Building Trust in Yourself - zen habits zen habits
Building Trust in Yourself
I find that almost all problems are a breakdown in trusting ourselves.
If we could trust ourselves fully, so many things become effortless.
Let me give some examples of where we don’t trust ourselves:
Procrastination: We procrastinate when we think we can’t handle the stress or difficulty of one or more tasks, or we don’t trust ourselves to handle any bad outcomes we fear from doing those tasks (people judging our work, for example). If we trusted ourselves completely, we could just do the task and deal with the stress that comes from it, and deal with whatever comes after.
Overwork: We work hard often with hopes of clearing our todo list or inbox, and getting a sense of peace if we finish everything (which never comes). We don’t trust ourselves to handle the work in future days, and don’t trust that the work we’ve put in by the end of a reasonable work day is enough.
Social media addiction: The urge to constantly check social media (or other distracting websites) is usually driven by a fear of taking on harder tasks, or a fear of missing out. If we trusted ourselves completely, we could calm those fears while taking on our more important tasks or taking care of ourselves better.
Lack of exercise: While we might want to exercise, it’s something we put off, often because of a fear that we won’t get all our tasks done, because of fear of missing out on things like social media, or because of fear of the discomfort of the exercise itself. If we fully trusted ourselves, we could take on the discomfort and joy of exercise, while trusting that we could get to the work and social media later.
Overwhelm: When we’re overwhelmed, we don’t trust ourselves to be able to handle all the things that are in front of us. If we fully trusted ourselves, we would trust that we could choose one thing from the list, be fully in that task, and then take on the next after that. And deal with whatever situation arises, one thing at a time.
Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list of problems you might have, but I’m hoping you can start to see where self-trust is the key factor in all of the above, and many other problems.
So if that’s true … how do we develop trust in ourselves? Let’s first look at what’s possible if we fully trust ourselves, then look at how to develop that trust.
What’s Possible with Full Trust
If we fully trust ourselves, life becomes so much easier. We can step into the unknown, out of our comfort zone, take risks, and act with confidence. We can ask for what we want, and trust that it’s OK to want something. We can choose from the heart, and trust the heart’s desire.
Here are some things that become possible with full trust:
We can choose what we feel called to work each day, at the beginning of the day, so that we line up our day with our priorities.
We can trust ourselves to choose the next task from the list, from our hearts. Then trust ourselves by taking that task on with full devotion, trusting that we’ll get to the rest later.
We trust ourselves to handle any situation that arises, any consequence from our choices. If someone is upset or disappointed with us, we trust ourselves to deal with that. If we feel sadness or frustration, we trust ourselves to deal with that. The future, then, becomes less stressful because we trust that we can deal with anything that comes.
When we have an overwhelming number of things in front of us, we trust ourselves to choose one thing, and deal with that.
We trust ourselves to fully take on difficult things like exercise, difficult tasks, difficult conversations, meditation, and more, because we know we can be with whatever stress is there.
We begin to create a life of impact, because we’re taking on the things that are impactful and important.
We create a life where we are taking care of ourselves, because we’re trusting that it’s OK that we can take care of ourselves.
We create the ability to have difficult conversations, because we trust ourselves in those convos. Our relationships get better, and we’re less stressed by whatever the other person is doing.
That’s just the start. More trust leads to us being able to fully be ourselves, and our lives become more alive, more relaxed, more joyous, more effortless.
How to Develop Trust in Ourselves
So how do we develop that kind of trust? With intentional practice.
Pick one area where you aren’t trusting yourself, and set an intention to practice:
Procrastination: take on one task at a time. Trust yourself to take on that task, even for 2 minutes. You don’t have to finish, just start. With practice, you’ll go longer, up to 30 minutes. That’s enough for this practice.
Overwhelm: Make a list of tasks. Practice choosing one, and taking it one. Trust yourself to deal with the rest later, and practice just taking that one task on at a time.
Urges and addictions: Cut yourself off from the urge/addiction for 3 days. Practice trust in yourself to deal with the stress that results from not indulging. Find other, healthier ways to deal with that stress: meditate, exercise, go for a walk, talk to a friend or therapist.
Difficult convos: Make a list of the difficult conversations you’ve been putting off. Practice trust by reaching out to the easiest one on the list and asking for a few minutes (in person or over the phone). Don’t rehearse the convo, don’t let yourself overthink it. Just show up, and practice talking with this person, trusting yourself to navigate without overthinking. Practice trust by being mindfully with any emotion that comes up, for you or them. Repeat this once a day.
These are where I would start. The practice of developing trust is a lifelone one. Beyond this, I would suggest you get some support — reach out to me if you’d like to work with me as a 1-on-1 coach, I’m here for that work!
ZEN HABITS VIDEOS
A Guide to Dealing with Anxiety
Watch on YouTube
Anxiety is a common experience, especially when life feels chaotic or overwhelming. Often, we try to manage this discomfort by distracting ourselves or attempting to control our environment. But these strategies can keep us stuck in a loop of stress. What if we could learn to work with our anxiety instead?
In this video, Leo discusses simple yet powerful practices for dealing with anxiety. He emphasizes the importance of being present with our feelings, using deep breathing to calm the mind and body, and approaching anxiety with kindness. These practices can help us break free from the cycle of avoidance and build a more peaceful relationship with our emotions.
Tune in to explore these techniques and discover how to approach anxiety in a way that supports your well-being.
A Short Guide to Dealing with Discouragement
One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of our personal progress is discouragement. Whether you're trying to form a new habit (reading, meditation, exercise, waking early) or taking on a meaningful project, or just getting your life in order ... discouragement is one of the biggest reasons you'll get stopped.
Here's the "bad" news: discouragement is unavoidable. You will encounter it on your path, if you're taking on anything challenging or meaningful. It's a part of the meaningful path. I actually don't think it's really bad news, it's just how the path looks.
And here's the good news: discouragement isn't a problem. It's a property of learning, of growth, of trying. Just like heat is a property of the sun or fire.
Discouragement is a property of caring and having hope.
So with that in mind, how do we deal with it when we encounter discouragement on our path?
Some people will just crush hope, and try not to care or get optimistic. If we don't hope, we can't get let down right? But that just means our hearts are shut down. Similarly, they might not even try ... because if you try, you might fail, right? But that just means we can't create any new possibilities that we care about.
The way to deal with discouragement isn't to shut down our hearts to trying or caring or hoping ... it's to take it as part of the package. Just like a hurt heart is a part of loving, or soreness is a part of exercising. When we care, and hope, and try ... we will get discouragement.
Then when it comes, just let yourself feel it. Take care of it — do you need a hot cup of tea, a talk with a friend or a therapist, some love? Let discouragement be an opportunity to practice loving yourself and taking care of yourself.
Then care and try again. Get your heart back to hope & possibility. Take the next small step. Create something new, one tiny motion at a time.
Discouragement isn't the end of the journey — it's a place to stop and lick your wounds, tend to your heart, catch your breath, and then start again.
You've got this.
with love,
Leo
How to Face Hard Tasks
Some days, facing our hard, scary tasks can be really challenging. We might feel avoidant, and go to comforts and distractions. Maybe that's most days, for a lot of us.
So how do we actually turn towards those tasks?
I just published a video on the Zen Habits Youtube channel on this topic, called the Top 4 Tips to Face Hard Tasks (you can go watch that now if you prefer video) ... but I thought I'd share a couple of quick tips for you in this email ...
First, recognize you're facing resistance. If you notice yourself avoiding hard tasks, just label it "resistance." This is a normal feature of doing meaningful work ... or even just being human.
Give yourself a tiny bit of space. Instead of rushing off to distractions ... can you pause for just a moment and take a little bit of space? First, get curious about the resistance — what does it feel like? If you can bring some mindful awareness to this resistance, it doesn't have to be that big a deal. Second, turn toward the hard task (more in the next tip). Breathe.
Pick a hard task, and take a tiny dose. It's hard to push ourselves to do ALL the tasks, so pick just one. It doesn't have to be the hardest one, just any one. Forget about all the other tasks, and imagine this is the only task in the universe, and give it a bit of attention. Then do the smallest dose possible — can you just open the document and look at it? Can you just write 1 sentence? Make it easy to start.
Give yourself a short break, then try again. This is a training, but you're not trying to be Superman. Just do a small dose, then give yourself a minute or two break. Then come back and do another small dose. Eventually, you might be able to complete the task, or at least make some decent progress.
One little step at a time. That's all it takes. Don't go too hard, don't kill yourself, just ease into it. And breathe.
Btw, I published a few videos on the Zen Habits Youtube channel recently that go along with this theme:
How to Create an Amazing Morning Routine
The Zen Habits Guide to Waking Early
Zen Habits Guide to Calm in the Midst of Chaos
I hope you find these valuable. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the Zen Habits Youtube channel lately! I really appreciate it.
with love,
Leo Babauta
Two Practices to Stay Centered
Life can be chaotic, and we can get thrown off our center by difficult challenges. That's not a problem! The difficulty comes when we're not able to come back to our center.
So today, I'd like to share two specific practices that I've found to be really helpful, in bringing me back to my center when I get thrown off by life's challenges ... and in some cases, staying centered instead of getting thrown into a tailspin:
Focus on what's in your control. Most of the time, we're thrown off our center because we want things to be different — we want other people to act different, we want different circumstances. But most often, that's not under our control. We can't control how people behave or react, we can't control the world. So it can be really calming to figure out what's under your control, and just focus on that. What's the smallest thing you can focus on that's under your control?
Love more. When things aren't going our way, we get upset, frustrated or discouraged because we're attached to a certain outcome. There's desire for the outcome to be what we want. But what if, instead, we could desire many outcomes? And be OK with being disappointed or frustrated with not getting one specific outcome. The practice is to love more outcomes. For example, if I'm going on a run, maybe I want to run really fast and feel really good and have nice weather. But what if I could love the rain, my discomfort, and however I run, even if it's not what I was hoping for? Love more things, love the things we reject, love a wider range of experiences, and the attachment to a specific outcome gets loosened.
These are deep practices that take ... practice! Try them today, and see what you can discover.
Btw, I published a couple of Youtube videos recently that go along with this theme:
Zen Habits Guide to Calm in the Midst of Chaos
How to Regulate Your Emotions
I hope you find these valuable. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the channel lately, and commented! I really appreciate it.
with love,
Leo Babauta
From https://zenhabits.net/
How to Autoregulate Your Habits
When most people try to start a new habit — like exercise, meditation, waking early, journaling — they tend to try to go as hard as they can. And in doing so, they set themselves up for failure.
I have a friend who wanted to start running, for example. Every time they ran, they would do it as fast as they could, so they were always really winded. That’s Too Fast, Too Soon (title of my new action movie franchise). It’ll lead to failure for most people.
Another person I talked to wanted to start waking up at 5am, two hours earlier than they were usually awake. They said they were worried they wouldn’t be able to stick to it for long. I agreed: you could probably do it for a few days, but you’ll crash and burn, most likely.
Now, going hardcore is possible, if you dedicate your entire life to this one change, and reduce all other commitments and stressors. You’d have to set up a lot of structure and support to make it work. But your odds of long term success go way down, just like a crash diet.
So I always recommend starting small. But there’s a more sophisticated technique, that I call “autoregulation” (borrowed from biology) that I’d like to share with you.
Here’s how it works, in brief:
Start the habit small — let’s say 15 minutes of easy exercise, or wake up just 5 minutes earlier than your normal time on Day 1.
Increase the next day, if you were successful. For the exercise example, increase by 2 minutes a day. For waking early, wake another 5 minutes earlier on Day 2.
Continue to increase the habit if you’re successful.
Decrease the habit if you miss a day. So if on Day 3 you wanted to wake up at 6:45am, but didn’t wake up until 7:30 … on Day 4, set your alarm for 6:50am. If you missed a day of exercise, decrease the exercise time by 2 minutes the next day. It’s important not to see this as a punishment for failure, but rather an adjustment for your long-term success.
Take a full day off if you’re tired, stressed, or too busy. Start the next day if at all possible, with a decrease in the habit (see #4).
If you follow this autoregulation method, you’ll make your habit easier when it’s needed, and make it more difficult when you have the capability to handle it.
Some days, you’re just busy, or tired, or stressed. On those days, take a break. Then come back the next day with a decreased habit goal (exercise 2 minutes shorter, wake 5 minutes later, etc.) to make it easier on yourself.
Some days, you have lots of energy and focus. On those days, it’s entirely appropriate to get to continue to increase the habit, slowly.
Using this method, you’ll increase your habit slowly, at a pace that’s appropriate for your capacity. If your body can’t handle increasing the exercise, take a break and then come back with an easier target.
This time-based approach works for a lot of habits: meditation, journaling, writing, learning a language. It doesn’t work as well if you’re changing your diet, but you can still use the same principles: slowly move closer to your target eating pattern each day, but give yourself breaks and slow down your progress as needed.
If you’re trying to procrastinate less, this can work too — start a daily habit of doing short focus sessions (start with 10 minutes, once a day) and increase by 10 minutes as long as you’re able to stick to the plan. For example, on Day 2, do a 20-minute focus session. On Day 3, do one 10-minute focus session and one 20-minute focus session. On Day 4, do two 20-minute focus sessions. Keep adding 10 minutes as long as you stick to it. If on Day 5 you don’t do the focus sessions, decrease by 10 minutes on Day 6.
At some point, you should stop increasing — perhaps when you get to your goal (waking at 5am, exercising for 40 minutes a day, etc.). But it’s possible your goal will change as you do this, and you can find the level that’s right for you to stop increasing through this method of slow change.
So that’s the autoregulation method for changing habits. It’s a compassionate approach that’s meant to increase your odds of long-term success. Give it a shot!
Btw, if you'd like to practice with others, I created The Practice in my Fearless Living Academy — to have our members practicing with this together, with structure, accountability and community. Come join us!
with love,
Leo
https://zenhabits.net/
Forcing Yourself to Do a Task vs. Letting Yourself Off the Hook
People often think, when they’re tired or don’t feel like doing a task (or a habit), that there are really only two choices:
Force yourself to do the task anyway; or
Let yourself off the hook
And while there isn’t anything wrong with either of these choices, I’m here to remind you that they are choices. And they’re not the only choices.
What else can you do in that situation? Well, here are just a few other possibilities off the top of my head:
Choose to take care of yourself, and then come back to the task when you’re more replenished
Find a reason to do the task that inspires you to do it, even if you’re tired — for example, if you knew that doing a task would save a million people’s lives, you probably wouldn’t say, “Oh, but I’m too tired right now”
Ask for other people’s help
Find a creative approach that has you bringing play to the task while also honoring your tiredness
As you can see, there are choices, when we get beyond the only two choices that occur to most of us.
Let’s talk about our tendencies, then talk about how to pursue other options than the two main ones we’ve mentioned at the beginning.
Our Tendency
The thing is, most people will default to one of the two choices by habit — if you normally let yourself off the hook, that’s probably a tendency (you might add some self-judgment and self-criticism to that tendency). If you are good at forcing yourself to do work, you probably do that as a tendency.
So become aware of your tendency — which one do you lean towards? There isn’t anything wrong with this tendency, but it will always get you the same results: avoidance gets you stuckness and self-judgment, while forcing yourself gets you a sense of burden, overwhelm, exhaustion and apathy.
Once you’re aware of the tendency, you can ask yourself whether you’d like to try something different. If so, read on!
Creating Aliveness
So first, let’s say you decide that self-care is your priority. That doesn’t mean you’re going to avoid the hard things, but you’re going to make sure you’re not going towards burnout, and take responsibility for making sure you’re getting enough rest, nourishment, mental breaks, and movement.
So that is a given. Now what? Well, now you can move towards the tasks you’re resisting — hard, scary tasks you want to put off.
But instead of forcing yourself, you want to try something different, that doesn’t feel like coercion and doesn’t make you feel so burdened and apathetic.
How do we do that? There isn’t a right answer, but here are some things to consider:
Connect with your deeper Why. Something that inspires you to take action, instead of having to avoid or force yourself. What would have you excited to tackle this?
Let yourself play. Why does this have to feel like work, or a “nose to the grindstone” kind of thing? Why are we trying to just “get through” all of our work tasks and emails and meetings? What if all of this could be a playground?
Let it feel alive. We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. Let’s let ourselves feel more alive in each moment, whenever we can remember. What would it be like to feel alive right now, as you read this?
Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Sometimes the resistance or overwhelm is too much. How can others be invited to help us face it, or to make it more like play, or to help shoulder the burden? We don’t have to be so alone.
These are some ideas to play with. How can you feel more alive in the tasks you have in front of you today?
with love,
Leo
From https://zenhabits.net/
Death Reflection Practice
Sometimes (not often enough) I will walk to the local cemetery, which is about 5 minutes from my house. I'll sit there and reflect on the beauty of these people whose lives are remembered here, and reflect on the shortness of life.
Death is not a topic that most people want to think about, and can make people uncomfortable. Who wants to think about death?? Well, me. I see death as a part of life, like the outbreath is a part of breathing. And I find it incredibly powerful and poignant to reflect regularly on death.
If you'd like to practice, sit somewhere in stillness — it doesn't have to be a cemetery, though you should definitely try that!
Then contemplate such things as:
What would you miss if you were gone?
What would you wish you had done?
What would you regret not letting go of?
What if a loved one were gone — maybe someone you're holding a grudge against — what would you miss about them?
Does life become more precious when you consider the end of it? The shortness of it?
How can you use these reflections to help you find purpose and focus in your daily work?
How can you use them to inform how you are in relationships?
Would you do anything differently on a daily basis?
You don't have to contemplate all of these each time — they're prompts to help you, and you're not limited to them.
What does reflecting on death help you to see? How can it make today feel like a wondrous gift?
Btw, I published a couple of Youtube videos recently that go along with this theme:
The Zen Habits Guide to Aging Well
How to Live the Simple Life
I hope you find these a gift as well. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the channel lately, and commented! I really appreciate it.
with love,
Leo Babauta
From https://zenhabits.net/
The Powerful Effect of Bringing Play Into Your Life
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How much of your day is spent either 1) trying to make yourself do something you really don't want to do, or 2) avoiding doing that thing you don't want to force yourself to do (and feeling guilty about it)?
In truth, this is most of the day for many people. Trying to coerce ourselves to do stuff.
So a few things to say about coercing ourselves:
It doesn't work really well — we'll put up a lot of resistance if we're trying to force ourselves.
Even if you can do it, it's super not fun!
And then when you're done forcing yourself, you have to do it again. Over and over again. Hoping to do everything "right" but usually feeling like you're not doing it "right."
OK, so let's say you're convinced that coercing yourself to do things doesn't work. Then what? Do we just never do the boring things? Just always avoid facing the hard things?
That's not what we want either, because most people reading this wants to be out doing meaningful, impactful, sometimes hard and scary things. So how do we do that without coercion?
Play might just be the answer.
Let me describe the powerful effects of Play in this context, and then talk a bit about how to bring Play into your life.
The Powerful Effects of Play
When we're up to meaningful, difficult, interesting, scary things ... coercion is one answer. Avoidance is another. And Play is yet another possibility.
Here's what happens when we bring Play into doing all of our hard, meaningful tasks:
Instead of dreading a task, you start to get excited about playing with the task.
Instead of looking for the possibilities of failure, you start looking for the opportunities for fun, for exploration, for adventure.
Your day becomes less of a slog and more of a playground.
You focus less on doing things the "right" way and more on trying new things out and seeing what works. You get less perfectionist and give yourself more permission to make messes.
You focus more on learning and growing than needing to stay safe.
You feel more alive — instead of just churning through endless tasks, you're trying new things, stepping into the unknown, seeing what works and what doesn't. It can feel thrilling.
You learn more — instead of worrying about doing things right, you let yourself try new ways of doing things, and let yourself fall on your face, because that's a part of the Play.
These are the powerful effects of Play. Let's look at how you might start to incorporate Play into your day.
How to Bring Play Into Your Life
At this point, you might start to ask, "OK, so how do I play? Just give me the answers!" But knowing the answer is the safe way, not the way of Play.
Instead, try things out for yourself, and see what you can discover! Be playful in bringing Play into your life!
That said, here are some ideas to start you out:
When you do a task, ask, "How can I turn this into Play?" Maybe some music, maybe try things out a new way, maybe let yourself stumble and fall a bit, maybe turn it into a game.
When you have free time — even 10 minutes — instead of going to your usual distractions or seeing how you can use the time productively ... ask yourself what would be fun? How can you turn this small time into a bit of Play?
Invite others to play with you — young kids are always down to play (they're our models for Play!), but you can invite your partner, your family, your friends. How can you invite people you work with to play?
Try to see if you can do your usual things in a new way. Get inventive! Instead of walking home the usual way, try a randomly selected path. Instead of just getting through your email, can you do it with more Play? Instead of doing chores or errands the usual way, can you get creative with them?
Some words to prompt you: Adventure. Dance. Games. Creativity. Invention. Stumbling around like a toddler learning to walk. Exploration. Discovery. Joy!
What would you like to play today?
with love,
Leo
The Practice: Create Impactful Shifts with Daily Training
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Making huge shifts in our lives can be daunting, to the point where we don’t even try. How do you conquer a mountain?
What I’ve found to be incredibly effective is to do a daily practice of just 15 minutes, that leads to a huge impactful shift over time.
Small but impactful, practiced every weekday.
This is how I created The Practice in my Fearless Living Academy. The Practice is something you challenge yourself to do for just 10-15 minutes a day, every weekday, with accountability and measurement of progress to increase your effectiveness.
Let me walk you through a common example …
Let’s say you struggle to turn towards tasks that feel difficult and a bit scary. Basically, lots of work tasks are like this — just enough difficulty and resistance that you avoid them. Things pile up, you stress about all of it, you feel bad about yourself, your projects get stalled. This is a small problem that has added up to a huge difficulty for you.
The Practice would challenge you to block off 15 minutes every weekday for 4 weeks, where you:
Spend 15 minutes practicing difficult tasks: Make a list of the difficult tasks you’re avoiding, and choose from the top of the list each day.
Make it easier: If a difficult task would take you more than 15 minutes, just choose a first step in the task that will take you 5-15 minutes. An easy start.
Stay accountable: After each weekday session, report to an accountability group.
Stay consistent: Try not to miss any days, but if you do, simply start again the next day.
Measure your progress: Do this for 4 weeks. Check in to see how much better you’re able to take on difficult tasks after 2 weeks, and then 4 weeks. This will help you see how much you’re making progress.
If you do this practice for 4 weeks, you’ll see a noticeable impact on your ability to take on your difficult tasks.
What we’ve seen in our experiments is that it makes a difference — small at first, but measurable and impactful. Over time, a big difference.
If you did this same Practice over the course of 2-3 months, it would have a huge, huge impact. Or … maybe you have 2-3 things you’d like to shift, and you did one per month … over the course of several months, your entire life would shift. Just from 10-15 minutes of focused time a day.
So for you, what practice would actually make a big impact? And if you practice that, what meaningful change could that empower in your life?
with love,
Leo