Zen Habits Favorites

What I’ve noticed, when I experience anger, frustration, disappointment … is that I am judging my experiences based on whether they are good for me or not. But why am I at the center of the universe?

Have you created healthy habits for you, but haven’t gotten your kids or spouse on board? You’re not alone — lots of people get frustrated when their loved ones don’t want to create healthy habits.

We are frustrated with ourselves, with others, with our situation, with the way the world is, and we can’t let go of wishing they were different.

Something I forget a lot, and have to remind myself about a lot: I’m not on my way somewhere. Each moment rushes by, because we’re on our way somewhere else.

Pause for a moment, right now, to notice where you are. What is it like? What is the light like? What about the sounds, the smells, the feelings your body is feeling, the people around you? What is your state of mind?

Hamlet said, ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ He was right. Without the human mind, things just happen, and they are not good or bad. It’s only when we apply the filter of our judgment that they become good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

If you don’t practice being present, slowing down, enjoying the moment right now, when will you practice? What are you practicing now instead?

How do you beat something so addictive as the Internet, or TV — things most of us find ourselves increasingly immersed in, all day long? I’m going to give you strategies I’ve found effective, because I face these problems myself, all the time.

Why put pressure on ourselves to achieve a huge list of things that aren’t that meaningful? Why feel guilty if we’re not pursuing them? Why not let them go?

Let’s say you’re feeling unmotivated, unsure of yourself, aimless, can’t find your passion, directionless, not clear on what your purpose in life is. There about a million things online telling you how to find your passion in life, and that’s a good thing. It’s a search worth undergoing. I’m not going to give you a fool-proof method, or a 5-step method, nor share my passion manifesto with you today. I’m going to give you a one-step method.

We all do it: we look at what others are doing and wish we were doing that too. Or, alternatively, we scoff at what they’re doing and judge them, and see ourselves as better. One makes us feel bad, the other makes us feel superior. Neither makes us happy.

One way is to get everything ready for anything that’s likely to come: get all your survival equipment, prepare your skills, plan for your work projects, get your affairs in order, think through your arguments, and so on. The trouble with this is you don’t know what’s coming.

The practice of simplifying, clearing things away and staying with what I’m doing is incredibly useful, and something I haven’t mastered yet.

I try to be myself, which is really the best I can do. If I’m authentic, I can’t be a fraud, because I’m just being who I am. Of course, I’m always trying to figure out who that self is, and the self is constantly changing, so it’s an interesting endeavor.

When we start a change, we have an idea of how that will turn out — a fantasy in our heads, perhaps with a short timeline and a perfect result and an increase in happiness. But it never happens as quickly as we’d like, we’re never perfect at it, and we tend to be mostly as happy as before. So given that reality, how do we make long-term changes?

I could cite a bunch of studies and numbers, but here’s the honest truth: based on my own self-experiments, and working with thousands of people on habits, sleep is one of the most important but least valued factors when it comes to creating habits.

The combination of sounds and colors and shapes and smells around you will never exist in this particular combination ever again.

We all procrastinate, and by and large, we all know the solutions to our procrastination. But they don’t work unless you’re aware of what you’re doing.

High stress, constant anxiety over tasks and work and life, social anxiety … this is all a part of the modern way of life. Most people just don’t feel a sense of peace, of calm, of serenity, throughout their day. These are the habits to develop that will help you develop calmness (based on my experience):

So what do you do when you’re overwhelmed and have a crapload of work to do? Here are the practices that work for me. I offer them to you in hopes that they’ll help you.