By Leo Babauta There is a power to our word that is very often underdeveloped a words are magic, and can create the world around us. But most of us use this magic as if it werenat powerful. The first way we see this is that we often donat honor our word to ourselves. In […]

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By Leo Babauta One of the best long-term things you can do for a happier life and better relationships is to cultivate a positive mindset. People with positive mindsets live longer, happier lives. They have lower rates of heart disease, cancer. They live about 7.5 years longer, on average. Thatas huge. So developing a positive […]

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By Leo Babauta On average, people spend more than 3 hours on their phones each day, picking up their phones nearly 60 times a day a| with some people spending closer to 4 hours. These numbers arenat meant to be judgments a itas not a bad thing to look at your phone a but instead […]

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By Leo Babauta Developing a strong sense of self is one of the most under-appreciated ways to be happy. To have healthy relationships, with others and with yourself. Itas not often understood, and as a result, problems in this area cause problems in all areas of our lives. Let me point out just some of […]

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By Leo Babauta My wife Eva and I have been vegan for over 11 years now, and we love it. I don’t talk about veganism a lot on Zen Habits, but today I’d love to share a little about it, if you’ll indulge me. Let me start by talking about why I’m vegan, and then […]

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By Leo Babauta When we are procrastinating, avoiding exercise or some other habit we want to create, or avoiding taking on a difficult project a| the underlying cause is rarely what we think it is. We think that all we need to do is do the thing weare avoiding, and stop procrastinating. Simple! But then […]

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By Leo Babauta aSmile, breathe and go slowly.a~ Thich Nhat Hanh Recently I got a running watch, and have been keeping most of my runs below a certain heart rate, to build up my heart’s aerobic fitness with lots of slow running. The pace of my runs has been incredibly slow for the last month. […]

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By Leo Babauta aThe quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.a a Rumi Thereas rarely a moment in the day when most of us stop moving and stop the noise. For most of us, we’re working, we’re moving, we’re driving, we’re listening to things on our headphones, we’re watching things, we’re filling […]

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By Leo Babauta The last couple of months, things have piled up on me: emails, tasks, random notes, a bunch of browser tabs with things I’m interested or need to do, financial stuff, etc. For the past week, Iave been allowing myself the joys of getting organized. It’s beautiful, and I just had to share […]

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By Leo Babauta How many days do you wake up excited for life, stoked to be alive and take on the day’s challenges? If your answer is “often,” then congratulations! That’s an amazing way to live life a but you’re in the minority. Most people are unenthusiastic about their lives, not looking forward to what […]

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