Category: Happiness

Why I’m Always in a Hurry, & What I’m Doing About It

Why I’m Always in a Hurry, & What I’m Doing About It

By Leo Babauta I’ve come to realize, more and more, that I’m always rushing. I rush from one task to the next, rush through eating my food, impatient for meditation to be over, rushing through reading something, rushing to get somewhere, anxious to get a task or project finished. What’s the deal? This coming from […]

A Guide to the Basic Anxiety of Life

A Guide to the Basic Anxiety of Life

By Leo Babauta Underlying much of what we do is an uncertainty, an anxiety, a fear, doubts, dissatisfaction … And we react to these anxieties, dissatisfaction and uncertainty in so many unhelpful ways: we seek distraction, we eat unhealthy food, we procrastinate, we get caught in a cycle of anxiety and unhappiness, we lash out […]

Wanting Someone Else to Fulfill Our Lives

Wanting Someone Else to Fulfill Our Lives

By Leo Babauta I have a friend who is lonely, who has such a good heart and desperately wants to find a partner who appreciates that goodness, to share a life with. We have all felt this, I’m guessing: this desire for a deep connection, this hope that another person will just get us and […]

Approaching Life with Beginner’s Mind

Approaching Life with Beginner’s Mind

By Leo Babauta A lot of our troubles could be solved by one simple practice. A lot of joy could be found with the same practice. And it is simple: practice seeing life with a beginner’s mind. I’m stealing this of course from Zen Buddhism’s shoshin and Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, and I’ve […]

Mindfully Free of Wanting People to Be a Certain Way

Mindfully Free of Wanting People to Be a Certain Way

By Leo Babauta One of the biggest sources of difficulties for every single human being is the desire for people to be a certain way. We can’t seem to help it: we want the world to be the way we want it. Unfortunately, reality always has different plans, and people behave in less-than-ideal ways. The […]

Zen of Busy: Continual Letting Go When You’re Overwhelmed

Zen of Busy: Continual Letting Go When You’re Overwhelmed

By Leo Babauta These past two weeks have been hectic and exhausting for me. My wife’s father passed away, and I’ve been in non-stop planning, coordinating, cooking, cleaning, driving around mode. Yesterday was the funeral, and it was a long, tiring and busy day. Incredibly sad, but busy. In the midst of this busyness, I’ve […]

Video: How We Get Hooked, & How to Unlearn Our Patterns

Video: How We Get Hooked, & How to Unlearn Our Patterns

By Leo Babauta In more ways than we often realize, we get caught up in our stories, and get latched into mental patterns that leave us frustrated, angry, full of resentment … or cause us to procrastinate. In other words, getting caught up is the cause of lots of our problems. I recorded a webinar […]

The Path of Fearlessness

The Path of Fearlessness

By Leo Babauta The more I work with people who are struggling with habits or life problems, the more I see how fears are holding us back. Fears stop us from building healthy and productive habits. Fears cause us to procrastinate, keep us from finding work that is meaningful (or doing that work if we’ve […]

How to Not Be Driven by Your Aversions

How to Not Be Driven by Your Aversions

By Leo Babauta I have a friend who doesn’t realize how much he dislikes so many things — much of his life is spent avoiding things he doesn’t like, or trying to rush through things like exercise, or annoyed by people who do things he doesn’t like. We all have aversions to things, more than […]