The Work You Love is Waiting For You

When I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to start writing. It’s not that I’m productivity-driven, or a workaholic … it’s that I love what I do. And I’ll tell you a secret to loving what I do: if I think my work will help someone, there’s no better motivator. I see lots of people, every day, who don’t like the work they’re doing. If I could help a few of them find work they love, it would make my year. So this is a mini-guide to finding the work you love. Because it’s waiting for you — you just need to find it and go get it. We’re going to do this in 3 simple steps. Ready? Let’s go! Step 1: Believe in yourself. The main reason people don’t try to do work they love, don’t even look for it, is because they don’t think they’re good enough. That’s hogwash. We’ve been bamboozled and hornswoggled into believing we are insufficient, that it’s scary to fail, when neither is remotely true. You are not only sufficient, you are perfect. And failure is inevitable, but it’s how you succeed. Failure is how we learn to get better. It’s a step towards success. I highly recommend you watch this TEDx talk from Scott Dinsmore for some inspiration … it’s the best 18 minutes you could invest in your life right now: Step 2: Find the work you love. This is probably the most difficult step for many people, because they don’t know what they want to do. Luckily,I’ve written a guide for you. Actually, this step is the fun part. You get to try different things. Fail often. Explore yourself. Learn about what you’re good at. Help people. Step 3: Take the leap. It’s the scariest, most exciting thing ever to take the leap and do work you love. I call it JoyFear. It’s totally worth it. Luckily, I’ve written a guide for this too. Making a living doing what you want isn’t exactly easy, but it’s not as hard as you might think. Create something that will help people. Do it the best you can, and keep getting better. Make it uniquely you, and tell your story. Don’t be a marketer or push yourself on people, but really help them and they’ll come to you. Two more things to read when you have the time: The Five Things You Need to Know About Finding the Work You Love Crazy Talk: The Do-What-You-Love Guide What are you waiting for? I’ve given you three steps, so you should be taking the first step already. If not, get moving! The work you love is out there. Waiting for you. But it won’t find you — you have to go looking for it.    Post written by Leo Babauta.

A Journey Without a Goal

Nearly every activity we do has a purpose, a goal in mind.
We drive to get to work, to the store, to a class or party. We walk for fitness, or to get to a specific destination. We work to achieve something, to reach certain numbers. We workout to get healthier, to get a nicer body.
But what would happen if we gave up the goal?
What would a journey without a goal be like?
Imagine setting out for a walk with no particular purpose — you might go in one direction because there’s a nice explosion of flowers over there, but then explore a different direction when you see someone playing music, then go in another direction because you’re curious about what’s there.
No destination in mind. Nothing to achieve. Just curiosity, fun, not knowing.
What would it be like to work without a goal? You might write something for fun, because you want to get it out of you, without knowing what the effect of the writing would be. You would figure out the work as you go, without knowing what the finished product would look like.
What would it be like to live life without a fixed plan? Without knowing where you’ll be living in five years, or what you’ll be doing, or what you want to achieve?
I don’t know the answers, but I do know that I’ve been freer as I’ve learned to let go of goals, fixed plans, fixed destinations.

How to Flow

I’ve long been a planner and a goal setter, but I’ve been learning a different way over the last few years. It’s a radical shift in thinking and doing, to a freer-flowing mode of being.
How does it work? Well, to be honest, there’s no one way. But it goes a little something like this:
You wake up, excited about being alive. You wonder, “What do I feel like doing today?” You aren’t constrained to anything at this point, but the question is important.
So you get started, doing something you’re excited about, having fun doing it. Is that thing you’re doing a destination, a goal? Well, in some ways, yes, but it’s not fixed. There’s no set plan, and the destination doesn’t matter as much as the process, the journey.
You start, but you might shift as you go, depending on the flow of ideas, on working with others who might have ideas you didn’t foresee, on things that happen along the way. You couldn’t have predicted these things when you got started, so you have to adapt — no plan can anticipate all of this, no goal would be adequate to the task.
You might even completely shift, if something new comes up, if a new opportunity presents itself. You let go of your idea of what today was going to be, because these ideas of what should be are lightly held. They mean nothing, really, and the important thing is the flow.
You learn to be flexible instead of set. You learn to be good at change and uncertainty, instead of fearing it.
As things arise, you adapt, and let go of your plans and goals. You move with the flow of water, with the changing landscape. You are free to do this because you don’t care where you end up — you just want to be present in your journey, be compassionate with each step, have fun each moment along the way. The destination becomes irrelevant.
No destination or goal matters if they are all good. Each step along the way, then, becomes the destination, and is exactly where you should be.

Courtesy : Leo Babauta.

The Habits That Crush Us

Why is it that we cannot break the bad habits that stand in our way, crushing our desires to live a healthy life, be fit, simplify, be happier?
How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten? We want to be focused and productive, exercise and eat healthy foods, stop smoking and learn to get rid of debt and clutter, but we just can’t.
The answer lies in something extremely simple, but something most people aren’t aware of:
We don’t know how to cope with stress and boredom in a healthy way.
The bad habits we’ve formed are often useful to us, in dealing with stress and boredom. Consider the bad habits that fit this bill:

• Smoking
• Internet procrastination
• Eating junk food
• Drinking
• Being rude/angry/depressed
• Watching TV or playing video games (if you become addicted & sedentary)
• Shopping (getting into debt, building clutter)
• Procrastinating on finances, paperwork, clutter (too stressful)
• Inactivity (avoiding exercise is a stress avoidance technique)
• Biting nails, chewing hair, clenching jaw

This isn’t a complete list, but all of these habits fill a strong need: they are ways to cope with stress and/or boredom. We have formed them as coping mechanisms, and they stick around because we don’t have better ways of coping.
So what if instead, we replaced them with healthier ways of coping? We’d get rid of the problems of these bad habits, and start getting the benefits of better habits.

Better Coping Habits

How can we deal with stress and boredom instead? There’s no one answer, but the habits we form should be ones that lead to healthier results. Some ideas:

• Walk/run/swim/bike
• Do pushups, pullups, squats
• Yoga/meditation
• Play with friends/kids
• Create, write, play music, read when we’re bored
• Learn to enjoy being alone, instead of being bored
• Take a daily walk and enjoy nature
• Deal with finances, clutter, paperwork immediately, in small steps, so that it doesn’t get stressful
• Take control of a situation: make a list, get started in baby steps, so things don’t get stressful
• Learn to be mindful of your breathing, body tension, stressed-out thoughts
• Get some rest
• Learn to savor healthy food that you find delicious
• Slow down
• Take a hot bath
• Learn to live in the present

These are some good examples. Each habit above will help cope with or prevent stress or boredom. If you replace the bad habits with these, your life will be less stressful and healthier. You’ll have less debt, less clutter, less fat, less disease.

Changing the Habits

The old habits of coping didn’t build up overnight, and they won’t go away overnight either. We built them up through years of repetition, and the only way to change them is also years of repetition.
But an important start is to realize why we do them — stress and boredom, largely — and realize that there are other ways to deal with these two problems. We need to be aware when stress and boredom start to kick in, and instead of being afraid of them, realize that they are problems easily solved by other habits. Let’s take the fear out of stress and boredom. Let’s learn that we can beat them simply, and prove that with repeated good habits.
Once you have that realization, follow the usual Zen Habits steps to changing a habit:

1. Pick one habit at a time.
2. Start very small – just a minute or two, if you want it to stick.
3. Use social motivation like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email.
4. Be very conscious of your triggers, and do the habit consciously every time the trigger happens.
5. Enjoy the new habit. You’ll stick with it longer if you do.

We have been crushed by the habits we’ve formed out of fear of stress and boredom. We can fight back, by learning to breathe, to smile, to go slowly. We can humble these giants that crush us by turning them into mere gnats to be shooed away with a smile.

Source:  Leo Babauta.

Simple Sports Nutrition

For those of us who are very active – whether due to job or just by choice things change. nutrition and eating has to change as our bodies start to work in a different way. Usually this is as simple as following our intuition but for many people who are into health and fitness this intuition is spoiled by bouncing from theory to theory over how and what to eat.

If you are doing lots of sports, cycling to and from work, have an active job or whatever it is that increases activity levels it is key first and foremost to eat more. And eat more calorie dense food. The alternative is to seriously slow down your metabolism and impact your hormonal health through calorie restriction caused by over exercising and under eating - ultimately eating away muscle, making you feel sluggish and maybe even weight gain.

When you exercise lots it is not only the immediate effect of the calories you are burning that you need to take into account but also the after burn, and hormonal impact that extra activity causes – making the body almost machine like in its ability to churn through food.

Here are some practical tips that can help you figure out how to improve your nutrition when more active than normal.

How much more you need to eat. Technically this should take care of itself, but due to many factors it is sometimes hard to listen to appetite. I find it is a good idea to eat three main meals a day – and at each one keep eating until your body actually tells you it is full. This means a sensation of fullness at the top of your stomach and literally not wanting to have another bite. Not to say you should stuff your face but learn to listen to your bodies signals of saying ‘I’m Full!’.

Focus on Starchy Unrefined Carbohydrates and Fruit. When active the body needs glucose. Your muscles are like sponges waiting to soak up all those starchy roots and grains. As always try to stick mainly to a philosophy of unrefined carbs (roots, rice, beans, lentils, whole-grains etc) this will not only give your body what it needs to recover but also give you a feeling of fullness as Insulin levels rise and trigger satiety.

Easy to Digest Food. Think well cooked and easy to assimilate foods – good examples are oatmeal with lots of fruit and made with milk. Pizza is good after a hard exercise session. The truth is that sometimes eating too clean when being very active just isn’t enough – maintain flexibility with your diet and allow yourself less clean foods. Food is life and without enough calories, especially well assimilated calories you won’t recover or feel your best.

Smoothies are also a good idea after exercise – make them simple think bananas or dates/figs, oats, milk and berries.

Snack Well. When hungry between meals don’t go for any junk – try to keep your desk, bag or kitchen stocked with healthy snacks. Fresh Fruit, Yoghurt, Cottage Cheese, Whole Grain Crackers, Wholesome Granola Bars. Also drink enough water….

Always follow hunger, even if you are hungry just after eating. EAT AGAIN. Sometimes after lots of activity hunger seems to go beyond what is normal. As in even after eating what seems a substantial meal there is still an empty void or a nagging hunger. This is quite normal – just follow your appetite and eat some more. Try and feel out for what your body wants and eat what you crave.

 When exercising or being especially active it is important first and foremost to eat more. This can be in the way of bigger meals or eating more often – whatever suits you. Remember that our bodies are smart and will normally guide us, really being in tune and listening to the signals is hard though. Just be sure to eat enough if you are being especially active – this will make your body strong and robust rather than weak and frail.

source: Zen to Fitness.

3 age-old eating rules you can use to your benefit!

Editors Note: This is a post from our contributor Megha Mehta
Here’s a mini quiz to get you thinking about the rules we’ll talk about

- if you’re a fiery ambitious easily irritable person who doesn’t take well to hot weather and ur in the middle of this desert town and have been eating spicy barbecued food for the last one week – guess how ur going to be feeling?

- imagine a working executive who lives in a highly urbanised town surrounded by concrete most days of the week and feels burned out and has low energy levels. what food group do you think he will benefit from?

Here’s a reminder that will help you answer the above and many such questions – each food has a specific personality n character – it actually informs us of what it can do! And depending on your personality, environment, body type, lifestyle and weather influences, your body will demand and benefit from certain kinds of foods more than others.
Our first example - the person who has a fiery personality because of which he/she doesn’t particularly enjoy hot weather and has been gorging on hot spicy food. This person is probably as of now super heated. This imbalance will most likely make him/her feel easily irritable, have a heated or upset stomach, allergic reactions, hyperacidity and so on…and these very same imbalances over a longer period of time might result in more severe issues like hypertension, liver disorders etc.
And in second example of a person who is burnt out and has no energy left is probably not getting enough clean air because of the environment he is living in. Living and being around greenery is a great way to supply higher levels of oxygen to your body which in turn makes your blood richer with nutrients and your organs have more vitality and energy.

Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother.  ~ George Herbert

If you’re unable to get that benefit from your environment then you will probably do well to include dark leafy greens in your diet. They have the very quality that is the opposite of what our lungs do – take in CO2 and release O2. So these can work wonders to one’s respiratory system and consuming them regularly can give you higher levels of oxygenated blood which in turn gives more energy and vitality to all your organs.
So here are some basic rules to get you started on these rules that can allow you to make smarter food choices.
1. Eat as per season
One of the best ways to ensure you’re giving your body the right foods is to buy foods that are fresh and in season. That means not buying the mangoes in the middle of winter cos they’ve probably been frozen through months and have come out to be sold now. If you eat fruits in the season they’re naturally produced you automatically ensure nature is working to balance the factors that your body needs now and you’re making sure you get freshest and highest quality foods!
So think watermelons in summer, kiwi and oranges in winter and pineapples and lychees during the spring.
2. Consider your personality and temperament 
Remember that your personality type has a huge role to play in choosing balancing nourishing foods. If you’re feeling cold n dry and have been anxious n stressed lately – your body is probably giving you signs in the form of dry cracked skin. What you need at that point is balancing grounding warm foods. That means you should favour soups, stews, and cooked foods more than raw salads.
3. Time of the day matters
You can digest heavier food better during the day because your metabolism and digestive fire is higher then. Eating your last meal 2 hours for you sleep is a great way to ensure your digestive system has done its work in time and you will be able to sleep more peacefully and wake up refreshed and energised. A light nourishing fibre rich meal for dinner will keep your stomach happy and constipation will never be an issue!
Megha is a Holistic Health Counselor helping busy working executives to eat healthier and achieve their ideal weight, energy levels, and body type. She also blogs about health tips, interesting recipes, natural remedies etc… at http://www.backtobasics.com.sg/ You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter. 
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Source: Zen to Fitness.

Clearing Your Life for a New Year

Every January, people rush out and get a gym membership, set a list of goals or resolutions, and get ready to take on a new year of frenetic activity.
Unfortunately, we don’t often clear space to make room for all this new stuff.
The beginning of the year is a great time for renewal of energy and taking on the things we’ve always wanted to tackle — clutter, fitness, work we’re passionate about, debt, and so on. But it’s also a great time to clear out your life, starting out the year on a blank page that’s ready to be filled.
While everyone’s life is different, I’ll share some of what I do to clear out my life.

• Review the year to think about what I learned, what mistakes I made, what I accomplished.
• Clear my schedule as much as possible. That often means saying no to people.
• Wrap up old projects, end commitments to people, so that my work plate is clearer than normal.
• Toss out old fitness and eating plans, to make room for new experiments.
• Clear my email inbox. If I haven’t answered the email recently, it’s probably not important, so I archive it. Act on or answer other emails, so that my inbox is emptied.
• Clear out other inboxes. That might be an inbox on a social network, or a list of things I wanted to do or read, or any kind of list really. File them away under someday, or delete or archive. Anything that’s taking some mental energy because I know I need to get to it, gets cleared.
• Clear my computer files. Usually this means deleting a bunch of files I don’t need, but I also just consolidate files into one folder or put them in an online archive (like in Dropbox).
• Clear paperwork. I rarely have any papers these days — I’ve slowly turned everything digital. But I still get things in the mail sometimes, so if I have any lying around, I dispose of them to clear out any remaining paperwork.
• Clear clutter. If there are areas that have become cluttered, I clear them out. Often it just means taking a box or bag of things that I’ve been meaning to donate to Goodwill.
• Clear my errands. I’ll make a list of all the errands I’ve been putting off, and do them in one afternoon.
• Clear my finances. I’ll take a few minutes to review my checking and savings accounts, Paypal, investments, etc. and make sure everything is in order. If there are little things that need taking care of, I do them so that my mind is cleared.
• Clear pantry and refrigerator of junk. Old crap that’s been lying around. Junk food if there’s any there (I don’t usually have any anymore, but I used to). Left with just good whole ingredients for healthy foods.

This might take a couple days, working off and on in little bits. For some, it might take longer. But when you’re done, it’s amazing. Your mind is clear and refreshed. You feel like you’re ready to take on anything.
To be honest, I do these things regularly throughout the year, and it’s great to keep a clean slate most of the time. But the new year is always a perfect opportunity to clear everything at once.

Courtesy: Leo Babauta.

A Compact Guide to Creating the Fitness Habit

A new year, a new slate of resolutions.
Perhaps the biggest resolution at New Year’s is to get fit — start exercising, start eating right, and all that jazz.
But resolutions never last. As you might already know, I’m not a fan of resolutions.
Instead of creating a list of resolutions this year, create a new habit.
Habits last, and they lead to long-term fitness (and more). They require more patience, but they are worth the wait.
As some of you know, fitness habits are what started me along the path to changing my life. I quit smoking, started running. Then I started eating healthier, became vegetarian (now vegan), quit the junk food addiction, started doing other types of workouts (bodyweight, weights, Crossfit, anything that was fun).
And six years later, I’m nearly 39 years old and in the best shape of my life. I have less bodyfat than any time since high school, more muscle than ever in my life, and I can run and hike and play longer than anytime in the history of Leo. That’s not to brag, but to show you what can be done with some simple fitness habits.

Reshaping Through Habits

The appealing thing about many fitness programs is that they promise quick results. You see testimonials from people who have gone through the program and lost 30 lbs. and gain a washboard stomach in just 4 weeks!
That’s all complete crap.
First, most people won’t achieve those results. Second, and more importantly, if you do get quick results, you’ll reverse those results very quickly … because you haven’t created new habits. You’ve just done something intense and unsustainable for a short period of time. That’s nearly worthless.
You should be focused on long-term results, and more importantly on a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle starts with changing your habits and ends with long-term results.
Changing habits takes time. I recommend one habit at a time, and give yourself about a month per habit. That takes patience, but you shouldn’t try to see amazing results in just 30 days. You should enjoy your new lifestyle, which will be an amazing result in itself that you can achieve immediately. In a matter of months and years, your body and health will change too.
Let’s say you change one habit at a time, one per month or so. You’ll have 12 new habits every year. Even if you only formed 6 habits that stuck and that you loved, you’d be amazed at what kind of changes those 6 habits would create in your life and fitness. If you did 6 habits a year for three years, you’d be transformed.
If you don’t have the patience to change one habit at a time, or focus on enjoying your new habits rather than getting quick results, you should stop reading now.

Which Habits to Choose

So let’s say you’re just starting out … what habit should you start with?
My favorite habit is daily exercise, but if you’re looking to lose weight probably the most important habits relate to eating.
In truth, which habit you choose first matters very little in the long run. You will be changing many little habits over the course of the next few years, and the order of those habits is unimportant. What matters is that you start.
Here are some habits that I’d start with, if you haven’t created them yet:

• Exercise for just 5 minutes a day, adding 5 minutes per week. Make it a fun exercise.
• Drink water instead of sweet drinks.
• Replace fried foods with vegetables.
• Eat fruit and nuts for snacks.
• Eat lean protein, including plant proteins, instead of red meat.
• Add strength exercises to your routine — pushups, pullups, squats, lunges.
• If you’ve been doing all of the above for awhile, add some weights — compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, dips, chinups, overhead presses and rows.

I’ve found that losing weight is simple: eat lots of veggies and plant or lean protein, reduce calories, do some kind of cardio, lift some weights to preserve muscle.
Gaining muscle is also fairly simple: eat lots of veggies and plant or lean protein, increase calories, do some kind of cardio to preserve heart health, lift heavy weights to grow muscle.
The weights should be compound lifts and heavy, the cardio should be enjoyable. Getting “toned”, btw, is just gaining muscle and losing the fat that covers the muscle, whether you’re a man or woman.

Forming the Habit

These are my top principles for forming habits. If you’ve read my writings on habits before, this won’t be new to you, but often it’s good to review these principles for things you’ve missed:

1. Make it social. This is an incredibly powerful too. I highly, highly recommend Fitocracy to everyone, as it’s a way to make exercise fun and social (invite code: ZENHABITS). It turns fitness into a game, and you log your exercises, get points, encourage others, complete fitness quests, get props for workouts you’ve done. Other great ways to make your habit change social: report on your daily progress to friends and family through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email, find a workout partner, get a coach, join a running group, join online fitness forums, join a class.
2. Do one habit at a time only. People often skip this one because they think they are different than everyone else, but I’ve found this to be extremely effective. You increase your odds of success with just one habit at a time, for many reasons: habits are hard to form because they require lots of focus and energy, having many habits means you’re spreading yourself too thin, and if you can’t commit to one habit at a time, you’re not fully committed.
3. Make it your top priority. People often put off fitness and diet stuff because they’re too busy, too tired, to stressed out by big projects or the holidays, etc. But in my experience, those are great reasons you *should* be exercising. So make your new diet or exercise habit one of your absolute top priorities for the day. If you don’t have time, you need to make time.
4. Enjoy the habit. This is extremely important, and most people ignore it. If the habit is fun, you will stick with it longer. And even better, if you are enjoying it, you immediately win. You don’t need to wait for a bunch of pounds lost or other results — you get instant results because you’re enjoying the change. I find activities I enjoy, I join challenges or races to make exercise fun, I enjoy a conversation with a friend during a run, I eat healthy foods that are delicious (berries — yum!) and focus on savoring those foods. Focus on the enjoyment, and don’t make the habit change a big sacrifice.

Final Recommendations

Many people set fitness goals for the year. I’ve done it myself, but lately I’ve found that I can get fit without them. For one thing, when you set goals, they are often arbitrary, and so you are spending all your effort working towards a basically meaningless number. And then if you don’t achieve it, you feel like you failed, even if the number was arbitrary to start with.
You can create habits without goals — I define goals as a predefined outcome that you’re striving for, not activities that you just want to do. So is creating a habit a goal? It can be, or you can approach it with the attitude of “it doesn’t matter what the outcome of this habit change is, but I want to enjoy the change as I do it”.
So enjoy the habit change, in the moment, and don’t worry what the outcome of the activity is. The outcome matters very little, if you enjoy the journey.
The journey to fitness can have an infinite number of paths, and setting your path in advance by setting goals is limiting. Allow yourself to change course on a whim, without guilt of not achieving a goal, and you’ll find new paths you’d never have anticipated when you set out.
But the most important step of the journey is the first one. After that, the most important step is the one you’re presently taking. So take that step, and enjoy it.

Courtesy: Leo Babauta.

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