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Where in the World Do I Start?

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.

The Tiny Guide to Being a Great Dad

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:
Sing with them.
Run around with them.
Make believe with them.
Read to them daily.
Dance with them.
Tell them corny jokes.
Paint with them.
Make videos where they are the star.
Set a healthy example by being active and eating well.
Show them how to be independent.
Teach them critical thinking, rather than just obedience.
Teach them how to teach themselves.
Don’t nag.
Don’t be overprotective.
Show them you’re proud of them.
Let them make mistakes.
When they get hurt, use that moment to teach them how to deal with pain.
Show interest in what they’re interested in, and don’t make it seem trivial.
Show them how to work passionately.
Spend some quiet cuddly time with them.
Make them pancakes with faces.
Have Nerf dart gun fights.
Play board games.
Take them on hikes.
Play sports with them.
Show them how to use a knife.
Be honest.
Honor your commitments.
Love your wife, and treat her with respect.
Be compassionate to others, and them.
Be happy with yourself.

20 Small Actions to Create a Fit Environment

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:
Get rid of the snacks. Don’t keep them in your house or you’ll be more likely to eat them.
Don’t buy convenience food. You’re likely to eat this when you’re too tired to cook.
Instead, cook big batches of healthy food once a week. Have it in the fridge, ready to be heated up.
Take healthy snacks to work.
Create a healthy eating challenge with your coworkers.
Join Fitocracy (invite code: zenhabits) and make friends there. Log your activities.
Join a running club.
Find a workout partner.
Set up an appointment with your best friend to go walking or running every day.
Get a coach.
Set fitness challenges with your friends. Log them online, on Facebook or some other social site.
Have a chinup bar in your doorway, and do a chinup every time you walk by.
Join a sports team.
Have nuts and fruit with you when you’re on the go.
Make it hard to turn on the TV (put it in the closet or something).
Use a program like LeechBlock or Freedom to shut the Internet down at a certain time each day.
Have healthy potlucks with friends or family.
Publicly commit to posting body pics or measurements each week on your blog.
Make a list of healthy restaurants, or healthy meals at other restaurants, for when you feel like eating out.
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.

The Most Important Skill to Master

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:
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.
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.
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.
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

The Three-Day Monk Syndrome

‘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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?

Infusing Play into Mundane Tasks

‘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?
Though I don’t want to tell you how to play, by request, here are a few quick examples:
Sing as you do chores
Use dishwashing as a form of mindfulness practice
Make a game of computer tasks — see how fast you can get your inbox to empty (set a timer)
Give yourself points for checking off your tasks, and see how many points you can get each day
Skip instead of walk
Imagine you are in a movie when you walk into a meeting
Give yourself challenges
Make bets with friends when it comes to doing things you don’t normally like doing
Play music, dance around
Do a victory dance after you do anything good
Annoy your co-workers by calling them Jeeves
Only text people in Spanish
Play games to learn things
When you send an email, make fax noises
When you have to clean something, give a play-by-play of your actions with a Howard Cossell voice
Imagine that your co-workers are robots, or vampires
Talk to your computer, and give it a name
Pretend you’ve never been anywhere before, and that everywhere is new
Anytime you do something, ask, “What would Dwight Schrute Do?” (WWDSD?)
Try to rhyme your emails or tweets
OK, those weren’t all great, but I’m sure you could think of better ones once you get into the right mindset.
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

The Tiny Guide to Creating the Flossing Habit

‘Floss the teeth you want to keep.’ ~dentist, quoted by Nick Crocker
Post written by Leo Babauta.

For many years, I rarely flossed, and as a result had some not-so-pleasant dental problems. I always knew I should have been flossing, but could never make the habit stick.
Creating the habit of flossing is a recent triumph for me, and because I’ve had a bunch of people ask about flossing, I decided to share what works best.
Let’s start by saying I’m not an expert on flossing. But I do know a thing or two about creating the habit of flossing, and that’s what we’re focusing on here.
I do know that flossing can fairly quickly improve your dental health. If you haven’t been flossing, it’s likely that you have some kind of gum infection, and so flossing will cause some unpleasant (but not really painful) bleeding. That’s normal, and it will go away after a few days of flossing (at least in my experience).
Your teeth will also start to feel cleaner, which is an amazing experience. And when you go to the dentist (you should, if you aren’t regularly, trust me), you’ll get a much better report, and have much less nasty dental work to be done.
Let’s take a look at how to form the habit of flossing.
Forming the Habit

These are the steps that worked for me:
Pick a trigger. For a habit to be automatic, it needs a trigger — something that is already in your daily routine. If you already brush your teeth every morning, regularly, then I suggest that as your trigger. Actually, a better trigger is going to brush your teeth — say you go into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and reach for your toothbrush … that’s your trigger. Floss right at that point, before you brush your teeth, and then brush your teeth after.
Have a visual reminder. The key is to do the new habit right after the trigger, but at first you might easily forget. So have the dental floss right next to your toothbrush, where you won’t forget it. You might also put up a note next to your bathroom mirror so you can’t possibly forget.
Floss just one tooth. This is an old idea, but it works well. Start your habit by just flossing one tooth. It’s so remarkably easy that you won’t be able to say it’s too hard, or you don’t have the time. It will feel a bit ridiculous, but just do it. On day two, floss two teeth. Slowly expand every 1-3 days until you’re flossing all your teeth. Sure, you won’t get the full benefit of flossing all your teeth at first, but the key is not to get the full benefit but to create a habit that lasts.
Focus on the enjoyment. Many people put off flossing because it seems hard or boring or unpleasant, but it doesn’t have to be. Flossing is a pleasurable activity if you allow yourself to be present, and think about how your teeth are getting cleaner and how nice that is. I love the feeling of clean teeth.
Mark it on your calendar. Every day you floss, mark a big X on your calendar (Jerry Seinfeld’s secret). Try to string together a bunch of Xs, and you’re golden.
That’s really all it takes. Focus on this one habit for a few weeks to a month, and you’ll have a new flossing habit. Matt Frazier did this, along with a bunch of other habits, and it helped change his life (read his amazing story). It’s such a simple thing, but it can change yours too.

Beating the Anxiety of Online Reading

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I am a huge fan of reading online — I can generally do it for hours a day. But with the explosion of great blogs, online magazines and news sources, personal development sites, social media and more … how do you deal with the anxiety that comes with it?
Anxiety often results from:
Trying to keep up with all of your reading sources, online networks, etc., which have an endless stream of posts.
Trying to catch up with a reading backlog that might have items that are months or even a year old.
Being afraid that you’re missing important or key articles or posts.
Not being sure that you’re reading all the best blogs and sites, or following the most important people on Twitter or Facebook.
And so on. This is an extremely common form of anxiety. Take a reader, Eric, who recently wrote:
I have been struggling with the problem of keeping up with all the awesome self-development websites & blogs for quite a while and I thought I would ask you for your suggestion. The only self-development websites I am subscribed to as a regular reader include yours, Scott Young, Steve Aitchison’s and Lifehacker. I have plenty more that I want to add to my regular list of blogs, but even with just the blogs I regularly read, I frequently have difficulty keeping up with all the excellent articles that are posted on an ongoing basis. My current “waitlist” of articles consists of over 350 articles, among which the oldest one was written in April of last year!
How do you deal with this? It’s a matter of letting go, and realizing you can’t ever, ever possibly read 1% of the good stuff that’s out there. It’s absolutely impossible. And so you must let go, or the anxiety will never end.
Trying to keep up is not only impossible, but a great waste of your life. You could be spending some of that time creating, pursuing a dream, exercising, learning a new skill, spending time with a loved one, or taking a nap. Any of those would be better than trying to keep up with everything, or worrying about it.
How do you let go? More below.
But first, one additional point … Eric also writes:
I have considered subscribing to only the very best ones, because many blogs borrow content from other better blogs. But just the work of trying to research the best ones through trial & error by reading sample articles takes a toll on my time & energy because there are just too many websites and I don’t want to wrongly eliminate some great blogs based on a few of their less-than-average articles. My biggest fear is falling behind on some really important productivity findings, insights and so on, with the rapid rate at which information is expanding these days.
It’s also impossible to know what the best blogs are, and to be sure you’re reading all of them. It’s impossible to find the best posts on the best blogs. This is not an important goal, and should also be let go. The reason for this lies in a philosophy of life, which I call the River Flow philosophy. Let’s take a quick look.
The River Flow Philosophy

If life is a river, and all the information out there (including blogs, social media, etc.) makes up the water, as well as all the possible experiences in the world … imagine trying to consume the entire river. Consuming an entire river is obviously impossible for one person, and no one would ever try.
Trying to consume all information and get all experiences in life is like trying to consume the entire river. Impossible.
Now imagine that you wanted to taste all the best drops of water in the river. How would you go about doing that? Well, you wouldn’t know where the best drops were, and so you might have to sample huge amounts of water to find out. Or you could ask various fish and fishermen, and they might have different opinions, and so you could test out all their recommendations, but that could take a lifetime, and even then you wouldn’t be sure you didn’t miss out on the best drops of water.
This is how many people approach finding the best blogs, the best books, the best movies, the best experiences in life … they try out a huge amount, or read a lot of recommendations and spend a lot of time testing the recommendations. That takes an entire lifetime. And still they might have missed out (actually, they almost certainly did).
Notice the futility of all of this activity. Now imagine that you let go of the goal of tasting all the best drops of water, which isn’t a necessary thing at all.
What might you do instead? Try the drop of water flowing towards you at this moment, and enjoy it. It might not be the best drop of water in the river, but who is to say? Maybe it is. Maybe if you love that drop fully, it will be the best, regardless of how good other drops are.
Enjoy the post or article you do read, and don’t worry about the rest.
Enjoy the experiences you have, and forget about those you don’t experience.
Have fun with the people you’re with, and don’t worry about who you’re missing.
Life is a flowing river, and worrying about every drop is futile. The water you’re in now is the best.
The Art of Letting Go

How do you let go of all the articles you want to read but can’t? How do you let go of the worry that you’re missing great articles? How do you forget about your backlog?
Wipe the slate clean.
Every day, you’re not adding to a new list on a whiteboard — those you’ve read and those you still have to read — but instead you’re starting on a clean whiteboard. This clean board is empty of what you’ve already done, but also empty of what you still need to accomplish. It’s blank, which means the possibilities are endless, and the guilt is zero.
Wipe the slate clean every day.
You don’t need to worry about your reading lists. Mark them all as read. Don’t worry about all the social media posts you haven’t read. Don’t worry about all the blogs there are to search through, or all the news sites there are to keep up with. Each day, your slate is clean.
Then you can decide how to fill that slate each day, and enjoy whatever you choose to experience. Then let go, with a new slate each day.
You won’t get to everything either way, nor will you find the best of the best either way. So enjoy the water you’re in.

The Little Guide to Contentedness

‘He who is contented is rich.’ ~Lao Tzu
Post written by Leo Babauta.

There has been little in my life that has made as much an impact as learning to be content — with my life, where I am, what I’m doing, what I have, who I’m with, who I am.
This little trick changes everything.
Let’s take a look at my life before contentedness:
I was addicted to junk food and fast food, and overweight and unhealthy. I bought too many things on impulse, owned too much clutter, and was deeply in debt and struggling to make it to the next payday. I was unhappy with who I was, wanted desperately to change, tried a thousand different programs and books. I was always worried I was missing out on exciting things, and wanted so much to be out doing the fun things everyone else was doing. I was always changing the way I did things, because it seemed everyone else had a better system or tools. I strove to meet goals, because they would get me to a better life.
And as I learned to be content, here was what changed:
I learned to be happy with healthier food, with less food, and my health improved and waistline shrunk. I relied on a good book, spending time with people I loved, going for a nice run … and my debt began to be reduced as I learned I didn’t need to spend money to enjoy myself. I learned to be happier with who I was, and what I was doing, and so no longer needed self-improvement books and programs, no longer needed to try all kinds of new systems and tools. I became happy with myself, with those around me, and with what I had — and so didn’t need to strive to change everything. Letting go of goals helped me to simplify things so I had less to worry about, less to do.
That’s just the start. There is no way to account for the tremendous change that happens when you learn to accept who you are, when you tell yourself you are perfect just as you are, when you love yourself and everything about yourself. You stop criticizing yourself, you are happier, you are a better person to be around, and you can now help others and work without the insecurities you had before.
This is not a magical state, and doesn’t require any new tools or books. It’s simple, and I’ll share what has worked for me.
Learning to Be Content

If you are in a bad place in your life, and are unhappy with everything about it (job, relationship, yourself, house, habits, etc.), it can be a miserable thing. But here’s something interesting: it can also be a happy thing.
I’ve been in situations where you might think things were bad, and sometimes I was very unhappy, and other times I was happy. The difference wasn’t in the external circumstances, but in my mindset — I learned to appreciate what I had, instead of focusing on the things I didn’t have or didn’t like. I was grateful for my health, for the people in my life, for having food and being alive.
If you can learn to develop the right mindset, you can be happy now, without changing anything else. You don’t need to wait until you’ve changed everything and made your life perfect before you’re happy — you have everything you need to be happy right now.
The mindset of waiting for happiness is a never-ending cycle. You get a better job (yay!) and then immediately start thinking about what your next promotion will be. You get a nicer house and immediately start looking at how nice your neighbors’ houses are, or the faults in the house you have. You try to change your spouse or kids, and if that works (good luck), you’ll find other things about them that need to be changed. It keeps going, until you die.
Instead, learn that you can be content now, without any external changes. Here’s how to start:
Take a moment to be grateful for something. What in your life is amazing? Even if everything seems to suck, there must be one good thing. It might simply be that you have beauty somewhere nearby, or that you are alive, or that your kids are healthy. Find something, and give thanks for that.
Catch yourself thinking, “This sucks.” It’s amazing how often people think this thought. “This sucks!” “My co-worker is the worst — he sucks!” “My wife doesn’t understand me — this suuucks!” It might be in different words, but if you catch yourself thinking something like that, pause. Reverse the thinking. Find a way to be thankful for the situation. “My wife is a caring and sweet person — maybe I should give her a hug.” “My co-worker might be annoying sometimes, but he has a good heart, and maybe I should get to know him better.” “My room might be messy but at least I have a roof over my head.”
Find the little things that can give you simple joys. What do you need to be happy? I love simple things, like taking a walk, spending time with a loved one, reading a book, eating some berries, drinking tea. These cost very little, and require very little, and can make me very happy. Find the simple things that give you similar happiness, and focus on those rather than what you don’t have.
Find the things about yourself that you’re happy with. We tend to criticize ourselves easily, but what if we turned it around and asked, “What do I do right? What am I good at? What is loveable about me?” Make a list. Start to focus on these things rather than what you’re unhappy with.
Do the same with others in your life. Instead of criticizing them, ask yourself, “What is good about this person? What do I love about them?” Make a list, and focus on these things above all else.
Assume that you, others, and life are perfect. You are great, and don’t need improvement. You aren’t a piece of clay that must be shaped and molded into something better — you are already perfect. Other people are also just as perfect, and don’t need improvement. You just need to appreciate them for who they are. The moment we are living in is not a stepping stone to something better — it is exactly wonderful, and we have already arrived at the perfect moment.
The Contented Life

It might be useful to look at what life would be like if you learned to be content:
Self image. We compare ourselves with the images in our head of perfection — movie stars, models in magazines, other people who seem to have it all together — and we can never measure up to those perfect images. But those images are not real. They are an imagined ideal. Even the beautiful people have bad hair days and feel flabby, and if you take away their photoshopped and heavily-made-up façade, you see that they are every bit as human as you are. Even the people who seem successful, living exciting lives — they have the same self-doubts you have. So if they don’t live up to this ideal image, why should you? And even if they did (which they don’t), why would you need to? When we let go of this image of perfection, we realize that we are already exactly who we should be. And then, all our need for self-improvement, and all the activity and effort and pain that implies, fades away. We are happy with ourselves, and nothing else is needed.
Relationships. If you are content with yourself, you are more likely to be a good friend, partner, parent. You are more likely to be happy and friendly and loving, more likely to be as accepting of others as you are of yourself. Relationships improve, especially when others learn to be content with themselves, from your example.
Health. Much of our culture’s unhealthiness comes from unhappiness — eating junk food to give ourselves comfort and relieve stress, not exercising because we think we can’t (because we have a bad self-image), being glued online because we think we might miss something if we turn off the computer or iPhone. When you realize that you aren’t missing anything, and you don’t need junk food to be happy, and you are good enough to exercise, you can slowly return to health.
Possessions. The overload of possessions in our lives comes from unhappiness — we buy things because we think they’ll give us comfort, coolness, happiness, security, an exciting life. When we become content with ourselves and our lives, we realize none of that is necessary, and we can start getting rid of these extraneous crutches.
Busy-ness. Much of our busy-ness comes from fear that we should be doing more, that we might be missing out, that we aren’t enough already. But we are enough, and we don’t need more, and we aren’t missing out. So we can let go of a lot of unnecessary activity, and just focus on doing what we love, and give ourselves the space to enjoy a contented life.
This is all just a few scratches on the surface of a contented life, but it gives you a picture of what might be. And the truth is, once you learn the simple trick of contentedness, it’s really a picture of what already is. You just need to let go of the fears, and see what is already here.
‘Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.’ ~Lao Tzu

Health Benefits of Tomatoes!

- Helps prevent several kinds of cancer
- Good for your kidneys
- Helps repair damage caused by smoking.
- Good for your skin.
- Good for your vision
- Full of anti-oxidants
- Helps maintain strong bones
- Good for your hair.