By Leo Babauta A year ago, my team & I started a grand experiment in our Fearless Living Academy, designed to create the best training possible for learning to face and deal with uncertainty in our lives, especially around habits and purpose work. We call it the Uncertainty Chall … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Our days can be overwhelming, and because of this, many people put off their creative work — it just doesn’t feel possible. If you’re in this camp, one or more of these will sound familiar to you: Of course, the time never comes when you’re feeling settled, when yo … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta When things are changing rapidly, and an overwhelming number of things are coming at you … it can be tough to navigate. Anyone who is up to anything big will have a lot going on. Lots of emails and messages, lots of tasks, lots of meetings and calls, lots of things … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta A 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 … | Continue reading
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 ver … | Continue reading
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. […] The p … | Continue reading
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 lif … | Continue reading
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 affe … | Continue reading
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 my … | Continue reading
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 of … | Continue reading
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 […] The post … | Continue reading
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’ … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
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 ever … | Continue reading
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 y … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta A 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’ … | Continue reading
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 inspire … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta One 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 […] Th … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Most 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 … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Creating 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 … | Continue reading
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: i … | Continue reading
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 t … | Continue reading
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 th … | Continue reading
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 uncerta … | Continue reading
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 mir … | Continue reading
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 o … | Continue reading
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 [ … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
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. … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’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 cle … | Continue reading
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 t … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’ve seen a lot of people with goals about changing how they spend their time, things like: 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? Somethi … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’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 […] The post … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta There are a number of common blockers for creating powerful change in your life: 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 chan … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta The 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 wi … | Continue reading
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 sh … | Continue reading
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, … | Continue reading
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 ironicall … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
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 mes … | Continue reading
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 fa … | Continue reading
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 resis … | Continue reading
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 act … | Continue reading
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 fee … | Continue reading
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 actua … | Continue reading
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 possib … | Continue reading
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 lig … | Continue reading