Leo Babauta - Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art  of Change,  Briefly

Essential Zen Habits

Mastering the Art

of Change,

Briefly

Leo Babauta

Uncopyright

All ideas in this book are stolen and have no owner. This entire work is therefore uncopyrighted and in the public domain. No permission is required to copy, reprint, or otherwise gleefully rip off anything Ive written.

I dont believe in the right to deny the freedom of ideas.

For my dad, Jose Babauta, whose passion for the truth of art inspired who I am. And for my friend Scott Dinsmore, who always dreamed big. I miss you both.

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. -Okakura Kakuzo

Theres a projector in our minds, and its constantly playing a movie about how wed like things to be, our ideals about the world, our expectations of how things will turn out, how others should be, how we should be. These images arent based on reality, but are just a fantasy this film projector has created from nothing.

It turns out that this fantasy, which I call the Mind Movie, is what stands in our way of making habit changes. As well-intentioned as the mind is when it creates this fantasy, its also causing us frustration, struggle, bad feelings about ourselves, procrastination, distraction, and more. In other words, this Mind Movie is at the heart of all of our problems.

Creating a new habit, for example, should be a pretty simple task. In theory. Its simply repeating an action after a trigger (say, the habit of writing after the trigger of your morning coffee) over and over until it becomes more and more automatic. If you do the action after the trigger every day for about six weeks, you should have a fairly automatic habit. Do it for several months, and itll be pretty ingrained in your life.

So if its so simple, why do we struggle to create new habits and drop old bad habits? Because the mind is like a little child constantly seeking comfort and pleasure and control. This Childish Mind is playing a Mind Movie all the time, about how our lives should be so comfortable and pleasurable and orderly. The mind then runs from discomfort and fear and change and confusion, which arent at all the fantasy playing in the Mind Movie.

Unfortunately, creating a new habit or dropping an old habit cant be done without discomfort. When we change our usual way of doing things, this becomes uncomfortable sometimes to a really strong degree. The Mind Movie tells us that changing a habit should be easy and fun, but the reality is that we must wander outside our comfort zone. And so the Childish Mind rebels. It throws a tantrum.

This Mind Movie and the rebellion of the Childish Mind is not just at the heart of our struggles with habit change; its at the heart of all our struggles. When we procrastinate on the important work we want to do, when we avoid pursuing our creative dreams because of fear of failure, when we struggle with healthy eating and exercise, when we are frustrated with other people or ourselves or our life situation these struggles are a result of the Childish Mind and the Mind Movie.

How I changed my life

I struggled for many years with health problems, procrastination, debt, being stuck in jobs I didnt like, never pursuing my dreams, being overweight, not being able to quit smoking or junk food. I struggled with the Childish Mind and the Mind Movie, and didnt realize why I was struggling. What was wrong with me?

I tried many times to change all my habits, sometimes succeeding for a week or two, but always ending in failure and guilt. Id end up just feeling worse about myself.

I finally overcame this cycle of failure and guilt by completely focusing myself on one habit change (quitting smoking), and not letting my Childish Mind run away from the discomfort. It was a massive struggle, but I learned that I didnt need to listen to this Childish Mind, that it would raise hell but ultimately all the complaining was just noise.

I proved to myself that I could overcome the resistance, and I learned to turn from the Mind Movie to embrace the reality in front of me. The moment in front of me was awesome.

I also learned to change habits in tiny steps, gradually, so that the Childish Mind wouldnt rebel so violently. One at a time, I changed my eating habits slowly over long periods of time. One change at a time, I was able to start running, start writing in the morning, start a business, start paying off my debt and saving and investing, start getting rid of clutter. I became a minimalist, a published author, a vegan, a marathoner, and more.

All from learning to deal with the Childish Mind.

Id like to share what Ive learned with you, in this small volume of distilled methods. I challenge you to work with me on these skills over the next 6 weeks.

I wrote a longer version of this book in 2014, but for this second edition, I decided to toss out those carefully crafted chapters with their stories and longish explanations. For this edition, I wanted no fluff, just the essentials.

So, with inspiration from a blog post by author Derek Sivers (sivers.org), Ive decided to compress this book into a series of Just Do This instructions. Ill explain the instructions, but I wont go into detailed reasoning or stories. Ill assume youre ready to make a change, and you trust me to tell you what Ive found to work. Ill assume youre going to do your best to implement the instructions.

In return, youll get everything Ive learned about changing habits and dealing with struggle in a compact volume that you can read in minutes a day, or all in one day if you wanted.

You can read it however you like, but I recommend that you:

1. Set aside 10 minutes every morning, and read one chapter a day.
2. Create one new habit for the next six weeks (not quit an old habit).
3. Follow the weekly focuses that I set out in this book, for your new habit.
4. Then read through the Troubleshooting, Quitting a Bad Habit and Life Struggles sections.
5. Finally, wrap it all up with the Just Do This section at the end, which will distill all of this book into a few pages of brief instructions.

In this book, Ill give you a method for dealing with the Childish Mind and the Mind Movie. If you practice the method over the next six weeks and beyond, it will help you not only become better at changing habits, but dealing with procrastination and life struggles.

This book isnt about how to make yourself a better person its about how to remove the things that get in your way.

The Challenge: Commit to making a small change

I hereby issue a challenge to you: Commit to reading one brief section of this book every day (usually the daily missions, just a paragraph each), and commit to making one small change in your life as you read this book (but dont start the change yet!).

Each section is short and the missions in the chapters are easy, and all together the reading and missions should take about 10 minutes a day.

This challenge is essential to this book: if you put the ideas into action, youll learn them through practice. If you just read the book without acting (which you are probably tempted to do), youre wasting your time.

So: are you up for the challenge? If you are, make a decision this minute to make one small change as you read this book. Be all in. Dont start until Day 6 of the Week 1 chapter, but today you can make a strong commitment to yourself.

Instead of doing a chapter on each of these ideas, here are the key concepts youll see throughout this book:

1. Mind Movie: The fantasy your mind plays in its head about how things should be. This fantasy might be about how nice your life would be if you had a meditation habit, or ate healthily, or got fit with Crossfit. The fantasy might be about how disciplined or productive or mindful you should be. It might be about how considerate other people should be to you, or how they should ideally behave, or how great your life should be. These fantasies arent true, but your mind believes them anyway, because it really wants them to be true. It feels like they should be real. Unfortunately, these Mind Movies get in our way of appreciating life and making healthy changes, and they create struggle for us.