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 ot let this resistance drive us? What if we could l ..read more

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 traveler, not some wide-eyed child. How did I get thi ..read more

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 these mental constructs, and then how to practice ..read more

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 add a bunch of extra steps. We put things off for a ..read more

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 life were more effortless, more relaxed, more trust ..read more

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 nearby. We’re missing out on life, but we can awaken to ..read more

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 letting go of them is often something we don’t want t ..read more

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 to have pristine clearness before we focus — we’ll ..read more

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 family Have a better work/life balance Spend more time outdoors Spend more time with friends Read more And 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 how to shift to being more intentional abou ..read more

By Leo Babauta There are a number of common blockers for creating powerful change in your life: Feeling that the effort is pointless Resisting the effort Frustration with yourself or others Disliking the activity Feeling 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 Gift. If you deploy Seeing the Gift, you ..read more