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 Challenge. It’s a 4-week challenge that we’ve run 12 times so far, with astounding results. Seriously, I didn’t know what to expect, but people have been doing things in these challenges that’s just blowing me away. Results like: Finally stopped procrastinatingMade more progress on a p...

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: I’m too busy right now, I can always do (insert creative work here) laterThings have to be just right before I can do (creative work)When things are settled, that’s when I’ll startI need to clear out my desk, my office, my life before I can start Of course, the time never comes when you’re feeling settled, when you’re not busy or stressed or overwhelm...

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 changing every day. Lots of uncertainty. How do we navigate the uncertainty of all of this? The visual metaphor that works for me is surfing. I’m going to talk about how to surf uncertainty, and how to learn to surf uncertainty. What we really want is a simple, straightforward path. ...

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 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 s...

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 immediate results. Seeing progress quickly can be very encouraging — so how do we find encouragement when we don’t see that quick progress? Over the years, I have been able to stick to some big long-term changes: losing weight, working out to gain strength, training for marathons, c...

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. Of all of the countless hours I’ve been working with people in my Fearless Living Academy, in my Fearless Mastery mastermind, with my one-on-one coaching clients, and listening to all of you readers. The Zen Habits Podcast can be found here. Let’s celebrate! This podcast has bee...

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 fully on retreat. Step away from your usual routine, and let yourself practice something different. Take some spaciousness for reflection, and for deciding to try something different in your life. And then do some deeper work with Leo Babauta, creator of Ze...

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, our relationships, our happiness. If your stress levels are high on a regular basis, it’s like having a smoking habit — it will take its toll over time. So how do we reduce stress levels to something manageable? I’m going to share some of the most important w...

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 been true for so many people I’ve worked with and known. Consider how most of us spend our days: Doing busywork, messages, emails, small tasks.Putting off larger tasks, avoiding the scary stuff.Scrolling social media, news, favorite distraction websites.Watching videos ...

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 recognized when we’re feeling drained or a bit battered by life. We just focus on what we think we need to be doing, and just push through. This might feel necessary, but it’s rarely helpful, because we’re just forcing ourselves to act when we’re depleted or feeling confront...

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 examples: To start exercising and moving more, you have to let go of some of the comfort of sitting and watching/reading things on your devices.To start waking up earlier, you have to let go of the thing you like to do that keeps you up late at night (maybe watching TV).To give up alcohol, you ha...

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 up a case against someone, or watching video after video. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s a very human thing. But what would it be like to live more fully in our bodies? We might call this, “Embodied Living.” To live embodied means to: Notice when we’re...

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. I’ve come to realize that cleaning, organizing, decluttering … for me, it’s a form of self-care. It helps me feel settled, makes me feel like I’m taking care of my life. Yes, cleaning and organizing can be overwhelming, and is often avoided. But it doesn’t hav...

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 if we could learn this kind of deep appreciation for any moment? I notice myself often in a hurry for something I want to happen right away. I want it to be fully finished, yesterday. I’m overlooking the incredible moment that’s happening ...

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’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 ...

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 retre...

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 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...

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 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...

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 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; andWe make that meaningful, get discouraged, and let that derail us. This is an almost universal thing, in my experience. No one...

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 ...