Zen Habits Favorites: Recent Episodes
Leo Babauta and Chris Calabro
Each episode of Zen Habits Favorites features a select blog post written by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, read by Chris Calabro. Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives. It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, find happiness.
One of the most common problems among people I work with and coach is the feeling of always being busy.And then it becomes a rationalization: I can’t honor my commitments because I’m too busy! I can’t be with my family or friends because I’m too busy. I can’t work out, meditate, shut down at night to get to sleep, or make time for solitude and disconnection … because I’m too busy. Is it true? Or can we develop a habit of not being busy, even with the same workload?
Our lives are spent building up to more important moments, later, the moments when we’ll be happy. But when those moments come, we’re not happier. In fact, we’re already looking ahead.
For the most part, everything is normal. We’re managing. On good days, things go pretty well. On bad days, frustration and stress get to us. But what if we could shift everything in a magical way?
It happens to all of us: we don’t get done what we hoped to get done, then we feel stressed or guilty about it. It’s time to let that go, because it’s not helping us. We can build resiliency around this, with a little mental training. And it will help us in magical ways. Think about whether you’ve done any of these things....
When I write these articles, they’re as much a reminder to myself about what I’ve found to work as they are a reminder to all of you. I’ve found them to work, but that doesn’t mean I always remember to practice them. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect, by any means.
I used to think, as many people do, that if we’re unhappy with ourselves, we’ll be driven to get better. And if we were all of a sudden content with ourselves, we’d stop doing anything. I no longer believe this.
The next time you experience frustration, just notice it. Just be mindful that you’re unhappy with something or someone, that you’re feeling frustration in your body somehow. Now notice what it is in this moment that you wish were different. What is missing from this moment that is frustrating you? Frustration stems from what you don’t have.
As you sit here reading these words, you are breathing … stop for a moment and notice this breath. You could control the breath, and make it behave as you like … or you can simply let yourself breathe. There is peace in just letting your body breathe, without having to do anything about it.
The question I’ve been asking myself lately, before I do anything, is a deceptively simple one: “What’s the most loving thing you can do in this situation?“
When I remember to do this — and I very, very often don’t — it lifts the difficulty that I’ve been facing internally and shift my focus to understanding and empathizing with other people, seeing how I can give them compassion.
If you’re on Facebook looking at your friends’ food pictures or vacation photos, that will shape your reality. If you’re on porn sites, that’s what your reality is. If you follow people on Twitter who complain all the time, that affects your life in a major way.
There’s a part of today’s consumerist world that drives us to want more, buy more, act on our impulses, hoard, spend to solve our problems, create comfort through shopping, seek thrills through travel, do more, be more. What would happen if we broke from our addiction to wanting and buying more?
You can read entire books on productivity, dozens of blog posts, and implement half a dozen different productivity systems. But at the end of the day, you’d have gotten nothing important done. The truth is, productivity is fairly simple, in theory.
We think we need to improve ourselves and our current situation, because we’re dissatisfied (at least a little bit) with how things are. So we strive for change — exercise more, eat better, read more, be more mindful, do more meaningful work, be more disciplined. And yet, we struggle with change. Why is that?
When we feel difficult emotions in real life, we can stop believing in the story, and start to see the reality of what’s happening: there’s just physical objects around us, moving. There are atoms and molecules, living organisms, people who can talk and create.
We feel the moment isn’t enough unless we talk about it, share it, somehow solidify it. The moment is ephemeral, and we want solidity and permanence. This kind of groundlessness can scare us.
Pretty much all of us experience frustration on a daily (or even hourly) basis. We get frustrated by other people, by ourselves, by technology, by work situations, by small crises that come up all the time. How can we calm ourselves and let go of our frustrations, so we’re not so irritated and angry throughout the day?
Think about how busy our lives have become. Think about how distracted we’ve become. Think about how many things needlessly pull on our attention, our time, our money, our sanity. The point isn’t to opt out of life. It’s to see that life is much more than we dare to believe it can be.
The basic nature of life is that it is everchanging, uncontrollable. When we think we have stability in life, something comes up to remind us that no, we don’t. There is no stability, no matter how much we’d like it. And this kinda freaks us out.
Everyone is trying to look good in the eyes of others. Everyone stresses out about how they look, how they’re perceived, whether people think they’re awesome or good people. It’s why Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and mirrors exist.
What I’ve noticed, when I experience anger, frustration, disappointment … is that I am judging my experiences based on whether they are good for me or not. But why am I at the center of the universe?
Have you created healthy habits for you, but haven’t gotten your kids or spouse on board? You’re not alone — lots of people get frustrated when their loved ones don’t want to create healthy habits.
We are frustrated with ourselves, with others, with our situation, with the way the world is, and we can’t let go of wishing they were different.
Something I forget a lot, and have to remind myself about a lot: I’m not on my way somewhere. Each moment rushes by, because we’re on our way somewhere else.
Pause for a moment, right now, to notice where you are. What is it like? What is the light like? What about the sounds, the smells, the feelings your body is feeling, the people around you? What is your state of mind?
Hamlet said, ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ He was right. Without the human mind, things just happen, and they are not good or bad. It’s only when we apply the filter of our judgment that they become good or bad, beautiful or ugly.
If you don’t practice being present, slowing down, enjoying the moment right now, when will you practice? What are you practicing now instead?
How do you beat something so addictive as the Internet, or TV — things most of us find ourselves increasingly immersed in, all day long? I’m going to give you strategies I’ve found effective, because I face these problems myself, all the time.
Why put pressure on ourselves to achieve a huge list of things that aren’t that meaningful? Why feel guilty if we’re not pursuing them? Why not let them go?
Let’s say you’re feeling unmotivated, unsure of yourself, aimless, can’t find your passion, directionless, not clear on what your purpose in life is. There about a million things online telling you how to find your passion in life, and that’s a good thing. It’s a search worth undergoing. I’m not going to give you a fool-proof method, or a 5-step method, nor share my passion manifesto with you today. I’m going to give you a one-step method.
We all do it: we look at what others are doing and wish we were doing that too. Or, alternatively, we scoff at what they’re doing and judge them, and see ourselves as better. One makes us feel bad, the other makes us feel superior. Neither makes us happy.
One way is to get everything ready for anything that’s likely to come: get all your survival equipment, prepare your skills, plan for your work projects, get your affairs in order, think through your arguments, and so on. The trouble with this is you don’t know what’s coming.
The practice of simplifying, clearing things away and staying with what I’m doing is incredibly useful, and something I haven’t mastered yet.
I try to be myself, which is really the best I can do. If I’m authentic, I can’t be a fraud, because I’m just being who I am. Of course, I’m always trying to figure out who that self is, and the self is constantly changing, so it’s an interesting endeavor.
When we start a change, we have an idea of how that will turn out — a fantasy in our heads, perhaps with a short timeline and a perfect result and an increase in happiness. But it never happens as quickly as we’d like, we’re never perfect at it, and we tend to be mostly as happy as before. So given that reality, how do we make long-term changes?
I could cite a bunch of studies and numbers, but here’s the honest truth: based on my own self-experiments, and working with thousands of people on habits, sleep is one of the most important but least valued factors when it comes to creating habits.
The combination of sounds and colors and shapes and smells around you will never exist in this particular combination ever again.
We all procrastinate, and by and large, we all know the solutions to our procrastination. But they don’t work unless you’re aware of what you’re doing.
High stress, constant anxiety over tasks and work and life, social anxiety … this is all a part of the modern way of life. Most people just don’t feel a sense of peace, of calm, of serenity, throughout their day. These are the habits to develop that will help you develop calmness (based on my experience):
So what do you do when you’re overwhelmed and have a crapload of work to do? Here are the practices that work for me. I offer them to you in hopes that they’ll help you.
Now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t ever judge other people. But one of the best changes I’ve made to help me be happier is learning to see judging other people as a red flag.
A friend recently asked me how I balance my personal lives and all my projects, and it made me pause and think. And that pause, and the thinking, is really the key to it all, I discovered.
When you’re feeling resentful or angry about something, it’s worth stopping to consider why.
How much of your stress, frustration, disappointment, anger, comes from one little thing? Almost all of it comes from your expectations. We build these expectations in our heads of what other people should do, what our lives should be like, how other drivers should behave … and yet it’s all fantasy. It’s not real.
Most of us are pretty busy, just about every day. Some like it that way — being busy is almost a status symbol, as it shows you’re important and productive and a go-getter and achiever. I say we should reject that little game of who’s busier than whom.
Many people are super busy, and distracted, because busy-ness and distraction feels productive, and isn’t boring. Smokers don’t want to quit smoking, because it helps them deal with stress. What do all these people have in common? They rely on crutches.
When I first started simplifying my life, about 8 years ago, I remember my life being much busier. I would say yes to everything, and go to lots of social stuff, and drive everywhere doing a crazy amount of things, rushing wherever I went. By crazy I mean it can drive you a bit insane.
Think about the major problems in your life — from anxiety to lack of regular exercise to a bad diet to procrastination and more. Pretty much every one of these problems is caused by a fear of discomfort.
When we were kids, most of us had someone to tell us what to do. Then came adulthood, where things became not-so-clear.
Our days fill up so fast, and are so rushed and filled with distractions, that they seem to be bursting. It’s a huge source of stress for most people, and stress is perhaps the most important factor determining whether we’re healthy or sick. So how can we simplify our days? It’s not incredibly hard, but I’ve found it’s best done in steps.
Instead of working with a fixed outcome (goal), work from moment to moment, using principles that work for you. Each moment, don’t ask “am I doing something to move me to my goal?” but instead ask, “Am I doing something right now that’s based on one of my values or principles?”
Let’s say we’re working and someone interrupts us: bam, so pissed off! Life is suddenly a boiling rage. OK, maybe we’re just annoyed. Why are we so annoyed/Hulk-enraged? Simply because we wanted to continue to work uninterrupted, but some buttwad has ruined that perfect fantasy.
What’s the fastest way to get a task off your to-do list? Just delete it … or don’t put it there in the first place.
Why is it that we cannot break the bad habits that stand in our way, crushing our desires to live a healthy life, be fit, simplify, be happier? How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten?
If your life is full of stress, like mine once was, there are some simle things you can do to get your life to a more manageable level. Your life will probably never be stress-free — but when stress gets too high, it causes us to be unhappy and unhealthy.
It’s not that changing bad habits is impossible. But if we are so discouraged we don’t try, we will never change them. To try and to fail is of little consequence, but to never start at all is fatal to the habit change.
One of the keys to happiness — as well as productivity and effectiveness at work — is finding work you love, that you’re passionate about. Work you want to do, instead of just have to do.
Too often the trend in our society is for people to be separated from either other, to be cut off from the great mass of humanity. Strike back against the selfishness and greed of our modern world, and help out a fellow human being today. Not next month, but today.
One problem with our complicated lives these days is that many of us never find time to spend alone, in peace, without being bombarded with noise and information. Find time each day to be alone, for your mental health, by stealing pockets of time from other areas of your life.
There are days in everyone’s life when they feel overwhelmed by the stresses and tasks and projects and phone calls and emails that weigh upon them. Yes, even the minimalists like me get overwhelmed from time to time.
I highly recommend that, if you haven’t yet, you develop the daily habit of reflection, in your own way. It could have profound changes on your life.
Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves. Yet mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.
As grown ups, we’ve lost this childlike sense of life. And that’s actually a sad thing. It’s not just about happiness and innocence either — being more childlike also helps us to be more creative, more imaginative, more innovative and open to worlds of possibilities.
We’re endlessly looking at how others do things, for inspiration and ideas … but we end up wanting to try those things too. That sounds harmless until you realize that you’ll buy almost anything because someone wrote about it and made it sound amazing.
If you’re going to do anything interesting in the world, criticism is an unavoidable fact. The trick to navigating the icebergs of criticism is to figure out which are helpful, and steer clear of those that aren’t.
One of the driving forces of my life for many years was the need to improve myself. So what’s the problem? You could say it’s great that people are constantly trying to improve themselves, but where does it end? When is anyone ever content with who they are?
You don’t need to be a monk to find solitude, nor do you need to be a hermit to enjoy it. Some of my favorite activities include sitting in front of the ocean, still, contemplating … walking, alone with my thoughts … disconnecting and just writing.