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Exercises for the Terminally Busy

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’ve been out walking all day in New York City with my daughter, and haven’t found any time for my usual workouts in between museums and fabulous restaurants.
And yet fitness doesn’t require hours of your time every day.
I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite quick exercises. It’s not meant to be a complete fitness program, but something to sneak in when you’re too busy to get a longer workout or a visit to your gym.
If you’re working hard, or stressing out over all the things you have to do for your family, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.
If any of these exercises is too easy, rest for 30-60 seconds and do a second one. If that’s still too easy, add something with weight.
Exercises for the Terminally Busy

1. Bodyweight squats. These are some of my favorites. Sit back, then squat down like you’re sitting on a toilet seat, until your thighbones are about parallel to the ground. Stand up and flex your glutes, repeat as many times as you can. Rest 20-30 seconds, do a second set, then another. If that’s too easy …
2. Jump squats. Same as above, but explode into a jump as high as you can from the squat position. Land lightly on the balls of your feet and go straight back into the squat. Do as many as you can ‘ aim for 20-30 reps, 3-5 sets.
3. 300 lunges. You can do walking lunges if you have space, or just alternate legs and stay in the same spot. Try to rest as little as possible. If this is too easy, do 400 meters of lunges. If this is still too easy …
4. Jump lunges. Same as lunges, but jump up and switch legs in the air, land lightly on the balls of your feet, go right into the lunge. 200 reps, in as little time as you can. If you’re not in good shape, start with 50 or 100 reps.
5. Pushups. If you’re in decent shape, see how fast you can do 100 pushups. Last time I tried I barely did it in under 5 minutes. You might be much faster. If pushups are too hard, do some of them on your knees. You can also just do sets of 10-20, and repeat this througout the day as you can find time.
6. Stairs. Walk up the stairs as often as you can. If this is too easy, run up them 2-3 stairs at a time. Go up and down and do several sets if you can.
7. Burpees. Squat, put your hands on the ground, thrust your feet out behind you so that you’re in pushup position, do a pushup, jump your feet so that you’re back in squat position, jump up in the air as high as you can. Repeat. See if you can do 20 or 30, or at least 10 if you’re not in great shape. Do 3-5 sets.
8. Pullups. Set up a pullup bar in your house, or find a tree branch outside you can reach. Do as many as you can, do 3-5 sets. Or just do as many as you can every time you walk by the bar. If you can’t do pullups, try jump pullups. Or do negatives ‘ use a chair to get yourself at the top of the pullup position (chin above bar), then lower yourself to the bottom position (arms fully extended) as slowly as you can, and repeat as many times as you can.
19. Hindu squats and Hindu pushups. You’ll have to do a Youtube search to find the method for these, but they’re excellent. I also love dive bomber pushups, Spiderman pushups, and mountain climbers. Again, do as many reps as possible, 3-5 sets.
10. Jumps. Mark a spot on the wall about a foot higher than your highest reach, then jump and touch that spot as many times as you can. Repeat 3-5 sets.
11. Bounds. Run by bounding (leaping as far as you can). Alternate this with jumps and squat jumps.
12. Handstand pushups. Stand with your back to the wall, put your hands on the ground about 6 inches from the wall, then walk your feet up the wall until you’re in a handstand position, but with your feet leaning on the wall. Try to do a pushup so that your head almost touches the ground, and push your arms straight again. See how many reps you can do, repeat for 3-5 sets. If you can’t do a full rep, just do a partial rep ‘ bend your arms a little. You’ll get stronger with practice.
13. If you have the equipment, other good workouts would include kettlebell swings, dumbbell snatches, sandbag throws and sandbag cleans, and fireman’s carries of your spouse.
14. Rounds. If you find the above exercises easy, try combining several exercises in as many combinations as you can ‘ for example, do 15 squats, 10 pushups, 5 pullups. That’s one round. See how many rounds you can do in 5 or 10 minutes. There are tons of ways to combine the above exercises.

The Quiet Theory of Influence

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Most online marketing people will teach you how to use social media to reach a larger audience, how to use email lists and the scarcity principle and social proof, how to create authority, how to effectively convert pageviews into sales.
Most marketers, online or off, are full of it.
Converting visitors into buyers is a soul-less use of your creative energy. Reject it, out of hand.
I find more value in creating something of value. I find influence a better metric than sales or traffic or reader numbers.
And I’ve learned something that the screaming marketers will never tell you: instead of screaming, prefer quiet.
When everyone yells “Look at me!”, become quiet.
When others seek attention, turn your attention inward.
When everyone wants pageviews and sales, be valuable.
When others try to pull visitors to their sites, let people find you themselves.
When most blogs have popups and drop-downs urging readers to subscribe to their newsletters, get out of your readers’ way.
When others brag of their success, let others laud you instead.
When others cling greedily to copyrights, give your work away.
When others use goals to drive themselves to change the world, learn to be content, and people will ask to learn your secrets.
I’ve found all of the above to be true. When you’ve created something of real value, you don’t need to do any marketing, spend any money on advertising, or push people to subscribe.
People will find you, and they’ll think you’re so great they want to tell their friends about it. Your readers will become your marketers. Your value will become your advertising budget.
Imagine owning a muffin shop. If the muffins are commonplace, you’ll have to advertise and do some “guerilla marketing” to get customers. But if your muffins make people roll their eyes in ecstasy, they will tell the world of your deliciousness, and the world will pound on your muffin-scented door.
Become quiet, find contentedness, become valuable. These trump marketing every time, and as you learn to listen to your inner music, you can now ignore the marketers hawking their oils of snakedness.

The 5 Principles of a Profound Workday

‘Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.’ ~Laozi
Post written by Leo Babauta.

Let us toss out all we know for a moment.
Toss notions of productivity, time management, efficiency, and the bottom line.
Empty our workdays of all we’ve packed them with, and sit still with an empty room.
What should we put in this room? Do we want to spend our limited space on busy-ness, on making money, on quick transactions and calculated meetings?
What if we put into it only that which matters? What if we left everything else out?
We would be left with a workday that was poetry, profoundly beautiful.
The Profound Workday

In my life I have deliberately cultivated a workday that is flexible, simplified, slow, mindful, creative.
The exact opposite of my previous life: a hurried, anxious, complicated, dull workday.
What I’ve curated is not difficult, but it is the perfect environment for creating work that is profoundly different from my previous accomplishments.
I’ve created this flow using some key principles. You might not be able to implement all of them right away, but it’s my hope that you’ll find the principles useful.
1. Empty: In Silence and Solitude. When your schedule is full, you have no room for change. When your day is full of noise, you have no space to think.
Empty your day. When you have an empty space, you can fill it with anything. Only with this emptiness can you create something truly different.
Clear your schedule. Find space for silence and solitude. With this space you’ll be free, to hear your thoughts, to see the truth, to create beauty.
2. Slow and Mindful. Rushing paradoxically leaves us with less time — the speed means we don’t pay attention, and so the day disappears rapidly and leaves us before we notice.
Slow down, and pay attention. You’ll be able to focus on your creative tasks more, and though you’ll do less, you’ll accomplish things that are more profound.
Be mindful of every activity, small or large. Enjoy every motion.
When you are done with a task, wash your bowl. Then move to the next.
3. Profoundly Creative. Don’t use the gift of your day for mindless repetitive tasks. Don’t end the day with nothing to show for your work.
Start each day by creating. Make the space at the beginning of your day to create, before you get lost in emails and online networking and reading.
Create something amazing. Delight your audience. Leave them amazed, wanting to do your marketing for you. Make a difference.
4. Simplified. The principles for a profound workday might seem impractical to most people, because there just isn’t the time or space to implement them. The only way to create this type of workday is to simplify.
It’s the key to everything else. Subtract. Pare everything down to its essence.
What’s on your desk right now? What are the three items that actually need to be there? Remove everything else.
What’s on your schedule for today? What are the three tasks that would really make a difference in your life? Eliminate everything else that you possibly can.
What do you do every day? How many of those things can be eventually pared down?
How much do you do online? Could you do without it?
Simplify, and you’ll be able to find emptiness, solitude, silence, slowness, mindfulness.
5. Flexible and Natural. This type of workday might start to sound rigid, but in truth when you create space you also allow yourself the flexibility to deal in the moment with any change.
The natural flow of things is change, and if we are rigid we aren’t able to deal with changes. We become frustrated, anxious, angry, flustered.
If instead we have no expectations of what will happen each day, and deal with changes as they come, we let go of that frustration and anxiety.
Be open to whatever happens. Be flexible. Deal with change as it happens, and you’ll find true profoundness doesn’t come from within us, or from external sources, but in the space between the two.
‘Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Tragedy of Missing Out

Post written by Leo Babauta.

A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry.
The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,” the father said.
“Yes, but I’m worried I’m missing out on better fish,” the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?”
“Maybe you should try,” the father said.
And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,” the father said.
“But what if there are better fish out there?” the son asked.
“Maybe you should try,” the father said.
And the son did, catching a bigger fish, then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on.

At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?”
The son hesitated. “I’m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn’t taste any of them.”
The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don’t worry. They were delicious.”
—
We are all of us like the son. We all worry, at some time or other, that we’re missing out on things.
It’s why we’re so busy — we take on so much because we don’t want to miss out. We take on dozens of goals and aspirations, because we don’t want to miss out.
But here’s the bare truth: we will miss out, no matter what. It’s inevitable. We cannot do or try everything in the world, even with lives twice as long. We cannot see every town and city, read every interesting book, watch every important film. We will always, always miss out.
Here’s the second, more important truth: if you always worry about what you’re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have.
Don’t make a reading list a mile long — focus on the book in your hand. Don’t pack your vacation itinerary with every highlight of the city you’re visiting — walk around and enjoy what you find. Don’t worry about traveling the entire world — be delighted with the world around you. Don’t worry about what you’re missing online, or in the news — what you’re doing is good enough.
And let go of your long to-do lists and goal lists. They are a futile attempt to keep from missing out. You will miss out, but in striving to do everything, you’ll miss out on the wonder of the thing you are doing right now.
What you’re doing right now is all that matters. Let the rest go, and enjoy the fish you’ve already caught.

Best Procrastination Tip Ever

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Your first thought as you look at this article will be, “I’ll read this later.”
But don’t. Let the urge to switch to a new task pass. Read this now.
It’ll take you two minutes. It’ll save you countless hours.
I’ve written the book on ending procrastination, but I’ve since come up with a very simple technique for beating everyone’s favorite nemesis. It is incredibly easy, but as with anything, it takes a little practice.
Try it now:
Identify the most important thing you have to do today.

Decide to do just the first little part of it — just the first minute, or even 30 seconds of it. Getting started is the only thing in the world that matters.
Clear away distractions. Turn everything off. Close all programs. There should just be you, and your task.
Sit there, and focus on getting started. Not doing the whole task, just starting.
Pay attention to your mind, as it starts to have urges to switch to another task. You will have urges to check email or Facebook or Twitter or your favorite website. You will want to play a game or make a call or do another task. Notice these urges.
But don’t move. Notice the urges, but sit still, and let them pass. Urges build up in intensity, then pass, like a wave. Let each one pass.
Notice also your mind trying to justify not doing the task. Also let these self-rationalizing thoughts pass.
Now just take one small action to get started. As tiny a step as possible.
Get started, and the rest will flow.

Become a God of Learning Your Trade

Post written by Leo Babauta.

A lot of you are like me — trying to do what you love, and figuring out the best way to do that.
It’s not always easy to do what you love, because:
You aren’t sure you’re good at it.
You don’t know if it will work.
You don’t know if people will like it.
You don’t know how to get better.
You doubt your ability to succeed.
You might spend months working on something, only to have it fail.
And these are tough problems.
But I have a method for beating them. And it’s a simple trick.
Do it in public, and get immediate feedback.
It’s one of the most powerful things you can implement, I promise. Here’s why and how.
The Lessons of Street Performers

Consider the street musician or juggler or magician: they do a show in public, in front of people who have other things to do and haven’t planned on watching a show, and have to convince that crowd not only to watch, but to pay them money after having already seen the show. (Read more.)
That’s an amazing business model. If a street performer isn’t good, people won’t watch. But making a small change in the performance, like a better setup or better patter, can make huge changes in audience reaction and payment.
And here’s the thing: they see the effects of those small changes immediately. There’s no wondering, “Will this work? Will it be an improvement or make things worse?” Because they know if it works, if it makes things better or worse, right away.
Instant feedback is the most valuable thing you can get. It’s better even than a sale, because a sale might result in a satisfied customer or it might not, and a sale doesn’t tell you how to improve.
Whatever you want to do, if you can do something publicly, even in front of a small group, and get instant feedback, that’s pure gold. There’s no better way to improve. There’s no better way to evolve a method or creative process or business model than through this simple technique of constant iteration and natural selection.
How to Be Evolve Like a Street Performer

Blogging is one of the best ways to do something in public. Consider: you write about an idea, and you get instant feedback from readers, in comments, emails, tweets, G+ posts, etc.
When I started Zen Habits, I don’t think I was that great … I wrote a bunch of posts that didn’t thrill readers. I wrote a couple that did thrill some people, and so learned what works best as a writer — more than I’d learned as a writer in the entire previous decade of writing. Through this kind of public writing, instant feedback, and constant evolving, I got better over the course of months, not years.
No matter what you do, you can put ideas out on a blog. You can also put software out to beta testers, as soon as possible, with the simplest possible version of the software. You can test recipes by making them for people, maybe selling them on the street in a cart. Artists can put artwork online instantly. Musicians and actors can put stuff on Youtube. A business can put itself online in as small an iteration as possible, without taking months of blind development.
For some work, it will take a bit more creativity. But use this idea of working in public, getting instant feedback, and evolving through constant iterations to improve better and faster than ever before.
I admit it can be scary. Which is why you can start with a small group, less public but still using the same ideas, and grow the audience as you grow more confident.
Be a street performer. There’s no better way to get amazing at something.

The Many Reasons We Rely Upon Our Clutter

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Clutter isn’t an easy problem to solve, no matter how many times I might tell you to toss it out, tell you that you don’t need it.
A book isn’t just an object with words on it. A jewelry box isn’t just a container. Clothes aren’t just protection from the elements.
Each of these inanimate objects means so much more to us.
We put our emotions into them. We rely upon these objects to fulfill needs in us.
They are our crutches.

These crutches are convenient, because they save us from having to learn to cope with tough things. We’ve relied on these crutches often since childhood, and our culture has programmed them into us. If I point them out, some of you may get angry at me. That’s OK. Anger is an appropriate response — I’ve felt it myself when these issues came up in me.
What are we to do when we discover these crutches? We can’t just toss them out and think we’re done. We have to find new ways of dealing with our emotions and the world around us. Let’s start today.
The Roles of Clutter

These aren’t all true for every person, but I’ve found they’re very common:
1. Security. When we have lots of stuff around us, we feel more secure. Somehow it’s as if we can survive the apocalyptic winter, or at least an earthquake or economic recession.
New habit: Learn to combat fears with information. What’s the worst-case scenario? What could you do in that case even without the items around you? Do you have people you could rely on? Can you learn skills that don’t require clutter? Could you live without? Try it for a little while and see.
2. Self image and self worth. Clothes and jewelry and shoes and handbags make women feel pretty, feel attractive, feel good enough as a woman. Men rely on clothes, gadgets, hats and other accessories, tools, sometimes weaponry. We feel manly and good enough. Buying these things — shopping — is an activity that fills us with more self-worth, or at least staves off the feelings of inadequacy.
New habit: Learn that you don’t need external objects to be attractive or good enough. You are already perfect. Learn to love yourself as you are, without self improvement. Most people aren’t judging you, and if they are, they are not good for you.
3. Memories and holding on to the past. Photo albums, mementos, gifts from loved ones, yearbooks and other school memorabilia, souvenirs, books, trophies, plaques, framed photos, sometimes old clothes … these objects and more hold emotions and memories from the past. They represent good times, perhaps better times, perhaps love from someone special, past glory, shared experiences. But this is living in the past, and while the past is important, it isn’t your life.
New habit: Learn to live in the present. Let the past go, like an old friend who has come to visit and has now left. You can always revisit this old friend later, but there’s no need to hold onto her. Let her live her life, and you live yours. You don’t need objects to represent memories and good times and glory, because those objects aren’t those good times or glory. Those objects aren’t the love that they represent. Live new good times, make new love.
4. Love. It was mentioned above, but it’s actually a separate role. Objects that have emotional value — often gifts or something similar — represent the love of the person who gave them to us. Earrings from your husband, a hand-crafted gift from your child, a book from your parent. We hold onto them because we use them to feel loved.
New habit: Realize that things aren’t love, and that the love is only in people. Go spend time with those people, if possible, and not with things. If the person is gone (possibly dead), realize that the love is in you, not the object, and you don’t need this crutch to feel that love.
5. Possibilities for improvement. Self-improvement books or literature on our shelves we haven’t read, tools for building or making something, exercise equipment or yoga clothes, gardening tools or baking apparatuses, a dusty old bike or running shoes … there are lots of objects we don’t actually use but hope to someday. Holding on to them represents the possibility, sometime in the future, that we will be better. We will improve. We hope, and as long as we hold on to those objects, that hope is alive.
New habit: Squash every bit of hope in yourself. Just kidding. But again, live in the present, not in the future. Do things right now that make you happy, and don’t keep objects as placeholders for some perfect future that will never come. If you don’t use things, give them to someone who will. Maybe keep one, and tell yourself if you don’t use it in the next month, it goes. Mark it on your calendar.
6. Comfort. When we’re feeling lonely or depressed or stressed or frustrated, we often turn to shopping. Buy objects, because they won’t judge you, they will comfort you like a teddy bear or security blanket, they don’t require wooing or coddling in order to be in your life, just a credit card. But they don’t solve any of your problems, and in fact add to your clutter problem and possibly your debt problem.
New habit: Deal with the problems. If they seem tough, deal with them in small steps. Loneliness means we need to connect with other humans, not object. Depression can be helped by talking with people, by getting active. Stress can be relieved by simplifying your life, being active, resting. Frustrating problems are best dealt with by eliminating things or working out better ways of doing things.
7. Procrastination. Sometimes we know we don’t need things but we leave them in huge piles because we don’t want to deal with them. Clutter is procrastination, because it’s easier to leave it and let it pile up than deal with it, just like it’s easier to avoid dealing with problems. Deal with it later, I don’t have time right now. You dread the pile. But putting it off only makes it worse, and the stress of putting it off builds up inside us, deteriorating the quality of our lives.
New habit: Take one piece, and deal with that. Feel good, and take on the next piece. You don’t need to conquer the mountain, but just that first step. Get helped from a friend or partner, and make it fun and social.
8. Excitement. Camping or mountain climbing or skiing or surfing or biking gear can represent excitement in the future. Lots of other objects might also represent future excitement — computers, clothes, jewelry, tools, luggage, and more. Somehow just having these items in our lives means we might someday have more fun.
New habit: Realize you don’t need objects for excitement or fun. You can have fun with nothing. By yourself. Or with a friend. With new friends. Right now, not in the future. And when the future comes, you can still do that, without all this gear.
There are many other roles that clutter plays in our lives, but these are some of the more common ones. Once you start to look at your clutter in this way, you can see that it’s a crutch. That you don’t really need that crutch, because you’re strong enough to learn to live without it. And you’ll be better off without it.

Get Back on Track

Post written by Leo Babauta.

People trying to get healthy and fit all around the country are feeling guilty today after indulging way too much on Thanksgiving — and if you’re outside the U.S., you’ve had this experience on holidays of your own.
You had a great feast, but you feel like you overdid it. And you feel guilty as hell, and you feel like crap.
Toss all those feelings out. And get the hell off your ass and back on track.

I indulge myself nearly every holiday, and feel guilty too — for about a minute. Then I realize that guilt does nothing to get me fitter. I realize the only thing that will get me fitter is eating healthy today — yesterday doesn’t matter — and being active and working out today.
Here’s why yesterday doesn’t matter: one day of overeating makes almost no difference over the long term. And the long term is what really matters, isn’t it? Are we trying to be healthy and fit on one day, or for a lifetime? Over a lifetime, one day means nothing, but what you do on the vast majority of days is what counts.
And so stop the guilt-fest, stop the worrying, and start eating right. Today. Start working out … today.
If you’ve been doing great, that one day was just a day of fun, and you deserve it. Get back on track, and you’ll be great.
If you haven’t been doing great, and you overdid it, you should now have more than enough fuel to start exercising today. Go for a walk, and enjoy the outdoors. Play a sport with family. Do some pushups, squats and lunges instead of sitting around all day. It doesn’t matter what you do, but start moving.
Yesterday came and went, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Today, you will rock. Today, you are the master of your fitness.

Sitting and Watching

‘No matter what gets in the way or which way the wind does blow… I’ll just sit here and watch the river flow.’ ~Bob Dylan
Post written by Leo Babauta.

Have you ever felt that we are rushing through life, that we get so caught up in busy-ness that life is passing us almost without notice?
I get this feeling all the time.
The antidote is simple: sitting and watching.
Take a minute out of your busy day to sit with me, and talk. Take a moment to imagine being in the middle of traffic — you’re driving, stressed out by the high amount of traffic, trying to get somewhere before you’re late, angry at other drivers who are rude or idiotic, completely focused on making your way through this jungle of metal on a ribbon of asphalt. Now you’ve gotten to the end, phew, you made it, wonderful, and you’re only a few minutes late … but did you notice the scenery you passed along the way? Did you talk to any of the other people along your path? Did you enjoy the ride?
No, probably not. You were so caught up in getting there, in the details of navigating, in the stress of driving, that you didn’t have time to notice your surroundings, the people nearby, or the wonderful journey. This is how we are in life.
Now imagine that you pulled over, and got out of the car, and found a grassy spot to sit. And you watched the other cars zoom by. And you watched the grass blown gently by the wind, and the birds making a flocking pattern overhead, and the clouds lazily watching you back.
Sit and watch.
We don’t do this, because it’s useless to do something that isn’t productive, that doesn’t improve our lives. But as Alan Watts wrote in The Way of Zen:
“As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.”
It’s interesting, too, what we see when we sit and watch. We will notice others rushing, and worried, and angry, and in them see a mirror of ourselves. We will notice children laughing (or crying) with their parents, and remember what we’re missing when we rush to improve our lives.
More interesting is what you see when you sit and watch yourself. You learn to step outside yourself, and act as an observer. You see your thoughts, and learn more about yourself than you ever could if you were rushing to take action. You see your self-doubts, and self-criticism, and wonder where they came from (a bad incident in childhood, perhaps?) and wonder if you are smart enough to let them go. You see your rationalizations, and realize that they are bullshit, and learn to let those go too. You see your fears, and realize what hold they have over you, and realize that you can make them powerless, by just sitting and watching them, not taking action on them.
By sitting and watching, you come to know yourself.
You learn the most valuable lessons about life, by sitting and watching.
And as we know from the observer effect in physics, by watching, we change what we watch.
Take a few minutes today, to sit and watch. It might change your life.

Quashing the Self-Improvement Urge

Post written by Leo Babauta.

One of the driving forces of my life for many years was the need to improve myself. It’s one of the driving forces for people who read my work as well.
It’s an incredibly pervasive urge: we are always trying to improve, and if we’re not, that’s something we should improve.
It’s everywhere. Where does this urge come from? It’s embedded in our culture — in the U.S. from Benjamin Franklin to the early entrepreneurial titans, everyone is trying to better themselves. It goes deeper, to ancient Western ideals of the perfect well-rounded person. But it flourished in the 20th century, from Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill to Stephen Covey. And now it’s in full bloom, with blogs. And yes, I’m part of this movement.
So what’s the problem? You could say it’s great that people are constantly trying to improve themselves, but where does it end? When is anyone ever content with who they are? We are taught that we are not good enough yet, that we must improve, and so … we always feel a little inadequate.
This is true no matter how much you’ve accomplished. You might have achieved a thousand goals, but do you have defined abs? Are your boobs big and bouncy? Do you have perfect skin? Have you read every classic in literature? Do you know fine wines, fine art, and every great musician from classical to jazz to punk to rock? Do you have success as an entrepreneur, as a writer? Can you speak several languages, and have you traveled the world? Do you own fewer than 100 things, or a small house? Are you a fast runner, and have you run a 100 miler? Can you Crossfit, or lift 1,000 pounds in the Big Three lifts? Do you have the perfect home, and can you cook gourmet meals? Are you the perfect parent, or have perfect work-life balance? Can you do yoga, meditate, juggle and do magic? Do you brew the perfect cup of coffee, or tea, or beer? Can you recite Shelly, Shakespeare, Homer? Are you good at picking up women, are you the perfect friend, the perfect lover, a romantic husband, a wife who meets her husband’s needs, a master craftsman, a hacker and a programmer, a knitter or sewer, a home-repair expert, knowledgeable in investing and real estate, do you know the perfect system for goals and use the perfect to-do software, is your phone as nice as his, or your bag as nice as hers, do you have cute boots or a manly shave? Are you debt free, or car free or gluten free? Do you give to charity or volunteer at shelters or build schools for Africa? Is your TV as large as mine, or your penis?
Are you adequate? Are you confident of that?
We are never adequate, never perfect, never self-confident, never good enough, never comfortable with ourselves, never satisfied, never there, never content.
And it becomes the reason we buy self-help products, fitness products, gadgets to make us cooler, nicer clothes, nicer cars and homes, nicer bags and boots, plastic surgery and drugs, courses and classes and coaches and retreats. It will never stop, because we will never be good enough.
We must improve. We must read every self-improvement book. When we read a blog, we must try that method, because it will make us better. When we read someone else’s account of his achievements, his goal system, his entrepreneurial lifestyle, her yoga routine, her journaling method, her reading list, we must try it. We will always read what others are doing, in case it will help us get better. We will always try what others are doing, try every diet and every system, because it helped them get better, so maybe it will help us too. Soon, we will find the ultimate solutions, soon we will get there. No, that hasn’t happened yet, but maybe this year will be the year.
Maybe 2012 will be the year we reach perfection.
Or maybe it will never stop, until we die, and that’s a part of life — life is a constant striving for improvement, and we’d hate to ever stop wanting to improve, because that means we’re dead, right? Even if that means that as we die, we wonder if we could have been better, and our last thought is, “Am I adequate as a person?” Even if that means we are never happy with ourselves, at least we are striving to be happy with ourselves, right?
What if instead, we learned to be happy with ourselves?
What would happen?
Would we stop striving to improve? Would that be horrible, if we were just content and didn’t need to better ourselves every minute of every week? Would we be lazy slobs, or would we instead be happy, and in being happy do things that make us happy rather than make us better? And in being happy, perhaps we would show others how to be happy? And crazy as it might sound, maybe we’d start a little mini-revolution of happiness, so that people wouldn’t feel so inadequate, or need to spend every dime on products, or spend all their time on self-improvement.
A revolution of contentment.
Think of how this might simplify your life. Think of how many self-improvement books you read, or listen to in the car. Think of how many products you buy to make yourself better. Think of how many things you read online, in the hopes of being better. Think of how many things you do because you feel inadequate. Think of how much time this would free up, how much mental energy.
Realize that you are already perfect. You are there. You can breathe a sigh of relief.
The urge to improve yourself will come up again. Watch it, like a funny little clown trying to tease your soul, but don’t let your soul feel worse for the teasing. Don’t let yourself react to this little clown, nor feel the pain of his attack. Let him do his dance, say his funny things, and then go away.
Quash the urge to improve, to be better. It only makes you feel inadequate.
And then explore the world of contentment. It’s a place of wonderment.
‘Contentment is the greatest treasure.’ ~Lao Tzu