the sun or fire.
Discouragement is a property of caring and having hope.
So with that in mind, how do we deal with it when we encounter discouragement on our path?
Some people will just crush hope, and try not to care or get optimistic. If we don’t hope, we can’t get let down right? But that just means our hearts are shut down. Similarly, they might not even try … because if you try, you might fail, right? But that just means we can’t create any new possibilities that we care about.
The way to deal with discouragement isn’t to shut down our hearts to trying or caring or hoping … it’s to take it as part of the package. Just like a hurt heart is a part of loving, or soreness is a part of exercising. When we care, and hope, and try … we will get discouragement.
Then when it comes, just let yourself feel it. Take care of it — do you need a hot cup of tea, a talk with a friend or a therapist, some love? Let discouragement be an opportunity to practice loving yourself and taking care of yourself.
Then care and try again. Get your heart back to hope & possibility. Take the next small step. Create something new, one tiny motion at a time.
Discouragement isn’t the end of the journey — it’s a place to stop and lick your wounds, tend to your heart, catch your breath, and then start again.
You’ve got this.
The post A Short Guide to Dealing with Discouragement appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaToday I’m feeling sore and tired from hard strength workouts, playing lots of basketball, and doing a hill sprint session yesterday with my son. I’ve been working out hard, and I’m really feeling it!
So I’m going to take some rest and recovery time. Anyone who is into fitness knows the hidden value of recovery: this is when we actually get stronger. The workout is important, but recovery is arguably even more important, because that’s when our body rebuilds itself into something strong. Without it, we will burn out or get injured.
This applies not just to fitness, but everywhere in our lives: with work, learning, relationships, and more. It’s great to do the work — but if you’re not giving yourself adequate rest, or time to recover, you’re going to grind yourself into the ground. It’s much worse for your long-term progress.
If you want to get better at focusing on hard tasks … you have to give yourself time when you don’t have to focus. Otherwise your ability to focus get worse, from constantly trying to focus.
If you want to get better at dealing with chaos and uncertainty and discomfort … you have to face those things, but you also have to give yourself a break where you get to have comfort and security. Otherwise you deteriorate your ability to face discomfort.
If you want to become more productive, or better at studying things … you have to give yourself time when you don’t have to be productive, or don’t have to be studying hard. Otherwise you will become less productive over time, or worse at being able to study.
If you want to show up for your partner with a sense of love and intimacy … you have to have times when you take space away from intimacy, when you can take a break from having to love someone, and just be. Otherwise you’ll be less able to be open with them, and more burdened and resentful about them.
So take a moment to assess yourself: where do you need more rest? Are you feeling worn down, with a diminished capacity?
And how can you take responsibility for getting the nourishing and replenishing rest that you need, in order to show up more fully over the long run?
Btw, next week Wednesday (Aug. 14), my friend and simplicity expert Courtney Carver of Be More with Less is teaching a workshop related to this topic, for my Fearless Living Academy, called 3 Gentle Seasons. She’ll teach us practices to overcome chronic overwhelm, cultivate self-compassion, and find permission to do less, and how to let go of doing it all, to live with less stress and more ease, less overwhelm and more joy, and more!
The workshop is free for members of FLA — come join us!
The post The Surprising Value of Rest appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaWhen most people try to start a new habit — like exercise, meditation, waking early, journaling — they tend to try to go as hard as they can. And in doing so, they set themselves up for failure.
I have a friend who wanted to start running, for example. Every time they ran, they would do it as fast as they could, so they were always really winded. That’s Too Fast, Too Soon (title of my new action movie franchise). It’ll lead to failure for most people.
Another person I talked to wanted to start waking up at 5am, two hours earlier than they were usually awake. They said they were worried they wouldn’t be able to stick to it for long. I agreed: you could probably do it for a few days, but you’ll crash and burn, most likely.
Now, going hardcore is possible, if you dedicate your entire life to this one change, and reduce all other commitments and stressors. You’d have to set up a lot of structure and support to make it work. But your odds of long term success go way down, just like a crash diet.
So I always recommend starting small. But there’s a more sophisticated technique, that I call “autoregulation” (borrowed from biology) that I’d like to share with you.
Here’s how it works, in brief:
- Start the habit small — let’s say 15 minutes of easy exercise, or wake up just 5 minutes earlier than your normal time on Day 1.
- Increase the next day, if you were successful. For the exercise example, increase by 2 minutes a day. For waking early, wake another 5 minutes earlier on Day 2.
- Continue to increase the habit if you’re successful.
- Decrease the habit if you miss a day. So if on Day 3 you wanted to wake up at 6:45am, but didn’t wake up until 7:30 … on Day 4, set your alarm for 6:50am. If you missed a day of exercise, decrease the exercise time by 2 minutes the next day. It’s important not to see this as a punishment for failure, but rather an adjustment for your long-term success.
- Take a full day off if you’re tired, stressed, or too busy. Start the next day if at all possible, with a decrease in the habit (see #4).
If you follow this autoregulation method, you’ll make your habit easier when it’s needed, and make it more difficult when you have the capability to handle it.
Some days, you’re just busy, or tired, or stressed. On those days, take a break. Then come back the next day with a decreased habit goal (exercise 2 minutes shorter, wake 5 minutes later, etc.) to make it easier on yourself.
Some days, you have lots of energy and focus. On those days, it’s entirely appropriate to get to continue to increase the habit, slowly.
Using this method, you’ll increase your habit slowly, at a pace that’s appropriate for your capacity. If your body can’t handle increasing the exercise, take a break and then come back with an easier target.
This time-based approach works for a lot of habits: meditation, journaling, writing, learning a language. It doesn’t work as well if you’re changing your diet, but you can still use the same principles: slowly move closer to your target eating pattern each day, but give yourself breaks and slow down your progress as needed.
If you’re trying to procrastinate less, this can work too — start a daily habit of doing short focus sessions (start with 10 minutes, once a day) and increase by 10 minutes as long as you’re able to stick to the plan. For example, on Day 2, do a 20-minute focus session. On Day 3, do one 10-minute focus session and one 20-minute focus session. On Day 4, do two 20-minute focus sessions. Keep adding 10 minutes as long as you stick to it. If on Day 5 you don’t do the focus sessions, decrease by 10 minutes on Day 6.
At some point, you should stop increasing — perhaps when you get to your goal (waking at 5am, exercising for 40 minutes a day, etc.). But it’s possible your goal will change as you do this, and you can find the level that’s right for you to stop increasing through this method of slow change.
So that’s the autoregulation method for changing habits. It’s a compassionate approach that’s meant to increase your odds of long-term success. Give it a shot!
Btw, if you’d like to practice with others, I created The Practice in my Fearless Living Academy — to have our members practicing with this together, with structure, accountability and community. Come join us!
The post How to Autoregulate Your Habits appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaPeople often think, when they’re tired or don’t feel like doing a task (or a habit), that there are really only two choices:
- Force yourself to do the task anyway; or
- Let yourself off the hook
And while there isn’t anything wrong with either of these choices, I’m here to remind you that they are choices. And they’re not the only choices.
What else can you do in that situation? Well, here are just a few other possibilities off the top of my head:
- Choose to take care of yourself, and then come back to the task when you’re more replenished
- Find a reason to do the task that inspires you to do it, even if you’re tired — for example, if you knew that doing a task would save a million people’s lives, you probably wouldn’t say, “Oh, but I’m too tired right now”
- Ask for other people’s help
- Find a creative approach that has you bringing play to the task while also honoring your tiredness
As you can see, there are choices, when we get beyond the only two choices that occur to most of us.
Let’s talk about our tendencies, then talk about how to pursue other options than the two main ones we’ve mentioned at the beginning.
Our TendencyThe thing is, most people will default to one of the two choices by habit — if you normally let yourself off the hook, that’s probably a tendency (you might add some self-judgment and self-criticism to that tendency). If you are good at forcing yourself to do work, you probably do that as a tendency.
So become aware of your tendency — which one do you lean towards? There isn’t anything wrong with this tendency, but it will always get you the same results: avoidance gets you stuckness and self-judgment, while forcing yourself gets you a sense of burden, overwhelm, exhaustion and apathy.
Once you’re aware of the tendency, you can ask yourself whether you’d like to try something different. If so, read on!
Creating AlivenessSo first, let’s say you decide that self-care is your priority. That doesn’t mean you’re going to avoid the hard things, but you’re going to make sure you’re not going towards burnout, and take responsibility for making sure you’re getting enough rest, nourishment, mental breaks, and movement.
So that is a given. Now what? Well, now you can move towards the tasks you’re resisting — hard, scary tasks you want to put off.
But instead of forcing yourself, you want to try something different, that doesn’t feel like coercion and doesn’t make you feel so burdened and apathetic.
How do we do that? There isn’t a right answer, but here are some things to consider:
- Connect with your deeper Why. Something that inspires you to take action, instead of having to avoid or force yourself. What would have you excited to tackle this?
- Let yourself play. Why does this have to feel like work, or a “nose to the grindstone” kind of thing? Why are we trying to just “get through” all of our work tasks and emails and meetings? What if all of this could be a playground?
- Let it feel alive. We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. Let’s let ourselves feel more alive in each moment, whenever we can remember. What would it be like to feel alive right now, as you read this?
- Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Sometimes the resistance or overwhelm is too much. How can others be invited to help us face it, or to make it more like play, or to help shoulder the burden? We don’t have to be so alone.
These are some ideas to play with. How can you feel more alive in the tasks you have in front of you today?
The post Forcing Yourself to Do a Task vs. Letting Yourself Off the Hook appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaEvery day, there are things we’re resisting, avoiding, feeling some fear about. We don’t often recognize that, but what we most often do is turn away from these things.
This turning away leads to a couple of impactful things:
- A shrinking of our lives, as we turn away from things we’re not good at, where we don’t know how things will turn out, when we aren’t sure of success.
- A loss in trust in ourselves, and a feeling that we’re not living up to our best selves.
This isn’t wrong — it’s just how things tend to go. It’s all very human.
There’s something magical about swimming against this tendency. Of deciding to practice something different.
Let’s talk about this practice: facing your fears, just about every day.
This practice is to set a daily session of at least 10 minutes where you take on something that scares you, at least a little.
Some examples:
- Pick 1-2 emails that you’ve been avoiding responding to, and answer them.
- Write 100 words or more in that book you’ve been wanting to write.
- Go for a short run (or walk) each day, if you’ve been avoiding exercise.
- Record rough drafts of videos and send them to a friend, if you’ve been wanting to make a video course.
- Tackle just one or two small steps each day around your taxes or finances.
- Tackle the piles of clutter you’ve been wanting to declutter.
You get the idea. Pick one project, one area, and take small steps each day in that direction.
By working with the things that scare you, you are expanding yourself. You’re building trust in yourself. You’re exposing yourself to the fear regularly, and over time that fear will decrease.
It will get easier and easier with practice. And then you take on the next thing that scares you, and face that.
And over time, what happens is that you develop a confidence to step into the unknown, without needing to know the answers or know if you’ll succeed. That’s incredibly powerful.
Are you ready to create that kind of magic in your life?
Btw, this is why I created The Practice in my Fearless Living Academy — to have our members practicing with this together, with structure, accountability and community. Come join us!
The post The Magic Daily Practice of Facing Your Fears appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaHow much of your day is spent either 1) trying to make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, or 2) avoiding doing that thing you don’t want to force yourself to do (and feeling guilty about it)?
In truth, this is most of the day for many people. Trying to coerce ourselves to do stuff.
So a few things to say about coercing ourselves:
- It doesn’t work really well — we’ll put up a lot of resistance if we’re trying to force ourselves.
- Even if you can do it, it’s super not fun!
- And then when you’re done forcing yourself, you have to do it again. Over and over again. Hoping to do everything “right” but usually feeling like you’re not doing it “right.”
OK, so let’s say you’re convinced that coercing yourself to do things doesn’t work. Then what? Do we just never do the boring things? Just always avoid facing the hard things?
That’s not what we want either, because most people reading this wants to be out doing meaningful, impactful, sometimes hard and scary things. So how do we do that without coercion?
Play might just be the answer.
Let me describe the powerful effects of Play in this context, and then talk a bit about how to bring Play into your life.
The Powerful Effects of PlayWhen we’re up to meaningful, difficult, interesting, scary things … coercion is one answer. Avoidance is another. And Play is yet another possibility.
Here’s what happens when we bring Play into doing all of our hard, meaningful tasks:
- Instead of dreading a task, you start to get excited about playing with the task.
- Instead of looking for the possibilities of failure, you start looking for the opportunities for fun, for exploration, for adventure.
- Your day becomes less of a slog and more of a playground.
- You focus less on doing things the “right” way and more on trying new things out and seeing what works. You get less perfectionist and give yourself more permission to make messes.
- You focus more on learning and growing than needing to stay safe.
- You feel more alive — instead of just churning through endless tasks, you’re trying new things, stepping into the unknown, seeing what works and what doesn’t. It can feel thrilling.
- You learn more — instead of worrying about doing things right, you let yourself try new ways of doing things, and let yourself fall on your face, because that’s a part of the Play.
These are the powerful effects of Play. Let’s look at how you might start to incorporate Play into your day.
How to Bring Play Into Your LifeAt this point, you might start to ask, “OK, so how do I play? Just give me the answers!” But knowing the answer is the safe way, not the way of Play.
Instead, try things out for yourself, and see what you can discover! Be playful in bringing Play into your life!
That said, here are some ideas to start you out:
- When you do a task, ask, “How can I turn this into Play?” Maybe some music, maybe try things out a new way, maybe let yourself stumble and fall a bit, maybe turn it into a game.
- When you have free time — even 10 minutes — instead of going to your usual distractions or seeing how you can use the time productively … ask yourself what would be fun? How can you turn this small time into a bit of Play?
- Invite others to play with you — young kids are always down to play (they’re our models for Play!), but you can invite your partner, your family, your friends. How can you invite people you work with to play?
- Try to see if you can do your usual things in a new way. Get inventive! Instead of walking home the usual way, try a randomly selected path. Instead of just getting through your email, can you do it with more Play? Instead of doing chores or errands the usual way, can you get creative with them?
- Some words to prompt you: Adventure. Dance. Games. Creativity. Invention. Stumbling around like a toddler learning to walk. Exploration. Discovery. Joy!
What would you like to play today?
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By Leo BabautaRecently I had a reader write in to me about not being good at finishing things.
A few examples of things they haven’t finished:
- They bought a course and never finished it
- They can’t seem to stick to a diet
- They’ve only gone on half of the hikes they want to go on in their area
I can relate! It can be hard to finish things — we get excited about something at the start, but when we get busy or things get hard or boring, our commitment wavers.
So how do we get better at finishing things? We have to deepen into commitment, and get support.
Before we get into the details, it’s important to note: commitment is a practice. It’s not something you either have or don’t have, or that you’ll always suck at. You have to practice, develop trust in yourself, learn what works, learn to bring in what’s needed for what you’re facing. Let yourself get better at commitment by being in the practice of commitment, regularly.
If you’d like to practice commitment, here’s what I suggest:
- Make a deeper commitment: if you’re only half committed, then when things get busy, your commitment will go out the door. So it’s a practice to deepen the commitment — figure out why you really care about something, commit to others, and practice showing up no matter what. It’s like the commitment of a parent to feed their children — there’s no question.
- Use accountability & consequences: Most people don’t want to create consequences, but when we’re not really showing up with commitment, we can use accountability devices to deepen commitment. If you said you would have to get a pie in your face if you didn’t finish the course you bought by the end of the month, you’ll probably finish it. If you had to give $100 to a political candidate you don’t like if you missed your diet 2 days in a row, you’ll probably get more serious about the diet.
- Get support: Get a coach and find a community. It’s hard to persevere with something on your own. It’s easy to let yourself off the hook when things get busy, and easy to beat yourself up about it, and easy to engage with the same patterns over and over again. A coach helps us to see the patterns and choose something different. A community helps us to feel supported and not so alone when things are tough.
As you deepen into the practice of being committed, you’ll notice that you’ll falter a lot. You’ll want to give up, or habitually start to go to distractions, or have lots of reasons why it’s OK to put it off. That’s totally OK — this isn’t about doing it perfectly, but about practicing with these habitual patterns.
So when you falter, don’t quit. Think of it as a part of the growth process. You’ll start, fail, learn, and try again, over and over again. As you do this, you’ll get discouraged, and it’s important to get support to keep going. Get encouragement!
If you’re interested in getting support from me, consider doing 1-on-1 coaching with me, or joining my Fearless Living Academy community. The private coaching is a deeper commitment with much greater support, but FLA is a great community that will support you to keep going as well.
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By Leo BabautaMost of us are operating on mistaken ideas about what gives us happiness — and these errors are costly.
Think about how you normally spend your days — and then think about whether that’s making you happy. Now think about the cost to your health and long-term happiness.
Let’s give a few examples, so you can see what I mean:
- Social media: If you spend a lot of your time on social media, perhaps for it’s entertainment value or distraction from things stressing you out … notice if this leads to better or worse happiness and mental health. For many, it leads to worse mental health and less happiness, and has huge opportunity costs.
- TV, Youtube or other entertainment: Same as social media — it usually has diminishing returns on happiness (10 hours of TV makes you less happy than 1 hour of TV), and huge opportunity costs.
- Work: Our hope is to get a lot of work done, to clear things out, so that we’ll have peace and feel accomplished. This, of course, never happens — there’s always more work to be done, and our lists and inboxes are never clear (or at least, not for long).
- Email / messaging: Chances are, you spend a lot of time responding to people. There’s nothing wrong with that — most of us need to respond to some things. But the drive to constantly respond comes from fear, and no matter how much you respond, it rarely leads to happiness or long-term benefit beyond responding to the essentials.
- Shopping: Next time you have the urge to impulse buy something online … pause and ask yourself what you’re hoping to get out of that purchase, beyond the item itself. Sometimes the purchase is an absolute necessity, but mostly we’re hoping that buying this thing will give us a certain feeling — without knowing what the feeling is that we’re hoping to get. If you figure it out, ask yourself after the thing arrives if it gave you that … and then if it did, notice how long that lasts. Buying something rarely leads to a long-term gain in happiness, and often not even a short-term gain.
- Eating: Of course, we have to eat. And there’s something pleasurable and wonderful about good food. But often, we’re eating because of a craving or compulsion, because we think it will soothe or satisfy something. It rarely works. And it can come to the great cost of our health, if we’re overdoing it.
- Drinking alcohol: The same goes for drinking alcohol — there’s nothing wrong with it, but when it becomes a “have to” rather than an occasional treat, we’re doing it with hopes of soothing something or satisfying something. And that doesn’t really work.
OK, if you’re on board with all of that — then you might be asking, “So, what does lead to happiness?”
There are two places to look: outwardly and inwardly.
Outward Happiness ActivitiesAll of the activities listed above can actually give you happiness — eating a handful of blueberries, for example, gives me much more happiness than a large fast food meal. Doing some work, or watching a beautiful movie, or reading an inspirational social media post online … these can all lead to some happiness.
The most important thing is the way that the activity is done — with full appreciation, and without needing more and more and more. If you can approach anything this way, then the outward activity can lead to happiness.
That said, there are a few outward activities that I notice lead me to more happiness than most activities:
- Being outdoors and in nature
- Moving my body in a delightful way
- Eating healthy food
- Meditating
- Taking care of myself
- Connecting with others in an authentic way
- Expressing myself through creating
- Doing an act of service for others
- Smiling, laughing, dancing, playing
This isn’t a complete list, but hopefully you can see that these are happiness-related activities. Some activites can lead to greater happiness — if we fully allow them to. If we do them like we do most things, rushing through them without much appreciation, then they won’t have a big effect.
Inward Happiness ActivitiesIn the list above, of outward happiness activities, you might notice something — many of them are related to some inward experience. And that’s the most important thing — the real happiness comes from what’s happening inwardly.
Here are some inward activities you’ll notice from the list above:
- Being delighted by movement, music, connecting with others
- Caring for yourself or others
- Having fun, playing, smiling
- Being fully in the present moment
- Being grateful, being appreciative
- Loving
- Feeling connected to others, yourself, or the world around you
- Expressing your full self
Again, this isn’t a complete list. The idea is to show you the inward activities that are happening with any outward activity, that lead to greater happiness.
There are lots of other inward activities that don’t often lead to greater happiness: judgment, complaining, needing more and more, hating, seeing the faults, hiding yourself or shutting yourself off from the world. Not that these are bad things — they’re human, and we all do them, and they’re a part of the beautiful experience of living. But you might notice that when you’re doing them, they don’t fulfill you as much as other inward activities.
From that, you might consciously practice the inward activities that lead to greater fulfilment, meaning, love. How would you like to practice?
The post Our Mistaken Ideas About What Makes Us Happy appeared first on zen habits.
I find that almost all problems are a breakdown in trusting ourselves.
If we could trust ourselves fully, so many things become effortless.
Let me give some examples of where we don’t trust ourselves:
- Procrastination: We procrastinate when we think we can’t handle the stress or difficulty of one or more tasks, or we don’t trust ourselves to handle any bad outcomes we fear from doing those tasks (people judging our work, for example). If we trusted ourselves completely, we could just do the task and deal with the stress that comes from it, and deal with whatever comes after.
- Overwork: We work hard often with hopes of clearing our todo list or inbox, and getting a sense of peace if we finish everything (which never comes). We don’t trust ourselves to handle the work in future days, and don’t trust that the work we’ve put in by the end of a reasonable work day is enough.
- Social media addiction: The urge to constantly check social media (or other distracting websites) is usually driven by a fear of taking on harder tasks, or a fear of missing out. If we trusted ourselves completely, we could calm those fears while taking on our more important tasks or taking care of ourselves better.
- Lack of exercise: While we might want to exercise, it’s something we put off, often because of a fear that we won’t get all our tasks done, because of fear of missing out on things like social media, or because of fear of the discomfort of the exercise itself. If we fully trusted ourselves, we could take on the discomfort and joy of exercise, while trusting that we could get to the work and social media later.
- Overwhelm: When we’re overwhelmed, we don’t trust ourselves to be able to handle all the things that are in front of us. If we fully trusted ourselves, we would trust that we could choose one thing from the list, be fully in that task, and then take on the next after that. And deal with whatever situation arises, one thing at a time.
Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list of problems you might have, but I’m hoping you can start to see where self-trust is the key factor in all of the above, and many other problems.
So if that’s true … how do we develop trust in ourselves? Let’s first look at what’s possible if we fully trust ourselves, then look at how to develop that trust.
What’s Possible with Full TrustIf we fully trust ourselves, life becomes so much easier. We can step into the unknown, out of our comfort zone, take risks, and act with confidence. We can ask for what we want, and trust that it’s OK to want something. We can choose from the heart, and trust the heart’s desire.
Here are some things that become possible with full trust:
- We can choose what we feel called to work each day, at the beginning of the day, so that we line up our day with our priorities.
- We can trust ourselves to choose the next task from the list, from our hearts. Then trust ourselves by taking that task on with full devotion, trusting that we’ll get to the rest later.
- We trust ourselves to handle any situation that arises, any consequence from our choices. If someone is upset or disappointed with us, we trust ourselves to deal with that. If we feel sadness or frustration, we trust ourselves to deal with that. The future, then, becomes less stressful because we trust that we can deal with anything that comes.
- When we have an overwhelming number of things in front of us, we trust ourselves to choose one thing, and deal with that.
- We trust ourselves to fully take on difficult things like exercise, difficult tasks, difficult conversations, meditation, and more, because we know we can be with whatever stress is there.
- We begin to create a life of impact, because we’re taking on the things that are impactful and important.
- We create a life where we are taking care of ourselves, because we’re trusting that it’s OK that we can take care of ourselves.
- We create the ability to have difficult conversations, because we trust ourselves in those convos. Our relationships get better, and we’re less stressed by whatever the other person is doing.
That’s just the start. More trust leads to us being able to fully be ourselves, and our lives become more alive, more relaxed, more joyous, more effortless.
How to Develop Trust in OurselvesSo how do we develop that kind of trust? With intentional practice.
Pick one area where you aren’t trusting yourself, and set an intention to practice:
- Procrastination: take on one task at a time. Trust yourself to take on that task, even for 2 minutes. You don’t have to finish, just start. With practice, you’ll go longer, up to 30 minutes. That’s enough for this practice.
- Overwhelm: Make a list of tasks. Practice choosing one, and taking it one. Trust yourself to deal with the rest later, and practice just taking that one task on at a time.
- Urges and addictions: Cut yourself off from the urge/addiction for 3 days. Practice trust in yourself to deal with the stress that results from not indulging. Find other, healthier ways to deal with that stress: meditate, exercise, go for a walk, talk to a friend or therapist.
- Difficult convos: Make a list of the difficult conversations you’ve been putting off. Practice trust by reaching out to the easiest one on the list and asking for a few minutes (in person or over the phone). Don’t rehearse the convo, don’t let yourself overthink it. Just show up, and practice talking with this person, trusting yourself to navigate without overthinking. Practice trust by being mindfully with any emotion that comes up, for you or them. Repeat this once a day.
These are where I would start. The practice of developing trust is a lifelone one. Beyond this, I would suggest you get some support — reach out to me if you’d like to work with me as a 1-on-1 coach, I’m here for that work!
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Lately I’ve been waking up early (5:30am), because I traveled to London for a couple of weeks to lead a retreat, and my sleep schedule shifted. I really enjoy it!
Someone asked me recently what my morning routine is like, and I told them: It changes regularly, depending on what I need.
That said, I haven’t shared my morning routine in awhile, so I’ll share it here. Please remember that this routine is provisional — it will change when I need it to.
Here’s what I’ve been doing lately:
- Wake and brew some coffee. I went about 6 months without coffee, and I think it was better for my sleep. But lately I’m indulging myself with some delicious coffee made with a Chemex brewer.
- Meditate. I will sometimes go for awhile without meditating, but my life is much better when I meditate. Just like my dental health is better when I floss, and my physical health is better when I exercise every day.
- Gratitude. I like to greet my day with a moment or two of gratitude. How is today a blessing?
- Prioritize. I sit and plan my day — what tasks do I need to prioritize, when will I do them? I look at my master task list, my calendar, and team project system, and then I make a list for the day. I like to have my coffee here, enjoying this moment of quietness and purpose.
- Write. Next, I’ll either write, or do my most important task. This is another beautiful moment of quiet. Continue the coffee drinking, and gratitude.
- Emails. I’ll tackle as many emails and messages as possible. Clear them out, for the most part. I give myself about 30 minutes for this, because otherwise it’ll take up the whole day. Then I move on to the next most important task on my priority list.
I used to do some movement (like exercise or yoga) here, but lately I’ve been waiting until mid-morning to move my body, and then late afternoons for harder workouts or runs.
I change my morning routine (and wakeup time) to fit my needs in different seasons. Some seasons require more quietude and reflection, others more activity and focus, others more mindfulness and movement. The morning routine should serve the needs I have at the time.
I hope this helps! Wishing you beauty and wonder in your mornings as well.
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Every new day is a tremendous gift. And yet we often take these days for granted, rushing into everything we need to respond to, distracting ourselves, forgetting to feel wonder.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to create a morning ritual to greet your day?
The purpose of the ritual is to practice full appreciation of the gift we’ve been given, and to set the rest of the day up for wonder.
What would that create for your life, if you had a ritual like that?
My suggestion is to create your own ritual, not copy mine, because ritual is best treated as a creative act. Ask yourself, what would be amazing for your morning?
Some ideas and suggestions:
- Let the ritual be sacred. Let it have a feeling of elevatedness, transcendence, spirituality. If these aren’t your norm, maybe try them out — it’s possible this is exactly what your day needs.
- Start small, but go slow. You don’t need an hourlong ritual — perhaps just something that takes a few minutes, at the start. Keep it simple. But as you do it, let yourself do it slowly.
- Practice how you want to be during the day. Don’t rush through the ritual, like yet another obligation. How do you want to be during the day? Some ideas are: wonder, joy, play, slowness, spiritual, love. Choose one and practice this as you do the ritual.
- Incorporate elements of beauty and purpose. Some examples (but don’t do all of them): Flowers, a candle, music, a notebook and nice pen, incense. Read a text that connects you to wonder. Remind yourself of your deepest purpose.
- Gratitude, wonder, prayer. These are three elements we miss out on in our day. How can you incorporate them into your ritual? Prayer, btw, is something that many of us non-religious people reject, but we miss out on the humbling nature of asking for something you feel you can’t do on your own, from something that’s bigger than you (even if that’s family, community, the universe, etc.).
Another important idea: start out imperfectly, and iterate. That means create new versions as you go through the ritual regularly, adjusting based on what you discover. Don’t try to make it perfect — even if you just pause for a moment in the morning to think of 5 things you’re grateful for, that’s an amazing start.
What would be a lovely way to greet your day?
The Deepening Into Slowing Down RetreatBtw … I’m holding an online retreat, Deepening Into Slowing Down, from June 21-23, 2024, and you’re invited.
In this retreat, we’ll meditate together, I’ll teach about the depths possible in slowing down, we’ll look at our old habitual patterns, and do some work on this together. It’s a 3-day retreat designed to have you leave a changed person.
I’m also offering a $100 discount on the retreat if you sign up by the end of May, so grab your seat now.
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By Leo BabautaOur days are a busy rush, often from the moment we wake up. Even in our moments of rest, we are often on our phones or using technology to distract ourselves. The result is a life of stress, overwhelm, and habitual patterns.
What would it be like to slow down? To find stillness in your day, moments of rest and quietude?
The possibility of slowing down goes much deeper than just having a bit less busyness in your day …
Slowing down, if we go deeper, allows us to:
- Notice what’s coming up for us, and to attend to our emotions. This is much, much more important than people realize — most of our problems come from an inability to regulate our emotions or even recognize that they’re there.
- Make decisions from a place of choosing from the heart. If we have a decision to make, instead of overthinking it, we can slow down and sit in stillness for a few moments, and notice what our heart chooses. This makes decision-making much more effortless, once you learn to trust this.
- Make time for creating, instead of just busywork. We rush to do busywork because of fear, and because it’s easier than setting aside time to create. By slowing down, we can make the time to create, and slow down with our fears that are keeping us from doing this.
- Focus on what’s really important. What’s most important to you in your life? Spending time on loved ones, on your health, on your most important work? Whatever is most important to you, by slowing down, you can become more intentional and purposeful, and fully be with whatever you choose to do.
- Start to break up our habitual patterns. We live our lives mostly on autopilot, driven by old habitual patterns. This isn’t bad, but it means we struggle to do things the way we’d really like. We can begin break up those old patterns by slowing down, and noticing that we’re caught up in them.
- Start to get some rest and self-care into our lives. When we are rushed and busy and distracted all day long, it leads to feeling depleted and exhausted. This is a huge problem for many of us. Slowing down can create a bit of spaciousness to choose into rest and taking care of ourselves.
- Start to truly appreciate life. Rushing through our day, we barely notice the world in front of us. What if we could start to slow down and find wonder in the everyday moments?
These are just a handful of the possibilities of slowing down. It’s a deep, sacred, beautiful practice that can transform our lives, if we really engage with it regularly.
If you’d like to practice with me, I invite you to join me in my Deepening Into Slowing Down Retreat.
The Deepening Into Slowing Down RetreatI’m holding an online retreat, Deepening Into Slowing Down, from June 21-23, 2024, and you’re invited.
In this retreat, we’ll meditate together, I’ll teach about the depths possible in slowing down, we’ll look at our old habitual patterns, and do some work on this together. It’s a 3-day retreat designed to have you leave a changed person.
I’m also offering a $100 discount on the retreat if you sign up by the end of May, so grab your seat now.
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By Leo BabautaFor many of us in the Northern hemisphere, Spring has fully arrived: gorgeous sunshine, warmer weather, green trees, blossoms. It’s glorious!
With Spring comes life springing into action, full of abundance. This is the chaos of life, full and energetic and exuberant. It’s chaotic but in the most affirming of ways.
This abundance and chaos can fill us up, if we let it. If you’re feeling drained and empty, then you can let yourself feel the nourishing abundance of life all around you. Chaos can be stressful, or restorative — depending on our attitude towards it.
Here’s the practice:
- Go outside and look at the sunlight and abundant nature all around you.
- Let yourself relax and open to this abundance, and soak it in as a way to fill up your cup.
- Imagine that seeing the abundant life and greenery can relax you, bring life into you, make your heart sing with joy and wonder.
- Soak in as much of this life energy as you’d like!
The amazing thing is that this abundant, chaotic life energy is always available to us, no matter the season. It’s the joyful play of little kids, the chaos of our lives, the energy of a crowd in a subway, the emotions of a loved one, the uncertainty in your heart. This is all the abundance and chaos of Spring, come to life, unpredictable, in transition, creative and powerful.
Can you practice being more open to receiving the abundance and chaos of life all around you, and within you?
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By Leo BabautaI challenge you to do a test before you read the rest of this post (well OK, read the next two paragraphs then go do the challenge) …
Open an email that’s been sitting in your inbox but that you’ve been avoiding responding to or acting on. Pick the hardest one. Try to sit there, read the email, and then act on it and/or respond to it.
Then notice if there’s a moment when you want to just get away from that email. What does that moment feel like?
This moment of overwhelm and anxiety is usually invisible to most of us. It happens multiple times throughout the day (possibly dozens), and determines the actions we take or don’t take. But we rarely notice it — we just try to get away from it.
This is the moment that ruins our focus. It’s the moment that causes our procrastination and avoidance. It’s the moment that ruins our best habits and our best intentions.
It’s a moment that has a feeling we don’t want to feel. In fact, we’ll often spend a lot of our time trying to avoid that feeling. It feels too hard to feel.
We might have even set up a large part of our lives so that we don’t have to feel it — our lives are designed around that kind of feeling, to avoid it. For example, if you feel that feeling when you talk in front of a group, you might have set up your life so you never have to talk in front of a group. If socializing with strangers gives you that feeling, you might have a life where you don’t have to do that. If you get the feeling when you share your creative work with others, then you might have a life where you never have to do that. You get the picture.
That’s all fine — you don’t have to change your life. But if you’d like to not have to avoid the feeling, and you’d like to create amazing focus and the ability not to avoid your most meaningful work … read on.
The main thing is to let yourself feel the feeling, whenever you notice it. If you can do that repeatedly, as a training, you’ll get much better at it, and the feeling becomes much less of a big deal.
So first, notice when the moment comes — when you’re feeling the thing that is overwhelming and that you want to get away from. It might be because of a difficult or scary task, an upcoming event or meeting or trip, a difficult conversation or a frustrating person, an email or message you don’t want to read. Just try to catch the moment when it’s happening.
When you notice it, pause. Just sit for a few seconds, and breathe deeper and more slowly. Let yourself calm down for a minute, and just be with the feeling. That means to give it your attention and not to turn away from it, just for a few seconds.
If it’s too intense, get up and walk around. Shake it off. Distract yourself. Then you might try again, just for a few seconds. Maybe do that 2-3 times if you feel up to it. No need to push yourself too far.
If you practice this several times a day, you’ll get better at it. If you do it 10 times a day, you’ll get better even faster. Soon, you’ll be able to stay with it for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute. Then longer. You’ll grow your capacity to be with this moment.
Then everything becomes possible.
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By Leo BabautaAs I write this, I’m on a long plane ride — I’ve written many posts on planes and trains, and I find it actually much easier to write this way despite the shakiness of my laptop on these rides.
It’s easy to write on planes and trains because there’s not as much to do. I don’t get the Internet option on planes because it really limits my options. That’s a good thing for focus.
On planes, I can do one of a few things: read, watch a movie, sleep, or write. Those are all good options, but they’re limited. I tend to think about it for a minute, and then choose one to focus on for a while.
At home and at work, however, our options are unlimited. And our brains seem to want to do it all, when we have unlimited options. We tend to jump from one thing to another, endlessly, until the sweet release of sleep takes us from all of our choices.
Monks have long been people with limited options, intentionally. They’re like people who ride on planes (without buying Internet) — they can read, write, pray, eat, clean, meditate (or commune with God, depending on their religion). All day, every day. And usually, they have spots in the day for each of these.
This makes pristine focus easy.
What if we could develop the pristine focus of a monk? It’s not that they have superpowers — though this kind of training will ultimately develop your capacity to focus — but they have the structure and the limited options that lead to focus.
Let’s talk about how to put those ideas into action.
The Pristine Focus of One ThingImagine that you sit for a minute, and let your heart (or your schedule) choose one thing to focus on. Just one, for a limited period of time (let’s say 10 minutes, or 30).
Now you cut off all other options. Ruthlessly. It’s just you and this one thing.
You’ll be tempted to move away from the one thing, but you’ve committed yourself. So you turn towards it. And you focus.
You feel like turning away, but you’re committed. You breathe. Maybe you get up and stretch. Then you come back to focus.
This is training in pristine focus. And you get better at it with practice.
Everything you do starts to become easier, calmer. You make a bigger impact with each day, while being less busy. This one simple practice, resulting in everything you’ve been wanting.
Structure to Support FocusThat kind of pristine focus doesn’t come for free — you have to commit yourself to it.
And having structure to your day can really help you focus on one thing. If it’s time to meditate, that’s what you’re focusing on, exclusively. If it’s time to write, that’s what you’re devoted to.
So think about the things you want to focus on exclusively when you do them. Some ideas:
- An important project
- Exercise
- Answering email
- Finances
- A creative project
- Journaling
- Meditation or yoga
And so on. You might have others — playing music, crafting, reading. What would you like to have pristine focus for in your day?
Then block them off on your calendar. Don’t block off the whole day — maybe between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of your available time — because you need time for unexpected things, and taking care of yourself. You need space between things.
Then trust the structure you come up with. Let the structure support your practice of pristine focus on one thing at a time. Let this be your practice of devotion.
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By Leo BabautaThere is a power to our word that is very often underdeveloped — words are magic, and can create the world around us. But most of us use this magic as if it weren’t powerful.
The first way we see this is that we often don’t honor our word to ourselves.
In his wonderful book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz puts “Be impeccable with your word” as the first and most important of the four agreements that can change your life. There’s a lot more depth to this agreement, “Be impeccable with your word,” than you might first realize … but I’m only going to cover one aspect of that: honoring your word to yourself.
Some ways we don’t honor our word to ourselves:
- We say we’re going to exercise today, but then put it off because we’re busy.
- We vow to stop eating so many sweets, only to give in the next day and eat a bunch of ice cream and cookies.
- We say we’re going to work on a meaningful project, but that keeps getting pushed back another day, and another, until months have gone by.
- We say we’re going to meditate, but instead check our phones or email.
None of this is “bad,” and it would be a misuse of our word to harshly criticize ourselves for any of this. But what if we could start to honor our word to ourselves?
What if, when we tell ourselves we’re going to do something, we actually follow through and do it?
What would that change for you, in your life?
If you could 100% trust yourself to honor your word to yourself … this could change everything.
Let’s look at how to develop the power of our word to ourselves.
The Practice of Honoring Our Word to Ourselves
Start by committing yourself to take your word to yourself as sacred. It’s a vow, and when you say it, you’re fully committed to it.
Remind yourself of this each time you’re about to break your vow to yourself.
Then start by only making small promises to yourself — things you know you can definitely do. And follow through on every single promise, over and over, with full commitment.
For example: promise to go and drink a glass of water, and then do it. Promise to answer this one email, then do it. Promise to go for a walk around the block, then do it. Small promises, and then take them as sacred.
Remove the possibility of not doing it. My coach says if you’re a parent, you don’t even question whether you’re going to feed your kids or not — it’s a commitment you don’t question. Treat your commitments to yourself in the same way — unquestionable.
When you do it, acknowledge yourself for honoring your word to yourself. This is a victory to be celebrated. Even if it’s a tiny victory, it’s important.
If you mess up, honor your word by acknowledging the mistake, and apologizing. Take responsibility, without blame or shame. And then commit yourself to growing from this mistake.
Only once you’ve gotten good at the easy promises should you go to harder ones. Instead of promising to write for an hour, promise to write for 5 or 10 minutes. Instead of trying to meditate for an hour, just meditate for 5 minutes. Same with exercise, or anything that requires focus. Small promises, executed impeccably.
Don’t make indefinite promises — like that you’ll never touch another drop of alcohol. Make small promises, like you’re not going to eat a cookie for the next hour. Then make the promises easier to fulfill — get rid of the cookies, or remove yourself from the vicinity of the cookies.
Over time, if you work on developing the power of your word, it will become something you don’t question. And then your word will be like a powerful magic spell you can cast anytime you need to make magic happen.
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By Leo BabautaOne of the best long-term things you can do for a happier life and better relationships is to cultivate a positive mindset.
People with positive mindsets live longer, happier lives. They have lower rates of heart disease, cancer. They live about 7.5 years longer, on average. That’s huge.
So developing a positive mindset can be one of the most impactful things you can do for yourself.
And there are a ton of downstream effects: you are kinder to others when you’re happier, so your relationships are better. You are more playful, more joyful, more likely to take positive actions and focus on meaningful goals.
So how do we develop this positive mindset?
I’m going to share a handful of things I’ve found to be important …
- Notice your tendency toward negativity. We often don’t realize that we have a bias towards a negative mindset. This is a blind spot for most of us. To uncover this blind spot, try to find places during the day when you have a negative mindset: complaining, criticizing, judging, catastrophizing, feeling helpless, feeling resentful, feeling victimized, feeling put upon or burdened, feeling bored or lonely. NONE of these feelings are wrong! They’re just things to notice, and as we notice it, we will have the ability to create big shifts.
- Notice the impact of negativity. Without judgment, get curious about how these moments of negativity impact your life. How does it affect your motivation? Your relationships? How much fun other people have around you?
- Accept your negative feelings. Start to take the stance that it’s OK to feel whatever you feel. Tend to the negative feelings — how can you soothe them? How can you fully express them? For example, if you’re angry, can you rage like a werewolf? If you’re feeling put upon, can you yell in frustration into a pillow? Exaggerate your feelings, allowing them to course through your blood, and you’ll let them through you instead of repressing them.
- Find a new, positive stance to come from. Once you’ve exhausted the energy of the negative emotion, you might notice that your heart and mind are more open. In this place, you can choose something new. What stance would you like to come from in these moments? Pick one and practice it: maybe you will look for something to love in the other person. Maybe you’ll come from a stance of being of service to others, or compassionate, or giving unconditional love. This new stance takes practice.
- See the gift. Whatever stance you choose, it can be a beautiful practice to see the gift in any moment, even ones that feel negative. When someone is upset with you and you feel defensive … what is the gift in this person’s upsetness? When you are feeling tired and overwhelmed, what is the gift in such a moment of tenderness? When you have had a sad and lonely day, what gift can you find in your melancholy? There’s always a gift to be found in every moment in this brief and precious life, if we have the courage to look.
- Wonder practice. In the same way, we can practice awe and wonder in each moment. If we take on this practice, what we want to look for is seeing the wonder and beauty in each moment of life. Start with the easy stuff: going outside and seeing beautiful nature, or rejoicing in the light falling on our faces. Seeing laughter in a little kid, or love between two partners. Look for it everywhere! Even in the places we find more challenging: can we find wonder when people behave in ways we don’t normally like, or when the world is chaotic, or when we’re hurt? It’s powerful to take on this practice.
- Change your physicality. If you normally act like Eyore (from Winnie the Pooh) — slumped over and mopey — then your mindset will stay negative. That’s OK! There’s nothing wrong with feeling this way. But you might practice taking on a Tigger physicality — more positive, excited, joyful, playful. If you dance around, your mindset will follow. How can you bring a joyful, grateful, awe-filled physical attitude toward life?
This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide to a positive mindset … but rather a place to start. Pick one of the ideas above that feels easy and helpful, and practice it!
See what starts to shift. One small shift at a time, this could change your entire life.
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By Leo BabautaOn average, people spend more than 3 hours on their phones each day, picking up their phones nearly 60 times a day … with some people spending closer to 4 hours.
These numbers aren’t meant to be judgments — it’s not a bad thing to look at your phone — but instead are meant to bring some awareness to our phone usage.
A lot of people I talk to want to decrease their usage of phones — not necessarily decreasing to zero, but decreasing impulsive usage of their phones.
Many of us tend to grab our phones anytime there’s a lull, and once you get on your phone it can lead to mindless scrolling.
So how can we develop more mindful use of our phones, and become less dependent on them?
Let’s explore together.
Becoming More Mindful of Phone Usage
If you don’t have awareness, you can’t change something. So the most important first step is to start to bring mindfulness to your phone usage.
Here’s how:
- Get a small notebook or scrap of paper, and each time you reach for your phone, make a tally mark on the paper. This will bring awareness to reaching for your phone.
- Notice what you’re feeling when you reach for the phone. Write that down on the paper or notebook as well. Boredom, anxiety, overwhelm, sadness, loneliness, fear, frustration. This is the reason you’re reaching for the phone — in hopes of dealing with this emotion (hint: it doesn’t work).
- Take three breaths before you actually unlock the phone. You have the phone in your hand … pause for a moment and take three breaths. Notice the feeling you’re feeling that makes you want to reach for the phone. Do the breaths help with the feeling?
Commit to doing this for a week. You’ll develop beautiful mindfulness around your phone usage, even if you don’t stop using the phone.
Breaking the Habit of Phone Dependence
At this point, your mindful practice has set you up for success to break the habit.
Let’s look at how to change the habit:
- Understand your Why: Before you start, ask yourself why you want to make this change. Is it important, or is it a “this would be nice” kind of thing? If it’s just going to be “nice” to make the change, you won’t stick with it, because it’s not more important than your urges. You need a more meaningful reason: it’s going to lead to better mental health, better relationships, better productivity with your meaningful work, or whatever would be meaningful for you. Write this reason down and have it somewhere you’ll see it each day.
- Set an intention: Commit yourself to making this change. Is your intention to not look at social media or certain apps on your phone? Is it to only use those apps twice a day for 30 minutes each session? Is it to never use your phone except for reading or music? Set a clear intention, and commit yourself to it for a certain amount of time (let’s say 4 weeks).
- Lock screen reminder: Make your phone lock screen something that will remind you of your intention. A nature scene, a quote, a photo of your kids, whatever it takes. This will help you bring awareness whenever the urge comes up.
- Find other meaningful activities: What do you want to do instead of look at your phone? It should be something that 1) addresses the emotions you identified in the “mindful” section above and 2) you enjoy or find meaningful. For example, if you reach for your phone when you feel overwhelmed or anxious … maybe sitting in meditation, doing a few yoga poses, or going for a short walk will help you deal with those emotions, and lead to greater health or mental clarity. Other ideas: connect with a friend, do some stretches or pushups, drink a cup of tea, do some breathing exercises, or write someone a love note.
- Pause practice: When you are about to use your phone, practice taking a short pause. Breathe. Notice your emotions. Tend to them. Consider your meaningful Why and your intention. If you can’t avoid using the phone after this pause, don’t beat yourself up. Just introducing the pause is a huge, huge step. Celebrate any progress.
- Be willing to be with all of life: We most often use our phones because there are things we don’t want to feel or experience. It’s an avoidance mechanism. But what if we train ourselves to open up to all experiences, all parts of life? We don’t need our coping mechanisms anymore. So each time you reach for the phone, practice being with and opening to the experience you want to avoid. This is a training, and with practice, you’ll increase your capacity to experience and love every experience that life has to offer.
- Daily review: At the end of each day, before you go to sleep, set a reminder to do a short review. How did you do with your intention? What got in the way? What feelings did you resist being with? What can you improve tomorrow? Be compassionate with yourself. But use this daily review for continual learning and improvement.
This is not an easy habit to change, but it’s changeable … if you commit yourself, and find a meaningful reason. And if you let yourself continue to learn and grow in this process.
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By Leo BabautaDeveloping a strong sense of self is one of the most under-appreciated ways to be happy. To have healthy relationships, with others and with yourself.
It’s not often understood, and as a result, problems in this area cause problems in all areas of our lives.
Let me point out just some of the common symptoms of an under-developed sense of self:
- People pleasing
- Conflict avoidance
- Not being honest about how you feel
- Losing yourself in a relationship
- Distancing yourself from your partner when you’re afraid
- Hiding things, cheating on your partner
- Not being able to take care of your needs or emotions
- Being afraid of intimacy or relationships
- Not setting boundaries, feeling overrun or overburdened by others, resenting it
As you can see, the issues come up especially in relationship with others (with your partner, family, friends, coworkers, etc.) … but because of that, it affects almost everything in your life, even when you’re alone.
If you can develop a strong sense of self, you will start to address these problems and more, resulting in a massive transformation of your life.
This is obviously a huge topic that I can’t cover fully in one article, but let’s discuss the essentials.
Your Sense of Self Develops in Your FamilyParents often see their kids as an extension of themselves — my kid reflects how good of a parent I am, my children validate me, my children are a part of me.
You can see this when a parent is always telling their kids what to do, controlling their lives, or wanting the kid to be responsible for the parent’s anger, anxiety, or sadness.
The result of this kind of relationship is that often the kid grows up without a strong sense of self. They don’t know how to set boundaries, because the parents didn’t let them. They don’t know how to take care of their emotional needs, because the parents didn’t allow it. They look to others to reflect their value, because that’s what the parents trained them to do.
None of this is meant to make the kid or the parents wrong for how this goes. It’s just to shine a light on what’s happening, and to try to understand how it works.
Sense of Self with Your PartnerAs a result of all of that, we often come into romantic relationships without a strong sense of self. We think that we need to please the other person, and be validated by them.
We might feel we need to merge ourselves with them to feel love, and lose ourselves. Or perhaps we’re afraid of losing ourselves, because we don’t have a strong sense of self … so from that fear, we distance ourselves whenever we get too close to intimacy.
Most of our problems come from this: we either think we need to lose ourselves in the other person, or we distance ourselves because we’re afraid of losing ourselves.
This can be transformed if we develop a strong sense of self. Then we wouldn’t lose ourselves, nor need to distance ourselves. We can have closeness without losing the sense of who we are.
How to Start Developing a Stronger Sense of SelfThe way to develop a strong sense of self is to start by knowing yourself better — not necessarily changing anything about yourself.
This means a willingness to have intimacy with yourself:
- Know your feelings: Start to bring awareness and presence to your fears, anxieties, sadness, loneliness, boredom, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, love, compassion, joy, and more. When they are happening, can you notice them and let yourself feel them? This creates a sense of trust in yourself that you can be with your feelings.
- Know your self-talk: Notice what you’re telling yourself when you avoid, criticize, complain, break promises to yourself, make mistakes. What kind of language do you use? What kind of tone? Understanding this is a way of understanding how you’ve learned to protect yourself.
- Take care of your feelings: When you’re feeling afraid, sad, lonely, emotionally exhausted … can you find a way to take care of these feelings? Soothe them, bring love to them, reassure them? If you could have a loved one give you exactly what you need, what would that be? Could you do that for yourself?
- Know your desires: We are often trained to not want anything. It might not feel OK to want things. But what if we could just own our desires, and start to notice what they are? And feel that it’s OK to have these desires? That doesn’t mean we always get to have whatever we want — that’s attachment. But just acknowledging your desires can be powerful.
- Know your light: We sometimes only relate to the parts of ourselves we don’t really like. But a good practice is to start to see the parts of yourself that are beautiful — your compassion, generosity, curiosity, playfulness, commitment, power, courage, love, joy, and more. These aren’t always obvious, but they’re always there. Start to notice them and acknowledge them more often. This is the essence of developing your sense of self.
If you practice these on a regular basis, your sense of self will get stronger with each practice.
Practicing in Relationship with OthersIt’s best to develop your sense of self when you’re alone — even if you’re in a relationship, or have lots of family or friends around you, spend some time alone each day to practice knowing yourself.
That said, we deepen this work whenever we’re in relationship with anyone else. This can be a romantic partnership, a friendship, a relationship with your kids or siblings or parents, relationships with team members, business partners, etc.
Some ways to practice:
- Notice when you’re seeking validation from the other person. Practice validating yourself instead — acknowledge your light, celebrate your victories.
- Notice when you’re holding yourself back. You might not want to share your feelings with the other person, or perhaps you’re afraid of being honest. This is a withholding of yourself out of fear. When you notice this, attend to your fear. Then see if you can share yourself, at least in little bits. Through this practice, you’ll develop trust to share all of yourself.
- Set boundaries. Notice when you need alone time, and let them know. Notice when you’re saying Yes to things out of guilt, and practice saying No. Notice when you’re resentful about things, and look for a boundary that you can express that won’t make you resentful. Look for where your needs aren’t being honored, and speak up for them.
- Continue to practice your individuality. Just because you’re in relationship with someone else doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice who you are. Can you speak up for your opinions and desires? Can you have your own activities that are yours alone?
- Use conflicts to grow your sense of self. Every conflict with the other person can be a practice in opening your heart to them, without giving up who you are. And even if the conflict goes badly — let’s say they are shut down and mean to you — you can take some time alone and practice being with your feelings and taking care of your emotions. In this way, even difficult conflicts can be an opportunity to grow closer to yourself.
Be patient with yourself, because this isn’t easy stuff to practice, and you won’t “get it right” all the time. In fact, there isn’t a right way to do this, it’s an exploration, a journey of self-discovery.
Get support from a friend, a therapist, a coach, whenever you’re struggling with any of it. It’s OK to not be able to do it all on your own.
Above all, rejoice and delight in yourself, no matter how it’s going!
The post How to Develop a Strong Sense of Self appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaMy wife Eva and I have been vegan for over 11 years now, and we love it. I don’t talk about veganism a lot on Zen Habits, but today I’d love to share a little about it, if you’ll indulge me.
Let me start by talking about why I’m vegan, and then I’ll share a few tips on how to make becoming vegan as easy as possible, in case you’re interested.
So the first thing is that veganism, for me, is about compassion. Yes, it has a huge environmental impact — probably bigger than anything else you can do, including ditching a car or going electric vehicle. Yes, switching to eating plants can often have a huge health impact, if you’ve been eating a lot of junk and not a lot of veggies. But for me, the reason is compassion.
Animals are fellow living beings, and even if they aren’t human, I feel they deserve our compassion. Anyone who has a dog or a cat as a loved one knows what I’m talking about, but all of us have looked into the eyes of an animal and felt a heart connection. I believe they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, not as objects for our pleasure. If you agree with that, then I hope you’ll consider learning more about how they’re treated if they’re raised for food or clothing.
I grew up thinking that meat and dairy and eggs were simply food items — in the back of my mind, I knew that they came from animals, but I’d been protected from the reality of that. The animal agriculture industry is invested in us not looking more deeply than what we see in the grocery store. But it’s all horrors, if we bother to look.
So when I found the courage to face this and educate myself, I couldn’t close my eyes any more. I had to decide whether I was willing to ignore these horrors, just so I could have the pleasures of meat, cheese, eggs that I’d grown accustomed to.
If we’re being honest, these foods are for our pleasure. We no longer need to eat animal products to survive, nor thrive. I have been living a very healthy life for over a decade — I’m strong, not underweight, not anemic, not deficient on any vitamins or minerals. And it hasn’t been hard at all. It doesn’t require a ton of careful planning, nor does it feel like deprivation or sacrifice.
I love eating vegan food! I eat mostly whole plant food — lentils, greens, fruits, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, avocados, nuts and seeds make up the majority of my diet lately. But in recent weeks I’ve also had vegan pizza, burgers, fries, cookies, banana bread, donuts, pad Thai, and more. I indulge, and it’s all vegan, and all delicious.
I’m a healthy vegan because:
- I eat mostly whole plants, delicious as anything
- I exercise daily. Running, walking, strength training, sports.
- I get good sleep.
- I make sure to get the nutrients I need: a decent amount of protein for all the exercise I do, pretty much all the vitamins and minerals my body needs from my plant foods, plus I supplement with Vitamin B12, Vitamin D (especially in winter), and Omega 3 (from seaweed).
And I’m a happy vegan, because I let myself enjoy life. I don’t care about wearing leather or wool. I feel good about my choices. And I don’t judge anyone else. I just model being a healthy, happy vegan.
The Easy Way to Go VeganWhat I learned is that you don’t have to go all or nothing. If you’re interested in making this compassionate change, then I suggest the following:
- Do it gradually. Start by cutting out one thing — let’s say red meat — while learning one or two vegan recipes of something you already enjoy. We started with things like vegan chili, spaghetti, and pizza. After that feels normal, pick another thing — maybe poultry. And learn a couple more recipes. And so on. I didn’t do it all at once (cheese was the last thing I gave up, and it was way easier than I thought!).
- Don’t be afraid to try vegan substitutes. Sure, they’re processed, but so are a lot of things we eat. I don’t think of vegan products as “health foods” but more things to make it easier to switch to vegan. And the products are getting better every year — companies like Impossible, Beyond, Field Roast, Miyoko’s, Gardein, Silk, Forager and more are creating really great stuff.
- Learn how to get your nutrients. One of the most important is B12, which isn’t provided by whole plant foods, but you can easily get it in fortified foods like soymilk. I take a weekly B12 vitamin for insurance. Make sure you’re getting adequate protein by eating a protein source at every meal — beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, seitan, or some vegan meat substitute. I also recommend a daily vegan Vitamin D. It’s not hard once you figure out what works for you.
- Don’t toss out your non-vegan stuff. Being vegan isn’t just a diet — it includes other lifestyle choices like not buying leather or wool. Read up on those industries to educate yourself. But I don’t think you need to toss out all your belts and boots and go buy new stuff — that can be expensive and wasteful. Instead, when your current stuff needs to be replaced, just look for alternatives that don’t use animal products.
- Be kind to the haters. If you transition to being vegan, you’ll get lots of people who are curious about it, and some who try to argue about why it’s a bad choice. You’ll hear stories of people who tried it and got sick (it’s rare, and usually means they didn’t get proper nutrients). You’ll get lame jokes about vegans. It’s OK — don’t take any of it too seriously. I try to keep a good sense of humor, find compassion for them, and kindly educate if they’re genuinely curious. Otherwise, I just remind myself that this is just what comes with the territory when you make a change that makes others feel threatened. I remember what that was like for me, as a meat eater, and I remain gentle with them.
The main thing is to not stress about any of it, and make it as easy and enjoyable as you can. Let me know if you have questions!
The post Why I Am Vegan (and how to make it easy) appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaWhen we are procrastinating, avoiding exercise or some other habit we want to create, or avoiding taking on a difficult project … the underlying cause is rarely what we think it is.
We think that all we need to do is do the thing we’re avoiding, and stop procrastinating. Simple! But then when we fail, we wonder what’s wrong with us.
The problem is that we aren’t really addressing the real cause. We’re addressing the symptom, and while there are tactics that can help with the symptom, they rarely last for very long.
So what causes our avoidance? An underlying emotional current. Some kind of inner state.
Let me walk you through it:
- You’re feeling a certain way — because of the way your life is going, you might be feeling overwhelmed, anxious, afraid, sad, lonely, emotionally exhausted, frustrated, battered by life.
- You resist that emotional state — you don’t want to feel that way, so you resist letting yourself feel it. This resistance is usually in the form of distraction, like online distraction, busywork, messaging, etc.
- Facing difficult things is harder in this emotional state — turning toward a difficult project, or clearing clutter, or dealing with a thousand emails … these are all overwhelming in the best of times. But being in a difficult emotional state makes it even harder. No wonder we’re avoiding!
- We try to overcome our avoidance with tactics — we try to coerce ourselves to do the thing we’re avoiding, with tactics. “No distractions, only work today!” And it sometimes works, but because the underlying emotional state hasn’t been addressed, it never lasts long. We go back to avoidance.
- This makes us feel bad, and worsens the underlying emotional state — we feel bad about ourselves when we revert to avoidance. This only adds to whatever emotional state was already there. Go back to the first step above, and repeat, with some added emotional stress!
Any of this sound familiar? It’s what we’re all going through, every day, usually without knowing it. Even if we’re aware, we’re rarely actually facing it, because we’re resisting the emotional state.
So the two problems to address are:
- We’re unaware of the emotional state causing avoidance.
- We resist the emotion, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Let’s talk about how to address these issues, so we can address the real cause of avoidance.
Bringing Awareness to the Inner StateThe key is to notice when you’re avoiding something. Is there a project, task, conversation, or personal habit you’re putting off?
Alternatively, you could notice that you’re caught up in distraction — messaging, social media, email, busywork, Youtube, Netflix, news sites, forums, etc. Doing a little of this is always cool, but if you are caught up doing it a lot, then this is a sign you’re probably avoiding.
Once you notice your avoiding or caught up in distraction … see if you can notice your underlying inner state. Are you feeling sad, grieving or lonely? Overwhelmed, afraid, anxious? Frustrated, angry, resentful, burdened? Hurt, unloved, unseen?
At this point, you don’t have to do anything about the emotional state. Just notice. The more you bring awareness, the more you’ll be able to address it at some point.
Not Resisting the EmotionIf you’re avoiding or caught in distraction, it’s a good bet that you’re resisting the emotion. That means that you don’t want to feel it — you feel there’s something wrong with feeling sad, angry, anxious, etc. In your head, you might think there’s nothing wrong with these feelings … but there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to feel them. Maybe you think you can’t handle it, or it’s too hard.
There’s nothing wrong with resisting the emotion. It’s human to resist! But as long as we’re resisting it, it will have a power over us, and avoidance becomes unavoidable.
If you’re up for letting go of your resistance, the practice is just to let yourself feel the emotion. Just feel sad, lonely, anxious, frustrated. Sit in stillness for a few minutes, and just let yourself feel it. The main instruction is to relax — let your body and mind relax, as the emotion comes up.
Surrender to the emotion. It’s rarely that difficult, and will usually only last for a minute or three. If it’s too intense, you can stop — do something to take your mind off it.
Whether you’re able to surrender to it or not, give yourself a few minutes of self-care after. Give yourself compassion, love, a nice warm cup of tea. Get a hug from someone, or talk to a friend or therapist. And acknowledge yourself for whatever you were able to do.
How Not to AvoidPutting this all together, here’s how to create a shift so you aren’t avoiding as much …
Notice when you’re avoiding or stuck in distraction.
Notice the underlying inner emotional state.
Surrender to the emotional state, letting yourself feel it. Relax.
Give yourself some love and self-care.
Once you’ve done that, you should be much clearer. Now see if your heart is more open to taking on what you’re avoiding.
Just do 5 minutes of what you’re avoiding, to start with, to give yourself an emotional victory. It’ll open your heart even more.
Dance in victory!
The post How to Address What’s Really Causing Your Avoidance appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Recently I got a running watch, and have been keeping most of my runs below a certain heart rate, to build up my heart’s aerobic fitness with lots of slow running.
The pace of my runs has been incredibly slow for the last month.
It’s helped me to fall in love with running again.
I’ll share more about that, but it has me wanting to share a more general thought: slowing down can have us falling in love with anything if we let it.
Let me share a few examples:
- Music: Often we listen to music while rushing through our day — while going somewhere, while working, while cleaning. But there’s a sweet pleasure in just sitting around listening to an entire album, the way we used to do, not doing anything but enjoying the music.
- Work: We often give work a bad name, because it can feel burdensome, overwhelming, exhausting. We have to coerce ourselves to do work. But if we slow down with our tasks, give them some space and allow ourselves to fully immerse ourselves in each activity … it can transform the experience. It can feel spacious and luxurious.
- Eating: Many of us rush through our meals, scrolling on our phones as we eat, watching TV or videos, doing work. It’s hard to enjoy food this way — the food has no flavor if we’re not paying attention. There can be something delicious about slowing down and giving our full attention to our food, even for 5-10 minutes. Savor, and find gratitude for this nourishing beautiful meal in front of us.
- Walking: Usually if we’re walking, we’re in a hurry to get somewhere (at least, I am). Or we’re walking for exercise but we have music or a podcast loaded up so we don’t have to pay attention to the walk. But there slowing down and just enjoying the way — even if it’s on the way to get somewhere — can be transformative. Enjoy being outside, enjoy the short journey to go from one place to the next, enjoy the space between things, enjoy moving your body through space.
Of course, the same idea can be applied to anything, not just these examples. Reading, exercise, relationships, drinking tea, a bedtime ritual. Let me return to the topic of falling in love with running again, before I talk about the way to slow down in order to fall in love all over again.
How Slowing Down Helped Me Fall in Love with Running AgainI read a bunch of articles (and a book called 80/20 Running) that inspired me to slow my running pace down to an easy breezy conversational pace. Running slowed way down, but that allowed me to run longer (in distance and in time) and not feel very tired or risk injury. I started running almost every day.
These longer, slower runs became a place to reconnect to myself. Sometimes I load up an audiobook or listen to an album. Other times I just enjoy the outdoors going by at a slower pace.
The biggest surprise is how much I started to look forward to my daily runs! Instead of this hard, tiring workout that I would have to “overcome” … it became a place of peace and play. Running slower comes with its own challenges (I often feel I’m going too slow), but it came with unexpected joys.
After a couple of weeks of this, I realized that I had fallen in love with running again, for the first time in a decade.
The Way of Slowing Down to Re-Fall in LoveSo how can we apply this not only to running, but to anything that we’re not excited about anymore?
The Way of Slowing Down starts with simply setting an intention to slow down. I did this with running, because I was convinced of its benefits. If you think there’s a beautiful possibility available to you if you slow down with a particular activity, set the intention.
Then find a way to remember. For running, I had the running watch to give me feedback if I was going too fast. For eating, it helps to put technology away and only have the food in front of you. Same thing for reading, writing, or drinking a cup of tea.
Next, find a way to savor the deliciousness of the activity. What is there to love about the experience? What joys can you discover, if you keep your mind and heart open? Can you allow yourself to relish in it?
Finally, I love having a sense of anticipation. It’s the feeling of “I can’t wait to be with my lover again!” It’s the sweetness of looking forward to play, joy, pleasure, spaciousness. Always leave the activity with a little longing — don’t exhaust your desire. This way, the next time you are about to do the activity, you’ll feel a lift in your heart.
What would you like to fall in love with again?
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
~ Winnie the Pooh
p.s. if you’re interested in practicing slowing down with me, join me in my London retreat in April: the Practice of Slowing Down.
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By Leo Babauta
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
― Rumi
There’s rarely a moment in the day when most of us stop moving and stop the noise. For most of us, we’re working, we’re moving, we’re driving, we’re listening to things on our headphones, we’re watching things, we’re filling up the little spaces by checking our phones.
This isn’t wrong — it’s a very human tendency to want to be busy, productive, filling every space with something useful or entertaining.
But what if we could let ourselves become quiet?
What happens is something magical: we start to discover a new way of being alive, and a deeper experience starts to reveal itself to us.
What does it mean to become quiet? There isn’t a simple answer to this, but here are some of what I’ve been learning:
- It means slowing down for at least a few minutes, physically — refrain from moving around doing a lot of things, refrain from doing a bunch of tasks on your computer or phone, but instead just sit or come to some kind of stillness or slowness.
- It doesn’t mean you need to meditate — though of course that’s one way to do it. Instead, you could go for a quiet walk in nature, or sit watching the sunset, or lie in a hammock and just feel the breeze.
- Move away from technology, at least for a few minutes. Disconnect. Let go of reading and listening as well. Just sit still or move slowly, not trying to get anything done or consume anything.
- It means you let go of being productive or being entertained. You don’t need to achieve anything, prove anything, be excited. You let go of these kinds of compulsions, even for a few minutes.
- It means you don’t need to feel a certain way, or avoid feeling a certain way. For example, a lot of people want to feel productive, competent, entertained, so we do whatever we can to get those kinds of feelings. Also, we don’t want to feel bored, lonely, sad, helpless … so we do everything we can in order to avoid these feelings. Becoming quiet means we can allow ourselves to feel however we feel, just allowing it to be our experience. This gives us a freedom for life to be just as it is, and for ourselves to be just how we are, however we’re feeling.
Stillness and quiet aren’t the sexiest things, where you can make a lot of money or get a bunch of followers or viewers. We don’t usually realize we’re craving quiet. But in my experience, this is where the deepest experience of life lies, in the quietude.
What might you hear in the stillness and quiet? What life has to say.
“In stillness, the world is restored.” — Lao Tzu
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By Leo BabautaA lot of the people I work with feel a lot of heaviness in what they’re taking on — whether it’s work, their finances, relationships, health, etc.
We often don’t even realize we have heaviness about something — but other people can feel it if we talk to them about it. Things feel really hard, overwhelming, discouraging, frustrating, pointless.
If you’re feeling heaviness about something … that’s OK! You’re human, and you are allowed to have heavy emotions. Giving ourselves full permission to feel whatever we feel is a powerful way to be.
That said … what if you’d like to experience life in a different way? What if you’d like to make things feel easier, more empowered, more inspired, more on purpose?
This might require us to let go of the heaviness — not because it’s bad or wrong, but because it’s not serving us in creating the life we want.
Let’s talk about how to let go.
Start with Being with HeavinessIronically, it’s pretty much impossible to let go of something if we think there’s something wrong with it. If you think something about you (like heaviness) sucks, then you’ll try to let go of it, but it won’t work. It’ll just dig its heels in even harder.
That’s because it’s a part of us. Fear is a part of who we are as humans, as are emotions like frustration, disappointment, discouragement, pointlessness. We try to disown those parts of us because we don’t like them, and can’t be with them. So it’s like wishing you didn’t have a brain or a heart — pretty hard to get rid of them!
So we start by just letting ourselves be with the emotions that are there when heaviness shows up. Can we allow them to be there? Welcome them? Bring curiosity? What about love? This is shifting how we relate to these heavy emotions.
Only once we’ve practiced with this, and can accept these emotions, can we practice creating something different.
Catching It in the MomentIt’s important to practice noticing the heaviness when it shows up. If you can catch it when it’s happening, then you can work with it.
If you notice it … first, practice just being with it, bringing curiosity, bringing love, like we discussed in the section above.
But then, you can decide if you’d like to choose something different. In the moment, if you’re aware you’re in the heaviness, you can decide if you’d like to let it go and choose something fresh.
We’ll talk about that in the next section below, but it’s important to remember that it happens in the moment — so catch it when it happens!
Creating Something DifferentIf you catch it in the moment, you can choose something different. It’s not that you’re going to “improve” yourself or fix the broken thing about you … it’s simply that there’s something else you want. You can love stormy weather but simply want some sunshine today. Your heart is allowed to want what it wants.
So do you want? Do you want to have more joy, play, love in your life? More creativity, adventure, wonder? More generosity, gratitude, magic?
Choose what you’d like, and then choose into it in the moment. It won’t come easy, because you’re comfortable with the heaviness. It’s safe for you. Choosing something else means you have to choose into taking actions that aren’t what you would normally do. If you want more adventure … you have to actually choose into adventure, and take actions in the face of your fear (what adventure doesn’t have fear?).
Make a list of what you might do if you choose into your new way of being. And then start to take those actions, with the new way of being.
The Art of Letting Go RetreatIf you’d like to practice with me, join my Art of Letting Go Retreat that I’m leading October 19 – 21, in the gorgeous mountains of North Carolina.
Art of Letting Go Retreat
We’ll be practicing the art of letting go of those blockers:
- Learning how we hold ourselves back, and convince ourselves that it’s OK
- Learning about the fear that causes these old patterns
- Practicing with other people who are open to this — the method of how to let go
- And most importantly, learning the freedom and openness that comes with this letting go
- Also: how to create structure & ritual that will help you practice for the long term
You’ll learn how to create openness, new patterns, and practice stepping courageously into the unknown.
Art of Letting Go Retreat
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By Leo Babauta If you’re trying to lose weight or gain muscle, you can work really hard at it for a week … and see no change. The same goes for learning music or a language, or creating meaningful change in the world. It’s hard to stick to long-term changes when you don’t get very […]
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It’s finally here — launch day for the Zen Habits Podcast! Today is a day of celebration … of not only this launch, but of the journey I’ve been on with all of you Zen Habits readers. Of the work that I’ve put into this, but also of the support I’ve gotten from my team. […]
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We’re excited to invite you to the first Zen Habits Weekend Intensive! Dates: Oct. 19-21, 2023 Location: Art of Living Center in North Carolina Theme: The Art of Letting Go (or, the Love Story of the Unknown) In this weekend intensive, we ask you to take 2 days away from your life, and to be […]
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By Leo Babauta Stress is a part of life, and eliminating it is a fool’s errand. If you ever succeeded in eliminating all of stress, your life would be boring and you’d have removed yourself from anything meaningful. That said … too much stress can be toxic. It can negatively affect our sleep, our health, […]
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By Leo Babauta Much of our days, we’re trying to escape. In fact, you might call this the primary occupation of the human animal. What are we trying to escape? What’s happening in this moment, right now. Most people will outright reject that idea, but I know this to be true of myself, and it’s […]
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By Leo Babauta Some days, I’m in need of some comfort. I’m tired, emotionally drained, or just feeling besieged by the world. On these days, I try to recognize my physical, mental and emotional state, and I ask myself what I need. Just noticing is a big step for most of us. We often don’t […]
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By Leo Babauta To change a habit — whether you’re starting a new habit or quitting an old one — you have to let go of something really important to you. This is why most people struggle with habit change — it’s not easy to let go of your sacred cows. Let’s take a few […]
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By Leo Babauta Most of us live in about 8% of our body most of the time — the head. Even though we have a lot of body beneath the head, we forget about that most of the day. We’re on our screens, doing work, consuming content, messaging. We’re distracted, worried, ruminating. We’re overthinking, building […]
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By Leo Babauta The other day, I returned home from a short trip, and immediately unpacked and washed my clothes, putting everything away. It felt nice. The next morning, I was feeling a bit unsettled. So I started cleaning. I cleaned in the kitchen, outside in the yard, swept the garage. I felt so good. […]
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There is a concept in Japanese tea ceremony from Zen, roughly translated as “one chance in a lifetime,” or “one lifetime, one meeting.” It’s such a beautiful idea: any meeting you have with someone is unique, fleeting, and will never happen again, even if you see this person every day. What would life be like […]
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By Leo Babauta Having worked closely with dozens of people’s transformative journeys, I’ve come to recognize a handful of mindset shifts that make an incredible impact. Those who’ve worked to shift in these ways have remarkable transformations. I’m going to share them here with you in hopes that they might inspire your own transformation. If […]
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By Leo BabautaA well-known climbing coach said that the biggest obstacle in the way of people’s growth as climbers is, basically, fear of embarrassment.
When people want to get better at climbing, they try to do it privately, so that no one can see them doing things badly. They’ll go to the climbing gym when no one is watching, or hang out in a corner hoping no one is looking. But they’re missing out on the biggest opportunity — feedback from people who can see things they can’t see.
And the thing getting in the way is fear of embarrassment.
I’ve found that this is true no matter what you’re trying to learn. No matter what you’re trying to grow in. Fear of embarrassment will stop you from getting real growth and transformation.
My belief is not that we should just get over that fear. It’s that we could learn to see embarrassment as an integral part of the growth process.
I’ll talk about why in a moment. But first, let’s look at a few more examples where the fear of embarrassment stops people from growing:
- Writing a book or blog: This one might be a bit obvious — you want to write, you might start writing, but the fear of embarrassment (or being judged) stops you from writing or making the writing public. But even further, we resist getting feedback from people that might improve our writing, because we’re worried that the writing sucks. Imagine getting feedback from readers and more experienced writers who might help you get to the next level — most people cringe at the idea of showing their “embarrassing” writing to people who might judge them.
- Getting coaching or support from others: Most people avoid getting a coach, or getting real support from other people, because they are embarrassed to admit how their growth process looks. I haven’t been doing the things I said I would, I’m struggling, I don’t like things about myself. We have judgement for all of that, and we are embarrassed to show that to others. This stops us from getting support through all of this struggle.
- Taking your business to the next level: Whether you’re launching a new business or wanting your existing business to get to the next level … it can be hard to see where you’re getting stuck. Leadership is lonely, and we can only see what we’ve already learned to see. To get to the next level, it requires getting feedback from someone who can see what we can’t see. But this can feel embarrassing. We avoid getting that kind of support, and that means we struggle to do anything other than what we already know to do.
Hopefully you can see that this can be applied anywhere we want to grow — personal development, taking care of ourselves, deepening in a relationship, dealing with the overwhelming chaos of life. We struggle to get beyond where we are, because we are too embarrassed to get support, feedback, coaching that might take us to the next level.
Why Embarrassment is an Integral Part of the ProcessWe hope to grow and learn without embarrassing ourselves. If we can learn in private, and then show how good we are //after// we’re really good at it … then we won’t feel embarrassed. We want to avoid that feeling at all costs, even if it means never learning at all.
But that’s not how it works. We have to be willing to be bad at something before we can be good at it. The growth process requires us to mess up, to learn from experience rather than just reading about it or watching videos. The growth process requires us to be messy and stumbling in the unknown … and then to get some support when we stumble, think we’re doing it all wrong, or feel like giving up.
And that is embarrassing. It has to be embarrassing, because we are necessarily pushing beyond the boundaries of the self-image we’ve created for ourselves. We’ve stepped into a new area of growth, which means we can’t be the person who has everything figure out, who has it all together. We want to be the person who has it all together, but that’s only possible if we are not growing.
So we choose to grow and learn, to transform, but that means letting go of who we think we are, and who we’re trying to get others to think we are. That’s a letting go, and it’s embarrassing.
If we avoid that embarrassment (which is natural), we will avoid the growth. We will not step into the unknown, which is where real learning resides. Where meaningful work resides.
How to Work with the Fear of EmbarrassmentOK, so you have a fear of embarrassment (of course!), and you can see how it’s holding you back.
How do you work with this fear? It’s a deep topic, but here are some ways to start working with it:
- Recognize when it’s coming up. When you’re avoiding sharing with people, notice the fear. When you don’t want to get feedback or coaching or support, notice the fear. When you’re trying to stay safe or hidden, recognize the fear. Just name it “fear” and don’t get too caught up in what the fear is about.
- Notice the effect the fear has on your life. Where is it holding you back? What is it keeping you safe from? What would be possible if you didn’t have to worry about the fear? How do you feel about all this?
- Ask yourself if you want something different. What would you like that’s outside of the world created by this fear? What would you like to try instead?
- Try something different. What else can you try that isn’t constrained by the fear of embarrassment? If you’re learning to climb, you might try climbing in front of other people and letting yourself do it badly. Dance badly in public and have fun! Write badly in public, sending it out to everyone you know, and ask for feedback. Ask for help. Let yourself be in the unknown. Get support from a coach or a group. Ask a teacher to rip your creation apart. Let. yourself be open to the depth of learning and growth.
- Let yourself be with the fear, with love. The fear of embarrassment will definitely show up as you open yourself to something different, to getting feedback, getting coached, getting supported, getting messy. That’s OK! Fear is not the end of the world, it’s simply our companion in the unknown, in the deep place of transformation. Can you let yourself feel it, and let it simply be there in your experience? Can you give yourself love as you feel the fear?
As you let yourself feel the fear and feel the embarrassment, what will happen is that you start to shed your old self. You no longer need to be constrained by doing things perfectly, impressing anyone, showing the good side of yourself, because you are growing into a new kind of becoming.
What would be possible if you let yourself go through the transformation process? If you’d like to practice deeply with me and others, come talk about being a part of my Fearless Mastery program.
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I’m creating a new Fearless Retreat in October that will be a part of my Fearless Mastery program … and it has me reflecting on the most recent retreat I led in Costa Rica in March.
I’m moved to share with you the lessons I learned from the March retreat, because I was so inspired by the transformation that people went through …
Here are some of the lessons I took away from the Fearless Retreat on March:
- Just coming to the retreat fills people with uncertainty. Everyone who came was excited, but nervous, and fears about themselves in this retreat came forward. They found themselves confronted by the fear, and then running to their go-to patterns of busyness, wanting to exit, avoidance, perfectionism, distraction and more. This was perfect, because it uncovered exactly what we needed to work with.
- People can create a deep trust really quickly. When people showed up, they didn’t know what to expect, and you could feel the nervousness. But very quickly, they opened up and trusted, and once they could trust, transformation became possible. It was amazing.
- People are fascinated by their own patterns in the midst of uncertainty. Everyone was invited to investigate what kinds of patterns came up for them in the uncertainty of the retreat … and they were fascinated by what they found! People pleasing, needing to do everything right, avoidance, hiding, not standing for their boundaries, and much more.
- Everyone went through something powerful. There wasn’t a person there who didn’t go through a process of transformation. People learned to find their center, find their power, find their courage, find openness. People learned to feel their heart for the first time in years, and stay open in the midst of stress and chaos. They found a larger version of themselves than they believed possible.
- Everyone left changed — including me. Every person left a different person — more open, more excited about purpose, more connected to their hearts. And that included me. I left with my heart cracked wide open, and with a deeper level of trust in myself and people’s processes.
- Inspiring, unexpected connections were formed. People went there not really knowing what to expect, and they found connections with each other that were rich and nourishing. Lifelong friendships were started, and people felt supported for the first time in a long while. So beautiful!
- The community that gets created is so needed. Eating together, dancing together, playing together, having deep conversations. People felt like they belonged to a community, and that’s not something everyone gets in their lives. A feeling of trust, safety, belonging. It’s what the world needs.
It was powerful, for me and for my team, not just the people who came to join us.
So with that in mind, we decided to create a Fearless Retreat in October as part of our Fearless Mastery small group coaching program, because we think it’s that important.
I’d love to have you join us. Apply for Fearless Mastery today to have a convo about the 5-month coaching program that’s aimed at transformation.
And included in the price will be a seat at the Fearless Retreat in October, where you’ll come together with us in person and experience something really powerful.
Let’s talk — apply today!
p.s. If you’d like to hear from some of the people who went through the retreat, check out these videos.
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By Leo BabautaOne of the things that really humbled me in recent years is the realization that I am often only halfway in on anything I do. I’m rarely ever really all in.
For example, I might join a coaching program with the idea of trying it out, but not really sure if I can do it. Then when things start to get hard or overwhelming … I might be looking for the exit door, or hiding so I don’t have to be embarrassed. This is being halfway in, with an eye on the exit.
Another example: I commit to meditating every day. Then when I’m meditating, instead of being fully in the meditation, maybe I’m waiting for it to be over, or giving myself reasons I should end early. Then two days into it, maybe I really don’t feel like it, so I skip it. Then I find reasons to keep skipping it. This is even less than halfway in.
Most of us do this in just about everything we do. And it has a really corrosive effect on whatever we’re taking on.
Does it have to be this way? Let’s take a look at what it looks like to be all in, and why we rarely do that. And then look at how it can create something powerful in your life.
What It’s Like to Be All InSome of us have an experience of being all in, somewhere in our lives. Some places that might be true for you:
- Your kids – you’re not about to abandon them when they’re not behaving the way you’d like.
- Your marriage – a subset of people are fully committed, and will do what it takes to work it out even when there are really big problems. There are others who have one eye on the exit door, ready to bolt when there are problems. Which are you?
- Best friend – maybe you have a bestie who you are fully committed to, who you’ll be there for no matter what, who you will never abandon even when they are lashing out and not being ideal.
If you can relate to one of these — like having kids — then imagine what it would be like to have that kind of all-in commitment to whatever you do.
Imagine working on a creative project and having no question that you’re going to complete it. Even when things get hard, you’re working with the difficulties. Even when you feel like giving up, you don’t give yourself the option. Even when you miss a few days, you come back without any questions. Even if you die with it incomplete … you will die knowing you gave it your all.
Your heart is fully in it. Doubts might come up, but those are expected.
This is full devotion.
Why We Avoid ThatWe rarely let ourselves be all in, fully devoted … because it’s hard and scary.
We don’t think we can do it. We don’t think we’re strong enough. We have lots of evidence that we will screw it up, based on past experience. We don’t trust ourselves.
We don’t trust the other person. We fear what they really think of us, we think they’ll abandon or hurt us, or let us down. Yet again.
We don’t think we can work out the hard problems. They feel intractable, overwhelming, too complex, to out of our control. We hate not having full control.
It’s easier to run. But it leaves our full heart, our full power, on the table.
The Power Created by Being All InWhat you’ll find if you’re all in:
- Deeper commitment creates deeper trust.
- The greatest results you are capable of.
- Transformation — you’ll be able to shift some of those things you think you can’t do or be or have.
- A deeper relationship, with more trust.
- A deeper relationship with yourself, with more trust.
- A realization that you didn’t need the exit door.
- A deeper devotion to whatever you care about.
Imagine that instead of heading for the exit door, you’re committed to working things out the best you can. (Not that you should stay in an abusive relationship or anything that’s harmful to you.) When you want to run, you stand and find something deeper within you.
What would that do for the projects that are most meaningful to you? For the relationships you care about most? How would you show up differently for your purpose in life?
What would have to shift? What would you have to let go of? What could be created from this place?
How to PracticeThis is not another set of expectations and shoulds to judge yourself by. This is about practicing deepening.
Here’s how you might practice:
- Notice the places where you’re looking to get out, to exit. Where are you only half committed?
- Notice how this impacts your life, the people you’re in relationship with, and what you care about.
- Notice the fears that stop you from being all in, that keep you looking for the exit. Can you be with these fears, as sensation in the body?
- Notice what you want to do from those fears — run, hide, eject someone from your life, make them feel bad, justify why you should quit, etc etc. Can you hold these with love, as something sacred you’ve created to protect yourself?
- When the fears show up, try to catch yourself. Notice what you want to do, and recognize that this is just a safety mechanism. Breathe. Be with the fear. Give yourself love.
- Continue to love yourself, the other person. The more breath, presence and love, the more spaciousness you’ll find.
- Then see what else might be created, if you don’t run for safety. From love.
This isn’t easy practice. I highly recommend you get some support. This is why I’ve created my Fearless Mastery small group coaching program — apply today and let’s talk!
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By Leo BabautaMost people think that if they’re struggling, that means something is wrong. If you’re struggling to write, to meditate, to eat healthily, to be focused and productive … or struggling in a relationship or job … that means something is wrong with you, or you need to change your circumstances, or this just isn’t right for you.
If we think something is wrong with the struggle, we will usually try to fix it, get out of the struggle, change ourselves … so we don’t have to have this problem anymore.
I’d like to propose a different view: that struggle is the place of growth, learning, curiosity, love, creativity. Struggle is an incredible opportunity for being creative.
Let’s take a couple examples so you can see what I mean, then let’s talk about how to work with this.
Struggle in WritingLet’s say I’m trying to write a book or a blog post … and I feel frozen by the unknown of it all. What to write about, how to approach the topic, how to be original or valuable, how to avoid people judging me.
So I’m frozen up and don’t know what to write. My instinct might be to avoid this struggle and do something else easier, like answer emails, take care of urgent tasks, check social media. But what would it be like to stay in this struggle?
Instead of avoiding the writing … I could commit myself to staying here. Staring at the blank screen, and letting myself sit with the discomfort that I’m feeling. Let myself sit with the unknown, and feel what it feels like. Get comfortable with this unknown, with the struggle.
After sitting for a few minutes, I might start to settle in and relax with the struggle. The unknown isn’t so scary. I can breathe deeper, and find the beauty in this moment of unknown.
From this place, I might find some creativity. OK, I don’t know what to write … but could I try something silly? Write about a superhero penguin, or an accountant that can shoot rainbows out of his belly button. Maybe I could write about not knowing what to write about, and sing a song as I write (“Oh I wish I knew what to wriiiiite!”).
The specifics of what I try here don’t matter. What matters is I can just try something. Maybe I make a list. Maybe I dance around until something comes up. Maybe I meditate and become one with the universe, and then the universe channels and answer through me. Maybe I trust whatever my heart says. I don’t know — but that’s the place of discovery, in the “I don’t know”.
Struggle in HabitsLet’s say I wanted to practice yoga every morning for 30 minutes. I commit myself, I set a reminder, I feel excited about it! I might even do it for a few days. Then one day when it’s time to do my yoga … now I don’t feel like it, and check my messages instead. This happens for a few days, where I avoid it and feel bad about myself.
Normally, we might just give up, and tell ourselves it wasn’t worth it. Or be harsh with ourselves about the failure. But what else could be found in this struggle?
Imagine that I could pause for a few minutes and feel the struggle. Let myself feel how I am disappointed in myself and discouraged. What if I could bring curiosity into this place, and maybe even compassion and love? What if the real yoga is in this place, where I feel lost and want to beat myself up or give up?
If I stay in this space of the unknown for a little bit, I can find something new. This is where real learning, real growth, real transformation takes place. I might be able to get creative and try something new, if I stay here for a little longer.
We mostly want to get out of this place, because it’s uncomfortable. But maybe staying is exactly the spot where I could grow beyond my current reality.
How to Practice Creativity in StruggleAs you can see, this requires a growth mindset — a mindset that the struggle isn’t the end, but the place of learning and creativity.
So when struggle shows up, here’s how I might practice:
- Notice that I’m struggling, and that I want to get out of it in some way.
- Invite myself to stay here, in the struggle, rather than needing to avoid it or fix it.
- Breathe. Let myself get present, and find a little bit of spaciousness.
- Bring curiosity — what can I discover here in the unknown of this struggle?
- Invite creativity — what else might I try, other than what I already know how to do?
I invite you to practice this, and see what you can discover. You might find that there’s more depth to this space of the unknown than you imagined.
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By Leo BabautaCreating a new habit like meditation, journaling or exercise isn’t incredibly complicated — at the most basic level, you tie the habit to a trigger that’s already in your life, start small, and find ways to encourage yourself to remember it and actually do it.
But it becomes a much more complicated and much messier ordeal because:
- We have resistance;
- We give in to the resistance;
- We feel bad about ourselves as a result; and
- We make that meaningful, get discouraged, and let that derail us.
This is an almost universal thing, in my experience. No one escapes this trap.
So how do we work with it? We can make things really simple (that’s not to say easy) by getting to the heart of this: the resistance.
In addition, it helps to have a way to deal with feeling bad about ourselves when we give in to the resistance. I’ll talk about that after I talk about getting to the heart of resistance.
The Heart of Habit Change: ResistanceLet’s say you decide to do a morning habit like writing, meditation, yoga, or journaling …
You commit yourself to doing it every morning when you wake up (after coffee of course). You set a reminder. You wake up. Then …
Suddenly, you really need to check your email and messages. That leads to a bunch of other things that need to be done. Then you decide it’s time to check the news, or social media. Now you have to get ready. You’ll do that habit later.
What I didn’t describe above — and what most people don’t even acknowledge or notice — is the most important part. The resistance. If you can deal with the resistance, you can form a new habit. If you aren’t even aware of it, you’ll think there’s something wrong with you, or you’ll keep looking for better answers to fix this problem you have.
No amount of systems, books, answers will fix the problem of resistance. It’s something we can work with, but it doesn’t go away when you find the right answer. It’s simply fear and uncertainty.
If we can learn to work with that resistance, new habits will form.
Incidentally, it’s the same thing when you want to change an old “bad” habit — like quitting smoking or chewing your nails or eating too many chips. We have the urge to do the old habit (smoke a cigarette), and we have resistance to just letting the urge arise and fall. It’s like checking the email instead of meditating — we think we have no choice but to give in to the resistance.
Working with Our ResistanceSo what if we didn’t need to give in to the resistance? What if it could be a place to embrace?
Here’s a way you might work with the resistance:
- Make a commitment to do a new habit (or stop an old one, like smoking). Make the commitment small so your resistance isn’t high — meditate for 5 minutes, not an hour. Set a reminder if it’s a new habit. For quitting, try a small commitment like no smoking after 7pm.
- When the time comes, and you resist doing the habit … pause. Don’t go to your emails or give in to the urge to smoke a cigarette. Just pause.
- Breathe. Feel the resistance / urge, and stay with it.
- Keep doing that. Give yourself love / compassion. Stay with the resistance / urge.
- See if you can create some new way of working with the resistance / urge. Do you want to do it with someone else? Step up accountability or consequences? Find a way to bring play, joy, creativity to the activity? See the moment of resistance as sacred and full of wonder? Get creative.
There isn’t a right answer here. Play with it. Keep working with it. Our desire for it to be over and to not have resistance is our greatest stumbling block. Keep creating something new, each time the resistance / urge happens. Eventually, you’ll discover something that works. And along the way, you’ll discover something new about yourself.
Dealing with FailureYou hope that this will go perfectly. You’ll work with the resistance and you’ll crush this new habit. Yep! That’s exactly how it will go!
Except that part of it going perfectly is that it will include failure. That’s just a part of the growth process. You fail, you struggle, and you find something new in that.
The difficulty is that people take the failure to mean something meaningful about themselves. It becomes such a big deal. I failed! I must suck. Or I can’t do this. Or I’ll never be able to do this. Or What the hell is wrong with me?
Isn’t it interesting that a simple thing like failure carries such huge emotional significance? We feel bad about ourselves, we get discouraged, and we quit.
What if failure (and feeling bad about ourselves) was simply a part of the growth process? Not a big deal, but something to learn from? How would you approach it then?
I won’t give you the “answer” (because there’s not just one) … but I invite you to get creative. What can you try that will help with this part of the growth process? How can failure be embraced, loved, and be a place for curiosity and discovery?
If you can work with this, you will be liberated.
The post Simplify Habits: Get to the True Heart of Change appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that so many of us are incredibly focused on getting stuff done. Productivity systems and tools, anxiety about being behind on all the things we have to do, a complete focus on all the stuff to do, at the exclusion of all else …
But here’s the thing: if you ever get really really good at executing and getting stuff done … you realize that it’s an empty, meaningless game. I’m a testimony to that — I’m very good at getting things done. And I can absolutely crush my task list for months on end. And at the end of all of that, I still don’t feel much more satisfied.
There’s some satisfaction in getting a bunch of things done, but that’s not what really drives us. What drives us is fear — fear of what will happen if we fall too far behind, if we drop all the balls we have in the air, if we can’t get a sense of self-worth through accomplishment. Our fear is really about what it will mean about ourselves if we don’t get stuff done.
That fear never goes away, no matter how much you get done. It’s like a sex addict who has a ton of sex, and still doesn’t feel fulfilled, and has to go get more. We’re addicts who are never fulfilled.
What would happen if we decided not to play that game? If we could set aside for a moment the fears that drive us, the hope that we’ll ever finish everything, the hope that we’ll somehow get a feeling of being good enough if we are good at getting things done?
What’s beyond all of that?
I don’t know the answer, but here’s what I’m finding:
- First, that the moment is perfect, and getting stuff done is not required in order to achieve peace, freedom, happiness, play, joy, curiosity, connection, love, or anything else I truly desire. I can sit right here and be present with the wonder of the present moment.
- Second, even though nothing else is needed … there’s stuff I want to create! I want to make a podcast, for example — and that’s my motivation for getting my butt in gear. Not to get stuff done, not to keep all the balls in the air, not to keep my head above water … but to create what I’m committed to creating in the world.
- Third, I can play any game I want to play. I could play the game of checking things off my task list endlessly, but that’s not very fun after awhile. Instead, I can make up other games — what about getting on calls with people and discovering their life’s purpose together? Or finding out what their heart wants most? Or bringing love to whatever is getting in the way of that? Or maybe I could discover a new game today that I’d like to play.
- Fourth, my heart wants to express itself in many ways. It’s expressing itself with this article right now, but it might want to express itself through a podcast, through a call with a coaching client, or by go outside and enjoying movement in nature. This is so much more satisfying than the game of getting stuff done.
- Fifth, I’m finding sacredness in each day. In the work that I’m doing, and in not doing anything. In conversations with people, and in conversations with nature. In my heart’s expression of love, and in the fears and struggle I face. This is so much richer than just focusing on getting stuff done. And I’m finding the sacredness in getting stuff done that matters to me.
Those are a few observations I’ve found in the space beyond getting stuff done. What might you find there?
The post Beyond Getting Stuff Done appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that most people (myself often included) make complicated task and organizational systems. Today I’d like to talk about why and how to simplify that.
Task systems that are overcomplicated require a lot of overhead work — if you have to spend a lot of time organizing and going through your system, you’re spending time on the system that could be spend doing something more meaningful.
Having better productivity systems doesn’t make us more productive. Actually being able to do the hard stuff isn’t down to the system — it’s down to your ability to face uncertainty and resistance. And that’s something you can train in — but it won’t be found in a productivity system.
Having better organizational or note-taking systems doesn’t make us more organized. It is busywork to distract us. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why do we spend so much time figuring out our systems and making them so complicated? It’s simply fear. We’re overwhelmed and afraid we can’t handle it all. We think if we get a better system it’ll be the answer we need to start crushing things. We are afraid of dropping one of the many balls we have in the air. It’s simply fear, and everyone has it.
What I’m going to share here is a simple system — it’s not meant to be the perfect system, or the one you have to adopt to start crushing things. It’s meant to be a simple model that can show how simple things can be.
But perhaps more important is the mental view of tasks that underlies this simple system. I’ll talk about that as well. And then I’ll get to the most common obstacles or objections to this kind of simplicity.
A Simple SystemHere’s the system: make a single list of your tasks. One List. Put everything you have to do here. Each day, pick some things from that One List to focus on.
That’s the system.
Go through your emails, and for each one that’s been sitting there, add a task to the One List. Star the email and archive it so it’s out of your inbox. Repeat until your inbox is empty. Do the same with messages you haven’t responded to because they contain a task or decision. Emails and message apps aren’t meant to store your tasks.
Maybe you have a bunch of things on your computer desktop. Go through those and put them on the One List.
Go through your Ten Thousand Browser Tabs and take the tasks each one represents, put it on your One List, and bookmark and close the tab.
OK, now you have One List. Things should be a lot simpler (some possible additions are below in the last section). There’s a good chance you’re feeling overwhelmed. That means we need to talk about the underlying mental model of this One List simple system.
The Underlying Mental ModelThe reason why a long list is overwhelming is because underneath the task list is a view: 1) we think this is a list that we need to finish; and 2) we fear that if we can’t finish it or at least stay on top of it, we will be inadequate in some way. We base our self-worth and safety on whether we can finish this list … but it’s too long to finish! In fact, a task list will never be done, even when you die.
This is an unhelpful mental model that produces stress and overwhelm.
Instead, I propose a different view: Tasks are options that we can use as we create the art of our lives.
Imagine you have a big palette of paints, and you get to use them to paint your art on a canvas. You don’t feel like you need to finish all the paints on the palette, right? It’s not a matter of getting them all done so you can avoid feeling inadequate.
Instead, the paints are your supplies for making art. They’re things you can dip your brush into, to create the art of your life.
You can have fun with your art. You can fully express yourself and the deepest truth of yourself. It’s a whole different game.
Answers to Common ObstaclesJust having One List is perhaps too simple for people, so let’s take a look at some possible modifications based on questions you might have …
Q: The list is too long, how do I find focus?
A: Have a shorter Today list. Pick things from the One List and put it on the Today list. Do that at the end of each day for tomorrow, so you can start your day with a plan already done.
Q: How do I choose what to focus on each day?
A: If you’re struggling to decide what to put on your Today list … you might be struggling with uncertainty. This can cause a lot of people to get stuck, because if you don’t know … then what? I would encourage you to stay for a minute in this stuckness, in the “I don’t know,” in the uncertainty. The answers will come to you if you sit in the not knowing for a minute or two. It’s good to create a daily ritual where you create your Today list for the next day … and in that ritual, allow yourself to sit for a moment to get some clarity on what to add to the list. And as you create the list … allow it to be like creating art out of your life!
Q: I never end up finishing my Today list, what can I do?
A: If you are creating art and you don’t finish it … what do you do? You might continue to work on it tomorrow. Or abandon it and start afresh! Or incorporate some of it in your next art piece. But not finishing it isn’t a problem. It’s just a part of the process.
Q: What about meetings, calls, appointments?
A: I like to put those on a calendar instead of a task list. So the calendar can be a part of the simple system. I check my calendar the evening before to see what I have coming up, and again in the morning.
Q: What if I want to have all my financial tasks in one place, all my calls in another, all my errands in another, etc etc?
A: That’s fine! One List is just an example. If you want to have One List for your main work tasks, but another list for your finances and administrative tasks that you do on certain days, go for it. Just keep it fairly simple.
Q: What if I find myself dropping tasks and feeling disorganized?
A: If you were painting a huge canvas, and you kept forgetting to paint certain parts of it … what would you do? Probably you’d set aside some time to paint those parts, if they’re important. Sometimes they’re not important, so you don’t set aside the time. So you can decide how to work with that. The bigger problem is the feeling of being disorganized. This is simply a feeling. It’s a feeling of chaos, of change, of not having everything in perfect order. Can you create art with that feeling?
The post We Overcomplicate Our Task Systems appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
The boy awoke one morning to a startling discovery — that everything he believed was not the truth. He realized that the way he’d been seeing things was only one way of seeing things. His view of things was not absolute but tentative.
What he saw this morning is that everything was made up of a luminous cloudlike substance, an energy. Including himself. Including the air and wind and light. Luminous and full of wonder.
His body was made up of this energy — there was no difference between inside himself and out. Even his emotions were forms of it — anger, sadness, love, fear, grief, frustration, loneliness, all were made up of this luminous, wondrous, cloudlike energy.
The energy was all the same everywhere, but it was swirlying and cloudlike and changing in form. His body, for example, might have seemed like a separate thing from everything else, but it was constantly shifting like a cloud, breathing out and emanating parts of itself to the rest, taking in new parts from the rest.
This discovery of the luminous energy making up all of reality … it changed his life that day. He felt connected to everything around him, because it was not separate from him.
He was no longer held back by anything. He could do things he was afraid of before, because he saw that fear was just the same energy as everything else, beautiful and delicious. His old habit of avoidance melted away, as he had no difficult feelings to avoid — all was luminous energy.
He was no longer a slave to his addictions, because the craving that caused the addictions was simply a form of this wondrous energy. He could simply feel the craving, and love it as he loved everything else.
He no longer felt worried about being adequate, because there is no fear of inadequacy when you are a part of the luminous energy of everything. He no longer had to worry about getting love, because he was a part of the love of everything.
He was liberated. And so he decided to liberate all other beings by sharing his story of awakening to luminous reality.
The post The Parable of Luminous Reality appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that most of us let ourselves be driven by our resistance to something difficult, scary, unknown.
We take on a hard task — creating something, for example — and then we feel some kind of resistance. Or maybe it feels like overwhelm. It’s simply uncertainty, and fear of the unknown.
This is quite normal, to feel uncertainty, fear, resistance, overwhelm. Then we let it drive our actions, letting the fear be in the drivers seat. That’s pretty normal too, and very understandable.
What would it be like if we didn’t need ot let this resistance drive us?
What if we could let ourselves stay in the uncertainty, feel the resistance … and then transform it into creativity and action?
Let’s take a look at the two parts of that.
Stay in the ResistanceSo the first thing is you have to set aside some space for whatever you’re resisting. Warning: this step can be a doozy. We somehow always find ourselves too busy to make time for the thing we’re resisting. We’re so busy! We don’t have time for that scary thing! Funny how that works.
So if you notice that you never have time for it … make the time. Set aside some time. Maybe 15 minutes in the morning, maybe 30. Cut out some Netflix, Youtube, or social media time, and make time for this. Put it on the calendar, and commit yourself fully.
OK, let’s say you do that … now you find yourself in that block of time, and all of a sudden, everything else seems so much more urgent! Your emails are suddenly irresistible. Your kitchen magically needs some cleaning.
Stay here, don’t abandon the task. Your resistance wants to drive you away, but you’re going to try something different. An act of leadership rather than letting life happen to you.
Sit still for a minute. Let yourself feel the resistance. Not the thoughts about how you can’t do this, or how you should do it later … but the sensation of resistance in your body. The sensation of overwhelm and fear and uncertainty. It’s simply a sensation, an experience.
Be with it. If it feels like more than you can handle, stay a few moments longer. It’s a training, to be able to stay mindfully present with the feeling of resistance.
With practice, you learn that it’s not a big deal. You can be with it, with non-judgment, gentleness, even love.
Transform It Into Creativity & ActionOnce you’ve done that, there’s another incredible way to work with this energy in your body. It feels like something you don’t want … but actually, it’s just energy.
This is the energy of life. Of being human. Of fear and meaning. Of learning and creating. Of discovering something new. Of connecting and falling in love.
This energy is not something to expel from your life, but rather to use in your creation. What can you create in this place of resistance, in the unknown? Can you let yourself stay curious, and explore? What might emerge, if you stay open here?
From this place, your deepest creation will be uncovered. You begin to realize that you are not the inventor of your creations but the discoverer of them. You begin to get excited about what might be unearthed in the unknown.
This is magic. What are you waiting for?
The post Creating When You Feel Resistance appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’m on my first international flight since the pandemic started, and I got lucky enough to have a window seat. Flying to Costa Rica by way of Guatemala to lead a retreat, I’m looking out at a vast expanse of mountains in Mexico … and I’m in absolute awe.
What a miracle this is, to be flying so magically through the air, over such majestic stretches of this Earth!
I noticed that when I was traveling a lot before, I got pretty jaded about flights. Ho hum, another flight, let’s get this over with, no big deal, I’m an experienced traveler, not some wide-eyed child. How did I get this jaded to the wonders of life? How do any of us get so jaded?
Life is miraculous. Life is filled with wonders. Life is majestic and magical.
And I don’t just mean the magic of flight — which our ancestors would have thought was sorcery, by the way. I mean the magic of toasters and heating and houseplants. I mean the miracles of each human being we encounter on the street, the wonder of having someone love you, the sacredness of grief and heartbreak, the joys of a berry.
Every moment, we have the opportunity to wake up to wonder, to awe, to everyday miracles. It is enough to make your heart leap with joy, to overwhelm your soul, if you let it. Every day, we have access to this, in so much abundance.
Will you let it in?
The post Everyday Wonder appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
Everything we believe about ourselves and others is an idea, an image constructed in our heads. And these mental constructs can be some of our biggest obstacles and struggles.
Letting go of our mental constructs — our ideas about ourselves and others — can be one of the most liberating things possible.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to have mental constructs — we can’t help it, it’s human and often necessary for whatever we’re doing. But sometimes it’s an obstacle and cause of pain.
So let’s look at what it would be like to let go of these mental constructs, and then how to practice.
Some Concrete ExamplesMental constructs are ideas we have about something. For example, if you look at your phone, you might have the idea that it’s a “phone.” But that’s an idea — in fact, it’s a clump of matter that is only arbitrarily separated by our minds from any of the other matter around it. The clump of matter we call a phone isn’t even static — it’s constantly changing.
But you can see that it’s necessary to think of it as a phone, and even useful. Thinking of everything as a dynamic field of matter and energy makes it hard to get the laundry done or have a conversation. We need concepts and mental constructs.
That said … let’s look at what happens if we can let go of them (we’ll talk about how to do that in a bit):
- You’re stressed about an upcoming meeting or social event. You have all kinds of worries, like, “What if I look stupid and people judge me?” Very reasonable worries, but it can cause a lot of anguish. If we realize that the idea of looking stupid and being judged are just ideas in our heads, and not reality … we can let go of them. We can return to the present moment and relax. Or be with the sensation of fear that’s in our bodies, becoming present to our experience in the moment.
- You’re frustrated because someone has complained about you. You get caught up in thoughts about why they’re wrong, how they’re always complaining, about how you can never do anything right, about how you should just leave this job and be done with all of this bullsh*t. There’s nothing wrong with these thoughts … but maybe you can see that it’s a set of thoughts that are made up in your head. They’re not objective reality. In reality, you’re just feeling an emotion, a set of sensations in the body. You can become present to them, and your body, and be freed of all of the extra narrative that’s causing so much resentment.
- You’re feeling resistance to a task and wanting to procrastinate, distract, avoid. There’s some kind of idea in your mind about how hard this will be, how overwhelming it feels, how it’s too much right now. From this feeling and set of thoughts, you decide to do it later. But the feeling of difficulty and overwhelm won’t go away then, and in fact things might only be worse then. So what if we let go of the ideas about how it’s too hard … and simply got present to the sensations of resistance, fear and overwhelm that are occuring in the moment. Getting present to these sensations, we develop the capacity to be with our experience, and learn that it’s not too difficult (that’s an idea) … in fact, it’s beautiful. And then we can turn towards the task and take a small action.
These are a few examples, but you can see that letting go of ideas can be freeing.
We start to realize that we can access a wider view of each moment, instead of narrow and tight. We can access an open, fresh perspective in the midst of any struggle. We start to have a more relaxed way of being with life, and can access freedom, peace and presence in any moment.
How to PracticeSo how do we practice?
First … start by noticing what ideas you have about the world, yourself and other people in various moments. What are your ideas about the person who is annoying you? What ideas do you have about yourself in whatever situation you’re in? How is everything you believe about someone or a situation just a set of ideas or mental constructs?
That doesn’t mean it’s bad to have ideas, but recognizing that they’re ideas we’ve created is a powerful step.
Second … what would this moment be if you were free of these ideas? Imagine that the blackboard of your mind were wiped clean of your narrative, mental constructs, ideas about everything you’re thinking about?
Imagine a moment that’s free of these ideas. Feel the wider perspective of the moment, the openness that becomes accessible when you let go of the ideas. Feel how freeing, how open, how lovely.
Third … once you’ve accessed this, you might let yourself become present to sensations in your body, of tightness, of fears or resistance or overwhelm, of emotions. Not the ideas about these sensations, but the experience of the sensations. What does it feel like? Could you relax with the sensations in the present moment, even feel the freedom of being in the midst of the experience?
And finally … you could take a small action. Wash a dish. Write a sentence in that email you’ve been avoiding. Speak to the person in front of you, with an open heart. You don’t need to do anything — experiencing the freedom of the present moment is enough. But freed of your ideas, there might be something you feel called to do, a single step that would be a beneficial action. This action will be based on a mental construct … but that’s OK.
Are you up for practicing letting go of ideas and experiencing the freedom available in each moment?
The post The Practice of Letting Go of Mental Constructs appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
It sometimes amazes me how we make everything harder for ourselves than it needs to be — myself included.
That’s not a bad thing — it’s simply human. Harder is not worse. We learn from harder. So there’s a beauty and a sense to it.
That said, once we see how much harder we make things, we have an opportunity to … not make it harder. Simplify. Do things with more ease.
Before we get into how to do that, let’s look at how we make things harder.
How We Make Things Harder for OurselvesWe add a lot of extra thinking and stress. We add a bunch of extra steps. We put things off for a long time, so that it becomes so much more stressful. We worry about things we can’t control, or can’t know about (like what other people think of us).
These are all protective mechanisms — we’re trying to keep ourselves safe. But in most cases, it’s not needed.
Let’s look at some examples of how we typically make things harder for ourselves:
- There’s an email in my inbox that requires a few steps before I can reply. Instead of doing those steps, I put it off, because of a belief that I have too much to do. It lingers in my inbox for a week. A bunch of other emails do that too. I’m so overwhelmed by this that I keep putting off all the emails. What could be a simple set of small steps ends up becoming an unconquerable mountain.
- I have some planning to do for a trip — and I worry about all the possible things that could come up, not sure what to expect, not sure what people will think of me. It feels overwhelming so I put it off while worrying about it for weeks. It could be a simple act of booking a flight and a room, and packing, but it becomes a lot of anguish.
- I have a million things to do on my todo list. Instead of simply doing the next thing on the list, I jump around from one thing to the next, panic about not being able to do it all, distract myself for awhile, making myself feel overwhelmed and stressed.
- Planning for a social gathering at my house becomes an exercise in worrying and overpreparing, spending days getting everything ready. Instead, it could be a simple act of getting some food and drinks and tidying up a bit.
You can see that for each of these examples, I’ve shared a way that it could be simple and easeful. But we layer complexity, worrying, overwhelm, distraction, avoidance, stress, overthinking, overpreparing, anticipating.
What would it be like to just do things as simply as possible?
How to Do Things With Greater EaseSome good questions to ask when you’re doing anything are:
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How am I making this harder?
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How could I do it as simply and easefully as possible?
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How would I do this if I trusted myself?
So for example:
- If you are creating something — if you trusted yourself and didn’t have to worry about whether you’d be judged, how would you create and put it out into the world? For me, it’s much more easeful this way, just creating and releasing my creations.
- If you don’t have time to deal with an email or message right now … could you make some time later in the day or in the week to deal with the messages that will take a little more time?
- Instead of worrying about all the things you have to do and getting stuck in overwhelm about all of it … could you just focus on the next task?
- If you’re worrying about what you said in a recent conversation … what if you simply trusted and focused instead on what’s in front of you?
- In preparing for something coming up, what if you could just trust yourself and do it as simply as humanly possible?
- If you’re piling guilt on top of yourself … what if you released that and gave yourself compassion instead?
- If you are piling expectations and stress on yourself … what if you released all of that and just put yourself fully into whatever you do?
- If you’re avoiding and distracting, adding a lot of extra stress on top of things … what if you just did the smallest next step and trusted yourself?
- If you’re overthinking and getting stuck in worry and indecision … what if you simply got lost in the doing?
What if you brought a sense of play, ease, adventure, curiosity, joy, love to everything you did?
This is a lifelong practice, but it’s so beautiful. I wish you simplicity and ease.
The post We Make Everything Harder appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
For those of us who find ourselves constantly busy and doing, it’s often hard to imagine a more effortless life.
Life is striving, pushing to make things happen, trying to catch up, overcoming inertia, trying to stay on top of things. An approach called “non-effort” might seem a bit nonsensical.
But if this is you, notice how tense you are most of the day. Your jaw might be sore from clenching, your torso is tight, you are tired from so many activities, everything might seem like a struggle or marathon.
What would it be like if life were more effortless, more relaxed, more trusting, more surrendered?
Let’s explore this, and see what might be possible.
To start with, let me tell you who this article is not for … it’s not meant for people who could use a little extra effort. If you find yourself relaxed and feeling spaciousness in your life but feeling that you can’t be arsed to take on hard things … this isn’t what you need. You could likely use a little more effort into things, which would require a different approach. Finding the approach that’s right for you is about putting in “right effort” — not too much, not too little.
What Non-Effort Looks LikeIt’s hard to describe what non-effort is, because it’s an absence. That’s like trying to describe emptiness — its definition is about what’s not there.
So let’s take a couple examples of what non-effort might look like …
- Meditation: Effortful meditation is putting a lot of energy into keeping your focus on one spot, getting frustrated with yourself when you wander from that, sweating bullets as you try to do it right. Non-effort meditation is sitting in a relaxed way, paying attention to what’s happening in the moment, noticing when your attention wanders to thoughts, noticing the thoughts for a moment with the curiosity of watching a cloud float by, but then returning easily to the present moment. It’s not zero effort, but it’s much more effortless.
- Writing: Non-effort is letting yourself take a walk and notice what comes up for you as something to write about, and trusting that. Then sitting in a quiet space without distractions, and letting your words bubble up on that topic. Sometimes nothing comes, so you sit still for a moment and breath, until something comes. Then you let it flow from your fingertips. It’s not zero effort, but it’s not super tensed with effort.
- Projects: You invite others to work on the project, set up the structure, and then show up together. It can be like play. Then you set up something to do between meetings, and another meeting in the near future. Each step along the way, you can bring play and creativity. You make effortless decisions by choosing from the heart and trusting yourself. The project starts to grow like a joyfully tended garden.
These are not how non-effort has to look. They’re examples of how it could look. In truth, it looks however it looks when you practice, even including some effort.
Seeing the Wisdom in Non-EffortNon-effort isn’t just about making things easier for yourself — though that is a huge benefit. Things become more relaxed, more effortless, less of a struggle. But it’s about more than that.
Something different emerges when you relax into non-effort. Not only a different kind of result, but a different kind of wisdom.
In the meditation example above … in the first, effortful model, you might actually get much better at single-pointed focus, with a lot of effort. But in the second, non-effort model, you gain access to a trustful part of yourself that relates to the world in a different way. It sees the beauty in the world just as it is, and understands itself as a part of that living, breathing wonder.
What if we began to cultivate that kind of relationship with life, by relaxing a bit, pushing less, and reclaiming our spot in the flow of life?
How to Practice Non-EffortIf you’re curious about this approach, or see potential for yourself … you might wonder how to practice this. Great! I got you. :)
The first step is to notice when you’re efforting. This isn’t necessarily bad or wrong, but you might just notice how much effort, tenseness, pushing you’re experiencing. What fear is driving this? Could you just be with the experience of the fear?
Next, pause, breathe for a moment, and relax your body. Let yourself open in the moment, to whatever is there: your emotions, your fears that you’re behind, your thoughts, your wanting to get this done and over with, the birds chirping in the distance.
Then see what might emerge from the place of non-effort. When you’re relaxed, breathing deeper, still … trust that something will emerge. An idea, some clarity, a choosing from the heart, something you’re being called towards.
Then trust that. Let it emerge and unfold. You might take action from there, but let it be action from a relaxed but devoted place.
It will take practice. And let that practice be non-effortful — simply relax and let yourself flow into it again, and again.
The post The Wisdom of Non-Effort appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
We live our lives rushing through tasks and messages, meetings and emails, chores and errands, until the end of the day comes and we start again tomorrow.
This is the usual way of living — we’re getting through things so we can be done with them.
The opportunity in all of this is to deepen in every single moment.
This is the heart of Zen practice — to deepen in each moment. To start by awakening to the present moment. To paraphrase Zen master Suzuki Roshi, when our minds are on our thoughts, we miss out on the birds singing nearby. We’re missing out on life, but we can awaken to what’s right in front of us.
We can deepen further: get really curious about what we can notice in this moment. What’s new about it, that we’ve never noticed before? What can we discover, if we pay closer attention? What’s the fine-grained detail of the moment that we barely register most of the time?
And we can continue to deepen: find wonder in every moment, letting the flow of the current experience become a source of magic and wonder and deep appreciation.
And still deepen more: we can awaken to our emotions, and how we want to escape them, or freeze them, rather than just experiencing the flow of the emotions as a stream of experience. We can turn towards this energy of emotions with curiosity, with love.
And still deeper: we can let the experience of the moment, and of our emotions, connect us to the tenderness and openness of our hearts. When we’re feeling frustration or sadness, can we let that connect us to the genuine heart that feels anger and grief? Can we let ourselves connect to the boundless compassion of our hearts, and the immense openness of our bigger minds?
And deepening even more: can we let ourselves awaken to the fleetingness of each moment, to the truth of impermanence, to how the experience of the moment is simply the experience of the flow of change? As we realize this impermanent nature of reality, we can start to realize that there’s nothing to cling to, that our suffering is about trying to cling to clouds.
And realizing all of this, we can realize the sacredness of each moment. The wonder and love present in the flow of experience. The gift of being alive and awake.
What would it be like, to bring this intention, to practice deepening in each moment? How could we remember to practice?
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By Leo Babauta
One of the keys to living a life of calm and purpose is the art of letting go.
If you’d like a more peaceful life, it’s powerful to look at what disturbs that peace, and practice letting go of whatever you’re holding onto that’s causing you anxiety and frustration.
If you’d like a life of purposeful focus, it’s powerful to examine what is standing in the way of that … and let go of whatever is blocking you.
Letting go can seem quite simple, but it isn’t necessarily easy. We have attachments that we cling to quite tightly, and letting go of them is often something we don’t want to do.
In this article, I’ll share the deeper part of the practice of letting go. Then I’ll talk about how you might practice.
The Heart of Letting GoWhen we are clinging to something that’s causing us to resist purposeful action, or to have our calm disrupted … what’s causing that?
The cause is some kind of idea, concept, or narrative we have in our minds. Let’s look at some examples:
- We often think it’s something outside of us — that person over there did something that upsets me, frustrates me, annoys me. But the other person isn’t the real cause — they’re just doing something. The real cause is that we have idea that they shouldn’t be the way they are.
- Sometimes we think we’re the problem — we shouldn’t be so lazy, or undisciplined, or something like that. We blame ourselves, feel bad about ourselves, then try not to think about it. But what if the cause of our feeling bad is that we think we shouldn’t be the way we are?
- If we’re resisting doing something, we might think that the problem is with the task/activity we’re resisting … or with ourselves for not being strong enough. But what if the cause of resistance is that we think the activity should feel some other way than it does?
You can see in these examples that I’m pointing to an idea that things should be different than they are. People will resist this … because they want things to be different than they are. They want change. And that’s understandable, we want to change what we don’t like. But what if we accepted what things are like, and then created change from a different place — from wanting to create, to play, to love, to explore?
How to Let Go of ConceptionsAll of this stems from having an idea of how things should be that’s different than how they are. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this idea — but it is just an idea. And to the extent that it’s causing difficulties, we can see how it would be helpful to let it go.
Imagine that you’re frustrated with or feeling bad about yourself, someone else, or a situation you’re facing. Imagine that this frustration or feeling bad stems from an idea that things should be different than they are.
Now imagine letting go of that idea. You’re just left with the experience of this moment, just as it is.
Notice how freeing that can be. It’s not about letting someone “off the hook,” or letting go of accountability or commitment to change. It’s about freeing ourselves from the attachment to an idea that’s causing some kind of suffering (frustration, resistance, feeling bad).
We’re freeing ourselves, by letting go of the idea we’re holding onto.
The key realization is that the idea is just an idea. It’s not that it’s wrong or bad, but it’s a mental conception, rather than reality. We can use mental conceptions when they’re helpful, but let go of them if they’re not.
Our idea of other people, of ourselves, of any situation … is simply a mental conception. What if we could free ourselves in any moment by realizing that there’s a mental conception that we’ve created that we don’t need right now?
It can simply evaporate, if we let it. Our conception of how things should be can become cloudlike, looser, more open.
Try it right now: whatever you think you should be, whatever you think someone else is, is just a conception you’ve created. Can you let it go in this moment, and see what you’re left with?
How to PracticeOK, so how do we practice with all of this?
First, notice when there’s a difficulty: frustration, resistance, feeling bad about yourself, annoyance, anxiety. If you notice this, it gives you access to being able to practice with it.
Second, without needing to judge how you’re feeling, could you simply be with it? For example, if you’re feeling frustration, could you just let yourself feel the frustration as a physical experience in your body (as opposed to getting caught up in the narrative of frustration)? Give yourself compassion if you can. But there is nothing wrong with feeling what you’re feeling. Often it’s useful to simply let ourselves feel the emotion, rather than trying to fix it.
Third, if you’d like to free yourself, you can let go of the mental conception that’s causing the difficulty. It’s usually an idea of how you think things should be. What if you could just let it evaporate, and let yourself be free? Play around with it.
Fourth, you might just experience the moment free of conception. Just pure experience. Is there something in this moment you can be curious about? Be grateful for? Can you feel the wonder of this moment?
Fifth, once you’re free, you can take action if any is needed. For example, you can take on the task that you’re resisting, once you’re free of the idea that the task should feel different. Or you can have a conversation with someone, once you’ve let go of your frustration with them. Being free doesn’t mean we don’t take action — we just do so from a different place.
Would you like to take on this freeing practice?
The post Mastering the Art of Letting Go appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo BabautaI’ve worked with lots of incredible people who want to create something — whether it’s art, a book, a business, or some impact on the world.
One of the stories we often have when we want to create is that we’re too busy, pulled in too many direction, or need to clear out our lives before we can focus.
Basically, the story is that everything needs to be clear before I can focus and create.
But that never comes. We never clear everything else out, we never have a life without some chaos. And so if that’s our story — that we neeed to have pristine clearness before we focus — we’ll never create anything.
As I write this, I’m proving that story wrong. There’s chaos in my life, from things going on in my family to my uncertainty about my projects to a thousand demands on my time. And yet I’m finding some beautiful focus right this minute, to write. I’m not exceptional — we can all do this, if we commit to changing this story.
In this article, I’ll share some ways you might do that.
The Old StoryBefore you can create a new story, it’s important to get present to your old story: that you need to clear out your life and have no chaos before you can have focus.
This story flies under the radar, unnoticed, but it can feel very true and control our actions. You just operate as if it’s the truth.
The way you might notice this is first to reflect on how things are going. Are you writing that book or launching that business you wanted to create? If not, what’s been getting in the way of that? It’s easy to blame external circumstances, but you might notice what story you have that makes those external circumstances a blocker.
Next, you might commit yourself to finding focus every day to create. Block off some time. Then see what shows up – are you able to actually focus, or do you tell yourself something that allows you to put it off?
You might also notice what this story protects you from. For me, it protects me from having to create something I feel shaky about, and fall flat on my face.
The New StoryOnce you’ve gotten clear on the old story, and noticed it showing up, you can start to create a new one that’s more empowering. What new story would allow you to focus when there’s chaos, and what’s more, to feel lit up about it?
For me, part of my story is that I love a little oasis of calm and focus in the midst of my chaos. It’s peaceful, rejuvenating. I love moving something important forward, and feeling that incredible progress.
Another part of my story, even more important, is that this is a way for me to express my love for my readers. That’s important enough to create some space for.
But you don’t have to use my story: what would be empowering for you? Try three drafts, and pick one to practice. Then commit to focus blocks, and practice believing the new story during those blocks. It will feel a bit wrong, so you have to create structure to actually show up for the focus blocks — some accountability, for example.
Some Other NotesWhat I’ve shared is the most important bit. But there are some other things that help me:
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Create space and commit to it. I will block off focus sessions and tell others that I’m going to do it, and hold myself accountable. This actually empowers my focus, rather than needing to feel like a burden.
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Clear the decks. It’s not bad to try to clear things — small tasks, emails, messages — before you focus. I give myself a limited time, like 20 minutes, to clear things out, before I start my focus session. My goal is not to clear my whole life out, and not have any chaos. It’s to clear things out a little, just to an extent that feels helpful, not to the extent that feels like avoidance of my focus.
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Use a single-tasking tool. I use various writing tools that don’t have distractions. As I write this, I’m using Ommwriter, which is an old one, but there are plenty of others. Block off your internet connection if you need to. Put your phone on airplane mode. Tell others you are focusing, if needed.
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Think things through a bit beforehand. For writing, I like to spend some time before the focus session thinking about what I want to write. I’ll go for a walk, or think about it in the shower. This helps me get the focus session going with a running start.
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Create a little ritual. If you think of the focus session as a ritual, it elevates it above the usual tasks you have to do. Think of it as sacred. You might create a little space for focus, or do your writing in one spot. You might play music, get some lovely tea, light a candle. Start with intention, and remind yourself of your new story. Close with gratitude.
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Relax in the chaos. In the focus session, and even before you start, you’ll feel the chaos swirling around within you, if you pay attention. This is the very feeling that has us feel like we need to clear out our lives first. It’s completely OK to feel! What if you could take a few deep breaths, and allow yourself to relax with the feeling of chaos? It doesn’t need to go away. It’s just a part of the experience of creating.
These help me. Are you willing to commit to giving them a try?
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By Leo Babauta
So many of us spend a ton of time and energy stuck in indecision — the stress and delays that come with this are quite incredible.
One of the things I’m proud of about myself is my ability to make decisions quite effortlessly. This isn’t to brag — there are costs to that sometimes, and it took me awhile to develop this kind of trust in myself. But overall, it’s something I think has served me really well as a leader and entrepreneur.
So how did I come to turn this big stressor into an easeful thing in my life? Well, you can probably guess that practice is a big part of it. But a couple of mindset shifts have also been important.
I’m going to talk about those mindset shifts, how to practice, and how I make decisions in this article. But first, I’ll talk about what gets in the way.
What Gets Us Stuck in Indecision (and the Cost)Indecision costs us dearly — we spend a lot of time stuck in indecision, going back and forth, questioning our decisions, asking others for their opinion, avoiding thinking about the decision, and so on. It costs us a lot in stress. It delays projects. It makes us feel guilty because we keep putting things off.
It’s usually more costly to avoid deciding than it is to take decisive action and be wrong sometimes.
“More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.” — Cicero
So what gets us stuck in indecision? Usually fear.
We fear making the “wrong” decision, because we worry that it will make us look bad, that we’ll be judged, that it will not give us the validation we seek from others. We get stuck because of fear, and so we put it off rather than letting ourselves deal with the fear.
What the Art of Effortless Decision-Making Looks LikeImagine we could make decisions and take action without all the fear. I’m not saying we could be completely free of fear, but I’m asking you to imagine what decision-making would look like without fear.
Without fear of doing something wrong and getting judged … you’d simply make decisions based on the best info you have, and on your gut. You’d choose from the heart, rather than getting caught up in overthinking. You might make mistakes, but you’d learn from them, and make adjustments.
It’s so much simpler this way — simply choose from the heart. Trust. Take action. And clean up any messes that get made if things don’t work out as you’d hoped.
Fear does come up, of course. And you simply deal with the fear, with breath and love. It doesn’t have to be a blocker.
Sometimes a decision is a big one, and the consequences could be pretty costly. In those cases, you might give it more thought, sit with the uncertainty for a bit, do some research, ask the opinions of others, and then breathe … and choose from the heart. And be nimble in dealing with the outcome. This is where the trust comes in — you learn to trust that you can deal with anything that arises.
The Mindset ShiftsYou can see in what I’ve just shared that there are some mindset approaches that are helpful. The three shifts I recommend include:
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Choose from the heart vs. overthinking. When we get caught up in thinking, it’s because we think we can solve the uncertainty by thinking it through. While thinking can be helpful, it will rarely cut through indecision when fear takes over. A different approach is simply to choose from the heart — ask yourself what your heart wants in this situation. For example: do I want to write a blog post or go work out — there’s no right answer! I can think for a long time and not come up with the answer. Choosing from the heart is trusting that it’s OK to actually want what you want.
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Trust vs. wasting brain cycles. I’ve seen people spend so many brain cycles thinking things through, and then deciding … only to worry that their decision isn’t the right one. They make a decision, and then think about it some more. What if we could free ourselves from so much thinking, worry, and rethinking … by just trusting ourselves?
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Learning vs. getting it “right.” A lot of the time we get stuck in indecision because we want to make the right decision, but that’s not very helpful, because you can’t know what the right decision is. In fact, there might not be a right decision. What if instead we could see it as a learning process, where we try things out and see how that goes? Learn from the process. This learning approach frees us up from having to get it right, and allows for it to be a more empowered process.
You can see from these shifts in mindset that decision-making becomes more relaxed, less tight, more trusting. Effortless, almost.
How to Practice So how do we practice these shifts, and this effortless approach?
I wouldn’t recommend starting with super tough decisions, like whether to leave your current job or not. Practice with the easy day-to-day stuff to start with, until you develop more and more trust in yourself.
So things like: what should I work on next? How should I reply to this person’s email? Do I want a veggie burger or a lentil salad? Do I want to say yes to this invitation or not? Do I want to take on the clutter in my garage?
With each of these decisions, notice if you get caught up in overthinking, and see if you can practice choosing from the heart. Notice if you start to doubt your choice, and see if you can practice trusting your choice. Notice if you’re worried about whether you made the right decision, and see if you can practice looking at it as a learning process instead.
Ask yourself if you can make these decision more effortless. And see what you can discover through this kind of practice.
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By Leo BabautaI’ve seen a lot of people with goals about changing how they spend their time, things like:
- Spend more time with family
- Have a better work/life balance
- Spend more time outdoors
- Spend more time with friends
- Read more
- And so on
These are wonderful goals! They all involve something that theoretically is pretty simple: simply change how you spend your time.
But it’s rarely that simple, is it? Something causes us to spend our time in ways we want to change, but struggle to change.
Today we’ll look at what pulls us off goals like this, and how to shift to being more intentional about how you spend your time.
What Pulls Us Off Our Time IntentionsLet’s say you have a goal like, “Spend more time with family (or friends)” … why do you need a goal like that in the first place? Without any judgment, it’s worth asking, Why aren’t you already doing that?
Or another way to ask it: What will likely pull you away from that goal?
We can have the best of intentions with our time, but there are a few things that commonly cause us to get pulled away from those intentions:
- Unexpected things come up — an urgent work situation, a new request for our time, a crisis, really anything that needs to be dealt with that we didn’t anticipate.
- Things take longer than we thought they would. This is really common. We think we’ll take an hour to write that report, and it takes four. We think we’ll just run to the store for 20 minutes for a quick errand, and it takes 45 minutes.
- We forget to plan for things that don’t usually go on our schedule, like eating, rest, showering, brushing our teeth, folding laundry, cooking and cleaning up, and so on. So our ideal schedule rarely has everything we really need to do, and as a result, the schedule will often be thrown way off.
My suggestion for these is to put some padding into your plan, so you can deal with the unexpected. If you have time intentions blocked off on a calendar or schedule … don’t make it too tightly planned. Give space for rest, taking care of yourself, catching up on messages, and so on.
But there’s one bigger reason we get pulled off our intentions: fear vs. comfort.
For example:
- We might want to spend time with family … but when we’re getting a bunch of requests from clients (or coworkers), we might decide to work late instead of getting home on time.
- We might want to read more … but we abandon that when we’re feeling stressed about a project and decide to fill our available time with work.
- Or maybe we end up scrolling on our phones, or browsing or watching on the Internet, instead of doing what we planned … because we’re feeling stressed and want to comfort ourselves with distractions.
When we’re feeling stress, fear or resistance, we might get pulled towards work or distractions because we think that will allay the fear or comfort the stress. That’s the biggest reason we get pulled away from our intentions.
How to Spend Your Time More IntentionallyThe first thing is to think about what intentions you have for your time that you’re not already doing. For example:
- Read more
- Get outdoors more
- Spend more time with family
Once you’ve got those intentions, you can get clearer: 30 mins of reading everyday, an hourlong walk or hike in nature 4x a week, evenings with family after 6pm on weekdays and half day fun on both Saturdays and Sundays.
Then block it off on your calendar, and commit to others. Maybe you do your walks with your partner or best friend. Plan your weekends and weeknights with your family. Join a reading challenge or have reading time with the family.
Set a reminder to review your intentions every morning or evening.
Those are the first steps. The real work will come when you get confronted by fear, resistance or stress … and look to get out of these intentions by working or going to distractions.
When this happens:
- Bring awareness to what you’re feeling that’s pulling you from your intentions. Can you feel it in your body?
- Find a way to calm or soothe the fear / stress. Do you need a few minutes of walking? Deeper breath? Some love? Someone to talk to?
- Once you’re calmer, remind yourself of your intentions. Take a minute to remember why you wanted to do this. Is this intention more important than the temporary discomfort of fear or stress?
- Return to your intentions with love/devotion.
This is a practice, and it doesn’t come naturally to most of us. But if you’d like to live a more intentional life, this is the practice. What would you like to do?
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By Leo BabautaI’m publishing this a bit late (I usually post by the end of the year) but that is a good summary of 2022 for me: chaotic and messy, but still amazing.
It’s hard to fully share what the year was for Zen Habits, and for me personally … I went through a lot of personal challenges, while creating so much abundance in my business and with my team.
I coached some really incredible people, both in my 1-on-1 coaching practice and in my Fearless Mastery small group program. We held two amazing virtual retreats, and planned a new live retreat for Costa Rica in March 2023!
My team and I took our Fearless Living Academy to a new level, adding new content while adding focus sessions, workshops, challenges and more.
I deepened into commitment, and created sacred focus. I deepened my mindfulness practice, and how I show up as a leader. I expanded my vision.
And now I’m ready to take on 2023 with an incredible amount of love. Big things happening this year for me and my team and our mission!
Best Posts of 2022I’ve collected what I consider the best of my Zen Habits posts for the past year, I hope you find value in them:
- On the Shortness of Life
- Committed & Unattached: A Powerful Way to Work
- When You’re Overwhelmed, Simplify
- How to Have a Powerfully Effective Day
- How to Put Life on Easy Mode
- My Simple, High Impact Productivity Protocol
- How to Make the Most of Your 24 Hours
- The Ridiculous Effectiveness of Singleminded Devotion to a Purpose
- A Mindfulness Practice for Holiday Stress
- Seeing the Gift
And MoreFor more best of Zen Habits:
- Best of Zen Habits in 2007.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2008.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2009.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2010.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2011.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2012.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2013.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2014.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2015.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2016.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2017.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2018.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2019.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2020.
- The Essential Zen Habits of 2021.
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By Leo BabautaThere are a number of common blockers for creating powerful change in your life:
- Feeling that the effort is pointless
- Resisting the effort
- Frustration with yourself or others
- Disliking the activity
- Feeling an urge / compulsion to do the old habit
Each of these can derail your efforts to create something new. And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with any of these — they’re wonderfully human traits. But to create powerful change, we have to learn to work with them.
Today I’d like to introduce a magical tool that I call Seeing the Gift.
If you deploy Seeing the Gift, you can work with any of the above deterrents. Let’s take a look.
What’s ‘Seeing the Gift’?In any activity, in any person, you can find a gift. Sometimes it’s obvious — the person in front of you is kind and generous, and you feel them very easily as a gift. When you are watching a sunset out in nature, you can feel the wonder and joy of the gift of that moment.
But other times it’s more challenging — the person in front of you is being annoying, or you’re going through illness or injury, or the project in front of you is boring and hard. In some situations, or with some people, we resist seeing the gift. We want to just complain. And that’s OK! Let yourself complain, and see the gift in expressing the frustration or despair in your heart. How can that emotion be a gift to you?
If you continue to sit with that emotion, you’ll relax a bit. Then you can look deeper. While the person in front of you is being frustrating, there is something they’re offering you. There is a gift in them, if you are willing to look. Are you willing?
If you’re taking on an overwhelming or boring project, it can be hard to see the gift — but if you sit with it for a little longer, you’ll find it in the silence. You’ll start to realize what this project has to teach you. It will start to change you.
The Gift is what it has to teach you, how it changes you, how it connects you to the divine, to yourself, to everything around you. The Gift is the sacredness of the moment and of you. The Gift is a profound realization of the wonder of life.
It’s always there, if we’re willing to look.
How to Use ‘Seeing the Gift’ for Powerful ChangeLet’s take each of the “deterrents” to change that I mentioned above:
- The effort is pointless: It feels like you’ll never accomplish what you want to achieve, so it feels pointless to even try — this feeling of pointlessness stops every one of us. Could you see the Gift in trying even if you don’t get to the goal? Could the effort be a Gift no matter what the outcome?
- Resisting the effort: You have the project sitting over there waiting for you to start it, or you planned to work out today … but you’re resisting. Everything else seems more urgent, so you put it off. What if you paused for a minute to sit still, and see the Gift in the project or the workout? What if you let that Gift call you to the change you want to make in your life and the world?
- Frustration with yourself or others: The person in front of you is obnoxious. Or you aren’t living up to your expectations. These kinds of frustrations with yourself or others can be a huge deterrent to creating something new in your life. What if you paused for a few minutes, took some breaths, slowed down … and looked for the Gift in this person, or in yourself? Could this frustrating person be teaching you something unintentionally? Could there be something beautiful in them for you to find? Could you find the gift in the sacredness of your frustration?
- Disliking the activity: Sometimes to accomplish a goal, we have to do something we don’t like. This will often cause us to decide the goal isn’t worthwhile. But what if there could be a Gift in this dreadful activity? Could we find it, and allow ourselves to claim the Gift? This gives us access to more possibility than if we shut out every activity we don’t like.
- Urge to do an old habit: Let’s say you’re trying to change your diet, or go on social media less … the best of intentions can be derailed by an urge to do what you normally do. But an urge is just a momentary sensation in the body, nothing that has to dictate our lives. What if you could just sit with the urge for a moment, and see the Gift in that sensation? What if the moment of the urge is simply what change feels like, and the Gift is learning to be with the sensation of change?
As you can see, Seeing the Gift can unlock powerful possibility. All it takes is a willingness to sit for a few moments, and a willingness to see.
May the Gift unlock new possibility in your life.
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By Leo BabautaThe holidays can be stressful, with shopping, travel, family gatherings, extra busyness, winter storms, and more. The chaos of our lives plays out in sometimes heightened form over the season.
In this post, I’m going to share the practice I’ve been using to deal with whatever stress has been arising in my life. I call it Tightening and Softening.
This practice of Tightening and Softening is about letting in more and more of life, just as it is. It’s about relaxing with the flow of life, so we can expand our capacity to be with everything.
To start with, notice when you’re tightening against whatever is making you feel stressed, anxious, resistant, frustrated, overwhelmed. The body tightens — you might notice it in your jaw and face, in your throat or chest, in your stomach or clenched fists or legs. We tighten against the world, when someone is being frustrating or we’re feeling confronted by a situation.
This tightening isn’t bad — it’s what we do as humans, to protect ourselves. To shut out the uncontrollable. To wall ourselves off from what confronts us. It’s human to tighten.
But we’re not limited to that experience. We can open to life, just as it is, even when it’s challenging or uncomfortable.
The practice is to soften, using the breath. When you notice the tightening against life … simply breathe in, slow and deep. Allow the breath to soften the parts that are tight, to relax you more and more. To soften your stance towards the thing that’s confronting you.
With each breath, soften, and allow life in. Allow it to be just as it is, even the tightening. No need to change anything in this moment, just yet — simply allow it to be, even appreciate it. Soften so that you can be with things in all of their messiness.
When we do this, we allow people to be human, as messy as that can be. We allow ourselves to be human. We allow life to be chaotic and uncomfortable, beautiful and juicy. We allow ourselves to love all of it.
Here’s a meditation I’ve recorded to guide this practice.
May your holidays be filled with practice and love.
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By Leo Babauta I’ve noticed that so many people are feeling overwhelmed, scattered, and stressed – so much so that focus and effective work become incredibly difficult. So what can we do to be more effective in the midst of this scattered, overwhelmed state? Today I’m going to share the top three things I do […]
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By Leo Babauta Something I’ve noticed that derails a lot of people’s goals or attempts to form habits is the feeling that it’s pointless to even try. If it feels like it won’t matter if you do anything … why would you try? And so when people feel this, they will usually give up, understandably. […]
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By Leo Babauta I’ve been diving deep into working with full commitment lately, in my personal transformative work and working with my clients. It’s fascinating work. The biggest stumbling point for people is the dichotomy between: Being detached from the goal, which can ironically make it more likely to achieve the goal. For many people […]
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By Leo Babauta At the start of the pandemic, in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, I launched Fearless Mastery, my small group coaching and mastermind program. It was actually perfect timing: my intention was to help people train to be open in the middle of uncertainty, so that they could do their purpose work […]
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By Leo Babauta The feeling of being overwhelmed is extremely common in the people I talk to, and it’s becoming more and more clear to me that this is the default state for most of us. We’re overwhelmed by it all: all the things we have on our plates, all the interruptions and messages and […]
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By Leo Babauta Our focus during the day is almost always muddled. We switch between everything, and at any given 5-minute period, most of us would often be hard-pressed to say what we’re focusing on. That’s not how our minds work most of the time. It’s no wonder we struggle to face things that are […]
The post Creating Sacred Focus appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta A lot of us want to make changes in our lives — whether it’s changing a bad habit like smoking or overeating, creating a new habit like meditation, or simply being less distracted or reactive during the day. Whatever the change, you’re likely to face internal resistance. There is a part of […]
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By Leo Babauta I’ve been noticing lately how much of our lives is spent wanting to do something, wishing we could do something … but struggling to move into action. What’s the struggle to make this transition all about? And how can we more consciously make the transition into action? Let’s look at a couple […]
The post Moving From Desire to Action appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta People I’ve been coaching lately have been stuck in indecision about what purpose they should pursue. At this kind of crossroads, we can become plagued by doubt. And that makes sense: if you’re not sure what your purpose is, then going after a single choice can feel really uncertain. How do I […]
The post The Ridiculous Effectiveness of Singleminded Devotion to a Purpose appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta I’ve worked with a number of people who want more spaciousness in their lives — more time for rest, play, reading, reflecting, self-care, hanging with friends and other loved ones. The challenge isn’t that it’s hard to create more time (for some people, it is actually very hard) … the challenge is that […]
The post Creating a More Spacious Life appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta Someone I know shared that they came back from a meditation retreat excited about the meaningful possibilities they’d envisioned on the retreat — new projects, opportunities, important stuff they wanted to create. So incredible to be excited about meaningful possibilities! And then they got home, and there were piles of tasks, emails […]
The post The Urgency of Piles appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta You might know that I’m a fan of simplicity and minimalism — but for me, it’s not just about having less stuff or even doing less. For me, it’s a way of moving through the world with lightness. Not lightly tiptoeing around trying not to make an impact, but with lightness in […]
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By Leo Babauta Lately I’ve noticed a lot of people are feeling drained by life — the challenges they’re facing, their workloads, the anxiety of the world around them, and more. Someday soon I’ll write a longer guide to how to get yourself to a place of renewed resilience … but for today, I’d like […]
The post What to Do When You’re Feeling Drained appeared first on zen habits.
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some […]
The post On the Shortness of Life appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta At the core of a lot of our difficulties is a lack of trust — especially trust in ourselves. Think about these common difficulties that most of us face: What to focus on: We don’t trust our hearts to choose what we’d like to work on right now. Indecision: We get stuck […]
The post A Guide to Practicing Trust appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta It’s a simple fact: the pandemic has increased the amount of impulse shopping most people have been doing. There are lots of stats proving it, but you can simply take a look at your own life and the lives of people you know to see that it’s true for you. Why have […]
The post Getting to the Heart of Impulse Shopping appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta I’ve had a few emails from readers who ask me how to be compassionate towards other people without taking on all of their suffering. Opening your heart to another person can be emotionally taxing if you are feeling all of their pain. It’s an incredible question, because it shows: An intention to […]
The post The Balanced Path: An Open Heart Without Taking on Suffering appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta Every day, we go through a set of actions that is training our minds in the long term. Sometimes we’re training intentionally: we meditate, practice focus, get ourselves to start a workout, resist temptations, etc. Mostly, though, we’re training unintentionally: when you press snooze on the alarm clock, look at social media […]
The post We’re Always Training Something appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta A lot of people I talk to are unhappy with their ability to get stuff done in their lives. They feel they’re wasting a lot of time, never really getting anything important done. What I like to play with is the idea of having a “powerfully effective day.” It’s a big topic, […]
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By Leo Babauta This month I came back to my work after taking a full month off — I am a stand for taking time off and finding time for rest and replenishment. After a month off, it turns out I have a pile of tasks, emails and messages to go through! It’s daunting. It […]
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By Leo Babauta Very often, the way we live our lives is that we go through the motions — we do our work, try our best, tackle the things we have to do, take on our obligations, or we slack off on those obligations and find comforts where we can. What we often forget is […]
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