carltschweitzer

[carltschweitzer]

The Habit of Calm When You’re Feeling Frustrated

By Leo Babauta

Someone recently asked me about getting frustrated when they feel overloaded, and then shutting down or lashing out.

“This has been something I’ve struggled with for most of my life. I had an instance today where I could have been more calm and rational about the situation but calm and rationality gave way to frustration and anger. I’m wondering what habits I can use instead to keep from falling into fits of anger.”

This probably sounds familiar to some of us. We feel overloaded, and then maybe lash out at someone in frustration and anger.

This comes from the hope that things will be calm, orderly, simple, solid, and under control. The world doesn’t comply with this hope, however, as it is chaotic, disorder, constantly changing, never fixed, groundless. So we get frustrated, angry at others, and feel anxiety.

So how do we deal with the frustration that arises? How can we create a habit of calm?

I’m going to share a series of practices that you can turn into habits. When you notice yourself feeling frustrated, instead of lashing out, practice the following.

If you practice them over and over, whenever you notice frustration, you will start to shift.

The first practice is to catch your habitual pattern as early as you can, and shifting by not allowing yourself to indulge in it. When you notice yourself getting frustrated and feeling overloaded, notice the urge to go to your habitual pattern (shutting down or lashing out), but pause instead of indulging it.

The next practice is to drop into the body. Again, pause, and let yourself take a breath. Drop your attention into your body and notice the sensations of frustration and overwhelm. Stay with these sensations, with curiosity. Notice how strong the urge to lash out feels, and just savor that strong feeling instead of acting on it.

Open up to it, relax around it, be with it. Love this feeling, if you can, or at least be compassionate with it. Once you practice this, you get more and more comfortable being in the middle of frustration, and you don’t need to relieve the feeling by lashing out. You now have more space to calm yourself and do the next practice.

The third practice is to use this newfound space to connect to the other person. Now, I understand that you might be angry at them, and so connecting to them is the last thing you want to do. Your heart is closed to them, because you think they are the problem. The problem is your closed heart. Try not indulging in that shutting down, and opening yourself a little. This is a challenging but transformative practice.

From this place, notice the other person — they are acting the way they’re acting because they are feeling some kind of pain themselves. Maybe they’re feeling insecure, anxious, worried about the future. Maybe they are hurt by something you did and are themselves lashing out in frustration. Well, you can understand that! You are feeling the same thing. In this way, the two of you are connected.

Maybe you’ve responded to their frustration with frustration of your own. Now you are suffering like they’re suffering. You are connected in this way, the same. Let this sameness open you up to them, understanding them in a more human way. They are not the problem, they are suffering like you are. You’re in this together. Now how can you work on this together?

The final practice is to try to find an appropriate, loving and compassionate response. You have empathized with the other person, but now you need to take action. The answer of what action to take is not always easy, but at the very least, you’re not responding from a place of anger, which is a place that gives rise to inappropriate responses like lashing out.

What is an appropriate, loving, compassionate response? It really depends on the situation. Some examples:

The other person is upset and going through a hard time, so you help them calm down, listen to their frustrations, offer empathy and compassion, and talk through a solution together.

The other person acted inconsiderately but perhaps was unaware of how that affected you, so you come to them when you’ve calmed down and talk to them compassionately about it, sharing the impact of their actions on you and asking calmly for a specific thing they can do in the future instead.

The other person is not willing to engage in a compassionate dialogue, and is set upon being a jerk. You can’t talk to them calmly, because they argue with everything. In this case, you might get a third party to mediate, like a couple’s counselor or a manager in your workplace.

The other person is abusive. You empathize with the pain they must feel in order to be like this. But you also remove yourself from the situation to protect yourself from harm. You try to help them get the help they need while being firm about your boundaries.

As you can see, there are many possibilities — many more than I can list here. These are just some examples to show that you can find a loving, appropriate response to the situation if you come from a place of compassion and calm.

In the end, this stuff takes a lot of practice. But it’s immeasurably more helpful to do these practices than to lash out, which hurts not only the other person, but yourself as well.

[carltschweitzer]

The Universal Narrative: When You Feel Unworthy

By Leo Babauta

A little boy was told by his father, from a young age, that he wasn’t good enough. Not in so many words, but through his actions — by criticizing him, yelling at him, hitting him, leaving him.

The boy grew up into a man, knowing that he was unworthy of praise, of success, of love.

The boy, as an adult, got a job, but didn’t really think he was good enough to do the job well. He faked it, deathly afraid every single day that he would be found out and mocked, then fired. He tried to hide, not to put himself in the spotlight, because then maybe no one would see his unworthiness.

But he was always deathly afraid of people seeing him fail. So he held himself back, careful not to do anything where he might fail. He put off taking on tough tasks, and formed a long habit of procrastination. This came to rule his life, affecting his health habits, financial habits, relationships.

The boy, now that he was an adult, got into a couple of long-term relationships, hoping to find someone to make him happy. He didn’t believe he could make them happy or get them to love the true him, because he already knew he was unworthy of love. But maybe if he was really nice to them, and only showed them the good parts of him, they’d think he was lovable. So he never tried to be truly honest, never found true intimacy, because he could only show them certain parts that might win him love.

And he was always ready for them to find out how bad he was, to leave him. In fact, he left them before that could happen. Or if he didn’t leave them, he was only halfway in the relationship, one foot out the door. Ready to leave. Only partway committed. And in truth, they always felt that, and craved his full commitment.

This was true of every friendship, every professional relationship. He was never fully committed. Never fully honest, because he couldn’t show his true self. Always anxious that others might know how unworthy he was. Always trying to prove how worthy he was, even if he knew he wasn’t.

This is the story of Unworthiness. And it is fairly universal.

My Inner Narrative of Unworthiness

It’s one of my longest-running inner narratives. That I’m not good enough — that I’m somehow unworthy to teach, to write books, to train people in uncertainty.

As I’ve worked with thousands of people in changing their lives, I’ve found this is one of the most common inner narratives there is.

We’re unworthy. Unworthy of praise, of putting our work out there in the world, of leading a team or community, of creating something meaningful in the world. We’re unworthy of success. Of happiness. Of peace. Of financial comfort. Of loving relationships. We’re unworthy of love.

We’re not good enough. Not good enough to tackle our toughest struggles. To change our addictions and old habits. To change our diet, to start exercising, to start meditating — or to stick to any of these for very long. We’re not good enough to put our writing or art out in public. We’re not good enough for others to recognize our accomplishments. Not good enough to write a book, start a podcast, put videos online, start an online business, start a nonprofit, create a thriving entrepreneurial empire, launch a startup, teach ourselves a really hard skill, pursue a lifelong dream.

We’re not good enough, and we’re unworthy.

The Great Secret

Here’s the thing: it’s all just a story, isn’t it? It’s a narrative in our heads that we replay, over and over, until it beats us down into submission.

The thoughts aren’t true. There’s no objective panel of judges in the sky who have judged us unworthy. We just made up this story, and we pick out evidence to match the narrative. When someone says something remotely critical, we take it to heart, and offer it up as yet more proof that we’re not good enough.

The narrative isn’t true. And worse, it hurts us in every single part of our lives. It means we’re only half in relationships, hiding ourselves, never honest, never fully committed. It makes us anxious, afraid of failure, never putting ourselves out there (at least, not fully, not honestly), and if we do put ourselves in public, it’s a performance, trying to prove our worthiness. It holds us back. It makes us procrastinate. Hurts our health. Makes us unhappy.

This is the Universal Narrative of Unworthiness, and it’s not true, and it hurts is deeply.

Unlearning the Story

So how do we stop believing this untrue, hurtful story that goes so deep we don’t usually even realize it’s there?

I’ll share two practices that have helped me start to unravel the story, even if it still persists when I’m not being vigilant.

The first practice: writing out a mantra and repeating it. This is something I use when my unworthiness narrative comes up around writing a book or public speaking.

When I’m writing a book, the narrative inevitably asserts itself as something like, “No one is going to find this book valuable, this is going to be terrible.” It makes it much harder to write the book and I get very good at cleaning my kitchen instead of writing, let me tell you.

When I am supposed to give a talk, it seems fine when it’s months away and I agree to it. Then I get deathly afraid as the day gets nearer, and the flop sweats start. I start questioning my sanity: “Why did I ever say yes to this? No one is going to want to hear what you have to say.”

So last year I came up with a mantra to start to see the world in a new way: “The world craves you and your gift.”

I repeated this whenever I noticed my heart fluttering because of having to give a talk, conduct a workshop or webinar, lead a course or program, write a book or blog post. I repeated it many times: “The world craves you and your gift.”

Over and over, until I start to believe it. Yes, it sounds incredibly corny. And yet, it works. I start to look for evidence of it being true. I can’t hear the other story so much, if this one is being told.

The second practice: letting the story dissolve. I do this all the time, and it’s absolute magic.

Here’s how it works. I notice the narrative. I notice how it’s making me feel — I feel crappy, I’m fearful, I’m procrastinating, I’m hiding. And then I ask myself, “What would I be like if I didn’t have this story?”

This is a magical question for me. I imagine what it would be like, in this particular moment, if I didn’t have this narrative. All of a sudden, I’m completely present in this moment — I notice how my body feels, I notice my surroundings, I notice the sensation of the air on my skin and the light in the room and the sounds all around me.

All of a sudden, I’m immersed in this moment, free of the story. I’m free. I’m at peace. I can open my heart to the moment, to the beauty of the person in front of me if there is one, to the beauty of myself. What an incredible gift it is, to just drop the story and be completely present and in love with how things are, in love with myself and other people around me.

Practicing a new mantra and the magical question, the boy is gorgeously free of his old narrative, and can run wildly through the jungle, joyfully alive.

[carltschweitzer]

A Guide to Letting Go of Stress

By Leo Babauta

We all deal with stress on a daily basis — whether it’s the stress of being busy and overwhelmed at work, having to deal with personal crises, traffic, relationships, health, finances … stress can be a big part of our lives.

And stress has some strong effects: it makes us less happy, less effective, less open-hearted in our relationships, it tires us out, makes us less healthy, and can even create mental health issues if it rises to levels of anxiety.

So let’s look at how to let go of stress, whenever we notice it.

What You’re Struggling With

Why do we get stressed out, feel anxiety or feel overwhelmed?

Because we want the world to be calm, orderly, comfortable, and the world isn’t going along with those wishes. Things are out of control, not orderly, not simple, full of interruptions and unplanned events, health problems and accidents, and things never go as we planned or imagined.

But this is the way the world is — the stress comes not because the world is messy and chaotic, but because we desire it to be different than it is.

We have ideals for how other people should be, how we should be, how everything around us should be. These ideals aren’t a problem — the is that we are attached to these ideals. And this attachment causes us stress.

The good news is that we can let go of our attachment, and the world doesn’t need to change one iota. We can let go, and in doing so we let go of our stress.

How to Let Go of the Stress

Let’s say you’re experiencing a moment of stress right now.

Something isn’t going the way you’d like, things are chaotic or overwhelming, someone isn’t acting the way you’d like, you’re worried about something coming up.

The first practice is to drop into your body and notice how the stress feels, physically. Be present with the feeling — it’s not a problem to have stress in your body, it’s just a physical feeling. You can observe the physical sensation, just be with it. This can be your whole practice, and it only has to take a few moments.

The second practice is to notice the ideal, or your narrative about the situation. What’s causing this stress in your body? You have some ideal about how the world should be, how the other person should be, how you should be. And the world, the person, or you are not meeting that ideal. Notice that right now. Notice what you’re saying to yourself about it: “They shouldn’t act like that, I don’t like this, I’m such a screwup and not worthy of love.”

What do you say to yourself? Is this a familiar narrative? Notice that the ideal and the narrative are causing the effect of the stress, anxiety, fear, feeling of overwhelm. They aren’t serving you very well.

Also notice that they are completely fabricated by your mind. You created this ideal and the narrative. They are harming you, and you made up this dream. That’s nothing to beat yourself up about, but just to recognize. The good news: If you created it, you can let it go as well.

The third practice is to let go and just be. What would it be like to be in this moment without the ideal and the narrative? You’d be at peace. You’d be present in this moment. You’d be free. Perhaps more loving (to yourself or others).

Ask yourself what it would be like to not have the ideal and narrative. See if you can feel what it would be like, just for a moment. In that moment, you are free. You can relax, open your mind beyond your self-concern, and just be.

This is a state of openness that you can drop into in any moment. Just notice the sensations of this moment — the sensations of your body, of your surroundings. Notice the other people in your life, and their beautiful hearts. Notice how amazing it is to be alive right now, what a gift it is to have sight, hearing, taste, a body. What a privilege, what a joy!

You don’t have to be grateful and joyous in every moment, but this freedom of dropping ideal and narrative, and being at peace … it’s always available. Even in moments of chaos, you can be free, and even appreciate the beauty of the chaos.

[carltschweitzer]

Focus as an Antidote for Wanting to Do Everything

By Leo Babauta

I have a problem, and I think most people do as well: I want to do everything.

OK, not actually every single thing, but I want to do more than I possibly can:

I want to do everything on my long to-do list, today

I want to take on every interesting project

I want to say yes to everyone else’s requests, even if I know I’m already too busy

I want to travel everywhere, and see everything that’s interesting

I want to try every delicious food, and I always want more of it (and I always eat too much)

I want to watch every interesting TV show and film

I want to read everything interesting online

I want to take on a lot of interesting hobbies — each of which would take me many hours to master

I want to spend time with everyone I love, with every friend — and also have a lot of time for solitude!

Obviously, this is all impossible. But I bet I’m not alone in constantly wanting all of this and more.

There’s a term for this in Buddhism that sounds judgmental but it’s not: “greed.” The term “greed” in this context just describes the very human tendency to want more of what we want.

It’s why we’re overloaded with too many things to do, overly busy and overwhelmed. It’s why we’re constantly distracted, why we overeat and shop too much and get addicted to things. It’s why we have too much stuff, and are in debt.

Greed is so common that we don’t even notice it. It’s the foundation of our consumerist society. It’s the ocean that we’re swimming, so much a part of the fabric of our lives that we can’t see that it’s there.

So what can we do about this tendency called greed? Is there an antidote?

There absolutely is.

The traditional antidote to greed in Buddhism is generosity. And while we will talk about the practice of generosity, the antidote I’d like to propose you try is focus.

Focus is a form of simplicity. It’s letting go of everything that you might possibly want, to give complete focus on one important thing.

Imagine that you want to get 20 things done today. You are eager to rush through them all and get through your to-do list! But instead of indulging in your greed tendency, you decide to simplify. You decide to focus.

Let’s talk about the practice of complete focus. It can be applied to all of the

The Practice of Complete Focus

This practice can be applied to all of the types of greed we mentioned above — wanting to do everything, read everything, say yes to everything, go everywhere, eat all the things.

Identify the urge: The first step in this practice is to recognize that your greed tendency is showing itself. Notice that you want to do everything, eat everything, and so forth. Once we’re aware of the tendency, we can work with it.

See the effects: Next, we need to recognize that indulging in the greed tendency only hurts us. It makes us feel stressed, overwhelmed, always unsatisfied. It makes us do and eat and watch and shop too much, to the detriment of our sleep, happiness, relationships, finances and more. Indulging might satisfy a temporary itch, but it’s not a habit that leads to happiness or fulfillment.

Practice refraining: Third, we can choose to refrain — choose not to indulge. The practice of refraining is about not indulging in the greed tendency, and instead pausing. Noticing the urge to indulge, and mindfully noticing how the urge feels in our body, as a physical sensation. Where is it located? What is it like? Be curious about it. Stay with it for a minute or two. Notice that you are actually completely fine, even if the urge is really strong. It’s just a sensation.

Focus with generosity: Then we can choose to be generous and present with one thing. Instead of trying to do everything, choose just one thing. Ideally, choose something that’s important and meaningful, that will have an impact on the lives of others, even if only in a small way. Let this be an act of generosity for others. Let go of everything else, just for a few minutes, and be completely with this one thing. Generously give it your full attention. This is your love.

Clear distractions: If necessary, create structure to hold you in this place of focus. That might mean shutting off the phone, turning off the Internet, going to a place where you can completely focus. Think of it as creating your meditation space.

Practice with the resistance: As you practice focus, you are likely to feel resistance towards actually focusing and doing this one thing. You’ll want to go do something else, anything else. You’ll feel great aversion to doing this one thing. It’s completely fine. Practice with this resistance as you did with the urge: noticing the physical sensation, meditating on it with curiosity, staying with it with attention and love. Again, it’s just a sensation, and you can learn to love it as you can any experience.

Let go of everything, and generously give your complete focus to one thing. Simplify, and be completely present.

You can do this with your urge to do all tasks, read all things, do all hobbies, say yes to all people and projects. But you can also do it with possessions: choose just to have what you need to be happy, and simplify by letting go of the rest. You can do the same with travel: be satisfied with where you are, or with going to one place and fully being there with it.

You don’t need to watch everything, read everything, eat everything. You can simplify and do less. You can let go and be present. You can focus mindfully.

If you’d like to train in this kind of focus, train with me in my Mindful Focus Course.

[carltschweitzer]

The Beautiful Mornings Challenge: Create a Sacred Morning Routine

By Leo Babauta

Our days are filled with chaos, busyness and noise — often with very little time for intentional activity, quiet, solitude, mindfulness.

But we can intentionally create that lovely, mindful space that we crave.

Today I invite you to join me and a thousand others in my Sea Change Program as we launching into the Beautiful Mornings Challenge, which is about creating simple, lovely morning routines, and waking just a little earlier to make space for those intentional activities.

It’s about creating some space for meditation, reflection, movement, writing, or anything else you’d like to have room for in your life. And finding some space in the mornings for that, a sacred space that takes advantage of the quiet and beautiful light of the mornings.

Here’s how the challenge works:

Week 1: You pick one thing to do in the morning and wake up a little earlier to do it. There will be additional instructions for this first week, but the idea is that we’re easing into it. We don’t need to have the “perfect” morning routine to get started. Btw, this week could just be 5-10 minutes earlier than your usual wake time (20 minutes at the most). So pick a small task to fit into that. Things you might pick as your one thing to do: meditation, writing, yoga, journaling, writing, reading, or really anything that you’d like space for in your life. You cannot use the time for going on your phone or browsing the Internet.

Week 2: You pick a second thing to do in the morning, and wake up a little earlier than last week. Again, wake just 5-10 minutes earlier, and ease into it. Pick another small task. Now we’re waking 10-20 minutes earlier each day, and doing two small tasks.

Week 3: You make this a mindful, sacred space. Instead of waking earlier and doing a third task, this week you’re going to take some time to adjust to the new wake time, and make this a sacred space where you practice mindfulness. We’ll go more into this in the article for this week.

Week 4: You wake just a little earlier, and perhaps choose a 3rd thing to do. Like the first two weeks, you’ll wake just a little earlier (5-10 minutes) and choose a third thing to do for your beautiful morning routine. You’ll keep practicing your sacred space and mindfulness from the previous week.

So it’s that simple … slowly wake a little earlier each weeks (for 3 of the weeks) to make space for something you’d like to have in your mornings. And spend a little time making it a sacred space where you practice mindfully.

If you join the Sea Change Program, you’ll get:

Articles to help you move through this monthlong challenge

A live webinar with me, where you can ask questions

A supportive community on Slack (including the recommended option to join a small team for added accountability)

A library of video courses and articles to help you change any habit

Join Sea Change today (free for 7 days, then $15/month).

[carltschweitzer]

Develop the Powerful Habit of Mindful Focus

By Leo Babauta

Creating a life of focus, purpose and mindfulness is a tough thing these days. If you’re like me, you want to bring forth your gifts to the world, but you’re pulled in a thousand directions, plagued by overwhelm, distractions, a ton of messages and emails, and so many obligations that it’s causing you to put off doing the important work you want to do in life.

You would like to:

Be more mindful and find a greater sense of focus in your life

Be more effective in your work and life

Achieve a sense of peace and calm amidst daily uncertainty

Accomplish projects without getting waylaid and distracted by a thousand other directions

Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy. The Demons of Chaos stand in your way:

Other people’s demands, and a pile of emails and messages

Distractions from social media and other online comfort foods for the distracted mind

Putting important things off because of the uncertainty & discomfort of them

It’s not easy dealing with these difficulties, and finding the mindful focus you’re looking for.

Trust me, I understand

I’ve worked with many people as a teacher and coach, and I know from personal experience (including my own life), that most of us just go about our daily lives like this. We’re doing our best but in the end having a difficult time coping with the distractions of technology, the chaos of our work and personal lives, the uncertainty that lies in everything we do.

We struggle to find focus, and find the practice of mindfulness elusive on a day-to-day basis. Amidst all of this overwhelming chaos, we can often get stuck in indecision and procrastination.

We want a greater sense of meaning in our lives, a greater sense of empowerment and control, but aren’t sure where to find it or how to get there.

The Mindful Focus Course

I’ve created Mindful Focus Course just for this very common problem. In this four-week video course, we will look at:

Understanding why we get distracted, why it’s so difficult to find focus, why we procrastinate, and why we get plagued with indecision

How to structure your day and environment for greater clarity, focus and meaningful contribution

How to create a focus ritual and train ourselves to stay with important tasks in mindfulness

How to deal with our most common obstacles, like interruptions, emails, and the urge to run to distraction

How to simplify your day and create a more deliberate pace

How to cut out distractions

But this isn’t just a bunch of video content … this is real daily training, designed to help you actually create greater mindful focus in your life. I’ve designed it after my own personal training, and after training many others in these methods.

Features & Benefits of the Course

The Mindful Focus Course features:

Four week-long modules (plus an intro module to help you get set up for success), each featuring short, easily digestible video lessons.

Daily training to implement each module’s core ideas.

My recommended daily structure and rituals for greater focus and mindfulness.

Bonus videos: morning routines and my favorite tools for focus

This course has been designed to bring important benefits to your life:

A greater understanding of the forces that bring us to distraction, indecision, and procrastination

Create a greater sense of empowerment over the chaos and distractions in your life

Get better at not putting off important things, and accomplishing important projects

Find a sense of focus, clarity and mindfulness in your life

Find simplicity, calm and a sense of deliberate pace

It’s Not Easy, But You Got This

Committing yourself to training like this isn’t easy. A four-week commitment might sound like a lot … but consider how important your work in the world is. Consider how a lifetime of improved, mindful focus will benefit not only you but those you serve, those around you, anyone who is close to you.

Devoting yourself to this kind of training is never easy, but you are someone who isn’t afraid of the difficult, and who has taken on the discomfort of putting yourself out there in the world to serve others. Your heart is bigger than a little discomfort, and you are up to this challenge.

I believe in you, and would love to work with you.

Take Action Now

Sign up today to get access to this training, which I believe is life-changing.

Enrollment for this course is just $99, for a lifetime of focus. But if you sign up by April 15, 2019, you can get 10% off the course — use the discount coupon “early-bird” (without quotes) in the checkout cart.

Sign up for Mindful Focus Course here.

Money-back Guarantee

I fully stand behind this course, and give my personal guarantee that it will be worth your money. If you’re not fully satisfied, just ask for a full refund, you don’t have to give an explanation.

[carltschweitzer]

A Guide to Habit Resilience

By Leo Babauta

I’ve coached thousands of people who want to change habits, in my Sea Change Program, and I’ve found there’s a key difference between those who actually make changes and those who don’t.

That key difference is what I like to call “habit resilience.”

Habit resilience is the ability to bounce back when things don’t go as you planned, to stay positive, to encourage yourself, to forgive yourself, to be loving and compassionate with yourself, to shake it off and start again afresh. To learn and grow from struggles.

The opposite of habit resilience is getting discouraged when things don’t go as planned, beating yourself up, trying not to think about it when you mess up, ignoring problems, complaining, blaming others, deciding you can’t change, hardening your low or harsh opinion of yourself.

Let’s look at one example:

I want to change my eating habits, which is pretty tough to do … so I set myself a plan to eat oats for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and scrambled tofu with veggies for dinner. Great! But then during the week, I have to go to a work get-together, a family party, a 3-day trip to New York, and then my daughter’s birthday party. All the plans went out the window on those days.

So at this point, I can give up, beat myself up, ignore the problem … or, if I’ve developed habit resilience, I can shake myself off, make some adjustments to the plan, give myself some love, encourage myself, and start again, keeping a positive attitude the whole time. The second way of doing it will result in long-term change — if you can stick with it, there’s no change you can’t create.

That’s just one version of habit resilience, but you can see the difference between the first option and the second one is huge.

So how do we develop habit resilience? Let’s take a look.

Developing Habit Resilience

The good news is that you can develop this marvelous quality or skill of habit resilience. Actually, it’s a set of skills, but they can be developed with some practice.

Here’s how to develop habit resilience:

Loosen your hold on expectations. When we start to make changes in our lives, we often have unrealistic expectations. Six-pack abs in four weeks! But when we actually try to hit those expectations, we usually fall short. At least, at first. Over the long run, we can often make greater changes than we think we can. But over the short term, the changes are small, and not very orderly either. Change is messy. So just expect things to go less than ideally. Don’t be too attached to how you expect things to go, so that when your expectations aren’t met, you can just take it in stride.

Learn the skill of adjusting. If your diet plan doesn’t go as planned, it’s not necessarily a fault of yours — it’s the fault of the method or plan. How can you make it better to accommodate your life? Maybe you can get some accountability, set up some reminders, get rid of junk food from you house, and so on. There are a thousand ways to adjust a plan or method. When things go wrong, look for a way to adjust, don’t just give up.

Practice self-compassion and forgiveness. This is so important, but most people have the opposite habit — when things go wrong, we often beat ourselves up, are critical and harsh. Those kinds of reactions are unhelpful and can keep us stuck in old habits for years. Instead, we need to learn to be kinder to ourselves when we don’t measure up to what we hope we’ll be. When we let ourselves down, it’s important to forgive ourselves. Be compassionate, seeing our own suffering and wishing for relief from that suffering. Wishing for peace for ourselves. Being loving to ourselves, no matter what we do.

Don’t ignore problems, face them with kindness. That said, being forgiving is very different than just pretending it didn’t happen. If we’ve gone off our exercise plan, or stopped meditating … don’t just ignore the problem, not wanting to face it. Instead, turn towards the problem, and look at it with kindness. It’s like if you have a crying child — is it better to ignore the child and just hope that they’ll shut up? That will just lead to more pain for both of you. Instead, give them a hug. Acknowledge their pain. Give them love. Be there for them. And do the same for yourself when you’re having difficulties.

Learn to encourage yourself. I wrote recently about the importance of encouragement vs. discouragement … we need to practice this regularly. When you falter, can you be encouraging to yourself? Can you stay positive in the face of failure? Can you look at it as another step in your growth, instead of failure?

Find encouragement from others. In the same way, we can get encouragement from other people. Being in a program like Sea Change, with other people who are there to encourage you, is a good way to find that support. Ask for help from friends and family. Find a good friend who will help you get back on track, with love. We are not alone — lots of others know what it’s like to struggle, and are willing to support us when we’re struggling.

Learn perseverance — keep coming back. Stay positive when things go astray, and just keep coming back to the habit you want to change. Want to quit smoking but you backtracked when your father died? Get back on it as soon as you’re able. Come back with even more resolve. Commit yourself even deeper.

Can you feel that if you practice these skills, you’ll handle any difficulty that comes your way? That your path to change might be bumpy, filled with obstacles, but nothing will stop you if you keep a positive attitude, keep coming back, keep being loving and compassionate with yourself?

This is habit resilience. And it will change your entire life, if you practice.

[carltschweitzer]

The Deep Uncertainty of Meaningful Work

By Leo Babauta

A man I know wanted to create a non-profit organization that was going to help give people a voice who don’t have that voice in our society.

He felt really strongly about this issue, and knew that this would have a big impact on people who he cared deeply about.

But he kept putting off starting.

He was like a million others who want to do meaningful work: write a book, fight for those who are powerless, create a startup, code a phone app that could change lives, volunteer at a charity, launch a business that has a heart. We put off doing this work because of deep uncertainty.

This man, like many of you, wasn’t sure if he could do it. He wasn’t sure how to go about doing it. He was worried that people would judge him, worried about what they might say. He didn’t know what path to take, was overwhelmed by how much there was to do, discouraged that he kept having to start over.

These are just a small subset of the doubt, fear and uncertainty we all face when we think about doing something meaningful.

So this man made a list. Everything he had to do. He picked the first thing on the list, and told himself he’d do it tomorrow.

Tomorrow came, and it turns out he needed to organize all the files on his computer. Oh, and clean his desk and also his bedroom and kitchen. Once these things were done, he’d be all clear to go.

He started the next day, but wondered if he was using the right tools. He did a search and spent the day researching the best tools for what he needed to do. That lead to a lot of other research, so that he didn’t feel he was procrastinating.

The tools research led him to research a bunch of other things, and he felt good doing this research. He spent weeks in the research phase — not tackling the things on his list but just reading and searching and taking notes. He told himself he was doing the meaningful work.

He decided he needed to get back to that first task on his list, so he told himself to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow came, but he decided to check his email first, to see if anything important was in his inbox. He also answered messages, checked some news websites, answered some more emails, started organizing all the things he had to do, and paid some bills. That lasted several days. If he got all these things clear, then he’d be ready to work on the non-profit.

You can see where this is going. He found lots of reasons not to actually do the meaningful work. He was feeling worse and worse about himself at this point.

But the people who he wanted to serve are those who continued to suffer. He himself was in a pretty comfortable life, other than the angst of not taking action. But those who he wanted to help were still suffering, because he couldn’t face the uncertainty.

The story isn’t over yet. He’s still avoiding the uncertainty … but it’s possible he’ll turn and face it. Practice with it with full mindfulness. Be absolutely courageous and present with it. And then begin to open up to it, letting it transform him like a fire transforms metal. It’s difficult at first but he can relax into it and fall in love with it.

The key is to open up to the deep uncertainty of the meaningful work. Recognize it as a necessary component of that work, not something to be feared or hated or avoided, but embraced and loved. It’s like the uncertainty of falling in love — how boring would a relationship be without the shakiness of that uncertainty? We can learn to recognize the uncertainty of our meaningful work as the thrill of exploration, falling in love, adventure, learning, creating, playing, or serving those we love.

Devoting ourselves to those we love helps us to open up to the uncertainty, to relax into it, because we allow our minds to open beyond the smallness of our self-concern. We see that there’s more to this than worrying about our own comfort, and realize that the most meaningful moments in our lives were achieved with discomfort, and that wasn’t a coincidence — the uncertainty and discomfort are a necessary component for us to do anything meaningful.

We can train in this. With love.

This is the training I’m doing myself, and helping more than a hundred other trainees with in my Fearless Training Program. The deep uncertainty of meaningful work. It’s the best place to train, because your own transformation can help you do the work that impacts thousands of others.

[carltschweitzer]

A Simple Mindful Method to Deal with Tiredness, Loneliness & Stress

“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.” ~Byron Katie

By Leo Babauta

A loved one has been going through a hard time, dealing with tiredness, stress, and loneliness, and my heart goes out to them as it does anyone going through such struggles.

They can break your heart, these difficult emotions.

But beyond compassion, what I tried to help her with is a fairly simple method for dealing with these difficulties mindfully. I offer it to you all as well, as something to practice and test out.

Here’s the method, to practice if you’re feeling stress, frustration, loneliness, sadness, tiredness:

Notice that you’re feeling this difficult emotion, and notice how it feels in your body. Bring a sense of curiosity to the sensations, just being present with them for a moment.

Notice what thoughts you have in your head that are causing the emotion. For example, you might be thinking, “They shouldn’t treat me like that” or “Why does my job have to be so hard?” or “These people are stressing me out! Things should be more settled and orderly.” Or something like that. Just notice whatever thoughts you have. Maybe write them down.

Notice that the thoughts are causing your difficulty. Not the situation — the thoughts. You might not believe that at first, but see if you can investigate whether that’s true.

Ask yourself, “What would it be like if I didn’t have these thoughts right now? What would my experience be right now?” The simple answer is that you’re just having an experience — you have feelings in your body, but you also are experiencing a moment that has light, colors, sound, touch sensation on your skin, and so on. It’s just an experience, a moment in time, not good or bad.

In fact, while this experience is neither good nor bad, you can start to appreciate it for what it is, without the thoughts. Just seeing it as a fresh experience, maybe even appreciating the beauty of the moment. Maybe even loving the moment just as it is.

Obviously some of these might take some practice. But it’s worth it, because while you might not be able to get rid of tiredness (some rest would help there), you can let go of the thoughts about the tiredness that are causing you to be unhappy. You might not be able to get rid of the loneliness, but you can let go of the downward spiral of thoughts and emotions that make the situation worse.

And just maybe, you can find some incredible love for your experience in this moment. Yes, you feel tired, but you can love the tiredness, and everything else in this moment, without needing anything to change.

[carltschweitzer]

The Underestimated Importance of Encouragement in Habit Change

By Leo Babauta

When we’re trying to change a habit — whether its exercise or meditation or writing or quitting smoking — there are two key factors whose power most people don’t understand.

The two factors are encouragement and discouragement.

Let me walk you through an example. Michael wants to change his diet, and so he creates a healthy meal plan for himself and commits to sticking to that plan for a month.

Here’s are some typical key points within that month of habit change:

He starts the first day, and has a healthy breakfast as planned. He feels encouraged by this good start!

He has a healthy lunch too, and feels encouraged. But then eats a couple donuts that were in the office, and feels really discouraged. This might cause him to eat a burger with fries in the evening, which will get him further discouraged.

He asks some family and friends to keep him accountable in a private Facebook group, and they agree. He feels encouraged! He starts again.

When he eats a healthy breakfast, not only does he feel encouraged, he gets even more encouragement when he gets to post his success to his Facebook group. From this point on, every time he posts his successes, he feels encouraged, and it helps him to keep going.

The weekend comes, and he goes to a couple parties and does not stick to the meal plan. He feels discouraged. He stops posting for a few days on the Facebook group because he feels bad.

Not posting to the group makes him feel even worse. He is discouraged. He keeps eating bad, and gets more discouraged with every meal.

As you can see, the factors of encouragement and discouragement are the two key elements of the journey above. The more encouragement he gets, the better he’s likely to do. The more he feels discouraged, the less likely he’ll be to stick to things.

Luckily for us, we can do things that increase encouragement and decrease discouragement!

Ways to Increase Encouragement and Drop Discouragement

It’s not important to get this all perfect. We can all tolerate a bit of discouragement, and overcome struggle. But the more we can move in the right direction of getting more encouragement, the better our chances of success.

So let’s look at some great ways to increase encouragement:

Get support from others (including joining my Sea Change Program) for your change — report to them regularly, ask them to encourage you.

When things go astray, talk to yourself with encouragement. “You can do this! Get back on track, take the smallest step.” And so on. It’s a key skill.

Put up motivational quotes, inspiration, success stories.

Chart your progress. Show how far you’ve come.

Reward yourself (don’t use food if you’re trying to change your diet, don’t use buying things if you’re getting out of debt).

Mindfully enjoy the actual habit (like finding mindful gratitude as you exercise).

Do the habit with others (go for a walk with other people).

Give yourself stickers.

As you can see, these can be small encouragements. But they make a huge difference.

Some ways to decrease discouragements:

When you mess up or go off your plan … note when you’re feeling discouraged. Reframe this moment as less of a “failure” and more of an opportunity to practice two key habit skills: encouraging yourself and starting again. If you work on these two skills, you’ll get really good at changing habits.

When you miss reporting to people, note your discouragement. Reach out to one person and ask for support and encouragement. Tell them you’re embarrassed you haven’t been reporting, and commit to doing one small step.

When you’re overwhelmed and feeling discouraged, focus on the smallest next step.

When you have a habit streak going (which is encouraging when it is happening), but then the streak breaks (it goes from 47 days in a row to 0!) … notice the discouragement. Instead, think of the cumulative days you’ve been doing the habit, instead of the streak. Notice how much progress you’ve made.

When you feel like you’ve let yourself and others down, practice self-compassion. This is a truly great habit skill to practice.

There are other good ways to decrease discouragement, but the main method is to notice when you’re discouraged, and find ways to encourage yourself, to reframe it as an opportunity, to practice self-compassion, to ask for support, to pick one small step and start again.

[carltschweitzer]

How to Do Your Scariest Tasks of the Day, with Joy

By Leo Babauta

In my Fearless Training Program, one of our members talked about how she gets a lot done during the day, but inevitably puts off her two scariest tasks, and doesn’t get them done.

Does that sound familiar to you? Putting off the hardest tasks of the day is a common affliction for most of us.

That wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing, except that this often means the most important work doesn’t get done. The most meaningful work, our passion project or dream, keeps getting pushed back to another day.

Our days are too precious for this. We treat them like an unlimited resource, but how many do we have left? None of us know. But we do know that it’s a limited number, and they are incredibly valuable.

So how do we change this habit? We stop running from the fear and start moving towards it. We let it become our training ground.

Let’s look at how to train.

Creating a Sacred Training Container

It’s important not to take this lightly. We have age-old habits of putting off our scary, hard tasks, and just saying, “I’m going to change” is not enough.

We have to take this seriously. The way to do that is to create a container for our training. Think of it like a boxing ring where you train, or a yoga mat, or a meditation hall. It has boundaries that make it special, and that keep you in the training area.

Think of this as a sacred space. It’s sacred because you have elevated it above all the other ordinary things you have to do for the day. In this special space, you are going to go towards your fear, and allow your habitual patterns to shift.

Here’s how you might create that container:

Have a time of day when you train. Just as if you were going to go to a dojo to train — set a time. Will it be first thing in the morning, or right after lunch? Block it off on your calendar, set an alarm, and tell others that this is your training space.

Have a place set aside for this training. If it’s computer-based work (like writing or doing your finances), move to a different space to work on your laptop — like at a coffee shop or a different room in your house than you use to do your usual daily activities. You should move into this space each day and feel that this is your training space.

Create a starting ritual, where you set your intention for the training session. As you start, instead of just rushing to get the task done, pause. Take a moment to be intentional about how you enter this space and start training. Think of it as a sacred space. Set an intention for how you’ll practice during this training session — will you show up fully, and work with devotion?

Let there be only one thing you can do during this session. While you’re in this training container, this sacred space … let yourself do nothing but the task you’ve chosen to do. For me right now, that’s writing this article. I don’t allow myself to swtich to other tasks, to check my phone, to clean my house, to do anything but this single task. Let this be your most important rule. This sacred space is for nothing but training in uncertainty, pushing into fear, opening up in the middle of chaos with joy.

Pour yourself into it, with devotion. Now do the task you’ve been putting off, pouring your entire being into it. Do it not only for yourself, but for the love of those you serve. For example, I’m doing this out of love for all of you, my readers. You might do it for your team members, your customers, your family. What would it be like to do this fully, with complete devotion? Do we ever pour ourselves into tasks like this?

Close out with a bow of gratitude. Set a timer for this session (it only has to be for 10 minutes, even 5 if that’s too much), and when it goes off, allow yourself to close out the practice. Don’t just rush into the next task in your day. Close it out as if this were the end of a special meditation, an important martial arts training session. Bow to the practice, and to yourself, out of gratitude. Make this feel special. Actually, we can bring this specialness to every activity.

That’s the training container. Can you feel how this would elevate your training, to create a container like this?

How to Train, with Joy

Training in doing the things that scare you doesn’t have to be torture. In fact, it can be joyous.

To start with, what’s the scariest thing on your todo list? Pick that for your training session today, and create the container as we talked about above.

Then try these ideas to bring joy to the training:

Play some music. As you start, feel free to play some music. Brew some nice tea. Light candles if you like. Do what it takes to make this a pleasant experience. Music can even make the training fun.

Drop into your body. The training becomes a meditation if you drop your attention into your body, noticing the uncertainty you’re feeling, the physical sensation of it. Where is it located in your body? What does the sensation feel like? This is the training, to be present with the fear, the anxiety, the resistance, instead of running from it.

Stay with the sensation, with curiosity. Bring a sense of curiosity to the sensation, exploring it like it’s the first time you’ve ever had this experience. What is it like, right now? Can you stay with it for longer? Can you find gratitude for it? Can you be open, relaxed, even joyous with it?

Dance with the chaos. Feeling this uncertainty, you can begin to dance. Literally, you can dance — let your body move to the music as you do the work. But also figuratively — you are playing with this uncertainty, dancing with the chaos, having fun with whatever you normally run from. Let it be a game, let it be joyful, let it be an adventure.

Keep doing the task that you find scary, that you would normally put off, but do it with this sense of mindfulness, of dancing, of curiosity and gratitude and relaxation and joy.

[carltschweitzer]

The Two Most Powerful Ways to Create a Healthy Eating Pattern

By Leo Babauta

While most people want to find a way to eat healthier, they are up against forces stronger than they understand.

Sure, we’d like to eat healthier — but then why do we keep failing? Why are most of us getting heavier over time, despite our best efforts?

To figure out a better method, we first have to look at the powerful forces we’re up against. Then firm our resolve, and try one or both of the powerful methods that I describe below.

The Forces We’re Up Against

Let’s say you’d like to eat a healthier diet … think about what you’re up against:

You wake in the morning and are hungry and in a hurry — you know you want to cook something healthy with vegetables, or maybe some oats with fruits and nuts, but it’s too much work and takes too long. So you eat a quick bowl of cereal or grab a pastry at the coffee shop.

You want to get a salad for lunch but there’s a party at work and there are a lot of unhealthy options right there in front of you, very tempting. Or perhaps your co-workers invite you to lunch and you can’t resist getting the burgers or fried foods they’re eating.

You want to avoid sweets but then you go to a family gathering and there are delicious desserts passing in front of your nose all day long, and you just go for it.

You’ve been disciplined about eating healthy for a few days, but at night your cravings for snacks get the best of you and you just pig out. This is your body’s hormone signals at work, telling you to eat because it doesn’t want you to drop below a certain level (your bodyfat set point).

You are tired, you had a hard day, and you want to just comfort yourself with some snacks (comfort foods).

I’m sure at least a couple of these sound familiar to most of you. Maybe too familiar — you might have been struggling with these for years.

The forces we’re up against are powerful:

Lack of time and energy, so we opt for convenience

Social forces that cause us to do what others are doing

Tempting foods are too hard to pass up very often — this is a combination of high-reward foods and depletion of discipline

Our bodies signaling that we should eat when our bodyfat starts to drop (bodyfat set point)

We use food to reward or comfort ourselves, and this is an ingrained habit from childhood

Most of us can’t beat all of these really strong forces all the time. And so we win a few battles but lose the war over the long run.

What can we do against these powerful forces? Are they unstoppable?

No, we can overcome them. It will just take more focused effort than we usually believe when we say, “I’m going to start eating healthier, tomorrow!”

There are two powerful methods that can help us overcome these forces.

Powerful Method #1: Change Your Environment

Most of the forces above can be overcome with a complete change of our environment. Now, I understand that many people aren’t in complete control of their environment (teenagers, for example, or people living in a family) … but we can still make some changes that will help.

The more of these kinds of changes we can make, the better we’ll do against the forces above. See if you can make more changes than you normally would consider — sometimes when there’s a will, there’s a way to make it happen.

Imagine this: you go through your day with only healthy options to choose from, and you have healthy meals already prepared (you made them on Sunday). You wake up, grab a healthy breakfast, take your healthy lunch to work, avoid the unhealthy places your coworkers eat and instead read a book and eat your delicious lunch. You have healthy snacks packed for the afternoon when your energy starts to dip, and when you get home you have a healthy dinner to heat up and enjoy. At night, you have fruits you can eat if you get hungry.

With your environment changed, you will default to healthy most of the time. Then when you don’t have a choice, you can just do your best, and not worry too much about it.

Some changes to consider making to your environment:

Get rid of all unhealthy food in your home, and only have healthy options. If you can’t do this completely, do it as much as you can. Talk to the others in your home and ask for their helpl.

Plan out some healthy meals and prepare them in advance on Sunday.

Have healthy snacks available to you whenever you might get hungry.

Bring a healthy lunch to work. Find a nice spot to enjoy this meal.

Find some restaurants with healthy options that you can go to if you want to go with friends. Tell them not to let you order anything but the choices you’ve chosen ahead of time.

Prepare or buy something healthy to bring to parties or family gatherings. Avoid hanging out near the unhealthy stuff.

Plan ahead and have healthy stuff to bring for when you travel.

Have healthy options available at work, and avoid places where they have unhealthy stuff.

Get your friends and family to join you on your quest for healthy living. Start a challenge. Ask for their help. Don’t get frustrated if they don’t join you or don’t stick to it.

These are just some ideas. You might come up with others, but these are some examples of changing your environment to support a healthy change. It’s more important than we often realize.

Powerful Method #2: Get Some Support & Accountability

The next most powerful thing you can do to make a change is to make it social — get friends, family and/or co-workers to give you support, join a challenge with you, or hold you accountable for the changes you’d like to make.

This is true for any habit, but it’s especially true for eating habits. That’s because our friends, family and co-workers are often the biggest influence on us when it comes to eating. If they are trying to make us eat dessert all the time, we will have a hard time resisting that for very long. But if they’re eating healthy meals and snacks with us, or at least encouraging us to do so, we will probably do a lot better.

Some suggestions here:

Join my Sea Change Program to get some support and accountability — we’re doing the Healthy Eating Challenge right now, and it is set up to help you be a success.

Create a challenge and see if friends and family will join you. Or make it a challenge for your office.

Get an accountability partner or two, and report to each other every day. Or at least every week.

I highly suggest you join us in the Healthy Eating Challenge in Sea Change — I’d love to have you.

Two Other Things We Can Work On

While those are the two most powerful methods of change, there are a couple things that are also pretty important, that I should mention:

Change your coping mechanisms. A problem that many of us have is that food is our way of coping with stress, feeling bad, and so on. It’s been that way for years. To overcome this old habit, we have to find new ways of coping with stress, anger, sadness. When those feelings come up, you have to consciously choose to deal with them in a new way: talk to someone, go for a walk or a run, take a hot bath, have some tea, meditate. Do this consciously for awhile and soon you won’t need the food to cope. The same is true for rewarding yourself for hard work, by the way.

Practice self-compassion. What do we do when we feel bad about ourselves? Again, we often cope by going to our comfort foods. But instead, we can start to practice self-compassion. Do this regularly and you won’t need the food to feel better as much.

Practice mindful enjoyment of healthy food. People don’t like to eat healthy food if they think of it as a sacrifice, of eating food they don’t like just because it’s good for them. Instead, try to be mindful as you eat the food, and find something to enjoy about the experience. Can you slowly learn to adore the taste of fruit, of avocadoes, of greens sauteed in garlic and olive oil? Eat slowly, mindfully, and with joy.

These might sound like a lot of changes to make, and they are. But you don’t have to do them all at once. Make it a project to do some of these changes each week, slowly practicing the new coping mechanisms, slowly changing your environment, slowly getting more support and accountability.

This is doable. You are worth it.

[carltschweitzer]

The March Healthy Eating Challenge

By Leo Babauta

There are very few people among us who doesn’t want his or her diet to get healthier. So I’m issuing a challenge for March: the Healthy Eating Challenge!

This challenge is meant to be doable and promote small, gradual change … but also help push us a little out of our comfort zone so that we can have a powerful change within a month.

It’s not going to change your entire diet all at once, but it can help you move to a healthier diet.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, pick one mini-challenge from the list of mini-challenges. See the list below. You pick one mini-challenge for the week that would be an easy, positive change for you. Don’t choose anything you won’t be able to stick to. Pick one to start today!

Commit to doing that mini-challenge for the next week. I suggest you join us in my Sea Change Program, as we’re doing this challenge together and will hold each other accountable. We also have small teams you can join if you want greater accountability and support. If you want to do it on your own, commit to a group of friends, family or colleagues on social media or via email.

Report back after a week, and choose a new challenge. Each Monday, report how you did to your group (we have a challenge channel for that in my Sea Change Program). Report your successes, where you fell short, what you learned and what you’d like to do differently going forward. Then commit to a new mini-challenge (or stick to the same one for another week).

It’s that simple. Choose from the mini-challenges and commit to it for the week, picking a new one each week. One small change at a time. Gradual change is the most powerful change, and this challenge is the perfect way to do that.

I suggest you join us in Sea Change — it’s free for a week, then $15/month after that. For this small monthly fee, you also get:

Weekly articles to help you make the changes.

A live video webinar where you can ask me questions.

A Slack community where you can get support, join a small team, ask questions.

A huge library of video courses on changing every habit in your life.

The Weekly Mini-Challenges

Here are the mini-challenges (you do not have to do all of these, just pick one per week):

1. Adding healthy things:

Eat one vegetable at lunch/dinner (pick one meal)

Add one more vegetable to lunch/dinner (pick one meal)

Eat fruit for breakfast

Eat fruit and raw nuts for a snack

Eat veggie with hummus for a snack

Eat a healthy protein for dinner/lunch

Eat a fiber-filled breakfast

Have a tofu scramble with veggies for breakfast

Drink green tea in the morning or afternoon (pick one)

Add whole grains to your meals.

Eat a hearty salad for lunch every day.

2. Changing your approach:

Learn a couple new recipes this week

Eat at home more (add a couple of nights to whatever amount you normally eat at home)

Decide on healthy items to order before you go out to eat with friends.

Bring healthy food to a pot-luck party or work gathering.

Cook your healthy food in big batches and eat during the week.

Eat slowly and stop before you’re full.

Don’t eat after 8 p.m.

Set portion sizes and try sticking to them.

Don’t eat if you’re not actually hungry.

Try for high-volume, lower-calorie foods: vegetables, beans, fruits rather than white starches, meats, and fried foods.

3. Cutting out unhealthy things (look at what you do now, and set a target that’s lower):

Eat fruit instead of one of the sweets you normally eat.

Drink tea instead of soda.

Cut out sugar.

Cut back on the number of alcoholic drinks you have each day by one.

Eat less pastries, bread and other white flour.

Eat less fried foods.

Switch from white rice to brown rice.

Eat less fast food.

Bring a healthy lunch to work instead of eating fast food.

Try Ezekiel flourless cereal instead of sweet cereal.

Switch from processed meats (sausages, bacon, etc.) to real meat, or fish.

4. Vegan stuff (a few people asked for some suggestions):

Try eating one meal a day with no meat.

Reduce dairy or egg intake (use soymilk or almond milk on your cereal, for example).

Try cooking with tofu, tempeh, or seitan.

Try some awesome lentil recipes.

If it sounds easy and you’re already used to vegan food, try the 7-Day Vegan Challenge.

Not every change listed above for everyone. Find changes that feel right to you, as I know not everyone agrees with everything I’ve listed.

What is healthy for you will be different than what is healthy for me. I believe in a vegan diet (out of compassion for animals) and try to eat whole foods as much as I can (but not religiously). That doesn’t mean you have to do that.

The one thing I believe is in trying to get foods that are full of nutrients — vegetables, fruits, beans (and legumes), nuts, seeds, whole grains — and eat less of the foods that are mostly empty of nutrients (processed foods, white bread and sugar, fried foods). Again, you don’t have to be religious about it — I eat cookies and French fries just like most normals!

Are you ready to start the challenge? Start today by joining my Sea Change Program.

[carltschweitzer]

Meditating in the Middle of Chaos

By Leo Babauta

The wind and rain were swirling around me powerfully, as I sat in my mom’s tropical flower garden in Guam and meditated.

A tropical storm was passing close to Guam, where I’m living at the moment, and I decided to go out into the strong winds and torrential rain to meditate for at least a few minutes. Don’t worry, it was safe.

I actually stood in meditation, as sitting in a puddle of rainwater wasn’t that appealing to me. The water kissed my face, the wind rocked my body into a sway, and I practiced being present in the storm.

I was practicing stillness in the middle of chaos.

Of course, we don’t need to have an actual tropical storm (which turned into a supertyphoon after it passed us) to practice with chaos. It’s all around us, every day. Chaos is the uncertainty of our daily lives, the constant barrage of information and requests and tasks and messages we’re swarmed with, the uncertainty of the global stage and national politics, of our finances and global economy, of changing communities and our everchanging lives.

Chaos is all around us, and it can stress us out. It causes anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, procrastination, constant distraction, and the seeking of comforts like social media, food, shopping, games and more.

But what if we didn’t need to run to comfort or fear the chaos?

What if we could just be still, and find calmness and stillness with the uncertainty swirling around us?

A member of my Fearless Training Program said he would like to “dance with chaos.” I think that’s a beautiful idea. Let’s embrace the uncertainty. Practice with it. Dance with it, and let this practice be joyful!

A Joyful Practice in Chaos

So how can we practice mindfulness in the middle of chaos? How can we make it joyful?

For me, it looks something like this.

First, you give yourself space to be present with the chaos. I stood in the middle of the storm, because I was excited to see what it was like. I intentionally called it “meditating” because my intention was to be as present as possible with whatever happened. In your daily life, that might look like just stopping in the middle of your busy workday, at any moment, and dropping into the present moment so you can feel what the chaos feels like.

Second, you find the courage to be completely present with the felt experience of the chaos. In the storm, part of that was feeling the wind and rain on my skin, noticing the dramatic light that was filtering through the storm clouds, noticing the amazing tropical jungle in the small valley below me, and the movement of the trees and flowers surrounding me. But there was more than that: it was also the feeling of excitement in my chest, maybe a bit of uncertainty about whether something would fly and hit me on the head, which showed up as a small bit of fear radiating in my heart area. It was also the feeling of my body swaying, my leg muscles tensing, my chest expanding as I breathed. All of this is the felt experience of the moment. Not just my thoughts about it, but how it feels in my body. We can practice this in any moment.

Third, you relax into the chaos, and embrace it. Noticing how the chaos feels, you might notice any tension you have around it. For me, in the storm, there was tension around my safety (again, it was actually pretty safe), so I noticed this tension and relaxed those muscles. Relaxing my body, I let myself just surrender to it. Embrace it, as if it were an incredible gift. Again, we can practice this any moment. Right now, in fact, if you’d like to try it.

Fourth, you dance with it, joyfully. Once we relax around the chaos, and start to embrace it … we’re making friends with it. The uncertainty is no longer a thing to run from, or to resist, but is just a part of the experience of this moment. Of every moment. And so we can start to dance — let ourselves move through the chaos, in a loving, lovely, joyful way. What would it be like to play right now, in the middle of your uncertain life? What would it be like to be curious, and explore, like an adventurer? What would it be like to be grateful for this incredible moment of chaotic beauty? What would it be like to find the love, the openness, the swirling dancing musical movement in the middle of this storm?

We have the opportunity, every single day, even every moment, to be present with the storm of the world. To sit in stillness in the middle of the wind and downpour of life. We have the opportunity to be open to it, to dance with it, to even find the joy in the immense uncertainty that is our lives.

Let’s dance, my friends. Let’s love what is all around us.

[carltschweitzer]

Vast Mind: 3 Ways to Open Beyond the Self-Concern of Our Small Mind

By Leo Babauta

Most of the time, we are caught up in what can be called “small mind”: the small world of self-concern, of wanting to get what we want and avoid what we don’t want.

This is the cause of our suffering — always running to distraction, procrastinating, caught up in worries and fears, worried about what people think of us, what we’re missing, what someone did to offend us, and so on.

It’s a small world we get trapped in, this worrying about ourselves all the time. And it leads to stress, anger, hurt, worry, fear, anxiety and distraction.

The antidote is Vast Mind — growing bigger than the small mind we have habitually become stuck in.

What is Vast Mind? It’s opening to something bigger than our self-concern, opening to the freshness of the moment.

Let’s imagine that there’s someone whose family member has said something insulting to them. They immediately get caught up in small mind, thinking about how they don’t deserve to be treated this way, that they’re a good person and that this person is always being inconsiderate. They are worried about themselves, and their world is very small and constricted.

What if instead, this person dropped their self-concern, and opened their awareness to something wider than themselves. The experienced the moment as pure experience, and suddenly everything is open and vast. They relax into this openness. They might notice that this other person, whom they love, is suffering in some way. They send this person compassion, and feel love for the person and this moment.

That’s the difference between small, constricted mind that’s full of suffering, and vast mind that’s open, fresh, unbounded, and full of love.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are three practices for growing from small mind to vast mind.

Practice 1: Ego-Dropping Meditation

A great place to start is by sitting in meditation and opening your awareness and dropping the boundaries between you and everything else. Here’s a meditation I’ve created for practicing this.

The idea is that we practice dropping into a relaxed, open awareness, and then start to relax any boundaries we have between ourselves and all that surrounds us. We drop the construct we’ve created that we call ourselves, and then there’ just sensation, just pure experience.

It’s a returning to wholeness. It’s a wonderful practice.

Practice 2: Radical Not-Knowing

Most of the time, we act as if we know exactly how things are. We don’t pay too much attention to this moment, because it’s boring to pay attention to the breath, body sensations, the sensations of everything around us, because we already know all about that!

But in fact, every moment is completely fresh, completely open, full of new possibilities to explore.

When we get stuck in small mind, we are in a narrow, constricted view of the world. And it’s a hardened view — I know what I want and I just want to get it. I know what I don’t like and I want to avoid it. It’s the hardened view of fundamentalism.

The practice of radical not-knowing is to act as if you’ve never experienced this before. Everything is completely new to you, with no preconceptions or labels.

You look around at everything as if you’ve never seen anything like this. It’s fresh, wondrous, breathtaking. There are no names for anything, just the pure experience.

Try walking around like that for a few minutes, and see what it’s like. Be open and curious.

What happens is that we become much more open to the vastness of experience. There is no, “I want this” or “I don’t want that.” It’s just, “This is the experience I’m having right now.”

This is pure boundless awareness, and it is vast.

Practice 3: Opening to Devotion to Others

When I notice that I’ve gotten caught up in my small mind, I try to think of people other than myself.

This person is being inconsiderate because they’re suffering.

The people who I love are more important than my discomfort.

The love I have for my family is so much bigger than my small wants.

Opening myself up to the love I have for others gets me past my small mind, and into an openness. What would it be like to be completely devoted to other people? It’s a fresh experience, boundless and vast.

[carltschweitzer]

Cooking Healthful Joyful Meals with a Picky Family

By Leo Babauta

Shifting from a convenient but unhealthy diet to one of healthful, delicious joy can be a challenge when you’re living alone — but there’s a whole new level of challenge if you are part of a family.

The problem: while you might want to change to a new style of eating, picky eaters (kids, but also spouses) can disagree with the change.

Who wants to eat kale when fried chicken and pizza are go-to staples? Who wants to eat oats and fruit when Poptarts and sausages are the usual breakfast foods?

Well, me. And maybe you. But how do we deal with a family full of picky eaters?

A woman in my Sea Change Program asked me:

“I’ve got 2 kids who are picky and a husband who doesn’t generally like vegetables and really hates having the same meal 2 nights in a row. I know that you have a big family and I’m sure there’s someone in your household that is picky. ;) How has this impacted the way you or your wife meal plans? I really want to simplify my grocery list and for all of us to eat healthier.”

So … I don’t claim to have all the answers. We have been somewhat successful here (with our family of 8), but it took awhile, and in truth, we still have plenty of picky eaters in our family.

That said, I’ll share what has worked for us:

We try to find things that the whole family likes that are healthy and tasty. That might mean veggie tacos, veggie spaghetti (with whole wheat noodles if we can get away with it), sushi bowls, anything they might all like.

Other times, we cook something less healthy that they would like, and either join them or cook our own meals (which we might make to last for a few days).

We often make a lot of food for the family dinner and then have leftovers for lunch, and possibly another dinner or two (like a big pot of soup or chili). If your husband doesn’t like the same dinner twice in a row, he might be open to having it again in a few days.

We talk to the kids and try to get them to explore foods they don’t always like. This doesn’t always work, though. But it’s worth an ongoing conversation. You might try this with your husband as well. It helps to cook the vegetables in different ways that make them tastier, just to get them to open up to it. For example, if they don’t like kale, they might enjoy kale chips (baked with olive oil to a crisp, with seasonings).

Sometimes we cook a dish that has something one of the kids doesn’t like (mushrooms, for example), but we cook the mushrooms on the side, and allow them to leave off the mushrooms. This can get complicated but sometimes it’s not too hard.

If someone doesn’t like the dinner, they can just have a little of it and then make themselves a PB&J sandwich or grilled cheese or something. Our kids can cook simple things for themselves.

Finally, we get everyone involved in the meal planning. Everyone looks for meal ideas online. Vote on what to eat. Take one meal a week to cook themselves. If they cook it, they’re likely to eat it!

You don’t have to do all of these, but there might be a couple ideas here that work for you.

In the end, embrace the Zen Habits philosophy of small, gradual change. You don’t have to do all of this overnight. But there’s also the Zen Habits philosophy of loving the change you’re creating — how can you show them that this is a joyful change to delicious nutritiousness?

[carltschweitzer]

Why We Struggle to Make Time for Solitude

By Leo Babauta

How often do you take time to go out for an hourlong walk? To just sit out in nature doing nothing but contemplating and enjoying the silence?

I’m sure there are a few of you who indulge in this luxury regularly, but most of us don’t make time for solitude on a daily basis.

For some, it’s too much of a luxury: the struggle of daily existence is too close to survival level to even think about an hour alone in nature.

But for many of us, the main reason is that our brain rationalizes staying busy. We are filled with uncertainty all day long, and that drives us to try to do more, to get control of everything, to cram more into our lives, to stay addicted to technology and distraction.

The main driver of our busyness and distraction is uncertainty.

Uncertainty is woven into every hour of our lives. We are uncertain about what we should do, who we are, whether we’re good enough, what is going to happen, what’s going on in the world, and how to deal with the overwhelmingness of life. We don’t often acknowledge it, but we feel uncertainty all day long.

To deal with that feeling of uncertainty, of the groundlessness of not having stability in our lives … we cling to comforts and distractions, we procrastinate and put off the habits we want to form, we are constantly busy and messaging and more. And if we get a little downtime, we will pick up our phones or jump onto our favorite video site to watch something.

The idea of being in solitude, of having quiet in our lives and time for contemplation, might seem nice to many of us. But when it comes time to actually do it, we cling to busyness because of our feeling of uncertainty. “I can’t because I have too much to do!” “Just one more email. Just one more video.”

And yet, this constant busyness and distraction is draining us. We are always on, always connected, always stimulated, always using energy.

What would it be like to disconnect every single day for an hour? To remove ourselves from TVs, books, devices, and just go out for a walk? To not be productive, but connected to nature?

We could use the downtime. We could use the time to let ourselves recharge and be replenished by nature. We could use the movement, the quietude that gives our brains a chance to rest, the space for contemplation and nothingness.

To do this, we have to stop letting the uncertainty rule our lives. It can be with us, a constant companion, and we can learn to be comfortable with it and even love it as it is. But it doesn’t have to drive us.

The way to shift this is to create the space for solitude, even just half an hour … and then make it happen. Watch your mind try to rationalize why you shouldn’t do it, or have an urge to put the solitude off for just a little longer. Then don’t give in to that urge, but instead go to the solitude and be with your urges, your rationalizations, your stress.

See what happens when you give these things some space. They air out. They calm down. And you get nourished by the space and life around you.