Personal Development Blog For Living Your Full Potential

By Leo Babauta Most people feel busy and distracted throughout the day — calm and focus and a feeling of purpose are fairly rare for most of us. We’re jumping from messages to social media to email to quick work tasks to a search for something we’re curious about, from dozens of messages to dozens of posts to a couple doze browser tabs. All day long, one quick thing to the next, putting off anything that requires much more focus than that. The term “monkey mind” captures this fairly well — our minds swinging from one branch to the next, jumping around without pause. It’s not quite accurate (monkeys rests a lot of the time, and it’s apes that swing from branches, not monkeys) … but the image is vivid enough. This is actually how our minds are much of the time, but it can feel stressful and unfocused. Many of us would like a calmer, more focused way of being, at least some of the time. How do we develop this kind of focused mind, able to come to rest? This is one of the biggest pro...

As a leader, you know you’re responsible for the vision of your company. And you have one—sort of. It exists in the back of your head, but it’s really hard to get it down on paper. There never seems to be enough time to do it. And, when it comes right down to it, you’re not all that sure why it matters.  It’s hard enough to keep your business going from day to day. Who has time for navel gazing?

The internet reachable by Google has over a million terabytes of data . Every minute 300 hours of new video is added to YouTube . In the time it took to read this sentence, at least 10,000 new tweets have appeared on Twitter . We’re drowning in information, so it’s only natural to feel overwhelmed. Right? I was asked about this in a recent podcast: how can you deal with information overload? On the surface, it seems like a completely reasonable question. There is so much more to read, watch and respond to that it can feel a bit overwhelming. However, I think the explosion of data hasn’t really changed much about how we ought to stay informed. Most things aren’t worth reading. Of those that are, there’s an enormous amount of redundancy built in. The amount of truly original ideas worth learning is much, much smaller than statistics like I quoted above would lead you to believe. On the (Relative) Paucity of Good Ideas If ideas, as opposed to mere information, were truly exploding...

4 Simple Steps to Beat the Law of Diminishing Intent The turn of the year is always a good time to evaluate what’s working in our lives, what’s not, and make any changes that will start us down a better path. As we pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go, we normally have a sense of what to do. But that sense comes with a risk. Even if it only represents an inkling of clarity about what to do, it’s imperative that you act immediately. If you don’t, you can fall prey to the Law of Diminishing Intent . The Law of Diminishing Intent I see this with people who set major goals for the year . Let’s say they want to lose weight, write a book, or start a new business. Dreaming up big results can be emotionally satisfying and intellectually stimulating. But getting started requires action. And that can be tough, even risky. After all, how can you… make room in your schedule for the gym? find the hours it takes each week to sit and write? know if your new product...

By Leo Babauta If we’re absolutely honest with ourselves, most of us are only half-committed to most things — in many cases, much less than half-committed. We say that we’re going to change our diet, but are we fully committed? Do we make a meal plan and buy the groceries and clear out the junk food and set time in our calendar to prep meals for the week and change our habit of eating out much of the time? Do we feel so committed in our hearts that we’d bet our lives on it? We make a commitment at work (to our team, client, partner) but we don’t fully show up. We get distracted, we procrastinate, we are only half in it much of the time. We do the same thing to the people we love — we’re only half there for them. How often do we show up fully, with deep commitment? This is not about blaming or shaming, not about being judgmental or criticizing ourselves. This is about getting clear on whether we’re fully committed to anything , and getting very clear on the effects of that in our ...

By Leo Babauta Let’s imagine that you’re a reasonably healthy adult with all of your basic needs met, people who care about you in your life, and things you enjoy doing available to you … you should be pretty happy, right? It turns out, even in this incredibly lucky scenario, most of us still struggle — stress, anxiety, frustration, overwhelm, letting ourselves and others down, disappointment, hurt feelings, anger, feeling like you’re always behind … it all creates a sense of unease that is not aligned with our fortunate circumstances. So how do we go about enjoying life, finding a sense of peace and calm and purposeful focus? I’ve found mindfulness practices to be the key. They’re not a magical solution to anything, but they do ease the suffering we experience in our lives. Those of you who who have practiced meditation for awhile know what I’m talking about. Let’s look at a few ways to deepen into the practice, if you’re interested. Step 1: Drop Into Direct Experience of the Mo...

To lead a growing business, you need a strong team. But finding and keeping talent is a challenge. Sometimes it seems that good people leave faster than you can hire them. You’ve added all the perks you can think of, but nothing will stop the revolving door.  Why does staffing have to be so hard?

This theologian may have grown up with a certain amount of skepticism towards Christianity, but an encounter with her deceased grandfather changed her mind. The post Woman Found Religious Peace After Receiving ‘Blessing’ From Deceased Grandfather in Ireland (MOTH Monday) appeared first on Good News Network .

The Science Behind Reading and Influence Pollsters say reading is in decline. As an author and former publishing executive, the statistics make me wince. But I’m optimistic for another reason. Why? A readership crisis is really a leadership crisis. And for people who know how to respond, crisis is just another way of saying opportunity . I’ve been a serious reader for decades: business and personal development , history, the Bible, current events, theology, philosophy, and even some fiction. I’m a content glutton. It’s part of who I am. And it’s also enabled me to become the leader I am. I’m not alone. I know very few leaders who are uninterested in reading. And some CEOs are famous for their libraries and wide-ranging interests. Steve Jobs was, for one example, obsessed with the poet William Blake. Readers are likely to be leaders. And with reading in decline, readers possess a comparative advantage in today’s business and political environments. How? Here are five ways read...

By Leo Babauta What big task, project, chore, conversation have you been avoiding facing? It’s one of the biggest problems in many people’s lives — procrastination is one word for it, but I’ve found that “avoiding” is more accurate. We have something we don’t want to tackle or face, and so we keep ourselves busy and distracted so we can avoid it. Avoidance, of course, leads to a host of problems, including: If we avoid self-care, exercise, meditation, healthy eating, flossing … it leads to long-term health problems (including mental health stress). Things piling up can cause us to feel stress. Things not being taken care of can cause lots of difficulties as problems get worse. People might start to feel that we’re unreliable. We lose trust in ourselves, and we can often criticize ourselves and be harsh on ourselves. The last problem, by the way, is something we can address with the practice of trying to always be kind to ourselves. Harshness on ourselves is not useful, and w...

By Leo Babauta  The amount of time we spend fretting over what path to take, when we’re feeling uncertain, can sometimes be staggering. We’re entering into unknown territory, and we don’t know how to proceed. It happens all the time for many of us: we start a new job, launch a new venture, change careers, have to deal with incredible change, decide to write a book or create something online, put ourselves in a new social situation. Some of the things we do in response to this uncertainty: Extensive research, often to the point of very diminishing returns, sometimes to the point of being overwhelmed by how much information we’ve found. Buy books, courses, programs, other materials that we think will guide us — this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but in truth, none of this will give us certainty. Try to find teachers or other people who will guide us, who have been there before — again, hoping that they’ll give us certainty, but often this isn’t a magic pill either. Delay maki...

As a leader, you thrive on the challenges of running your business. But if you also happen to be a wife and a mom, you feel pulled in another direction. It seems that whenever you’re at work, you’re thinking at home. And when you’re home, you don’t feel fully present either. You may wonder why you can’t seem to get it together, like so many “Super Moms.”

Wake up at 5am. Read a book a week. Exercise every day—but make sure it’s high-intensity or it doesn’t count. Journal. Meditate. Volunteer. Living well sounds exhausting. Maybe it’s just easier to flop down and watch Netflix? Productivity guilt happens when you feel overwhelmed by all the things you know you “should” be doing. You don’t do them, but you still have that nagging feeling like you’re wasting time. If you feel that guilt, I’m partly to blame. I write a lot about how to live better, and sometimes all those suggestions can start to feel more like burdens than helpful advice. If living well sounds exhausting, what should you do about it? Should you just ignore all that advice as posturing from overachievers? Or should you beat yourself up for not reaching some hypothetical ideal? Exposing the Hidden Contradictions of Life Advice Part of the problem is that suggestions are almost always given on their own. So you can read about why exercise, reading, meditating or gra...

Sometimes it’s hard to see something, even when you’re looking right at it. That’s partly because of the way our brains work, according to psychology professor Wendy Wood. “Our minds are designed to miss the forest for the trees,” she says in her book, Good Habits, Bad Habits  “We are primed by cues [stimuli in our environment] and wind up not seeing the bigger picture, the world at large.” In other words, the things in the foreground (business as usual, daily life, busyness) obscure the things on the horizon (your vision). The now-dead computer company Compaq provides a case in point.  The Case of Compaq In 1982 three former Texas Instrument executives saw an opening in the emerging technology market. Just eight short months, they shipped the very first Compaq computer. I was an early adopter, one of many.  Compaq broke the record for the first-year sales of any company in American business history—$111 million. It went on to become the fastest company in history t...