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 fo … | Continue reading
“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 […] … | Continue reading
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 st … | Continue reading
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 [ … | Continue reading
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, be … | Continue reading
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: wh … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
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 […] The post … | Continue reading
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 […] The po … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta So much of our difficulties can be entangled with our sense of self worth — from whether we take care of ourselves with good habits to how we are in relationships to how much confidence we have at work. Think about your biggest difficulties (other than problems at … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta When we’re hit with uncertainty either suddenly or in large amounts, it can throw us off. We can get frustrated, overwhelmed, stressed, discouraged. This is normal and there’s nothing wrong with it. However, it’s my belief that we can train ourselves to stay more b … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Most of us don’t realize how powerful stories are in our lives, because we don’t even notice that we’re telling ourselves a story. But stories shape everything. For example, the stories you tell yourself is the reason you feel: Resentment toward a loved one or cowo … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta In recent weeks, almost every coaching client I’ve been working with has been feeling one big thing: overwhelm. It seems almost universal: people can’t seem to deal with the big things in their lives because they’re feeling too overwhelmed. They can’t take on their … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Every round of my Fearless Mastery program has simply blown me away. At the end of the 5-month round of this small group coaching program, we celebrate our victories — and every single person has some profound inner and outer victories to share. We just finished ro … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta This week, we’ve opened up enrollment for my deepest program, Fearless Mastery. It’s 20 or so people coming together to support each other’s meaningful work in community, and to get supported by me and our other coaches. The name “Fearless Mastery” brings up a lot … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Quitting an old habit or forming a new habit is fairly simple when it comes to the steps to doing it: find your trigger and do a new habit at that trigger over and over. Remind yourself to do it. Make it rewarding. The simplicity is deceptive, though: there are som … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta The other day I was having such a chill, easy day despite doing all of my usual work and chores and workout activities — the phrase, “Life on Easy Mode” came to me. The rest of the week, I kept the question in my mind, “What would it be like to have […] The post Ho … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’ve noticed that a lot of us will be pretty wiped out at the end of a long day of work or social activity, to the point where we need time to recuperate from exhaustion. There’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s talk about the possibility of doing hard things wit … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta One of the most common problems when people are working is that they get caught up in busywork or distractions, and it can take hours before they find their way back to their meaningful work. Part of that is procrastination, of course, but a lot of times it’s just … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta We usually dislike challenging situations, conflict with others, struggle with our work or habits. Struggle sucks! But what if it were a part of the training of life? What if every conflict, failure, difficulty, hard emotion … were exactly the lesson we needed to l … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Every one of us has thought patterns that keep us stuck: Discouragement: What’s the point, I’m going to fail anyway, why even try, it’s too hard. Rationalizing: It’s OK to skip this, I can do it later, one time won’t hurt, do it but don’t try that hard, wait out th … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta The habits we just can’t seem to quit can be very challenging — not only are they hard to change, they can have negative effects on our lives, and make us feel bad about ourselves. In this post, I’d like to talk about a few things I’ve found helpful to curb a […] T … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta We are held back from creating the life we want, from our highest purpose, from our greatest growth and learning … by what we know. Destroy what you know. Once we feel like we’re a little good at something, we cling to that. We cling to wanting others to think we k … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Something I’ve noticed is that we spend a lot of our lives wrapping our identity in our bodies. If our body is something we’re proud of, we feel really good about ourselves … but much more often, it’s a sense that something is wrong with us because our bodies don’t … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Much of our days are spent with busywork or distractions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, busywork and distractions can be lovely ways to spend our time. But sometimes we want to use our time powerfully and effectively. Let’s look at ways to work with increased … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Sometimes, our heads won’t stop thinking about something. Our thoughts will spin around and around, not willing to let go, obsessing. It might be about another person, a big event coming up, or about ourselves. It might be overthinking a decision, big or small. The … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta A surprising number of our daily struggles stem from our attachments. Let me list a few: Overeating: There’s nothing wrong with eating, but when we eat out of the habit of comforting ourselves or not knowing when to stop, it can lead to feeling bad or having worse … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta One of the great joys of my life is living simply, and every now and then finding ways to return to simplicity. Life tends to get complicated with time, and so I find ways to simplify. I’ve done lists with 100 ways to simplify, but obviously that’s not very simple! … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta While it is easy to show up to appointments we make with other people … I’ve noticed that most people struggle with commitments they make with themselves. If you say you’re going to exercise, meditate, write, journal, work on a project … but then you don’t stick to … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta When we decide to create a new habit — exercise, healthy eating, meditation, writing — we can get excited and optimistic, and have an idea of how it will go perfectly. This is such a hopeful time! Unfortunately, reality has other plans. Our perfect idea of how our … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Feeling overwhelmed with work and personal tasks is one of the biggest problems that the people I work with are facing. It turns out, our lives can be pretty overwhelming. There’s so much to do, never enough time to do it, and who knows what we should be focusing o … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’ve found that nearly all of us make things harder and more complicated, by adding a mental layer of difficulty. We make simple things complicated: Overwhelm: Doing one task at a time is pretty simple, but we get overwhelmed by all the things. We think about an en … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta When we’re feeling some inner resistance to a task, we tend to put it off — check email, social media, our favorite distractions or busywork. We all do it. We often turn it into something bad: I suck for not being disciplined, I suck for not being able to focus, I’ … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta So many of us feel a scarcity of time: we feel rushed, like there’s not enough time to do everything, always behind, never feeling like we’re doing enough. This problem is called “time scarcity,” and it’s one of the most common stresses in our society. So how do we … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta The beginning of the year offers such a beautiful blank slate. A fresh beginning is something to take advantage of: we can start anew, and reinvent our lives. If you’re feeling like you’re in a bit of a rut, this is the perfect time to make the most of this year’s … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta This was quite the year of change for Zen Habits, and everyone in the world. Chaos, growth, uncertainty, tragedy, joy, meaning. It’s hard to encapsulate it in words, because it contains multitudes and contradictions, but this has been such a year of powerful change … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta For the past couple of Decembers, I’ve created a lot of spaciousness and slowness for myself. It’s a beautiful way to wind down the year and reflect on my life. The holiday season can be a rushed affair for many people, but it doesn’t have to be. I’d like to share … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta We will often start our days with the best of intentions … and then promptly get caught up in a chain of busywork, messages, opening browser tabs, checking on things, answering email … … and soon the day has gone by and we wonder what we did with the day. There’s a … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta This neverending pandemic hasn’t been the best mental health environment for many people — it has created raised levels of uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, unhappiness, procrastination and feelings of dreariness for large numbers of people. That’s understandable, … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I’ve been working with a large number of people who are very often exhausted, not just from sleep problems but from their daily activities. A lot of us are drained by being around other people, doing video meetings, going out in public … and so we start to avoid th … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta When we’re creating a habit — say, meditation or practicing a language — we often try to encourage ourselves by creating an unbroken streak. 100 straight days of meditation! 30 straight days of practicing Chinese! These are amazing accomplishments, and we should le … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta I have a client who has completely changed his life — it’s been a complete transformation, and it is breathtaking. One of the most powerful things he’s brought into his life is the practice of self-compassion. It changed everything, once he started bringing this in … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Generally we avoid hard tasks, putting them off while we either do easier tasks or distract ourselves. This is understandable, as a hard task might feel daunting or overwhelming, but spending our hours on urgent but easy tasks vs. difficult but important tasks is g … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta It can often feel like our lives are messy, cluttered, overwhelming, scattered. Like a house filled with clutter, our lives can feel like a huge mess. Today I’d like to share an idea for getting things in order: just as I recommend for decluttering your house, crea … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta The way we view life is usually invisible to us, and yet it is probably the most powerful thing in our lives. For example, one person might hear the words of another person and feel incredibly hurt, stressed, angry, and then it ruins their entire week … while anoth … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Much of our lives are lived on autopilot. We jump from one task to another, one message to another, one meeting to another, one browser tab to another. We react in habitual ways to other people, to situations. And we justify this as the way it should be. Nothing wr … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta Most people experience their day as busy, overwhelming, scattered, rushed. There isn’t enough time to do everything. There’s pressure and stress in this way of living. Now, there’s nothing wrong with experiencing life in this way. As I said, most people do it. But … | Continue reading
By Leo Babauta We often can spot complainers, when it’s other people — they’re the kind of people who always seem to be complaining, negative, stuck in victimhood. It’s harder to see it when we’re the ones who are complaining so often. And in fact, in my experience most of us are … | Continue reading