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 o...

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 tra...

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 ...

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 Ourselves We add a lot of extra thinking and stress. We ad...

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 l...

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 nearb...

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 let...

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 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 t...

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 proba...

By Leo Babauta I’ve seen a lot of people with goals about changing how they spend their time, things like: Spend more time with familyHave a better work/life balanceSpend more time outdoorsSpend more time with friendsRead moreAnd 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 ...

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 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 ret...

By Leo Babauta There are a number of common blockers for creating powerful change in your life: Feeling that the effort is pointlessResisting the effortFrustration with yourself or othersDisliking the activityFeeling 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 Gi...

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 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 ev...

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 to help myself find focus and effectiveness even when I’m at my most scattered. The Interstitial Pause The first thing I recommend is a pause between anything you do — I call it the Interstitial Pause. Basically, instead of switching from o...

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. But if we want to break through this barrier, then the opportunity is to learn how to work with this feeling of pointlessness. If we can find a way to feel empowered when things feel pointless, a whole new range of possibilities opens up for us — includi...

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 though, this detachment can often mean you aren’t moving as strongly towards the goal, because you don’t care as much. It often shows up like getting up in the morning and putting the goal aside.Being fully comm...

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 with joy. Over the last 2.5 years, it’s grown into exactly that, and something much more. I’d love to tell you a little about what I’ve been learning, because it’s such a big part of my mission to help people train in uncertainty. In thi...

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 emails, all the things online and on social media, all the news and chaos of the world, all the things going on in our relationships. It’s a lot! We can celebrate the abundance of our lives, but often we bemoan it. The problem isn’t the abundance, but our fear...

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 scary, uncertain, difficult and meaningful. If you want to write a book, for example, how would you face that if you’re constantly muddling your focus? Our focus is precious and sacred. And yet we often use it as if it were worthless. How would you us...

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 you that doesn’t want to change. If you want to change your eating habits, there’s a part of you who just wants to eat the donuts. If you want to exercise more, there’s a part of you who just wants to be lazy and relax. If you want to have less...