I’ve written a lot about simplifying your life, from the philosophy behind it to the tactical steps to getting to simplicity. But the true key isn’t in the steps, it’s in our mental habits.
Author: Leo Babauta
Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger & author. He created Zen Habits, a Top 25 blog with a million readers. He’s also a best-selling author, a husband, father of six children, and a vegan. In 2010 moved from Guam to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he leads a simple life.
In Love with the Heartbreaking Beauty of the Discomfort
With my body in pain, I looked up at the sunlight and kept my heart open. And I took in the heartbreaking beauty of life. I witnessed it, and found it to be miraculous, pain and struggle and discomfort and all. It wasn’t beautiful in spite of the pain — the pain was a part of its total beauty. The struggle and discomfort itself was heart-renderingly gorgeous, as was everything else in the moment.
Creating the Elegance of Simplicity & Focus in Your Work Day
Our days can feel like a crazy sea of distraction, stress, busyness and overwhelm. We can get lost in that sea, and it’s hard to figure out how to find mindfulness and focus in the middle of it all. The answer, I’ve repeatedly found, is in the pure elegance of simplicity.
Overcoming Our Biggest Obstacle to Creating Habits
Whether you want to start a new exercise habit, start meditating or writing daily, start to get out of debt or clear your clutter … creating a new habit isn’t always easy.
The Incredible Progress of Daily Practice
Lately in my life, I’ve been repeatedly reminded of the power of practicing something regularly. Daily is best, I’ve learned, but several times a week works well too. You’d be surprised how much progress you can make with even a small amount of practice, applied regularly.
The Ultimate Productivity, Simplicity, Finance, Happiness & Weight Loss Hack
I’ll share the ultimate hack in just two words: letting go. These two words, if practiced and lived, can be the key to all the self-improvement in your life:
A Guide to Getting Good at Dealing with Chaos
It is a wonderful thing to have order to our lives, to simplify and have routines and systems that make things peaceful, organized, and calm. Unfortunately, life likes to throw chaos and disorganization our way.
The First Hour: Creating Powerful Mornings
It’s easy to fritter your day away doing a thousand small harmless actions … but the essential actions get put off. The antidote, I’ve found, is putting a little emphasis on making the first hour of your day the most powerful hour. Treating that first hour as sacred, not to be wasted on trivial things, but to be filled with only the most essential, most life-changing actions.
Procrastination is a Practice Ground for Life Mastery
Our tendency to procrastinate is exactly how we’ll see how our minds work, and learn to be better at all the difficulties of life. Because life will always have these difficulties, no matter how much we’d prefer to avoid them, and how we respond to them will determine everything. Let’s work on our responses to the hardest things in life.
The Action Habit: Put Everything Into the First Step
It’s easy to get into a mode of inaction, but building the Action Habit can be a lot more difficult. The reason is that the feedback loops in our lives are set up the wrong way: it’s easier to put things off than to act, it’s easier to seek comfort than to push into discomfort, fear and stress.