Personal Development Blog For Living Your Full Potential

By  Leo Babauta As New Year’s resolutions fade and we realize we need to try something else to get fit … I invite you to try a combination of two things that I’ve found to work really well: Mindfulness : As I’ve said many times before, mindfulness is such a powerful and fundamental practice that helps form any habit. Mini-challenges : I’ve found that short, 1-week mini-challenges are a hugely motivational way to form a habit like exercise or meditation. So for February, I’m issuing  the Mindful Fitness Challenge , and it will get you in better shape than you’ve been in for awhile! OK, so how does this challenge work? It’s simple: Pick the mini-challenge level  just above  where you’ve been at consistently  — for example, if you don’t exercise at all right now, just pick the “start moving” challenge. If you regularly exercise a few times a week, try the “daily exercise” challenge. If you exercise regularly for 30-60 minutes most days a week, do an a...

By Leo Babauta I don’t consider myself a parenting expert, but I have helped raise six kids (along with their mothers), and being a father has been one of the most rewarding things in my life. And while I’m not a perfect father, I think I’m pretty good at it. Mostly because I absolutely love it. Eva and I also have some slightly non-conventional parenting ideas that might be useful to parents who are always looking for new ways of thinking about things. So I’m going to share the best things I’ve learned about raising children, not because my way is the best, but because it’s always helpful to have a discussion about parenting. A really important note: Much of the work of parenting, if not most, was done by my kids’ moms (my wife Eva and my first two kids’ mom). I can only take a little credit. Here are some of the best things I’ve learned: Your main job is just to love them . We have to take care of their basic needs, of course, but parents add all kinds of extra things on top ...

There are three simple tactics that you can use to totally change your behavior for the better. The post The 3 Steps to Either Build a Good Habit or Break a Bad Habit appeared first on Good News Network .

If you need some motivation to persevere through failure, just listen to Wes Anderson's retelling of how his first movie screening was a disaster. The post Why You Should Always Persevere: Watch Famous Filmmaker’s Amusing Tale of How His First Movie Bombed appeared first on Good News Network .

“He who would travel happily must travel light.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry By Leo Babauta I’m on a trip at the moment, and a friend who generously let me sleep on his couch looked at my small travel backpack and commented on how little I travel with: “That’s impressive,” he said. I was a little surprised, because though I’ve gotten that comment before, it’s become normal for me to travel with just a small bag (10 lbs. or less, usually), and I have friends who travel with even less. But then I remembered that I’m far from normal in this way. I gave him a tip for getting started, and I recommend it for all of you, who want to travel light — or ultralight, as I call it, because for many people traveling light is taking a carry-on roller luggage. For me, having those roller bags is lugging too much, because you can run up stairs with it with ease, or carry it all over a city without worrying about stowing away your luggage somewhere first. It’s so much easier to travel ultralight. ...

Though it might take some time to find your career path calling, the rewards are more than worth the work. The post Advice From a ‘Shark Tank’ Star: Why the Challenges of Starting Your Own Business are 100% Worth It appeared first on Good News Network .

The Lesson: Although we often attribute the invasive nature of new technology as the reason for our anxieties, we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn it—because if these same feelings also existed 100 years ago, during a quieter and simpler time, then perhaps technology is not the root cause of this feeling. Notable Excerpt: “Maybe […] The post Maybe It’s Not the Technology That’s Making Us Feel Bad – 2-Minutes of ‘Happier’ with Gretchen Rubin appeared first on Good News Network .

From our 50th episode on the radio in Los Angeles… A man stuck in long airport security lines thought no one cared that he would miss his grandson’s funeral—but employees at this airline delivered the most incredible customer service. Click the play button above, and hear The Good News Guru tell the amazing story (from the January […] The post This Story, From the New Book, Will Lift You 40,000 Feet – Hear it Now on Our 50th Episode of Good News Guru! appeared first on Good News Network .

Dr. King’s efforts initiated changes that would transform American society. That’s why the nation celebrates Martin Luther King Day on the third Monday of every January. It’s a chance to reflect on what he meant for the nation—and what made his leadership so successful. In this episode, we’re going to explore the leadership legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

By Leo Babauta In all of my many challenges and habit changes and book writing and learning, I’ve found one thing to be the most powerfully beneficial to all growth, learning and training. I call it the Rule of the Edge . Here’s the rule: practice at your edge most of the time . And this rule is what will help you grow the most, over time. What do I mean by “your edge”? I mean going just to the edge of discomfort, just to the edge of what is difficult for you, what is pushing your boundaries a bit. If you’re practicing music, and you just practice the scales all the time, after awhile, doing the scales is too easy for you. You aren’t learning very much by only practicing musical scales. Sure, it’s still a good practice, but you have to push to something that’s more challenging for you. If you’re exercising, easy exercise is a good thing … but you also need to push yourself. Just a bit. But your edge isn’t pushing yourself until you’re ready to collapse . It’s not pushing to inj...

By Leo Babauta Life is full of all kinds of stresses, and each of us has habitual ways of reacting to those stresses — we procrastinate, run to comforts, lash out or distance ourselves from others, try to exit from a stressful place, mentally complain about others. The sad effect of these habitual reactions is that they move us further away from others, and from the direct experience of the moment . Let’s take a quick example: If you are hurt by the way someone is acting, your habitual reaction might be complaining about them, taking offense, getting angry (all of these or a combo). Then you shut them out, closing your heart to them, moving away from them. The effect of this is that you’ve now distanced yourself from the other person. And I submit that this is the cause of most of our relationship problems, work issues, violence, racism, political strife, and wars. Closing our hearts to others and creating distance from them out of habitual reaction to stress is the heart of aggre...

Michael and Megan Respond to Listener Questions Leaders make decisions, but clarity can be hard to come by. In this episode, listeners fire their most pressing questions at Michael and Megan. They bring practical solutions to the problems many leaders face, based on more than 30 years of business experience.

How to Triple the Likelihood of Achieving Your Most Important Goals Leaders dream big. But too often, our greatest goals get lost in the whirlwind of daily tasks and interruptions. Today, we’ll give you three simple practices that will ensure your goals stay on track all year long . You’ll avoid the pain of seeing your biggest goals slip through your fingers. And you’ll feel satisfaction at seeing steady progress until they are finally achieved.

How to Conduct an Annual Preview High achievers love the start of the new year and the prospect of new goals. The problem is that fresh enthusiasm can evaporate with the holiday cheer. Diving back into the whirlwind can be stressful and frustrating. We don’t think your goal achievement should fluctuate with the seasons. In this episode, we reveal a simple five-step plan that will launch you into the new year with focus and energy. Listen to this podcast, and you’ll avoid the January goal slump, and make 2019 your best year ever!

By Leo Babauta My friends, I am on a mission. I am going to change a million lives through my uncertainty training, helping people shift how they deal with fear and the chaos of their lives. Every day, we deal with doubts, with feeling overwhelmed, with frustration and anger, with loneliness and disconnection, with stress and anxiety, with discomfort and change. And in times of trouble, we deal with the uncertainty of death, massive change, illness, loss of jobs, collapsing finances and growing debt, incredible fears, shifting economy and turbulent politics. It’s enough to make us want to give up, or run to our comforts. But this seeking of comforts and exits, hiding from fears, lashing out at others in frustration … it only makes things worse. It’s throwing gasoline on the fire, and hoping it helps the situation. So I’m on a mission. I want to help people shift how they deal with this massive and daily uncertainty, so that they can do meaningful work in the world. Doing meaning...

By Leo Babauta As we start to form new habits for a new year, one of the primary questions to ask ourselves is: what habit should I start with? What habit will help set me up for success for all other habits? After nearly 15 years of changing my own habits, and a dozen years writing about habit changes and coaching others to change their habits … the answer is clear to me. The fundamental habit that helps all other habits to stick better is meditation (and mindfulness in general). And so, I’d like to challenge you to drop deeper into mindfulness, whether you’re fairly new to meditation or you’ve been a meditator for two decades or more. I’m calling it the Drop Deeper into Mindfulness Challenge , and here’s how it works: Pick the level just above where you’ve been at consistently — for example, if you don’t meditate regularly, pick the “regular meditation” level. If you meditate regularly for 2-5 minutes, do the 10-minute meditation challenge. If you regularly meditate every d...

By Leo Babauta It’s a new year, and many of us are looking to make positive changes in our lives. The best way to do that is not by making resolutions, but by creating habits that will stick for the long term. If you want to run a marathon, form the habit of running. If you want to write a novel, form the writing habit. If you want to be more mindful, form the habit of meditation. Of course, that’s easier said than done — just form new habits, no problem! So in this guide, I’m going to lay out the key steps to forming the habits that will change your life. If you’d like help forming these habits, I invite you to join me and more than a thousand others changing one habit at a time in my Sea Change Program. Steps to Creating a Habit Pick a positive habit . I recommend you find new, positive habits to form, rather than starting with quitting a bad habit. If you want to quit eating junk food … focus instead on creating the habit of eating more vegetables. Good positive habits to sta...

By Leo Babauta We have a new year upon us, and while “January 1” is just an arbitrary date, for most of us, it feels like a new beginning. And there’s something beautifully minimalist about this new beginning — it’s a blank slate, where we can do anything, imagine possibilities, become a new person. In fact, this is available to us in any moment: each new second is a fresh beginning, a new opportunity, a chance to start over, a blank canvas to be filled with whatever art we are moved to create. Let’s imagine this new year as a blank slate. It’s like an empty house: what would we like to put in it? This is a kind of minimalism. We can start afresh, tossing out everything and only placing in this empty house what we find most important, and nothing more. What would you like to do with the minimalist blank slate of this new year? Ask yourself: Do you want to fill it with distractions, or keep only the most important work, relationships, commitments? Do you want to be constantly ...