Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Tynan of Tynan.com.

When the godfather of blogging tells you to write a post, you write that post.

Two days ago Leo and I were talking about habits and procrastination and things like that. I told him about a few of the rules I have for myself, and he said that I ought to write a blog post about it.

This morning I woke up to an email where he, again, told me that I should write a blog post about it. I’m not one to risk getting a horse’s head in my bed, so I’m writing the post. Actually, Leo’s vegan, so it would probably be a giant chunk of Tempeh. Still.

I find gray areas very difficult to work with. I think most people do. If I simply told myself to “eat healthier”, I would probably barely change my diet at all. However, when I give myself black and white rules, I follow them pretty well. The difference is that with black and white rules, you don’t have a thought process to go through– you just act. With gray areas you require yourself to think over every decision, opening the window to excuses.

Following is a sample of the rules I follow. It’s not a complete list, but you should get the idea.

1. When you say you’re going to do something, do it. I believe that without his word, a man is nothing. This rule applies to things I tell others I will do as well as things I tell myself I’ll do.

2. Don’t lie, don’t exaggerate, don’t withhold information, don’t mislead. This rule exists mainly because it affects my performance in every day life. If I know that whatever I do will be related with perfect fidelity to others, I do it better. It also allows me to show proper respect to the people in my life. The one exception is authority figures who have the power to enforce rules but make them. For example, I might lie to a police officer to try to get out of a speeding ticket.

3. Show up on time, always. This rule is pretty recent, maybe a year or so. I’ve decided that when I commit to being somewhere at a particular time, I will always be there at exactly that time. The trick is to just get there five minutes early every single time and wait. It’s a very very minor inconvenience in return for being much more reliable.

4. No sugar, refined grains. I do cheat days every week or two, either when traveling or when it’s the polite thing to do around other people. I used to skip Christmas dinner and make my own food, but now I’ll use that as a cheat day and eat with my family.

5. Walk out of movies, stop reading books, leave parties. If I’m participating in some sort of entertainment and I realize that it’s not going to be worth the additional time spent, I leave. The fact that I paid $10 and watched half of the movie is irrelevant. The real decision at hand is: how do I want to spend the next hour of my life.

6. Computer is off at midnight. The only real exception to this would be if by not doing so I would break rule #1 to other people. If I told myself I was going to do something but wouldn’t be able to by shutting off the computer, I consider that to be good punishment for not getting it done earlier.

7. Listen to people. I used to be bad at this and I hate it when people don’t pay attention in conversation. So when I have a conversation with someone, I make sure I’m really listening and not just waiting for my turn to speak. Sounds basic, but I’d say 50% of people don’t do it.

8. Do the right thing, even if it comes at personal cost. I have a very strong set of morals, which aren’t necessarily totally congruent with everyone else’s, but I defend them and keep them strong by living by them as closely as I can. For example, the story I wrote a couple weeks ago about the Vegas poker chip.

9. Only wear wool. Wool is a better fabric than cotton in just about every way. It’s warmer when it’s cold, breathes well when it’s warm, dries faster and feels drier when wet, absorbs far less odor, etc. Anything that touches my skin directly (shirt, pants, underwear, socks, hat, etc) is wool.

10. Only wear thin soled shoes. It’s better for your feet and joints. I wear invisible shoe sandals and vibram five fingers.

11. When buying things, buy the best or something temporary and disposable. If the purchase is replacing something (and given how minimalist I am, it pretty much always is), it should be smaller and lighter than whatever it replaced. I like high quality items that retain their value well, and I like making my traveling easier. I might sometimes buy something that’s a tiny bit heavier, but overall my backpack has gotten smaller and lighter every year. If it doesn’t make financial sense to buy the best, I invest the smallest amount of money possible in a temporary fix. In other words, I would buy a $9 Casio or a $1000+ Rolex, but never a $100 Seiko.

12. Do things other people aren’t doing. This one is more of a heuristic than a rule, but I include it because it defines so many of my decisions. When making a choice, I will greatly favor the unknown over the known. I feel like this is how you contribute to society, even if it’s in a very small way.

13. Always be learning something. I always have at least one learning project going on at all times. Right now it’s Violin. Soon I’ll be as good as I want to be (able to play one full Mozart song poorly), and I will move on to either Chinese or Japanese.

14. Never have debt. I would suffer way before having debt. That doesn’t mean I won’t borrow $20 from a friend if I forget my wallet, but I would never finance anything other than a house, and only then because I can get a higher return on my money than a mortgage would charge me.

15. Always have a one year buffer of money. Through the years I’ve managed to save up enough to support myself fully for a year (in my RV, cooking my own food). I invest my money buffer to grow it, but I wouldn’t spend it on anything other than living expenses if needed. I do this not because I’m cautious, but because it gives me the freedom to choose how I spend my time, and thus take risks.

Find more from Tynan about living an independent, minimalist lifestyle (and more) at Tynan.com.

The Master allows things to happen.

She shapes events as they come.

She steps out of the way

and lets the Tao speak for itself.

~The Daodejing

Post written by Leo Babauta.

This has been what I’ve been learning over the past couple of years. Allowing things to happen.

It goes counter to our usual instincts in Western society — we are doers, creators of our destiny, we make things happen … we don’t wait for it to happen! That’s what I was taught from an early age, in school and by every motivational sports movie I ever watched. So allowing things to happen is not my normal way.

I have never been one to be passive, to let things happen instead of making them happen, to let go of control of things.

But here’s what I’ve been learning:

1. This control we think we have over our lives and our destinies … it’s an illusion. As the guy who had his life turned upside down by a heart attack, the woman who lost her father to death and had to drop everything, the family who lost their home to a hurricane, the entrepreneur that was doing well until the economy collapsed and no one was spending, the hard-working employee who was laid off when the economy tanked, the cyclist who was hit by a car, the car that skid because someone ran onto the road who had been obscured, the mom whose son has autism despite her doing everything right during pregnancy … it happens every day, where we think we’re in control but we’re really not. Do we control all the people around us who affect our lives so intimately? Do we control the overwhelming power of nature? There’s so much out of our control that what we think is control is really an illusion.


2. To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. This is a great quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, talking about controlling your mind. I see the cow and her pasture as a form of allowing things to happen — instead of tightly controlling something, you’re opening up, giving it more room, a bigger pasture. The cow will be happier, will roam around, will do as she pleases, and yet your needs will also be met. The same is true of anything else — stepping back and allowing things to happen means things will take care of themselves, and your needs will also be met. And you’ve done no work.


3. You have less stress, less to worry about. Imagine allowing things to happen naturally, and things work out, and all you did was smile and watch. You don’t have to worry about shaping things, about controlling something that doesn’t want to be controlled. You don’t have to push, and fix leaks, and put out fires. You just let things work on their own. They happen.


4. Things will surprise you. Let’s say you’re allowing something to happen. You might want it to go a certain way, to a certain outcome. That’s your goal. But what if you let go of this idea? What if you say, “I don’t know what will happen.” (Btw, you really don’t.) What if you say, “Let’s see what happens.” Then things will happen, but not the way you planned. The outcome might be completely different than what you’d hoped for. But it can still be great, just different. It might even be wonderful, and surprising. Surprises are good, if we accept that things always change and that change is good.


5. You learn how things work. Instead of trying to make things work the way you want them to work, just watch them work. You’ll learn much more about human nature, about the nature of the world, as you see things work without you controlling it. It might change you.

That’s all very good, Leo, you’re thinking. But that won’t put the food on my table.

Maybe you’re right. And so, don’t let me stop you from what you need to do. Carry on. I’ll just sit back and watch.

‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.’ ~Nelson Mandela

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Maneesh Sethi of Hack The System.

I still remember the happiest moment of my life. I had decided to throw a party for my Italian friends while living in Florence, Italy. My friends didn’t speak any English, and I vividly remember throwing the party and trying to only speak in Italian. And then, someone asked me to tell a joke.

I don’t know if you know this, but telling jokes in another language is one of the most harrowing experiences you can imagine.

I began the joke. C’era una volta (Once upon a time) …

Halfway through the joke, I began to get flustered. I couldn’t remember the Italian word in the punchline. And 30 Italians were staring at me, waiting for the joke to end.

At the last minute, I remembered and completed the joke. I waited for the sound of crickets … but instead experienced a thunderous laugh and a round of applause. I had made dozens of Italians laugh, in their country, in their language.

Until today, that memory continues to be one of the happiest moments I’ve ever experienced. And it’s the reason that, over the last four years, I’ve studied languages and now speak five: English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.

The Benefits of Bilingualism

Becoming bilingual opens up a whole new world—a world of different people, of different cultures, of different emotions.

Learning a second language has many cognitive benefits. For example, learning a new language has been shown to delay Alzheimer’s, boost brainpower, reduce cognitive biases, and even increase concentration and the ability to tune out distractions. Your ability to build better habits will improve by learning a new language.

But, more so than cognitive effects, the ability to speak a second language has a ton of social benefits. There’s bliss in having the ability to order food in the waiter’s native language, to eavesdrop on people in an elevator, to impress natives by speaking with and understanding them.

The coolest thing about learning your second language is that it makes learning a third, fourth, or fifth language much easier. The challenge isn’t in learning a new language, but rather learning how to learn a language. Once you know the techniques, you’ll be able to apply the same grammatical patterns and language techniques in every new language you learn. It’s for this reason that, while Italian took me 3 or so months to master, Spanish took only 2 months and Portuguese took just a few weeks.

Why most people are wrong about language learning

I studied spanish for several years in high school, and even got good grades on national exams. But one day, when I actually tried to speak the language, I suddenly realized.

Four years of studying Spanish in school, and I couldn’t even order a burrito.

So what went wrong? According to official standardized tests, I was an expert in Spanish. But I couldn’t even do the most basic of tasks!

The fact is that we not taught languages in the ideal way. Students study languages in huge groups and think that a few worksheets and grammar exercises will be enough to learn a language.

Yet almost no one actually learns to speak.

In actuality, by doing worksheets, we are practicing for just that—for worksheets. But if you want to learn to speak, well, you actually have to practice by speaking.

So when people try to learn to speak a language out of a book, or with Rosetta Stone, I try to show them that they won’t achieve their goals that way. If you want to speak, you have to practice speaking. And if you want to speak a language rapidly, well, you have to start speaking. A lot.

The Basic Strategy Of Rapid Language Learning

Learning a language can seem daunting, so I’m going to provide an overview of the general strategy, before we get into the specifics.

Here is the breakdown. We’ll go more in depth into each of these later on.

1. Get the right resources for learning: A grammar book, memorization software, and films/books.

2. Get a private tutor. You want one for at least a month. I recommend four hours/day.

3. Attempt to speak and think only in the new language. Every time you can’t remember a word, put that word into your memorization software. Practice your vocabulary daily.

4. Find friends, language partners, and other speakers of the language. Once you can have basic conversations with your private tutor, you need to find other partners. If you haven’t already, think about moving to the country where the language is spoken. Consider a group class. Practice continuously. Stop speaking English.

That’s the basic strategy. Again, this strategy is intensive, because learning a language in three months is a difficult task. If you’d prefer to learn the language more slowly or you don’t have the ability to move to a new country and practice 4-8 hours a day, then you can modify the plan. It is extremely important that you practice every day, however—20 minutes a day is much better than once or twice a week.

Some of these concepts are hard to understand through the written word, so I created a video series, just for Zen Habits readers, that teaches the steps to learn a language. Get the Hack The System Language Learning Videos here.

The Resources You Need To Learn A Language

In order to learn a language, you’ll need some items that you can practice with. Here are the resources I always use.

The Necessary Resources

A good grammar book. This is essential if you want to learn a language. I recommend Dover’s Essential Grammar series: the books are very cheap, concise, and thorough. When I lived in Italy, the Dover Essential Italian Grammar book became my bible. I read it everywhere, slept with it, and even memorized it.

A phrase book. This is similar to a dictionary, but for phrases. You can start memorizing full sentences and phrases, and you’ll naturally learn the individual words. I’ll talk more about memorization tactics shortly.

An online dictionary. For most romance langauges, I recommend http://wordreference.com. For German, try http://dict.cc. Google Translate can be useful, but it easily becomes a crutch. Use it sparingly.

A memorization app. You have to memorize vocabulary. I always put new words in my app, and practice them every night.

If you’re on a Mac, check out the app Genius. This genius app (pun intended) uses time-spacing techniques to test our knowledge. You’ll randomly be quizzed on words or phrases you are trying to learn, and the more often you make a mistake, the more often you’ll be tested. I recommend you put English on the left column and your desired language on the right, so that you’ll learn to speak in a new language, not translate from it. If you’re on a PC, I’ve heard good things about Anki.

Resources to learn from

A Private Tutor. I highly recommend getting an in-person private tutor through Craigslist or a nearby language school. However, if you can’t find anyone in your area or they are too expensive, check out Edufire.com. Edufire is a website that allows you to take private and group classes online over the Internet. Again, remember, private lessons are essential, so skip the group classes.

Free language partners and tutors. The Mixxer is an incredible resource. It’s a site that allows you to connect, via Skype, with language partners all over the world. Just choose your native language, and what you are trying to learn, and The Mixxer will find partners with opposite needs (who speak your target language and want to learn your native language).

At the beginning, online partners are a big help. Why? First, because chatting is much easier than speaking, so you get a chance to practice your language. Second, chat gives you a log of what you’ve been saying—and it makes it easier for your partner to correct you.

I use Couchsurfing.org and Meetup.com to find language partners and language meetups, no matter where I live. Check out Benny’s article to learn about finding language partners through Couchsurfing.

I don’t recommend Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is incredibly slow. In Level 1, which takes 1-2 months to complete, you’ll only be familiar with the present tense. This is not a good use of your time.

Pimsleur tapes, on the other hand, can be beneficial because they help you practice pronunciation in the context of conversations. However, they are still quite slow. To test this, I started training with the German Pimsleur tapes two weeks before beginning my German classes. I felt like I was making huge progress by finishing 1/2 of the German 1 tapes—until I had surpassed that knowledge in fewer than two days with an actual teacher.

The 90 Day Plan to Learning a Language

It’s possible to achieve fluency, or at least a high speaking level, in just 90 days, but it requires intense focus. The biggest shift was in mindset: I had to change my self conception from ‘Maneesh: a blogger who wants to learn Italian’ to ‘Maneesh: Italian learner (who blogs in his extra time).

If you don’t have the freedom to focus fulltime on learning a language, that’s okay, but the process will take longer than 90 days. Just make sure that you continue to practice every day, or else you’ll lose your knowledge rapidly.

Days 1-30

The first thirty days are critical to learning a new language. You need to immerse yourself as fully as possible.

I highly recommend moving to a country where the language is spoken if you want to learn a language in 90 days. This will help you get into the language learning mindset, and will allow you to surround yourself with the new language. If you are able to move to a new country, try to live with a host family. You’ll learn a lot by eating meals with a family that hosts you.

In any case, during the first month, work one on one with a private tutor—not group classes. Group classes allow you to sit back and be lazy, while a private tutor forces you to learn.

This is important: you must be an active learner. Most people allow themselves to be taught to, but you have to take an active role in asking questions. The best way to understand this process is via video—part of the video series I made to supplement this post includes a sample of a class I took while studying Swedish, with explanations of the questions I ask during private training. Check out the language learning videos I’ve made for this post here.

You’re going to start encountering a lot of words and phrases that you don’t know, both with your private tutor, and when you practice languages on your own. Enter these words in your memorization software.

You want to start memorizing 30 words and phrases per day. Why 30? Because in 90 days, you’ll have learned 80% of the language.

This great article talks about the number of words in the Russian language.

the 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences

the 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences

the 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences

the 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences

the 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences

the 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences

the 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences

the 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

As you can see, you need to learn around 3000 to hit 80% of the words … probably enough before you can start learning words easily by context. At 30 words/day, you’ll have learned almost 3000 in 90 days.

Use mnemonics to help memorize words.

Days 31-60

After your first month, it’s time to focus on exposing yourself to the language as much as possible. After a month of private tutoring, you’ll have the ability to have basic conversations.

If your private tutor is getting expensive, you might consider doing advanced group classes at this point—it’ll save you money and give you access to other friends who are learning the language. Just be careful of speaking only in English. Try to make it a rule to speak in the new language as much as possible. Continue with your private tutor, if possible.

If at all possible, find a boyfriend or girlfriend who is a native speaker. Learning a language is much easier when you’re dating someone who speaks that language. I once met a man who spoke fluent Russian, and when I asked him how long it took to learn, he answered, ‘two wives.’ The best advice I can give you for finding a significant other is something my Italian friend once told me: “Couchsurfing isn’t a dating site … but it helps.”

Now is the time to start finding language partners. Check out the Resources section above and use The Mixxer and Couchsurfing to find people who speak the language you want to learn. Attempt to spend a few hours everyday practicing your language. At this point, because you have a basic grasp of the language, it shouldn’t be a chore—you are basically spending time socializing with new friends.

Try reading simple books in your target language and underlining words that you don’t know. You can add these to your memorization app.

You should start trying to think in the new language. Every time you try to express a thought to yourself, but can’t remember the word, write it down in your memorization software. Continue learning 30 words and phrases per day.

Days 61-90

By day 60, you should be in a good position to speak the language. You just simply need to keep practicing. Have deeper conversations with your language partners. Try to go out with them as much as possible—I’ve even found that a moderate amount of alcohol helps significantly with language practice.

Continue studying 30 words a day and practicing the ones you’ve already learned, and you’ll be approaching the 3000 word mark—enough to speak a language close to fluently.

By now, you can start watching TV and reading books in your target language. Rent some DVDs in the foreign language and try to follow along. If you need to, turn on the subtitles. Don’t worry if you have trouble, because understanding film is a lot more difficult than having a one-on-one conversation.

Keep on working on the language for several hours per day, and by the end of the month, you’ll find that you have a good grasp on the language. It’s pretty amazing what you can do in just 90 days with intense focus.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve done it–you’ve learned a language in just 90 days. The best part is that you’ll find it much faster to learn your next language. You’ve done the hard part–learning how to learn a language.

You’ve unlocked a new skill. Language learning is about building a new habit—the habit of thinking and speaking in a new language. And once you perfect a single language, you’ve laid the foundation for doing even more.

Imagine, the next time you meet a waiter or tourist from Italy or Mexico or Greece, you could start talking, tell a joke, and—if you can remember the punchline in time—get to experience the elation of making someone laugh in their own language.

That, my friends, is zen.

Maneesh Sethi created a set of videos for Zen Habits readers to demonstrate how to learn a language rapidly. Get them at Hack The System, and you’ll also learn how to create systems that help you build habits and achieve your goals, unconventionally and rapidly.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

There was a time when I shunned lifting weights, because I felt they were unnecessary and for guys looking to get buff. I was also a bit fearful of them, because I didn’t know much about them.

Today things are a bit different. I still think you can get a great workout without going to a gym, but I also love lifting barbells loaded with weights. There is something satisfying about putting your entire body into lifting something heavy, an activity so intense that it requires all of your attention.

There is Zen in the iron of the barbell, in the heft of the weights, and every session of lifting barbells is like zazen for me.

Consider my workout the other day:

• I ran almost a mile, hard, focusing on my breath and the light touch of my feet on the ground as I sped along the concrete.


• Then I lifted the weighted barbell from the ground — a deadlift — progressively adding weight from light to oh my goodness that’s heavy. Every part of the lift required my attention, or I would either not lift the weight or injure myself: my hands gripping the iron, the alignment of my spine, the relation of my hips to the rest of my body, the force of pushing through my heels against the ground.


• Finally I ran back home, hard, sprinting up the final hill with complete focus, finishing winded, panting, wiped out.

A few sets of heavy deadlifts between two hard short runs: a total body workout that stimulates every muscle, strengthens my bones, focuses my brain. That’s a pretty good use of half an hour or so.

In other workouts, I will do heavy squats, the bench press, bent-over barbell rows, power cleans, push presses. I’ll add in some weighted chin-ups and dips. These all work out my entire body, exhausting me in a short time. And as I do them, my mind is on almost nothing but my body, the barbell, and my breath.

I don’t write this to suggest that everyone should lift barbells (though I think it’s great, and more people should try them — women and those of us who are aging come to mind). I write this because the focus I learn from the practice of lifting the barbell is something so useful in daily life.

It is a practice, learning to be mindful of what you’re doing right now, and not always thinking about what you have to do later. It’s a practice that you get better at with repetition, as with anything. Does my mind never wander — do I have complete focus all the time? Of course not. I have the same monkey mind that anyone has, but the practice is learning to be aware of that wandering, learning to return your attention to what you’re doing right now.

My mind starts to wander from the weights to the work I need to do later. I start thinking of all the things I need to do before my trip, or something I need to do with one of my kids, or how sweet pretty and loving my wife Eva is, and I miss her. But if I let myself stay in this future-thinking, the barbell will hurt me. I will round my back and pull a muscle (as I’ve done a few times before), or drop the weights on my chest or feet. This is a danger that won’t allow me to be elsewhere, and so I come back from the future. I am here, right now, with a weight in my hands that must be pushed, or pulled.

The returning, and the staying with what I’m doing right now, is the practice. The awareness. I am not good at it, admittedly, but I have gotten better by doing it over and over.

This practice helps with anything I do. If I’m writing, my mind normally gets pulled in every direction, but if I’m to write something worthy of your attention, I have to return to the idea and the writing. I have to be aware of the urges to check email or Twitter, or the wandering to other things that might (or might not) happen later.

When I am with one of my children, I often am elsewhere, mentally. The practice helps me to return to them, to be with them only, and the moment becomes instantly better.

It makes the moments I have with my wife, on one of our dates, so much better. Our connection is more complete, more genuine.

It means that when I take a walk, it is an experience of walking and nature, and not a planning session. It means that a shower is a moment of cleansing, purifying, relaxing. It means a meal is an experience of savoring textures, flavors, smells.

Tea becomes a meditation ritual as well. So does a glass of red wine in the evening.

The barbell sits there, inert, not wanting anything, not expecting anything of me. It becomes a simple tool, one that must only be lifted up, against the forces created by a massive Earth, and put back down. A simple tool that is practice for a way of living — a bell of mindfulness.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

One of the most frequent questions I get when people read Zen Habits, looking to change their lives, is:

“Where do I start?”

From getting in shape to flossing to getting productive to waking earlier to learning languages and much more … there are so many habits to change that people often become confused, overwhelmed, to the point where they don’t start.

I know, because I’ve been there. For me, before I learned how to change habits, the confusion of where to start resulted in two problems: 1) I would often try too many things at once, because I wanted to change a lot of things; or 2) I would just not even try, because it was too hard to figure out.

How did I solve it? I picked one thing, and just started.

This is what I recommend: pick something fun and easy. One thing. Anything, really. What you pick to start with matters little, because you’ll get to everything you want to work on eventually. Where it does matter is in how difficult the change is — if it’s too hard, you might fail and get discouraged and lose confidence. If it’s easy and fun, you’re more likely to succeed and move on to the next challenge.

That said, looking back on things, I have a few suggestions for great habits to start with. I recommend picking one of the following, depending on how much it appeals to you, and how much fun you might have doing it.

1. A Mindfulness Practice. There are a few good options here: 5 minutes of meditation, a mindful tea ritual, or 5 minutes of mindful eating at one meal per day (do nothing but be mindful as you eat, no distractions like reading or TV). Not only are these beautiful, calming practices, they actually set an amazing foundation for future changes. At the most fundamental level, they are practice for being mindful as you do anything, including undergoing other habit changes. One of the best things I’ve ever done is learning to be more mindful.

2. Simplify. Simplifying practices like decluttering or simplifying your schedule are great ways to create space for the important things in your life. I’ve found that a beautiful, uncluttered space is perfect for other things like exercise, reading, meditation, writing, and so on. Decluttering your schedule (find one thing to eliminate or simplify each day) is a great way to create space for other habit changes to follow.

3. Fun Exercise. What? Exercise can be fun? Well, sure — it is for me! I look forward to exercise, whether because running allows me to clear my head, walking allows me to mull over different ideas, or because working out with a friend is a wonderful way to socialize. If exercise doesn’t seem fun to you, you might just need to find the right partner, coach, team, or game to play. Exercise is a great habit to start with because it makes your whole day better, makes your mind more focused, and gives you the confidence to tackle other habits.

4. A Small Heathy Eating Habit. I love this habit because it makes you feel lighter, healthier, and happier. That change can affect everything else you do. A simple eating habit might be to eat fruit and raw nuts for a snack instead of greasy or sweet snacks, or drinking water or tea instead of soda, or eating veggies instead of something fried or starchy for dinner. Enjoy the cleaner, lighter taste, the lack of heaviness, greasiness and bloatedness you feel afterward. You don’t have to revamp your entire diet — just one small eating change is a great way to start.

What if you want to do all four of these? Pick the one you are looking forward to the most. If there’s a tie, then pick randomly. It doesn’t matter where you start. What matters is that you start.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I am blessed with six wonderful children and a fantastic and lovely wife, and for this I am deeply grateful. But on a day like today, a lazy Sunday morning when my family is sleeping in and the soft light of the morning permeates the house, I reflect on what it’s like to be a dad.

Not just a dad … a great dad. This is a height I don’t always reach, but I believe I do inhabit that space sometimes. I’m a great dad, on my best days.

If you’re curious about my thoughts, as a dad of 19 years that has included countless sleepless nights, endless answering of questions, thousands of nursery rhymes sung and horsey rides given, hundreds of thousands of words read in children’s books, more than my share of wiping up spitup, poopie butts and much more … here is my offering to the world.

Don’t worry, it’s a fairly simple guide.

The Three Rules

There are only three things you need to do to be a great dad:

1. Be there. If you’re in their lives, you rock. If you’re there when they scrape their knee, lose their first tooth, need someone to cry to, need help with their school project, want a partner for playing house or hide-and-seek … you are already being a great dad. Be there, when they need you, and when they don’t.

2. Love them. They will know you love them, if you love them fully. It will show in your smile, in your touch, in your good-morning hugs. But also tell them on a regular basis. Infuse all your dad actions with love.

3. Be present. It’s great to be in the same room with them, but as much as you can afford to, be fully present with them. Shut off the mobile device, close the laptop, turn off the TV, and really pay attention. Listen to their long fragmented stories. Really watch when they want to show off their new wizard or ninja move.

That’s it. That’s all you need to be a great dad. Well, there are some bonus moves, but those are just extensions of the above three.

The Bonus Moves

If you want some specifics of how to do the above three rules, here are some ideas:

1. Sing with them.


2. Run around with them.


3. Make believe with them.


4. Read to them daily.


5. Dance with them.


6. Tell them jokes.


7. Paint with them.


8. Make videos where they are the star.


9. Set a healthy example by being active and eating well.


10. Show them how to be independent.


11. Teach them critical thinking, rather than just obedience.


12. Teach them how to teach themselves.


13. Don’t nag.


14. Don’t be overprotective.


15. Show them you’re proud of them.


16. Let them make mistakes.


17. When they get hurt, use that moment to teach them how to deal with pain.


18. Show interest in what they’re interested in, and don’t make it seem trivial.


19. Show them how to work passionately.


20. Spend some quiet cuddly time with them.


21. Make them pancakes with faces.


22. Have Nerf dart gun fights.


23. Play board games.


24. Take them on hikes.


25. Play sports with them.


26. Show them how to use a knife.


27. Be honest.


28. Honor your commitments.


29. Love your wife, and treat her with respect.


30. Be compassionate to others, and them.


31. Be happy with yourself.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’ve learned, in the last seven years of getting fitter each year (from a really bad starting point), that when it comes to getting in shape, your environment is everything.

Small things I’ve done to change my environment make my life set up for getting fitter, slowly, gradually, but surely.

Consider two scenarios:

1. Person A has a long work day, gets home, wants to just veg out on the couch watching TV to relax. Is hungry so goes to the kitchen and gets some convenience food (he’s too tired to cook), gets some unhealthy snacks that are in the cupboard. Orders pizza later because it’s easy and there’s nothing else ready to eat besides some microwaveable stuff. After gorging on junk food, he’s too tired to do anything else but watch TV. Goes to sleep, gets up, rushes off to work, where there’s junk food all around anytime he gets hungry. Everyone else is in bad shape so he doesn’t find any motivation to work out. This cycle keeps repeating.

2. Person B has a workout time blocked into his workday, and has a workout partner waiting for him each day, so he won’t fail to do the workout. All his friends are relatively fit and often participate in various fitness challenges together. When they socialize, it often revolves around healthier foods. At home, he has no junk food, no convenience food, no snacks. No microwave. He has lots of healthy foods, and cooks them in big batches so that when he’s hungry and tired, the food just needs to be warmed on the stove. He participates in online social networks that revolve around fitness. He has no TV.

Which person is more likely to get fit? The person who has his life set up so that he’ll be likely to do the things to get fit.

The kicker, as you probably guessed, is that I am both Person A and Person B. Well, I was Person A and got overweight and unhealthy. Then I changed to Person B and got much healthier and fitter.

It was all a matter of creating the right environment. I’m happy to tell you that the changes aren’t that hard to make, and can be done over time.

Small Actions

The following are some ideas you can use to set up an environment conducive to getting fit — I’ve used them all at various times:

1. Get rid of the snacks. Don’t keep them in your house or you’ll be more likely to eat them.


2. Don’t buy convenience food. You’re likely to eat this when you’re too tired to cook.


3. Instead, cook big batches of healthy food once a week. Have it in the fridge, ready to be heated up.


4. Take healthy snacks to work.


5. Create a healthy eating challenge with your coworkers.


6. Join Fitocracy (invite code: zenhabits) and make friends there. Log your activities.


7. Join a running club.


8. Find a workout partner.


9. Set up an appointment with your best friend to go walking or running every day.


10. Get a coach.


11. Set fitness challenges with your friends. Log them online, on Facebook or some other social site.


12. Have a chinup bar in your doorway, and do a chinup every time you walk by.


13. Join a sports team.


14. Have nuts and fruit with you when you’re on the go.


15. Make it hard to turn on the TV (put it in the closet or something).


16. Use a program like LeechBlock or Freedom to shut the Internet down at a certain time each day.


17. Have healthy potlucks with friends or family.


18. Publicly commit to posting body pics or measurements each week on your blog.


19. Make a list of healthy restaurants, or healthy meals at other restaurants, for when you feel like eating out.


20. Park farther away from things so you’ll walk more.

Obviously not all of these will apply to everyone, and they’re just a start of what can be done, to give you an idea.

Setting up a fit environment doesn’t have to be hard, nor does it have to be overnight. But I challenge you to do one of these actions today, and see what happens when you start creating the right setup for a healthy life.

Unprocrastination Course

Today is the last day to join the Sea Change Program and be a part of the Unprocrastination Course in July. Don’t put it off! Read more.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Today I’m opening registration for the Zen Habits Sea Change Program, and announcing the Unprocrastination Course as part of the package.

The Unprocrastination Course will run for the month of July and will be available to all Sea Change members. And it’s an awesome course.

The course comes in four weekly modules with two live webinars, an incredible line-up of expert interviews (see below), and some bonus materials on week 5.

Registration for Sea Change Program will be for the next three days only (until Fri. June 15), and won’t be opened again until August. It’s a monthly fee of $24.99/month.

Unprocrastination Course Contents

Week 1

1. Overview: What is Procrastination, and How to We Tackle It?


2. Course Action Plan: Four Habits


3. The Art of Choosing Important Tasks


4. Building Awareness of the Procrastination Urge


5. Dealing with Guilt of Procrastinating


6. Cheat Sheet: Procrastination Causes & Cures


7. Video interivew: Entrepreneur Jesse Jacobs, owner of Samovar Tea Lounge, on getting things done

Week 2

1. Expert interview: Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Work Week


2. Setting Up an Unprocrastination Environment


3. Video interview: Tynan, expert on doing what you don’t want to do


4. Tricks to Get Started


5. The Pause — how to stick with your task


6. Live Webinar: Leo Babauta on mindset

Week 3

1. Expert interview: a href=”http://www.neilfiore.com/”>Dr. Neil Fiore, author of the best-selling book, The Now Habit


2. Beating the Fears that Cause Procrastination


3. Motivation to Beat Procrastination


4. Pretending to be Productive – emails, small tasks, calls, meetings, to-do lists, time management, all except doing the important stuff


5. Simplifying: When You Have Too Much to Do


6. Making Your Tasks Funner

Week 4

1. Expert interview: Scott H. Young, author of Learn More, Study Less, and How to Change a Habit<</li>


2. Expert interview: Ali Edwards, author, artist, designer, master scrapbooker


3. Dealing with Email, Social Networks, and Other Online Tasks


4. Feeling Tired, Lazy, Stressed, Overwhelmed


5. When Resistance Has Kicked Your Butt for Years


6. Screencast: Computer Procrastination Tools


7. Live Webinar: Leo Babauta on long-term unprocrastination habits

Bonus – Week 5

1. 3 Amazing Ways to Finally Get Your Book Written


2. Ways to Get the Energy for Important Stuff


3. Q&A: Answers to Procrastination Questions You Submit During the Course

Experts

1. Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, Four Hour Body, and the upcoming Four Hour Chef.


2. Dr. Neil Fiore, author of the best-selling book, The Now Habit


3. Scott H. Young, author of Learn More, Study Less, and How to Change a Habit


4. Ali Edwards, author, blogger, artist, designer, mother of two, master scrapbooker


5. Tynan, writer, programmer, self-employed, traveler


6. Jesse Jacobs, entrepreneur, owner of Samovar Tea Lounge

Sign Up Here

Again, the registration for Sea Change is for just three days (June 13-15) and won’t open again until August. It’s a monthly fee of $24.99, and the Unprocrastination Course in July is included for members, as well as past content and past courses on meditation and the Mindful Diet.

Read more about the Sea Change Program, or sign up here:

(IMPORTANT: after paying with a credit card or Paypal account, you *must* fill out the registration form and then confirm your email to complete the registration process. Wait to be redirected to the registration page from Paypal, after you pay, or click on the “Return to website” link on the Paypal site.)

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Georgina Laidlaw of ProBlogger.

I’m a control freak. I used to admit that only in hushed tones, as if it were something to be ashamed of. And the thought of Zen Habits’ No Goals philosophy used to fill me with a vague but pervasive dread.

So when I interviewed Leo for Blog Wise, an ebook on productivity, I wanted to know more. When I asked him what a typical day without goals looked like, he said:

“It’s highly variable. That’s one thing about having a little less structure than I used to have, which is that when it’s unstructured, it’s really a huge, open container that you can do anything you want with. I mean, you can fill it with anything.”

Yet Leo told me that he feels more in control of his life than ever before.

At first glance, this seems paradoxical. Don’t we cede control by abandoning our goals?

To have control, we’re taught, we need to know what we’re doing, and goals and plans are the key mechanisms we use to gain that knowledge. If we have a goal, we can make a plan to achieve it, and check our progress to make sure we’re on track.

That’s how we know what we’re doing. That, says conventional wisdom, is control.

This concept is so ingrained in many of us that when we feel something’s “out of control”, we turn to planning to get it “under control”. We pull out our calendar, break the challenge into steps, schedule them, and “commit” ourselves to completing each one. We may even feel better at the end of this planning process—I can’t be the only one who’s ever found solace in the making of plans.

But is that control? If so, how’s Leo achieving control without goals or plans?

Behind the control paradox

In line with these philosophies, we tend to think that control reduces freedom. According to this concept, control entails close scrutiny, a tight structure, and monitored progress.

But it’s not control that creates these structures. It’s the goals we set, and the plans we make.

If we have a plan, we can’t enjoy true freedom of choice: the plan’s structure dictates what we need to do. The threat of scrutiny ensures we don’t stray from that focus, even if something more interesting comes along. And the progress yardstick gives us a very real opportunity to disappoint—and to fail.

Many of us use a smokescreen of goals and plans as a means to avoid the responsibility of true control. We choose a goal, set up a plan, and slip into operational autopilot. We cruise from day to day along the ever-deepening rut that, while it restricts our freedom even further, requires no conscious thought, nor much energy to maintain.

We think we’re in control, and convince ourselves that we needed to sacrifice freedom to get it.

The truth is that if we let go of these ideas, then, like Leo, we can take control back.

Control freak? Freedom freak

Control and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive. If we let them, they can act as entirely complementary notions.

Control isn’t allowing outside forces, like a goal or plan we (or someone else) created weeks or months ago, to shape our actions.

Control is taking full responsibility for how we spend our time, right here, today. And in that control lies freedom: we get to choose.

What would you do if you had complete control—the freedom to do whatever you wanted today?

My answer to this question was, “live somewhere beautiful, have more free time, and work on cooler stuff.”

So I did. I chose to leave the city and live in the country; to leave my job, switch disciplines and freelance; and now, to go on a “working holiday” to visit friends abroad. These days, I get to make a lot of choices: what I do with my time, when, with whom, and where. I have control over the way work fits into my life, and its importance relative to the other things I like to do. The choices I made have given me the chance to enjoy that “huge, open container” that Leo talked about in our interview.

At first, that freedom was daunting, but it didn’t take long to get used to. The more control I took, the more freedom I gained, and the more choices I wanted to have responsibility for making.

And therein lies the key: to break free of the rut, we have to want to take responsibility for our freedom.

Georgina is a freelance content developer and Content Manager for ProBlogger.

Post written by Leo Babauta.

If you’re like me, you are constantly learning new skills — gardening, carpentry, pizza-making, languages, sports, and so on. And I think this is a fun and wonderful thing to do.

But what’s the most important skill?

That’s debatable. I think compassion is a huge one, as is mindfulness. I’d go with those two any day of the week.

But if I had to pick just one, it would be this: learning to be happy with yourself.

That seems too simple, to trite! Too mushy and New-Agey! And I’ll grant all of that, but I stand firmly by my pick.

Why? The answer has to do with how this one thing can affect everything else in your life. If you are not happy with yourself, or your body, you become insecure. You think you’re not good enough. You fear being abandoned and alone. You do lots of other things to compensate, and these lead to problems.

So many of the problems people have stem from this one thing — being unhappy with themselves (often in the form of being unhappy with their bodies). Let’s take a look at why, and then look at some ideas of how to master the skill.

Why It Affects Everything

Let’s say you’re unhappy with your body. You think you are too fat, or too skinny, or your butt is too small (or too big). Or your boobs are too small, or your pecs aren’t big enough. Your stomach is flabby, or loose, or covered in stretch marks. Your thighs are too thick. Your hips are too wide, or too narrow. The list goes on and on.

We’ll get into why we’re unhappy in a minute, but for now, just imagine the unlikely scenario that you’re unhappy with your body. What does that do to you? Well, you might be envious of other people (who, you know, are also unhappy with their bodies). You might be worried that you’re not attractive enough to meet someone, and therefore sabotage your chances for a relationship. If you’re in a relationship, you might think your boyfriend/girlfriend will leave you for someone more attractive. You might then act jealously, and do things out of this jealousy that actually leads to your partner being unhappy, and possibly eventually leaving you.

If you’re unhappy with your body, you might not want to look at it. You might obsessively undereat, and then binge eat, and then feel worse about yourself. You might avoid exercise because you don’t want to even think about the problem. You might eat junk food to comfort your bad feelings, and then make the health problems worse.

You might have anxiety about all of this, about your body, your health, your girlfriend leaving you. Then you eat more to assuage the anxiety, and it gets worse. Or you shop to make yourself feel better, and you get deeply in debt and your life fills with clutter. Or you drink alcohol or numb yourself with drugs or television so you don’t have to think about all this.

At work, you’re unhappy because you aren’t confident about yourself or your body, so you don’t do the things that require confidence and that would further your career. You might not leave your work to find work you’re more passionate about, because you don’t think you’re good enough. Even at the work you’re in, you do what you can to not think about the unhappiness you have, so you procrastinate with social networks, games, and other diversions.

There’s much more that’s possible, but you get the idea. Not everyone has all of these symptoms, but they’re possible for anyone. Many of our problems stems from this one problem, and fixing it can change everything.

That’s why, if you have a finite amount of time to learn (and we all do), investing that time into learning this one skill can pay off in innumerable ways. It’s the most important skill you can master.

Why We’re Like This

If this is so bad, why are we like this? How did it get this way? Well, there’s no one answer. It’s a building up of lots of reasons, including:

• Mass media. We see beautiful celebrities with perfect faces, stomachs, thighs, abs, chests and asses all over the place — on the Internet, on TV and movies, in magazines. Everywhere. They’re celebrated as the pinacle of our society, and we all want to be them in some way. They’re not real, of course — they’re Photoshopped, make-upped, did upped in so many ways that what we see is an illusion. We’re comparing ourselves to an illusion. But even if they were, why would we need to be like them? Why can’t we be like ourselves, and let that be the ideal?


• Comments from others. Friends, family members, co-workers, even spouses might make a seemingly innocent comment about our butt or boobs that makes us feel bad about ourselves. These comments are small but hit our self-esteem very hard. They’re not really about us, though, even if we almost always take them to heart. They’re about the other person, who is having a bad day, or jealous of you, or projecting their own insecurities on you, or comparing you to the mass media celebrities they idolize for no good reason. See these comments for what they are, and don’t take them to heart.


• Childhood incidents. In childhood, perhaps our parents made some comments about us that made us feel bad. Perhaps our parents got a divorce, or our dad was never around — if dad left mom, maybe that meant she wasn’t good enough for him, and by extension maybe I’m not good enough for someone else? If dad left, maybe it’s because I wasn’t good enough for him? This might sound like psychological mumbo-jumbo, but it’s real. I’ve experienced it, and so have countless others. It doesn’t mean we have to let it rule our lives, but we should be aware that it’s there, and learn to deal with it.


• Failures. Perhaps we’ve made some mistakes and failed at some things we tried to do. Honestly, everyone does, but when we do it, we take it to heart. It makes us feel bad about ourselves — we’re not disciplined, we’re not good enough. This leads to further failures, further hurting our self-image.


• Health problems. While having thick thighs or a bit of flab on the tummy is nothing to feel bad about — love how you look! — a completely separate problem from how we feel about our bodies is the health of our bodies. We tend to mix them together — being fat makes us feel bad about ourselves, for example — but really they can be separated. We can feel good about our bodies but realize that being overweight can lead to heart disease and diabetes down the road, so it only makes sense to lose some weight. Not because we want to look like a celebrity and feel better about ourselves, but because we want to be healthy. Being healthy, by the way, can help your self-image, and even though I said they can be separated, this is one positive benefit from conflating the two that you should accept happily.


• Spiral of negative thoughts. One bad thought leads to another, and then another, until we have a bundle of bad thoughts that become our self-image. This negative self-image can affect everything we do. But this self-image and these bad thoughts are not us — they are things that happen within us, but we don’t have to let them become us. We can cope with them, and turn them into positive thoughts, into gratitude, into happiness.

These are just a few reasons. In fact, so many things affect our self-image that it’s impossible to list them all, but it’s good to start to be aware of them, so we can cope with them.

How to Master the Skill

Let’s say you’ve accepted my premise that learning to be happy with yourself (let’s call it “love thyself”) is the most important skill to master … how do you get started?

The simple answer is practice. The complicated answer is that it takes awhile, because our self-image wasn’t formed overnight and it won’t be changed overnight. That’s OK. Just focus on this moment, and you’ll learn as you go.

I can’t give you a complete guide to learning to love thyself, as that would take a book, and I’m still learning myself, but here are some tips for starting out:

1. Become aware of your mental movie. You have a movie (perhaps a series of them) that you play inside your head about yourself. Usually we aren’t aware of this, but it happens, throughout the day. The movie is about who we are: you have a flabby stomach, you are fat, you are too skinny, you aren’t disciplined, you aren’t lovable, your braces look weird, you aren’t good at anything. Start to pay attention when this movie plays — it affects everything you do. Realize that this movie isn’t you — it’s just playing in your head. Realize that it isn’t true, and isn’t based on reality. Realize that it can be changed.


2. Start to make a new movie. This new movie will replace that play-out old one that keeps running in your theater. It will be a Michael Bay production, with a gorgeous lead actor (hey, that’s you!), great visual effects, lots of excitement … except with more character development and a lot smaller budget. Let’s base this movie on reality, not fears from childhood or illusions of celebrities or comments from others. Instead, it should be based on the fact that you are a good person, wonderful even, who is loving, kind, beautiful, passionate. This might not be what you think about yourself, but let’s make the movie like this anyway. Ask other people why you’re lovable (people who are likely to give a kind answer). Use these images in your new movie. When negative images start coming up (my boobs are too small!), cut them out and tell them they have no place in your production. Put better images in.


3. Consciously play the new movie. Learn to recognize the flicker of the old movie starting, and shut it off. Put the new movie in the projector instead, and play it. Practice this like it’s your new religion. You will get better with constant practice. Put up reminders all around you so you don’t forget.


4. Learn mental judo. There will be things coming in all around you that will try to attack your new movie. Comments from friends, celebrities, things you see on Facebook. When they are hurtling towards you, learn to lean to one side and let them whiz by. Give them a small shove, with a thought like, “That comment is not about me, it’s about you.” (And then go give your friend a hug — she’s probably having a bad day.) Or a thought like, “That celebrity probably is also worried about her body — having big boobs or a flat stomach doesn’t solve that problem.” Give the celebrity a mental hug, then play your new movie.

You are already perfect — you just need to realize it. You don’t need anything to solve this problem — you already have it. You just need to practice, like it’s the most important thing in your life, because in many ways, it is.

‘You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.’ ~Buddha

‘Ninety percent of life is just showing up.’ ~Woody Allen

Post written by Leo Babauta.

In the past, and sometimes still, I am often what the Japanese might call a “three-day monk“.

It’s a very common syndrome — you get obsessed with something for a short time, and pour yourself into it, only to stop a few days (or a week or two) later.

How many times have you done this? Be honest. We’ve all done it many times — with exercise, with a blog or journal, with learning something new (like a language), with a new hobby.

A three-day monk gets very little accomplished, because a short intense burst isn’t enough to accomplish meaningful change. How can you get in shape if you exercise for a week and then stop? How can you learn a language, learn programming, learn to write a novel … if you just spend a few days working on it every six months?

The key then is not being a three-day monk, but saying a 20-minute every-day prayer. Not literally a prayer (except that in a sense anything done with devotion is a prayer), and not literally 20 minutes — you can do it for whatever amount of time works for you.

But do show up.

If you can show up every day, and not just do it for a few days, you’ll create meaningful change — in your life, in the lives of others, in the world.

Let’s take a look at how to keep showing up.

How to Beat the Three-Day Monk Syndrome

There is no formula for beating this syndrome, except to do whatever it takes to just show up. You might do very little, you might make mistakes, you might utterly fail. But you show up.

Here are some things that work for me:

1. Don’t force yourself. This isn’t about discipline or the torture of making something you hate happen by brute force. It’s about doing something you want to do. So instead of forcing yourself, frame it in a way that makes it something you enjoy doing. A run can be painful drudgery, or a lovely time clearing your head and enjoying the outdoors. Learning Spanish can be a chore you dread, or a way to enjoy great music, learn about a distant culture, discover new films. Trust me: you won’t get very far doing anything if you have to force yourself every day.


2. Gradually increase. Throwing yourself full force into something might work for a little while, but it also makes it hard to keep showing up every day. Start small, and each day, just show up. Gradually increase what you do, so that each step along the way it still feels easy and fun.


3. Use momentum. Once you’ve gotten going, use the inertial force to keep going. This again is a matter of how you frame things. Each day, showing up can be like trudging up a hill with weight on your back, or it can be like falling forward down a hill. When I run down a hill, it’s almost like I’m falling, except that I keep my feet under me so that I’m falling upright.


4. Remind yourself of what you want. You’re doing the activity (exercise, language learning, meditation) presumably because you want to do it. When we stop doing something, it’s because we’ve forgotten that we wanted it. We start to fear it for some reason, and try not to think about it. Instead, think about it, but remind yourself of why you started doing it in the first place. That might mean reading some motivational articles, watching some videos that motivate you, looking at some pics that motivate you, referring to a vision in your head. Or just bookmark this article and come back to it every day.


5. Play some music. When I don’t feel like working out, I’ll play a song. Yesterday it was Eminem’s “Lose It”. I became so instantly pumped up that I went to the rowing machine and shredded it for 3 minutes and exhausted myself. So maybe that was a bit of overkill. But there’s no doubt that it helped me to show up.


6. Stop with the doubts. Everyone has doubts sometimes, but they can either be overcome, or they can stop us from showing up. Do you doubt that you can stick to something for a long time? Forget about the doubt, and just do it. Be sure that you’re going to do it at least one more time. When you prove yourself right, make a note of that, and then be sure that you’re going to do it one more time. Don’t even allow yourself to imagine that you won’t.

You might have been a three-day monk in the past — that’s in the past. Today, you are reborn, and from this day on all you’re going to do is show up. Can I get an Amen?

‘It is a happy talent to know how to play.’ ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Post written by Leo Babauta.

When I write about loving every moment and loving what you do, people often ask, “What about when you have to do something you don’t like?”

You can’t always enjoy what you’re doing, right?

Actually, you can. You just have to remember what it’s like to be a child.

Sure, there are things we have to do every day that we might think are boring: household chores, errands, routine tasks at work, being in a meeting that’s makes you want to pound your head on the table. But those are only boring because we’ve chosen to make them boring.

Let’s take my 6-year-old daughter Noelle as an example. She had to go to the dentist, which is a pretty routine thing for most people. We took the train and then walked a few blocks. In the train, she sang, found things fun to see out the window, played games with me. As we walked, she talked about how the building the dentist is in might possibly reach the blue stuff in the sky, and wanted to bet me that it actually did (10 hugs if I won, $1 if she won). The elevator ride to the 18th floor was like a roller coaster ride to her.

Everything she does becomes a game, an opportunity for wonder and exploration, or at the very least an opportunity to sing a song. She’s never bored. Why is that?

Because she doesn’t see anything as boring. Everything is new, and there’s always a game you can play.

We can do that too. Every chore can be turned into play. Every walk to the store can be infused with beginner’s mind, so that we see our surroundings afresh, ripe for exploration. Every boring work task can be turned into a challenge, a game.

My 8-year-old son Seth runs everywhere, jumps everywhere. We’re walking along the street and he’s a werewolf, a wizard, a superhero. A living room becomes a place to make a fort, styrofoam becomes a toy, and if there’s nothing to play with, he’s pacing around making up stories in his head. How can you ever be bored when you see life like this?

We’ve had the play pounded out of us, from years of schooling and work. Bring the play back, by watching a kid and seeing how amazing life is for them.

(This post was inspired by Suraj Shah’s post Last day living.)

‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.’ ~George Bernard Shaw