Author: zenhabits

The Best & Less-than-Best Motivations for Learning

By Leo Babauta More than 3,300 people signed up for the 30-Day Learning Challenge (wow!), and some of you might be finding a dip in your motivation for learning. That’s OK. We all go through dips in motivation sometimes. The key is to figure out a better motivator, and adjust your plan. Today I’d like […]

The Miracle of Suspending Mis-Belief

By Leo Babauta Would it seem miraculous if you could dissolve anxiety, fears, stress, frustration, anger … by making a small mental shift? The answer might lie in thinking about how we watch films. Last night, I was watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my kids, and my 9-year-old daughter said some of […]

7 Strategies for Dealing with Toxic People

By Leo Babauta Are there people who constantly criticize you, tell you that you can’t do things, make you feel bad about yourself, even yell at you? These are toxic people. Dealing with them is never easy, but it’s such a difficult problem that it’s worth looking at some strategies you might consider. I was […]

Finding Motivation on Important But Non-Urgent Tasks

By Leo Babauta I have a friend who is self-employed, running his own business and doing a great job … except that he finds himself procrastinating on important tasks like writing. No, I’m not talking about myself! Although, to be honest, I do the same thing too. We all do, I think: we know there’s […]

Learning Tips for the Top 8 Learning Challenges

By Leo Babauta On Friday, I issued the 30-Day Learning Challenge for June, and you responded incredibly: more than 2,500 people have signed up, and the list is still growing! As a thank you for joining me, I thought I’d write a couple bonus learning articles this month (in addition to what I’m creating for […]

The 30-Day Learning Challenge

By Leo Babauta There are probably a dozen items on your lifelong list of things to learn: a foreign language, guitar, martial arts, yoga, a sport, chess/poker/billiards, programming, html/css, drawing/painting, ancient history … the list is endless! Now is the time to do it. I hereby challenge you to tackle one of your learning projects […]

The Place Where You Are

By Leo Babauta We rush through our days with so much to do, so much we should be doing, so much we’re missing out on … but how often do we stop to appreciate the place where we are right now? I don’t mean to focus on the journey, because that’s many different places … […]

Feeling Determined to Change

By Leo Babauta Let’s say you’ve been wanting to quit smoking for awhile, or you’ve really been wanting to start exercising. All of a sudden, you read something that motivates you … you’re ready to make the change! You’re determined. You’re going to make this happen. That’s amazing. The question is: are you going to […]

Practicing Non-Judgment

By Leo Babauta We go through our day judging our experiences, other people, ourselves: this is good, this is bad. If all goes well, most of it will be good, but more than we realize, we dislike certain experiences, things about people, about ourselves. We “like” online comments by others, or pages on the Internet. […]

Hold Your Own Feet to the Fire

By Leo Babauta Lots of us want to change our habits — get healthier, procrastinate less, write a book, save some money, get fit, read more, get good at something. And when it comes to changing habits, we know what doesn’t work. What doesn’t work: saying you’re going to make a change, intending to, and […]