The Rich Roll Podcast - Leo Babauta’s Mission To End Human Struggle — Ruminations on Suffering, Simplicity & The Power of Mindfulness

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

As longtime listeners know well, minimalism, mindfulness & sustainable living are favorite recurring themes of this show. Guests like Andrew Morgan and Joshua Katcher have elucidated our our cultural addiction to fast fashion. Andy Puddicombe, Jason Garner,Light Watkins,Dan Harris,Charlie Knoles,Guru Singh,WuDe and others have espoused the benefits of meditation. And people like Joshua Fields Milburn have shared the strategies and value of learning to live better with less. Perhaps you even watched Joshua and Ryan Nicodemus' documentary, Minimalism*. If you did, you may recall seeing Leo Babauta featured. A husband and father of six, Leo is the creator of Zen Habits, one of the largest single-author blogs in the world with a fanatic global fanbase in the millions. Named one of TIME magazine’s Top 10 blogs, Leo was indisputably one of the first prominent voices on the internet advocating the power and beauty of embracing simplicity and mindfulness to transcend the chaos of our daily existence. Through his writing, he has taught millions how to clear mental, emotional, financial and physical clutter so we can focus on what’s most important, create something amazing, and find contentment, purpose and meaning in our lives. Count me a fan. Today finds Leo with a new goal: to end human struggle. Audacious? Sure. Naively optimistic? Maybe. But Leo is no ordinary human. Uniquely extraordinary, he might just have what it tales to help birth a new age of consciousness. Despite the fact that we had never met in person prior to this podcast, I can't overstate the extent to which Leo's work positively influenced my personal transformation and continues to this day to inspire my path. An authentic example of the powerful ideals he espouses, it was a personal thrill to finally meet him. More importantly, our exchange exceeded all expectations. This is a conversation about how to create healthy, personal boundaries. It's about the distinction between greed and ambition. It's about combating our consumerist programming through meditation, yoga, and mindfulness practices. And it's a conversation about his vegan lifestyle and why he unschools his children. But overall, this is a potent conversation about the path to self-mastery. It's about how to let go of negative habits and adopt positive practices with staying power in service to your highest, most authentic self. Because if you ask Leo, life is for living, not for productivity. Present, gracious and wise beyond measure, Leo is a rare voice worth heeding. And this is a podcast you're going to want to listen to more than once. I sincerely hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Peace + Plants, Rich

The year of changing my life was the result of a place of real struggle and not knowing how to change my life and wanting to and like starting all kinds of exercise programs. I was sedentary, not being able to stick to them for very long, trying all kinds of diets. I was overweight, probably like 60 pounds heavier than I am now, not being able to stick to that, trying to like, you know, get out of debt. And I was deeply in debt and not being able to do that. So I was just trying to quit smoking. I tried seven times and failed each time. So it was, it was a place of darkness and I found a way out. That's Leo Babauta, this week on the Ret Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. If you're a longtime listener to this podcast, then you know full well that topics like minimalism, mindfulness, and sustainable living are favorite recurring themes of this show, from Andrew Morgan talking about our cultural addiction to fast fashion, to people like Jason Garner, Dan Harris, Charlie Knowles, Guru Singh, and many others talking about the potency of meditation, to my conversation with Joshua Fields Milburn, who espouses the virtues of minimalism, living more with less. Perhaps you even watched Joshua's documentary, Minimalism, and if you did, you may recall seeing Leo Babauta featured in that

film. Leo is a husband, a father of six, and creator of the wildly popular Zen Habits blog, which is one of the largest single-author blogs in the world with over a million readers. It was named to one of Time Magazine's top 10 blogs for a few years running. And Leo was and is one of, if not the first major blogger or prominent voices on the internet to advocate the power and the beauty of finding simplicity and mindfulness in the chaos of our daily existence. How to clear the mental, emotional, financial, and physical clutter so that we can focus on what's most important, create something amazing, find contentment and meaning and purpose in our lives. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. My name is Rich Roll.

I am your host. And this week, I sit down with Leo, who is an extraordinary human whose work was absolutely instrumental in influencing and impacting my personal transformation and continues to this day to significantly inspire my path and the path of multitudes of people all over the world. I got a few more things I wanna say about Leo and this conversation, but first, a couple of quick announcements. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs.

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And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. So, I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Leo. He's just so thoughtful, so present. This is a guy who really walks his talk and is a true living, breathing example of the powerful ideas that he espouses. So this is a conversation about creating personal boundaries. It's about greed versus ambition. It's about combating our consumerist obsessions. It's about,

of course, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, veganism, homeschooling, unschooling. But mostly it's about self-mastery, not only how to create and sustain new habits that serve you, but how to effectively utilize certain tools and strategies to optimally deal with stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, remorse, in effect, the perils, the beauty, and the general gestalt of the human condition that we collectively share. So I absolutely love this talk, and I hope you do too. So without further ado, I give you Leo Babauta. All right, man, let's do it. All right. So good to talk to you. Good to finally meet you in person.

It's been many, many, many years in the making, and it's an absolute thrill, man. I'm so glad to have you here today. Yeah, it's amazing. It's really an honor to be sitting here in front of you. So I thought it would be fun to kind of kick this off with a little story. Okay. I think you know the story. But I had mentioned earlier when we were in the kitchen that your work, your writing, your blogs and habits has been formative in my journey.

I was reading your stuff. When did you launch the blog initially? 2007. 2007. So that was right around when I was beginning to kind of shift my lifestyle. So I don't know that I was a day one reader, but I was pretty early on and it was incredibly helpful to me to be able to have your voice in my ears as kind of a lighthouse and a guiding force as I was navigating some pretty treacherous uncertain waters. And so I appreciate you for that. Like you've been a big

behind the scenes person who has been crucial in kind of catalyzing my personal growth. So I wanted to thank you for that. No, that's, that's amazing to hear. And it's an honor to be a part of your journey. In fact, now that I know that I'm going to take all your credit for all your success. I'm giving it to you. You earned it and you're, you it and you're welcome to take it. And a funny thing happened

when we had never met, we'd never communicated. But when Finding Ultra came out, it was spring of 2012. And I knew that our mutual, I knew that my friend Matt Frazier knew you, Frazier of No Meat Athlete. And I just wanted to get the book into the hands of like people that I respected. Not, I didn't want anything in return. I just wanted to like be able to gift it as a way of saying thank you to people that had been helpful and, and, and been like, like yourself, a guiding force in, in, in my story. And so I reached out to Matt and I was like, Hey Matt, I really want to get like a copy of finding ultra to Leo. I don't know how to get in touch with them. Like, I know, you know, I'm, can you like bring it up? Or he's like, yeah, I'll ask him, you know, but you know, he's weird about stuff like Leo. I don't know how to get in touch with them. Like, I know you know him. Can you like bring it up? Or he's like, yeah, I'll ask him, you know,

but you know, he's weird about stuff like that. I don't know if he's gonna, you know. And I don't know, a week later or something like that, Matt emailed me back and he's like, you know, Leo said to thank you very much, but he's gonna decline accepting the book because he doesn't, you know, accept bringing new things into his house.

And so I had a moment of like a, like the briefest moment of disappointment. And then I was like, that's so baller. Like you actually walk your talk in the most profound way. Like you're actually living the way that you espouse and, and, you know, in line with what you write about. And so I actually thought it was really cool because it proved to me that you actually are who you are and hold yourself out to be. And I figured, oh, at some point we'll cross paths. Well, if I had known you were going to make the world's best podcast,

you know, if you're going to go on to do that, I would have taken the book. No, it was, you know, that's actually a really hard thing for me is to say no to everybody. Um, but in the beginning of the blog, I answered everybody's emails and I loved getting those emails and I answered every single comment. Uh, but as the blog grew, it was just became too much. And I had to like, for my own self protection and sanity, you know, set some gates basically so that I can be able to focus on the creating the work that I want to create. And, um, yeah, I mean, as you know, it can be

overwhelming. Well, saying no or having a healthy relationship with saying no is absolutely essential to living a minimalist lifestyle. That's right. How did you kind of cultivate a healthy relationship with doing that for me? Like I'm a people pleaser. Like I don't want to bum anyone out. And I end up saying yes to a lot of stuff I probably shouldn't and then resent it later. And I'm always like, okay, next time say no. I'm getting better. But I still have like, you know, a boulder.

I got to push up a mountain when it comes to that. Well, a couple of things. One is I learned that if I don't say no, I'm, and I'm saying yes to everything, then it's just overwhelming. So that yes, started to become, I started to associate that with overwhelm and stress and pain. So like I, I, and then I started associating no with simplifying and just having some space. So no became a positive thing for me. I actually started to cherish saying no to everything, like no to you, no to you. No, but it wasn't about no to people,

but it was more about saying yes to the life that I wanted in the space that I needed for my own sanity. So I would imagine you get offered really cool stuff though. Like a lot of those opportunities are probably things that would be fun or would be broadening, you know, that's, that's the other thing is that once you start to like set up these walls, not walls, but like, you know, these limits, you know, like, I'm only going to have this many things in my house or whatever. Those are like kind of artificial external things, but you start to see your own instinct to the urge to connect with everybody that you can because there's so many amazing things out there and you just want to do it all like i'm sure you're like me uh we're both people who want to like experience life to the fullest and have all these amazing experiences meet the

most amazing people and so saying you start to see that urge in yourself to like go and do everything and say yes and have so many meetings and to say yes to all these projects um and so i started to examine that urge in myself and i now think of it as greed uh which is a buddhist uh term for for that feeling of just wanting more wanting everything and um it's definitely very alive in me and And I see that now that I have those limits that I've artificially set. And it really helps me to see my own proclivities towards wanting more. I mean, when you couched it as greed, I was thinking ambition. And I think there's healthy ambition and there's unhealthy ambition.

So how do you split those hairs? Yeah. And greed is, in our our language it's a very negative word but it really just describes this wanting of everything you can you know having more doing more like rushing and and just um searching outside yourself for that answer right and it's like oh like you know good vegan food i'm here in la i'm not i'm not from here and i don't get this like incredible richness of amazing vegan restaurants and so i'm here i'm like i want to try every vegan restaurant it's impossible i can't possibly fit them all in but there's an instinct in me to want all of it because it's all so good and i feel like i might miss out on some amazing

ones so that's what what greed is and it, and it's actually a really human and like positive thing. Um, and so I don't want to like make it painted in like this horrible, like evil light, but it's definitely this thing in you and, and it can lead to like, I think we both have addictive personalities. Um, I know you've, you've struggled with that. I definitely do. addictive personalities. I know you've struggled with that. I definitely do. Yeah, and I do too. I mean, where I came from, my darkest place was addictions to a number of different things. And I still deal with those urges today, but that's where that comes from. It's just this wanting that more, wanting everything. Right. As a means of shifting how you feel in the moment. Right. It's a way of getting out of the present

right and so how do you you said like how do you choose between the one the good opportunities and the you know the ones that are going to be maybe too much um and for me it's just like being able to see that that tendency towards wanting more more more more and and letting that go so it's a letting go process and then what are you left with when you don't want more and more, more, more, and letting that go. So it's a letting go process. And then what are you left with when you don't want more and more? It's the loving intention. And so when I say yes to you, like I'm here with you, so I obviously said yes to something. It's like I feel like this is in alignment with my mission in life. And I feel like you embody some of the values that I want to spread in the world. And so coming here with you is a merging of that. And so that's a loving thing.

It's not necessarily based on that desire of like, I need to be on every amazing podcast. In fact, I haven't been on any recently, but this one felt in alignment with that love that I'm trying to offer to the world. That's cool. I appreciate that. And the feeling is definitely mutual. And yeah, I mean, it's tricky. You know, you wrote a blog post about this also with respect to travel.

Like when you go and you want to have all the experiences, you want to make sure that you see everything. And having that understanding that that's not going to be possible. that you see everything and having that understanding that that's not going to be possible and kind of playing that out and seeing yourself strung out because, you know, you've set up this goal that you can achieve of like checking all these boxes without actually ever just being present with where you're at and having a comfort level with knowing that you can't do it all and that that's okay. Yeah. And that, I mean, it shows up very strongly in travel, like you said.

Like, it's hard to be here when you're like, oh, I need to go to the next great place because there's so many great places. Rushing around to get the snapshot and then moving on. But that's actually what we do in our everyday lives. Well, most of us. I'm not, obviously, Rich is enlightened. No. At his reach of Nirvana. If anyone's enlightened here, it's you.

No, I mean, I definitely am pretty far myself. But most of us, instead of being present with the email that I'm reading, we're trying to get through our entire email box so that we can then go on to do the next task on our list and then go on to meeting so-and-so. And it's like, you're never fully present because there's that tendency to want more, to get to the next thing, to do more. And it's actually never ending. So you have to really just stay present with that urge, which is a natural one and practice letting go. It's so uncomfortable to do that. It's so hard

because you're also letting go of those little dopamine hits that you get also. Like, oh, I cleared my inbox. Oh, I checked my this or my that. Which is just not really necessarily directly related to moving your life forward or making you more content or more grounded or more successful. It's the illusion of moving forward without the actual truth of it. Yeah. And that's, I mean, we're all addicted to that, I think, is those little dopamine hits, you know, of, okay, I checked off that box, I did all these things. And moving on to the next one, it's just, it's hard to break free of that. So what are the daily practices that you've cultivated to manage all this um well

i'm obviously perfect and i do them all every day perfectly yeah you have a three hour morning routine and i've found you adhere to it perfectly every day and it's the perfect routine so i'm going to share it with you guys now and you'll you will have enlightenment after doing that and if you do this you will become leo yeah well i'm going to give you with you guys now and you'll, you will have enlightenment after doing that. And if you do this, you will become Leo. Yeah. Well, I'm going to give you all, but the last one and that one you can buy from my website. No. So no, I, I, I'm still in search of that answer, honestly, but what do I do?

Um, my daily practices, I, um, I meditate, um, And it's nothing, not like amazing, you know, advanced meditation, I just meditate on the breath mostly, right? So there's no specific approach, or I follow the generally I follow the Zen Buddhist style of Zazen and the, or like the just, just sitting kind of thing. But lately I've been returning to the basic practice of just counting the breath, which is something that I started with and then thought I was like moving on and beyond that. And I realized that I've, there's actually a lot of profundity, profundity in that. And so i'm rediscovering just counting breath um and that's like something that when you start out and you probably have had this experience like okay when do i move beyond counting breaths you know i need to get you know behind the velvet

rope into the next vip room of meditation yeah so like what's the next level and so you're always looking for that and that's actually really good to see that tendency in your mind to want to go beyond that um which is again that greed coming into play but so if you return to that which is such a basic practice and it's like so boring right or at least that's how our minds usually read it but actually you're just it's a practice of just fully being there, fully embodied with each breath and realizing that that is all there is. And it's like that breath is unique and not like the next breath and it's never going to come again. And that's exactly what we want to do is just in each experience, each moment to see that that's, that's unique. And it will never have this moment back. This one that

we're having between me and you right now, we're never going to have it again. And if we can just fully be here in this moment, as we are looking into each other's masculine eyes, we like, this is an amazing experience for me. And if I'm not fully here with it, I'm looking to the next thing. Okay. What what's, what's the next level thing that I can be doing? I'm going to be missing out on this amazing experience. And there's nothing more profound than anchoring yourself completely in the present moment. That's right. Right. So the idea, I think our minds are always looking for the advanced program or am I progressing, you know, with respect to meditation and ultimately it's so simple. Yeah. So simple. There's complexity within that simplicity, I suppose.

But there's no, you could plumb the depths of it for the rest of your life. Yeah. I mean, and anyone who's practiced breath counting knows that it's a simple practice. Like the instructions you can take in one minute. But actually doing it is pretty tough because of our minds, like, you know, wanting to get away from this moment. Like this is boring. Why am I counting my breath?

So you want to like, and you start to think about what else you have to do for today. And that conversation that you had yesterday, that's still sticking with you and all of these, you know, ego driven things. But if we can just let go of that ego and just stay with the breath and it's transformative, but like I said, it's pretty hard because of our minds tendencies. Yeah. And it's fleeting. Yeah. Right. All right. So how long do you do that for? Um, it varies lately. It's like, when I, I feel rushed, I should be doing it longer, but I actually do it shorter. I was like, okay, I don't have time. Cause I have so much to do. And so when I noticed should be doing it longer but I actually do it shorter I was like okay I don't have time because I have so much to do and so when I noticed myself just doing it for like 10 minutes

a day I realized like my mind is is doing that like wanting to like just get through the meditation and just check it off the list which is not really fully being there with it um so that lately it has been that which is a public confession, really. Yeah, my mind is definitely rushing off to the next thing. And especially when I travel, it's like, I have so much that I want to do. Again, it's that greed tendency. Like I want to do all of this stuff here in LA and meet all these amazing people. I'm not doing that, but it's, that's my mind's tendency. So it's like, okay, I only can do 10 minutes of meditation. doing that but it's that's my mind's tendency so it's like okay i only can do 10 minutes of meditation but i you know ideally and i don't really hold to the ideals but you know 20 to 30

minutes would be amazing okay yeah so that's right when you that's upon waking ideally yeah yeah yeah and then what follows that um yeah i don't have a magic formula. So let's see. Normally, well, so I mean, before that, I wake up, I have a glass of water and I take a couple. I take like an omega three kind of thing, vegan omega three. And then I meditate and I have coffee. And lately, I've been trying to now do a yoga practice, just a short one to some sun salutations, which is not something that I've been doing for a long time. So I don't want to pretend that I'm an experienced yogi. But I find that really useful. And I used to work out in the morning, whether that's a run or weights or something like that. to work out in the morning, whether that's a run or weights or something like that. I've been pushing that back to the afternoon and more focusing on my like most important task. So that's, that's basically nothing magical. Right. And are you still doing the, you know, check email twice a day kind of thing and restricting like your online time so that you can focus on, you know,

mission worthy work? Yeah. And imperfectly. So like so hard. Yeah. And you know, like for me, what, one thing that I've noticed from so many habits, when I say like, say no to this. And if you just say yes to one little one, it's, you know, that slippery slope. Um, and I discovered that when I first started my journey, like when I was trying to quit cigarettes, it's like, okay, when I I'll just have one puff, you know, and then it's like, all of a sudden I'm just smoking cigarettes again, you know? So that's the same thing. I like, I'll just check email real quick because, you know, I want to see if Rich emailed me, you know? Or it could relieve my stress because I have anxiety. There's this thing hanging out there that's unresolved. And I just, if I can,

if I can check and know that it's all okay, then I can actually be present with what I'm doing right now. Which is yeah, totally, totally fine. Like, you know, I don't need to rigidly hold myself to these rules, but having that line of saying, okay, I'm only going to do it this time. And this time helps me to see when I'm, what I'm doing. So when I, if I do it, because it's going to be, it's going to free my mind up, then, you know, that could be an amazing thing. Or if I'm doing it just because it's easy to slip into email habits, old email habits, then I can see that better now. Right. Yeah. So, but I have been slipping a bit, so yeah, I have to admit that you're a human being. Yeah. Um, but I, yeah, generally I've been checking email way less, mostly twice a day, sometimes even once a day. And I find that very freeing. Yeah. It's tricky, man. It sneaks up on me big time. It's definitely like in on you and just waging that war,

is it because you need to check them and this is an important part of your mission? Or is it because you're running from a difficult thing that you don't really feel like doing right now? It's both. It's both. I'm trying to carve out time to work on this new book. Okay. And so I'm much more vulnerable to distracting myself. Yeah, of course. Because I have fear and I have resistance, you know, to coin Pressfield's War of Art language. So I think unconsciously and maybe even on a conscious level like I'm seeking out distractions so that I don't have to do the hard thing you know what I mean every writer knows what you mean

and yeah and so there's that and then there's also like there's a lot of stuff going on and you know I've got a lot of unread emails and they all need responses so there's a responsive there's a responsible aspect of that as well that I can easily justify so when you say they need responses are these like actual ones that need responses or is that like your feeling of like this is undone? Probably a little bit of both. I mean, I've let go of the dream of inbox zero. Like that's not going to happen, you know, and let go of the shame of you think, you know, I have this thing like I'm a bad person. I can't answer all these emails, but it's just not like if I was going to do that, I would just be traffic copying an email all day long and never do anything else.

And so that's not a benefit to anybody. Yeah, and neither is the shame. No, yeah. And then I beat myself up because I can't get to all this stuff. Yeah, and that's not your core mission is answering emails. You're not Rich the email master. is answering emails you're not you know rich the email master but you know i've had i've had to weather you know some some negative consequences because sometimes you know like loose ends don't get tied up yeah when they should be if you're being more responsible i'm trying to figure it

out i have help and you know i'm trying to solve it but there's never a perfect there's no like if somebody in technology could like solve this email we all suffer from it. We all have this cultural epidemic of dealing with email. If somebody could innovate our way out of this and find a new way for us to communicate more fluidly, that would be a game changer that I think would resolve a lot of people's anxiety. So, well, yeah. a lot of people's anxiety so well yeah i so i it's interesting because my my view on that now is like it would be great to have this answer and yet this is like our practice ground you know right yeah so it's like this is with what's happening now i mean and it's really good because we see our tendencies email only just brings out the tendency it's a mirror it's a

great mirror exactly where you're at. So let me ask you this. You're writing your book. Your journey is holding me around. No, actually, this is exactly what I'd like to talk about. So you're writing your book. And we'll go back to Mia in a minute. Don't worry.

I know we will. You can cut this out if you want to. No, go for it. So you're writing your book and you have a chapter to write today, right? And there's fear coming up. Can you describe that fear, like the physical feeling of that fear? The physical feeling is... In your body. Yeah. It's an antsiness and it's a fear of not being good enough or not being able to... Well, how does that feel?

Some of the words. Not being good enough. Anxiety. Yeah, but like where is it located in your body? Probably like in my chest. Yeah. Yeah. And how would you describe the energy that's there in your chest?

The feeling of fear of not being good enough. that's there in your chest the feeling of fear of not being good enough it's like a vibrating like quickly vibrating energy that makes it difficult to concentrate yeah so it's vibrating in your chest does it feel like shooting out pulsing is it hard is it tight is it uh like uh like a gas like gaseous? Is it solid? Is it liquid? I would say it's shooting out and tight, like radiating out through the limbs. Yeah. Just a general sense of like dis-ease, you you know that makes it difficult to just relax

and i think it's bound up in um like an unhealthy relationship with trying to be perfect you know like if i'm if the words that are coming out aren't exactly what i have in my mind or how i envision this playing out then you know what am even doing? And how dare you even write a book? And who do you think you are? And then that's a cascading waterfall of like negative impulses. Yeah. So you have like this, and what you're describing is what every single writer, just in general experiences, and also every single person, human being on earth. But like, you have this idea, like like you want to make an impact on the world you want people to think well of you and you're attached to that idea which is very

natural attachment yeah because the the what i should be attached to is just trying to express myself as honestly as possible and to communicate an idea that i think would be helpful to other people as imperfectly as i you know as it as it may be. Yeah. And that would be way healthier. But also another thing that I've been working with is even that, like expressing yourself as, you know, perfectly as you can, that's even an ideal that you can get attached to, you know? So anyway, I'm not trying to lecture you or anything like that. So what is your, what is your strategy? To run usually. Well, running helps, you know, running helps resolve a lot of that anxiety.

And also it helps clarify my thinking. Yeah. So a lot of these ideas start to congeal. Yeah. You're talking about physically like going out for a run. Right. Are you talking about just running away? Just running to email.

Oh, running to email. Yeah. No, no. But actually, you know, running to running is a oh running to email yeah no no but actually you know running to running is is a good um good way to work with that for sure that energy that's in you right yeah um so my my practice with that now this is actually what i consider my life's mission is what we're just talking about um so that's kind of why i turned the microphones around no i appreciate that that was really helpful. So if you had to articulate your life's mission, what is that? It is to help people with that energy that's in your chest.

It's the, the way that I phrase it. Um, and I'm still working on the phrasing of the, uh, Leo version 2.0 TM, but by the way that I phrase it right now is I would like to help people with struggles. And this is a struggle, but there's so many versions of this. So many, I mean, everything that we struggle with in our lives, even the ones that we don't acknowledge is a version of this that you're talking about. And then the bigger, when I want to get big and bold, my mission is to end human struggle. That is an ambitious mission.

Right. But what you're describing there, that energy in your chest, and it's different for each person. And in fact, that energy, in my experience, and I'm not going to tell you what yours is, but my experience is actually that energy changes. Like if you just sit there watching it, it's nuts. It moves. It's the same with physical pain. When you draw your attention and get really specific with what color is it? Yeah. What is the nature of it?

Yeah. And where is it now? And you notice as the more you kind of like laser in on the locus of it, it will move around. And then, you know, ultimately, if you do it long enough, it will like dissipate. Exactly. So you could do that with a headache or, know whatever is ailing you yeah that's exactly the practice that that i've been trying to do and but the the problem is that we run or we we need to do something about that energy you know what i mean we need to fix it because it's uncomfortable

like just like physical pain is and actually i think it's a version of physical pain it's in your body right um so we run we go to email we go to twitter we go to all these different things that we feel are productive but we're running from that energy because when we go to email it's very there's a lot of like it feels more when you get a release yeah you get because you feel like you're accomplishing something right you're getting that dopamine like you said and you're accomplishing something. Right. You're getting that dopamine, like you said. And you're running away from that uncomfortable feeling. And that uncomfortable feeling is actually there in all these moments in our lives throughout the day where you're feeling like you might not be good enough. You have that fear.

Or you feel like something bad might happen. You get some anxiety. Or a lot of times it's frustration with other people and that's a kind of energy. Or resentment with your wife. There's all these different ways that we run from this energy that's in us. And so my mission now is to help people just to stay with that energy and stay with it.

And it's not something that I invented. I'm stealing it from Buddhism. But you stay with it and then you learn to become comfortable with that feeling of groundlessness or feeling of uncertainty and fear. And actually you can just stay with it. And like you have as a physical athlete, you've learned to stay with that discomfort when you're out on a run. You face it every single day. There's physical discomfort and you stay with it and you actually can give it mindfulness instead of trying to tune

it out with your music or whatever. If you just stay with it with mindfulness, like you said, it can dissipate and you can just keep running. But it's the same thing with anxiety and stress and frustration and all of that feeling bad about yourself is you can just stay with that energy and train in staying and train and just letting it be there and being okay with it. And then like you said, it can dissipate and you're okay. It's so true. I mean, that's what you just described is really the nature of sobriety, like true sobriety. Because I think as human beings, we all suffer in some respect from this very condition and we suffer on a spectrum. So at the very far end of the spectrum, you have people

with addiction problems, whether it's substance or behavioral, right? So when you become sober, you start to realize the relationship between that discomfort and the external thing that you reach for to take you out of that discomfort. So whether it's a drink or a drug or going shopping or watching television or answering an email or gambling or pornography or whatever it is, it is a quick fix to medicate an emotional state that for a lot of people is only, is very unconscious. They're not even consciously aware that they're making that choice in response to that feeling that's creeping up

that is throwing them off balance. Yeah, and you're exactly right. That's exactly right. And the addiction, what it is, for me, at least this is my experience of addiction, is you do that, you run to something away from that energy and you find that external fix, which is obviously very temporary and not really a fix. But you do that and then if you do that a number of times, it starts to harden into habit and then harden into addiction. And so what we have to do is unharden those addictions and habits that we have built up to run from that energy. And we've spent so much energy in our lives running from it. Every procrastination, you know, every moment of procrastination is running from that. Every time we reach for the, you know, you and I both like coffee. Every time we reach for coffee, a lot of times it's to fix that. I mean,

there's so many things that we do in our lives to run from that one thing. And if we can just stop running and just stay still and stay with it, all of a sudden it just doesn't become the end of the world. It's not something to panic about. It actually becomes okay. And you're like, oh, this is just another energy in me. And it will go away. It will change. It's not the worst thing in the world. And you learn to become comfortable with that discomfort. The fear of the discomfort is more severe than the discomfort itself. Yeah. And I think it's about developing a relationship with emotions in a way that allows you to kind of bifurcate your higher consciousness from the kind of emotional and physical symptoms of what is underlying that.

Right. So that you can get to that place and say, yeah, I feel like crap or I feel like I'm sad or I feel anxious, but they're just feelings, man. Yeah. It feels like they might kill you. They're actually just feelings. And every single feeling in the history of humankind can be relied on to do one thing and that's change like if you just stay with it it will morph into something else but you have

to get comfortable with being in that place of discomfort in order to experience that and get to the other side and say oh my god like i weathered that and I didn't have to reach out for that external thing to fix it. Yeah. And I'm okay. That's absolutely right. Right. But it's hard because we don't want to be uncomfortable. And we're in a culture that reinforces this idea that we should never be uncomfortable, that we should always be, you know, in some kind of luxurious state, you know, at ease and relaxed. Yeah. And so we're kind of conditioned state, you know, at ease and relaxed. Yeah. And so we're kind of conditioned to avoid these things that actually would make us happier and

more content ultimately. Yeah. And that conditioning that you're saying, that's something that we've been training in for our entire lives. It's like running to TV, running to porn, running to all of our social media and our phones and everything. It's just we've been training ourselves. Every single moment is mind training and we've been, we've conditioned ourselves because we're asleep at the wheel. You know, we're on autopilot and

we're just reacting. We're bouncing around like a ping pong ball, responding to impulses that are being thrown at us culturally or by family or whatever, and they have their own history of programming behind them until you kind of realize the extent to which you're actually exercising free will isn't quite what you thought it was. That's right. Right? That's right. So how do we begin to untie this knot?

So if we see the conditioning that we've already had and we see how that's not serving us, right? All of this conditioning, it's nothing to feel bad about. It's just, that's human nature is to be conditioned, but to see that it's not serving us and actually can be really hurting us in a lot of ways, whether it's addiction or anger or, you know, just all of procrastination and not creating the work that you're meant to create, um, see that it's not serving you and then start to unravel that conditioning. And the way you do that is that training of staying. So that's the, to me, that's the main training is the staying, but actually you can, as you said, you can actually go deeper. Uh, you talked about the higher consciousness and not letting yourself just be driven by the emotions

that are coming up, the feelings. So one of the things that I do in addition to that, and again, I'm not inventing this stuff, but I'll take credit though. I'll give you credit. So yeah, there's the staying. And if you can really learn to stay with that energy and be curious about it and be open to it and explore it. There's a Buddhist teaching where Buddha invited the demon Mara into the cave for tea. Instead of trying to do battle with Mara, he said, come on in and have tea with me. And this is the demon that causes all of our anxieties and the one that causes all of our disruptions in life, come and have tea with me. And so you're going to invite this energy in your chest to have tea with you and just welcome it and say, just come in and be a good friend to it and give

it some unconditional friendliness. And that's a hard thing to learn how to do, but you can turn your attention to it and say, like you would to a good friend. Like if you were my good friend, and every time you came into my life, I ran away from you, like that wouldn't be a good relationship, right? So instead, what if I said, hey, let's have some tea. You know, I'm glad you're here. How are you doing? You know, we can do that with that feeling that's inside of us and invite it to tea and just be welcoming and curious about it. What's going on with you? You know, we can do that with that feeling that's inside of us and invite it to tea and just be welcoming and curious about it. What's going on with you? You know, and that's the next part of it.

It's just to really explore it. So train to stay trained to explore with welcome and friendliness and a warm heart and compassion. And then the next thing you can do is actually go underneath that energy. And if you can go underneath that energy, there's that energy is there in you. But under that is the is this tenderness in your heart. And that's the tenderness that wants to get away from the discomfort and is is afraid of being unloved. Like you're talking about the fear of not being worthy or being not being good enough. We all have that. And that's comes from that tender place in your heart

that wants to be a good person and wants to be loved and respected. And that's actually a really, that's goodness in you. And it's a tender place that we don't often access. But this, so this energy comes from that. It's like, oh, it's like a scared little child saying, I want to be loved, but I don't want to be hurt. And so the

energy is from that place in our heart. And if we can learn to go under it and see that tender place and just stay with that, put our hand on that, it's tapping into, I think, is our basic goodness, which some people call our birthright. It's always there. And if we can learn to tap into that, we can start to learn to trust that that basic goodness is there all always there. And if we can learn to tap into that, we can start to learn to trust that that basic goodness is there all the time. Even if we're afraid, even if we're angry, frustrated, resentful, all of these things, there's that goodness there. And if we learn to tap into that, then we have a trust in that goodness that we can be okay even if we feel anxiety, even if we feel resentment, even if our spouse is yelling at us, we can be okay even if we feel anxiety, even if we feel resentment, even if our spouse is yelling at us.

We can be okay through this difficulty. Like as a center point. You can always go back to that place. And it's a place you can come to trust. Yeah, I was just, when you were describing that, mean that was beautiful what you said but i was thinking like okay well what's a practical example of you know an experience that an average person has and i was thinking all right well most people like dread doing their taxes like they put it off to the last minute or they file an extension and then before they know it it's like oh god i still

haven't done it and the amount of energy that goes into that dread like that you're carrying around like this low grade kind of anxiety in the back of your mind like you know you got to do that thing yeah and you're just avoiding it day after day after day after day and it can cause knots in your stomach yeah and then to face it and then so what's behind that oh well oh, when I do it, I'm going to realize I owe all this money or, you know, whatever's behind that, like fear of financial institutions or financial insecurity or that. And then even beneath that, like, I'm not enough.

I'm not good enough. I'll never, I'll never be able to be financially stable. Whatever like fears are fostering that. But then to kind of like, okay, finally do it and see your way through it and go, actually, that wasn't that bad. And then to reflect back on the amount of energy that you expended over the last six or eight or nine months trying to avoid it. It's insanity, right? transcend that paradigm and develop a healthier relationship with obligations or experiences that trigger you in that way is this journey of like finding that center point in yourself or cultivating

a relationship with that yeah and it starts from just not running so like you know the email two times a day it's not about me being super productive or super zen or anything like that it's more like that's a practice container for me of like when I, if it's 8 AM and I'm running to email, I know that's not in my container. And so it's very easy for me to see that I'm running. When you can see you're running, then you can start to practice with it. But we don't normally see ourselves running. See, I have, I have this experience of seeing myself running and doing it

anyway, which makes it worse because it makes the shame spiral that much more intense. Cause you're like, I know what I'm doing and I know I shouldn't be doing this. And I feel powerless to stop it. You're so human. Yeah. Boy. Um, no, I mean, we all, we all have that. Like we can see ourselves and we like, we know we're harming ourselves right now. We know we're running. We know we're eating the Doritos or whatever it is. And we're like, I don't care. Like, I don't give a crap right now. I want to run anyway.

And you know what that is? It comes from this very human desire to relieve yourself of this discomfort. Which is, there's nothing wrong with that desire. And the shame that comes up from that, like, oh, I just ate a whole bag of Doritos. to relieve yourself of this discomfort, which is, there's nothing wrong with that desire. And, and the shame that comes up from that, like, Oh, I just ate a whole bag of Doritos or, you know, vegan Doritos, but like, I just ate a really unhealthy thing and I just ate a whole bunch of it. And then you have the shame. That's actually also another feeling that you can sit with the shame afterward. Um, but yeah, I i mean what do you do when you see

yourself then you feel you feel even worse because you feel ashamed you're building this house on top of it's like you compound the damage layers and layers of guilt and shame yeah and regret and remorse and all of this stuff and so this is our human condition we're constantly layering crap on top of crap and we don't need to. So once we start to see it, your awareness now, you've taken going from like not being aware that you're running to an awareness that you're running, your awareness of that, and then you can be aware of the shame that you're putting on top of that and the shame of having the shame and all of this other stuff. That is where it starts starts because if you start to see yourself doing it over and over you're like okay how much energy am i going to keep expending i see myself doing it and eventually you just get tired like i'm tired

of hurting myself and that's when you can start to like say okay let me just take a breath here instead of running maybe i can try something different. But you have to just watch yourself do it for a while. Yeah. The trying something different, though, is the key. It's the action that will shift it because there's an adage in sobriety like self-awareness will avail you nothing. So you can listen to all this and, like me, develop an awareness. I know that I'm doing this. I'm checking out.

Again, here I am doing this behavior. But you're never going to transcend it until you alter your behavior. Behavior is the path forward. There's another Buddhist practice, which is renunciation. I'm sorry if you know all this stuff already. Oh, please explain. Preaching to the choir. So renunciation is just—

And my super cluttered—I was like embarrassed how cluttered this office is. No, it's wonderful. You guys should see it. But it's, it's a wonderful office. I feel like I'm in the place of magic, but anyway. So yeah, the, the, the practice is renunciation and it's simply just seeing you're, you're aware when you're running and you let yourself run anyway. And just afterward, just reflecting, maybe you can do it at the end of each day, maybe after just right after you do it, after you run and allow yourself to run. But it's just saying I was in discomfort. I ran from it. It actually didn't help me. Like you can kind of just reflect on that and just say,

me uh like you can kind of just reflect on that and just say i renounce that action and that doesn't that's not a feeling of guilt uh it's not uh beating yourself up about whatever you just did but it's just saying i'm letting that go it's a like i don't think it was helpful and i'm not going to i'm going to try and do better right but do it a neutral, you're doing it in a neutral frame of mind. Right. You're not, you're not hurting. You're not being harsh on yourself. Right. And is that something you would verbalize out loud or write it down in a journal or

just make a mental note to yourself? Yes. All of those. Any one of those is great. Any way that works for you. I personally just say it to myself. I just like make them just take a pause and this could be like a two second meditation just like i saw what i just did there and that's

my that's my pattern it's my tendency and there was a good-hearted maybe longer than two seconds now but it happens faster in my head but like that was a good hearted intention behind that and yet it did not come to a good result and i i vowed to do better from this point on and i can continue to vow each time and it's just a letting go of what i just did and a intention to do better to to practice with us in the future it's one of those things where you're like is is it really that simple? It can't be that simple. Like the human brain, at least my human brain is always like, tell me the super secret answer that no one knows that, you know, I want the special, you know, the special answer. And the truth is, and this is a core of Zen really, is that these simple ideas are so much more powerful than we

understand them to be that we can actually we could spend the rest of our lives trying to get to the bottom of how profound they are yeah and honestly it's as you constantly say this is a journey right so it's a simple practice but actually it's just something that you used along the way and you get better at it. And still, you know, you're like 50 years into the journey and you're still eating the bag of Doritos, vegan Doritos. Well, let's, let's step it back a little bit and create a little context for this journey. I thought it would be fun to kind of explore, you know, how you got to this, this place. You have a really interesting backstory.

Yeah. So maybe walk us through that a little bit. Yeah. So I created Zen Habits in 2007 and just took off that year. And so I've been a blogger for 10 years. But before that, the blog was really the result of more than a year of changing my life and before that was the year of changing my life was the result of a place of like real struggle um and not knowing how to change my life and wanting to and like starting all kinds of exercise programs i was sedentary not being able to stick to them for very long, start trying all kinds of diets. I was overweight, um, probably like 60 pounds heavier than I am now, not being able to stick

to that, uh, trying to like, you know, get out of debt. And I was deeply in debt and not being able to do that. So I was just trying to quit smoking. I tried seven times and failed each time. So it was, it was a place of darkness and I found a way out. Um, so I don't know if you want me to go into any of that. Yeah. So this was happening, this was like early two thousands. You're living in Guam. Yeah. That's where I'm from. And you're already, you're already married at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a messy story, but yeah, I was, this is my second marriage. I had been through a divorce. I had two kids from the first one. She had two kids. We came together, got married, had two more kids.

So we have a big brood. Six kids. Six kids, a Brady Bunch situation. Three boys, three girls. And so I'm on Guam. I'm working a day job that I didn't love. And you grew up there. Yeah.

I grew up also back and forth, all over the place, like the Bay Area, Seattle, born in Portland, Oregon, but mostly in Guam. My entire adult life was in Guam. And so, yeah, married. And it just things started to list like snowball, like just constantly running from the discomfort, really. Right. And what was your profession at the time? Um, at that time I was working for the governor of Guam as a speech writer, but I'm a writer by profession. Um, I had been a journalist since high school, basically, uh, uh, an editor writer, and then, um, worked for the Guam legislature, then the governor of Guam. And, um, yeah, not, Guam legislature than the governor of Guam. And yeah, not excited about it. So how does this all come to a head for you?

So again, overweight, couldn't stick to anything, smoking, deeply in debt, working in a job I didn't like, but working long hours, not able to be there for my family. And I just realized my life is entirely upside down and I was completely out of control and I didn't know how to get out like you know like for me it felt like rock bottom you know obviously there's always deeper rock bottoms but for me it felt like I'm like this is not working and there's something I need to get control of my life and so I I tried lots of different things they weren't working and I finally decided to start with one thing. Just narrow it down and put everything I had. Because I felt like I was saving my own life. And I had to just put everything I had into that one habit and do whatever it took to make it work.

So I did all kinds of research, read books, even research papers, all kinds of online sites. And tried everything to make it work. And it did. It stuck. It was quitting smoking. Quitting smoking was the one thing. And so how did you, after failing seven times or whatever it is, you said, what was the thing that you did that actually made it work?

It was actually a set of things. And that set actually worked for the next thing, which was running, and then vegetarianism, and debt, debt and decluttering and so forth. That set is something I discovered through repeated trying of it. And that's why I wrote Zen Habits, was to share that set of things. The set of things were, number one, making a big commitment. I basically told everybody I knew that I'm quitting smoking. Because before that, I would just say, okay, I'm going to quit today to myself because I didn't want people to know.

And so you always have an out. Yep. And then later that day, I took a puff and then was smoking by the end of the day. So it wasn't a big thing. It was like a minor commitment in my mind. So I had to make it. This is something I'm committing to. And I made it publicly. I asked for support. I found a support community, uh, which was accountability, but also like when I'm, when I need support, I'm going to reach out to you before I, before I smoke and ask for your

help. And these are people who are going through it with me. So that support and accountability and community was really important. And then meditation was, that's when I discovered meditation actually. When the urge to smoke was arising and it was very uncomfortable. And I would normally not even notice it. I started to just sit with it. And watch it rise. and get strong and strong and like so powerful and then let it go that's a quick question okay how what was your relate as a writer right like you can develop you know the relationship between smoking and like creative

writing or writing is a tricky one right so did you experience like having to figure out new strategies absolutely sit down and write yeah so that's actually why I started running um was was because I realized that smoking was actually a crutch for so many different um things in my life from stress to um yeah just like a social lubricant and all these other things. So I had to figure out what my triggers were with smoking, like what triggered me to start smoking. And I started to actually, I carried around a little piece of paper and made tally marks every time I had the urge to smoke. And I would allow myself to smoke at first, this is before my quit date. And I would just go around with that thing. And it was, it was allowing me to number one,

see when the urge was arising, develop mindfulness around it. And number two, to start to see the triggers. Was it stress? Would I just get into a fight with somebody? And so I made a list of all these triggers and I said, for this, I'm going to do this instead. And running was one of those. Right. So creating alternative behaviors to fill in the blank when you would experience that stressor or that. Right. Yeah. So there were replacement habits and there were coping ways to cope with usually stress really. And feeling bad about myself was another one and things like that fear. I don't know if that answers your question about creative writing. Yeah. So writing. So that was another big

one was understanding my triggers and creating replacement habits for each one. Yeah, there are probably a few others, but what I did was like, well, that worked. And maybe I can try that with running. Maybe I can create the running habit. I couldn't even run 10 minutes at first, And maybe I can try that with running. Maybe I can create the running habit. I couldn't even run 10 minutes at first, like so out of shape. And I started using that same thing. And what I did, I ran my first 5K and it was like so exhilarated.

I'm like, I can run a marathon. So I made a big public commitment to running a marathon. And I wrote a newspaper article, a column in the newspaper on Guam every other week about my training for my first marathon and that big public commitment, just to the support of the community from reading this and like cheering me on, got me to the finish line, even though I was totally not prepared for a marathon. Yeah, but you got it done. I did. So you're kind of canonizing these principles that have been effective in your life, right? Um, and so when do you have the impulse to like start sharing this online or create the blog? It was right after the marathon. So the marathon was done. Um, I had

already gone through a whole year of change and I had been done doing a whole bunch of other things. And I learned about that power of public support and accountability, um, and commitment. And so I'm like, okay, I did the marathon. My column is done now. I'm like, what, what can I do now to like get some, you know, public support and accountability commitment. And so the blog was my answer. And so that was really just like, it was supposed to be just my friends. You said first reader, my first readers were my wife and then my mom. Right. So Zen habits, you launch it and you create this, you know, beautiful minimalist template for it, which was unusual because this was the era of banner ads and just super cluttered.

Well, confession time. It's uncluttered right now. When I first started it, January 2007, it was cluttered. I put banner ads. I didn't know what to do. It just looked like every other blog. Right. And I wanted, I honestly, like when I, as soon as I discovered that this is something I really loved doing and I love that connecting with the readers and, and helping them and then learning from them as well, as you know, um, that was so powerful in my life.

I'm like, this might be my calling. And once I did, I'm like, okay, well, how do I pay for this? And so I slapped a bunch of ads on there and made like 30 cents the first month. pay for this and so i slapped a bunch of ads on there right and made like 30 cents the first month so how was there a moment where the blog like caught fire and blew up or was it like a organic progression of growth it was probably a few months into it um and it just caught fire like and then i did somebody share it or like how did that yeah how did that can you what are the forensics behind that yeah i don't know how they discovered it there was a site called dumb little man um and they're still around uh but at that time they were they had like 80 000 subscribers and i had again two and so

i don't know how they found me but they found one of my posts and it was like top 10 ways like one of my list posts which i became famous for in that first year um top 10 ways, like one of my list posts, which I became famous for in that first year, um, top 10 ways to motivate yourself or whatever. And they shared that. I remember going, looking at my stats that morning and in the seeing the spike, it was like, you know, where did this come from and how did this happen? And I just like complete, not my, nothing I did different that day than I had been doing the month before. And it was just overwhelming and then gratifying to see all these readers come in. And there was another site called lifehack.org, which is still around too. And they had a hundred some thousand subscribers.

And to get links from those sites was just an amazing thing for a blogger like me. And yeah, like I said, I caught I caught on fire. And one of the things I did was I wrote, I started writing guest posts, and becoming a freelance blogger. So I would write blog posts for other blogs. And I was probably writing five for five different blogs every week, and another five to 10 guest posts a week. So I was writing probably and I was writing every day on my blog. Wow. So I was probably writing 20 to 25 blog posts a week for a year. Oh my God. And writing for your job. Well, yeah, that's, I quit my day job at the end of the first year. So the 2007, by the end of that year, I had written my first ebook and got on, gotten out of debt. I got 27,000 subscribers. I got a book deal from an actual publisher and an advance,

and I quit my day job. But yeah, the first year was all happened in one year. Yeah. It was an amazing, amazing, amazing year for me. That's crazy. Wow. Like I didn't realize it was such a compressed period of time where all this happened. Yeah. I mean, and then there was a lot journey beyond that, but that first year was, was transformative. And, and like you said, I was, I had a day job. And so there's a couple of things I do as was, I actually started waking up early, which I had been doing for marathon training, but I waking up early just to write a bunch of blog posts. Um, and I would do it during my lunch hour. And then I worked for the government. Um, and on Gu guam there's a joke about uh how little they work i won't get into that but um so i was there well you could carve out free time during the day to get more

blog posts done everyone else is playing solitaire and i'm writing blog posts for for uh yeah a bunch of different sites i was super motivating yeah well it was also a really interesting time in the kind of culture of blogging, right? It was a moment where you could have a bust out blog. Looking at it now, I'm interested in your thoughts now. It would be a lot harder now, it seems to me, to distinguish yourself as a blogger. This blogger culture seems to have changed. That is true. There is some truth to that and yet that's what

i told myself at the time there were already big bloggers around and i said well there's no way i can make a dent in this everyone there's so they're all established and they had it easy because they started earlier than me in 2005 or 2004 or whatever and so i couldn't do it and yet it worked for me and then i've had so many people say that to me over the last 10 years, like, oh, it was easier for you when you started. And yet I've seen people rise just in the last year from nothing to stardom as a blogger. And so I've seen amazing writers rise up because they're consistent, they offer value, they're authentic, and they've got something amazing to share. And so that's still possible today and might be a little more crowded,

but really the, you know, in a crowd, if you can just be your, like you always say your authentic self and give amazing value to the world. And if you're on a mission that resonates with people, you know, you can find your tribe. Yeah, I think that's true. I think being prolific and being consistent is huge and being authentic and honest to who you are and providing content that is actually going to be useful and helpful to other people. Yeah. In a real way, there's always room for that. That's never going to go out of style no matter what. Yeah, it totally. Yeah. And it could be in a different way. Maybe it's video. You know, maybe it's virtual reality when my kids do it. But those are just

different distribution methods for the same idea. Same thing. Right. But you I mean, you are you know, when you talk about prolific, I mean, how many you've written, like five or six or seven or 10 or 12 books like like you look on Amazon, it seems like it's an endless stream of titles. I mean, I know some of those are eBooks and they're shorter than others and things like that. But I mean, you're, you're putting out like a tremendous volume of content. One little note that is true. And I can speak to that.

But, um, one little note about the Amazon books, a bunch of them are not published by me because I uncopyright my work. So people will collect a bunch of blog posts and then put it into an ebook. Oh, I didn't know that. Which is fine with me. I, I, I wanted to go out in any way that people want. It is interesting, but to put a pin in that, like the, the, the decision to uncopyright your work and, and allow it to be shared freely and repurposed however anybody chooses.

What is the, I mean mean that's a very zen thing to do right like was that a what is what was the decision making or the the sort of thought behind that it was uh it was inspired by the open source copyright movement the free software movement um and they're the beauty of that um how they just let the source be free because they want this to be shared and they want people to build upon it. And they don't really believe that ideas should be owned by anyone. And honestly, that resonated so much with me because as I just shared with you, I steal stuff from Buddhism. I steal stuff from Taoism and the Stoics. There is no original idea. Definitely not for me.

And I'm remixing it just like we all are, right? And I'm sharing it with the world in a way that is accessible in my own voice. So yeah, I didn't invent any of these ideas, but I build on it. And I merge them together in my own unique way. But I stole it from other people and I want people to steal it from me.

So it was actually a really scary thing for me to announce that. Scary and yet super exciting. And I have found actually for me, I coined a term called joy fear because the best moments in my life are filled with joy and fear, like this blend of both of them. And at such heightened levels that like I it's, I've now come to realize that that are, those are the pivotal moments of my life. When I quit my day job, when my kids were born, when I met my wife, when, um, when I do anything good in my, in my

work, when I feel, you know, like on a purposeful mission. And that was one of them was this fearful thing of releasing control over my work. Like, I don't know what people are going to do with it. They'll sell it for a thousand dollars and I won't get any of that money. Uh, maybe I'll go out of business because of this. Um, so it was very scary and also very liberating because one of the things that we do as content creators, if we, if we hold tightly to our copyright is we have to then protect that copyright. And it's so much have to then protect that copyright. And it's so much energy to spend to protect something,

like I said, that's not even mine. And to let it out free into the world and let people remix it in their own beautiful ways is, I think, a liberating thing. And ultimately, I think it gives wings to that content and allows it to spread more seamlessly and more broadly than perhaps it would have otherwise. Yeah.

And that said, I still sell stuff like it's uncopyrighted and yet people will still pay for it because they want to support me. And I love that. I love that I'm being supported by this community of people making their lives better and learning mindfulness. So I just feel so gratified. When did you create the super clean, minimal aesthetic for the site? It was an evolution. I've always been my own site designer. So I basically just go in and mess with the WordPress stuff and start stripping stuff out and break the site.

And then eventually I decided I'm going to make my own theme. But it's been like that probably like five years now. Yeah. When you first did it, it was radical because I was so used to seeing so much nonsense on every website that you would visit. And it would just be this clean white page. And there was like nothing non-essential was there whatsoever. I was like, how's this guy making a living? Like, how does this even work?

I know you're like supporting six kids. And now that I think about it, it's actually more like seven years or eight. But anyway, yeah, you know, that was actually, again, I rip stuff off from others. So I stole that from a read later service called Instapaper. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but it's one of those. Yeah, you like save web content and read it later on their site. And they take just the essential content and save it and take away all the ads and all the other things that you don't want to see and only the stuff you want to see. And so you read it on their site or on the app and it's just text in a beautiful, readable form.

I'm like, that's the pure reading experience that I want to create. I don't want to give people ads or all these sign up for my whatever. That's not why they're there. They're there to read this article and connect with it and make their lives better. If I can create that pure experience, that's what i want when i go to someone else's site so i'm creating that for them that's just like giving what i want to receive and um i love it i it's just my favorite thing that i've done one of my favorite things i've done is just create this site that is a pure reading experience. Yeah, it's cool. Well, I mean, you are at the tip of the spear or the vanguard of what has turned into this huge cultural phenomenon of minimalism, living more sustainably, living more mindfully.

Again, these are not new ideas, but for whatever reason, by whatever cultural alchemy is at play, they have percolated to the surface of mainstream consciousness in a really profound way. Yeah. And so it's got to be cool and gratifying for you, you know, now 10 years,

you know, nine years after you launched Zen Habits to be kind of in the mix of what everybody is talking about. So gratifying. I mean, I'm sure you know, you know, this feeling too. That's why I feel a connection with you is when you put your stuff out there, you don't know what's going to happen with it. Like, you know, again, you have this fear, maybe people won't, will judge it as unworthy. And then they take it and not only think, oh, this is good stuff, but they change their lives with it. Like how profound is that

to be incredibly, there's nothing, there's nothing more profound that you can experience as a human being than to have that kind of impact on another person. Yeah. And so, I mean, so you get it. That's, that's how I feel. And I feel such a privilege to be a part of people's lives in that way in spirit, but also in I show up here in your studio and we do this together or I link to somebody on my blog. I feel like I know you already. We can just pop in and have a shorthand. And here's the thing. You and I, the people, the men who are sitting here today in this room, we are who we are because of each other. Like you have influenced my thinking and my life and you've told me the same thing. And so we have kind of co-created each other.

And like I wouldn't be who I am right now if it weren't for you. And vice versa. I mean, that's crazy to think about that. And it's in a very real's crazy to think about that. And that's like the, I mean, it's in a very real way. Yeah, totally true. And like, there are people who are vegan in this world because of you, you created that the version of, of human being that they are right now. And there are people who have changed their habits or learn mindfulness because of me. They've created who they are and, and vice versa by them taking in that to their lives and supporting

me financially, but also just reading my stuff and paying attention, giving me the gift of their attention. They've created who I am. Like I wouldn't be who I am right now if it weren't for everybody reading my stuff, if it weren't for other bloggers supporting me and the community of like-minded, like-hearted individuals who are trying to create this. I just feel such a privilege to be a part of this. And it's not just the reader blogger relationship. It's the, all the other bloggers and podcasters and creators. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing, but why do you think now, like what's going on now in the world that created this confluence of circumstances that made these ideas that you've been talking about for a while and others have been talking about

so relevant and so applicable to people's lives and what they're looking for? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I don't have the full answer, but I'll tell you this. When I started writing about simplicity on Zen Habits, it's one of the first things I wrote about simplifying your life, leading a simple life. I thought I was weird. And so I had been reading books on simplicity, some little known ones now, but they influenced me.

And so I'm like like this is really amazing stuff and i want to write about it but i didn't think anyone would care because no one in my personal life cared about it um so i shared it not only not only that it's it's actually quite the opposite everybody's looking to accumulate as much as possible like their their attention is on diametrically opposed to what you were becoming more and more interested in. It's so counter to our culture that it's not on their radar. But here's the strange thing. People who read my blog, they just happened upon it.

However, they might have been exposed to it for the first time. Maybe it was the third time they were exposed to the idea of simplifying your life and having less. There was something in it that spoke to their hearts and it just ignited. And that's how my blog took off was because I think of mindfulness and simplicity and also changing your habits. But there was something in that simplicity and mindfulness message that just resonated with people and made them like want to change their lives and then share it with others. And I wouldn't be here if that didn't resonate with people. And I didn't realize that it was going to. So it was complete shock to me. Like, whoa, this message speaks to people. And it was two, three years of me just reflecting on like, why is this speaking to people? And as

I started to hear from readers and of ways that it changed their lives, I started to understand what you're asking about with like how, why now, right? And it's because of what you're saying, our entire culture is geared for more. And, you know, obviously advertising and consuming, that's what we do. And that's like, everything is about that. And we have like vending stuff in schools now. So kids are learning to be consumers. And they have the iPads where they're buying stuff. So we're learning to be consumers at a very young age. But there's also just the more, more, more aspect of online stuff and your phones.

And what we talked about in the beginning is that that tendency to greed has been triggered so much more now because of technology and the culture that we're in, advertising, TV, all of that stuff. It's just taking our normal human tendency that's been there since caveman days and amplified it. It's given it this microphone, like a megaphone, basically. And there's something in us that realizes that it's crazy. And we want some sanity in our lives. And it's out of control. And we want a feeling of control. I don't think you're actually going to get a feeling of control by doing the stuff that I tell you.

But what you learn through the journey is you don't necessarily need it. I think there's a level of control. I think there's a level of control, control in the sense that you are becoming more masterful in your decision making process about what you're allowing into your life and into your home. Yeah. Right. And so there's a there's control over that. And I think that feels good in a world that spins out of control, you know, that's spinning out of control with our, you know, insane consumer habits. Right now No, what I, what I, and you're absolutely right. Like the control is over your own mastery, your internal stuff. But what I think people, when they first come to it, they want is the external mastery, like the external control.

Like there's no stuff in my life, you know, no clutter. My email box is down to zero. Like I have a perfect system in the morning and perfect productivity system and therefore nothing bad will ever happen to me in my life you insulate yourself from discomfort like that's that's not gonna as opposed to actually getting being okay with the discomfort right yeah so you can build all of the external like systems of control and you're still going to run from writing that chapter yeah right because you might have one email right you know your inbox isn't at zero yeah we're very good at telling ourselves these stories that rationalize us running for sure so minimalism is isn't really like we talk about like like you just mentioned, you know, cleaning out the closet or donating all your stuff or, you know, declining to accumulate additional things.

But it's not really about the stuff, right? So when you have to define minimalism, how do you give words to it? It's, yeah, it's not about the stuff. It's the way that I normally define it. And I'm going to change it up here because of your presence here. That's influencing me. Better or worse. Yeah, taking me down a dark path no so normally i i say is really it's about

trying to understand what's essential to you and this letting the rest kind of fade away like kind of saying no to the rest that that's saying no that we talked about so like what's essential in terms of stuff right like is everything that we own essential or is it just adding more clutter to our lives? Is adding beauty and joy to our lives or is it draining us of energy and also finances, you know? So like there's, there's a lot of, um, of reflection on that. And by understanding what's essential, what you're really doing is, is understanding what's, who you are and what's important to you what your values are and so that's that's it's an internal thing so to me minimalism is starts with the clearing out your

cluttered closet and that's where the journey starts just like your journey might have started by putting on a pair of running shoes or or whatever you know or you know clearing out the liquor cabinet first yeah what i mean like yeah years before the running shoes yeah no but it was it was really just the start of the journey you know and so um you know that's where it starts but when you when you start to say okay well if i'm gonna like if i want to get down to a hundred things let's say you set some external limit like that it's completely arbitrary like what do i keep well what do i want my life to be like who am i what's important to me and then you even like think of people like is this person giving me energy in my life and making my life better or are they just

dragging me down but just the fact that you're asking yourself those questions you know is huge that's right yeah no you that's you hit on minimalism it's really just allowing yourself to ask the questions because most people in our culture are not asking those questions they go along with their their normal conditioning um and so pausing and saying huh is this the way i want to live my life it's it's a start of a conscious life so that's that's what minimalism is to me it's just a conscious life and it it's letting go. Also, it's a letting go process, letting go of not only possessions, but of the things that like of not being able to do everything and saying, I can't. And so I need to let go of some things that I think are important. And the ones that I've identified

as absolutely important. As well as ideas and thoughts about yourself yeah yeah i mean it can get as deep as you want it to get right um and really even if you just cluttered out the closet i think you're already um you've already achieved something amazing because most people don't even take a look at that and say there's any there's even a question there you know what it does for me and i go through you know it's like i i clean it out and then for whatever reason it seems like it's full again like a couple i mean now like people send me stuff in the mail i get all these boxes all the time stuff i'm not even asking for and i don't know what to do with it it finds its way into my closet and then then i have to give

it away or you know i don't know it's you live such a hard life getting all this free stuff it's like people must send you stuff too well maybe they know better that's sort of my address somehow yeah it's like it's such an ironic thing to send you something yeah you're who you are i got a book on minimalism that someone sent me that's not cluttering my closet um but for me like when i do that purge um there's a it's it feels incredibly good like whatever whatever i'm trying to you know avoid whatever like i'm trying to medicate myself with yes that's a better feeling triggering the same you know receptors or whatever but it's an amazing feeling. And, and it, and it does get you into the habit of like being just being discerning, like what is this versus this? Do I need this? Do I not need this? Just that calculus, you know, and the more that you can make that a habit,

you see it spill into other areas of your life. So when you say, look, if all you do is clean out your closet for me, I think what that does is it, itzes a perspective. Yes. You know, that I think if you kind of plant that seed will continue to grow and show up in other areas of your life. Yeah. That will get you asking questions about what is meaningful to you. And I think the more you're asking that question of yourself, that's how you develop, you know, that's how you connect with who you are. That's how you figure out what it is that you're here to do. That's how you express, bring life and voice to that authentic person that is probably more dormant than you would like to believe. I couldn't have said it better. I'm going to steal that and just put it on my website.

I'm not copywriting it. I'm not copywriting it. You know, and the other thing that I found is turning to the clutter closet and you start to, you know, get rid of stuff. It's liberating because you don't realize how much stress your stuff is causing you, what a burden it is, until you start to face it. So, yeah, I mean, it can be a profound experience just clearing out your closet from all the inner stuff that you're talking about and just from a point of relief from the burden, you know? How do you conceptualize or think about the relationship that you have to living simplistically, living minimally with Zen, right? So it's like the blog is Zen Habits. Zen infuses your work and your perspective on the world um so you know talk a little bit about that yeah you know first it was it was more

of an aesthetic thing to be honest when i first started i saw pictures of like zen temples and they're so minimalist and beautiful like i want that And so I started simplifying my life to get that external aesthetic thing. Um, and then as I started doing it, you know, like, like all of these journeys, you start to go, you know, it starts to open you up to other things, but the Zen aspect of, of it is, it's about letting go. So, you know, it's about having a flexible mind. And a flexible mind means you have to let go of whatever you're fixating on. And so, yeah, just clearing out your stuff is, is letting go of, you know, like I might have a pair, like, like some kind of exercise equipment that I had thought that I was going to hold,

like that I was going to make me better, you know, it's going to make me into an ultra athlete or something like that. And I, and I've, it's been sitting there gathering dust. And so I am holding onto the possibility of that and letting go of that means letting go of the attachment to that possibility. And it doesn't mean it won't actually happen. Like maybe I will become an ultra athlete, but I don't need to hold on to all of these, these things that are representing that possibility.

So it's a letting go practice, which is absolutely for me, what, at least what was then is a lot about is just letting go of all of these urges of running of attachments to things, attachments to self image. Yeah. It's, it's a, we're attached to a lot of things more than we, of attachments to things, attachments to self-image. Yeah, we're attached to a lot of things.

Even Zen masters are attached to stuff. And so it's just a constant noticing the attachment and learning to let go of that out of love for yourself and others. So when you write, are you making a conscious effort to contextualize how you think about these ideas, minimalism, et cetera, in the context of Zen? Or is that just a byproduct of your general interest in the world? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I don't normally put Zen as the context. and the reason i do that is because i think there are some things about zen that can be appealing

to people and so like if i said oh this is the zen way to declutter your house people might might you know go to it for that because of that like they want zen in their life right and um it's a false promise it's basically marketing zen and which is my blog is named zen so i've already done that uh but it's it's not what they're gonna get if they run to the zen way to declutter right so i don't do it because of of that i don't want to give in to people's tendency i already i've done it enough with just my blog title. And when you use the word Zen or Zen Buddhism or just the context of it, people who don't know it, they think they're getting something and then they don't get that. And the other thing is Zen can also be off-putting to

people. So that's the other way. You run towards it because there's appeal. and so i what i what i try and do is put it into very simple like everyday terms that you know like you know exactly what i'm talking about because you and your wife are such interesting contrasts there's such great merge of the of both of your energies but she's very very spiritual right and there's beauty and that's saying i'm not you are in your rich way right but there's there's beauty in her, you know, spirituality. And yet there's things that she can say that people won't get, right? And it might make them like back away, right? And so I feel that with Zen.

You can go into a Zen temple to meditate with them. And it's like there's all this chanting and you don't know what to do. And there's incense and an altar and like, what the hell is going on here? It's dripping in costuming and artifice that for a lot of people creates a barrier to them. Exactly. Their ability to actually just see the core idea behind it. So if I can boil it down to just doable ideas that people can can get and at least to the extent that i'm able to then that is me bringing the zen message um out there at least in my

limited understanding of it and the way that i can deliver it um but and honestly like i don't want to uh frame the zen way of of like you know, customary and all that stuff in a negative way. It is off-putting to people, and it is a barrier, but the way that they do things is actually very supportive of their practice, so that there's a reason for it all. We just won't understand it. Yeah, of course. There's beauty to it, but if somebody's been raised in the Catholic Church their whole life, or, you know, it's just, it's because they have no frame of reference it's foreign to them so then you know it there's an uphill sort of you know mountain to climb it's a gate to that place of understanding that so if you can remove that gate and just communicate you know super clearly right in a way that anybody can understand it and they're on that beautiful

white page yeah that's that's what i try and do so that So that's exactly why I don't do it in the Zen context. I do sometimes introduce Zen words or concepts, but it's not like... I mean, your influences are Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh and people like that that are known from that. Suzuki, Roshi, yeah. Yeah, I'm stealing and I'm heavily influenced. Let's just put it that way, in a kinder way. Who are some of the other big influences on you? So I have a teacher who doesn't write much.

And her teacher, his name is Reb Anderson. He's with the San Francisco Zen Center. I was their head abbot for a long time, and now he's just like this honored teacher. I'm profoundly influenced by him and her. Her name is Susan O'Connell. She's a Zen priest as well. The Tibetan Buddhists are very influential on me. And then just, I mean, all the... Have you been to Tibet? I have not.

I want to. Have you? No, I haven't. Oh, man. Yeah, I've been to Japan, but not Tibet. Yeah, no, I want to a lot. I think that's a trip you need to do. Yes. And I need to meet Pema Chodron someday.

I feel like she's one of my spiritual teachers and she doesn't know it. Where does she live? She has a monastery in Nova Scotia. Yeah. But she's in seclusion. It's her 80th birthday this year and she's in complete seclusion with one teaching in New York. And I tried to sign up for it and it's full. Wow.

So it's not meant to be yet. Not yet. You're not ready, grasshopper. Yeah. But there's so many people who've influenced me. And I was telling you before this that I've been taking up yoga and I'm now being influenced by the yogic philosophy. And there's a lot of merging of the two. Yeah.

It overlaps quite a bit, I think. Yeah. uh, merge merging of the two. Yeah. It overlaps quite a bit, I think. Yeah. So how do you, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about how you, um, how you convey these ideas in your own household. You got six kids, some of them are grown and out of the house. You've got all ages, you're married, you're very much living in the world. You're not like a single guy living in, you know, Ted Kaczynski style and it's like, you're, you know,

you got real life obligations and pressures. So how do you instill these notions into your children? What is your, you know, I want to talk about education and parenting and how you kind of navigate all of that. Cause it's super interesting. I think I was listening to a podcast where

the two of you you and your wife talked about uh veganism with your kids and we have a similar philosophy is that they're on their own journey so with veganism we we went vegan like in the middle of my kids journey so i'm still in the beginning but like they're already meat eaters so what was the impetus for you to go vegan i wish i could say it was you because i would be so cool by the way i'm not fishing for that but like genuinely no i just didn't what i feel like saying that right now but it's not true um it was just a bunch of things i went into it as a vegetarian to become healthier um i was overweight and then i started reading about like educating myself and of course looking for inspiration and

then then you learn as everyone knows you learn about animal welfare and the horrible stuff that we do to turn them into food and it's just like i you know once you are awake to that it's really hard to turn it off so that was it was a it was a progress um it was a progression um but you can apply the minimalism calculus to it right because you can say well is this serving me right it's not serving me is it necessary yeah what are the implications of making this choice on my life and the life of others. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just the, one of the things was like, Oh,

I thought I needed this stuff. Like I needed cheese or whatever. And then that was like my 99%. I was 99% vegan. That was my 1%. I would eat cheese once in a while. And then I like, let go of it.

And I realized I didn't need it all. Like, I don't miss it at all. Although I'm looking forward to your wife's, uh, the cheese book. Yeah. Vegan cheese. I actually, need it all along like i don't miss it at all although i'm looking forward to your wife's uh the cheese book cheese book yeah vegan cheese i actually i just had some nut based vegan cheese and it was delicious but i haven't missed it at all um and so yeah it's like that letting go like i think i need this as an attachment i thought i needed meat and then i let go of it and it's like

oh i don't need it anymore and for health reasons too like i often thought like you need this stuff to be healthy and i it turns out like you can i know it's a big surprise to you but you can actually be completely healthy as a vegan and like if you if you can be completely healthy as a vegan then what's the justification for putting the animals through that kind of suffering it's like your pleasure basically um and so like i just yeah started to turn that spotlight on that just like i did with with minimalism and it was like actually it's not necessary and i'm just gonna go with what is necessary for my health and it's plants so that's that's that was my journey and of course it was actually supported by other influences of people on me and then two friends who we met in London who were vegan.

One of them runs a vegan site now called plantshift.com. It's a little plug there. But they came and visited us and we spent a week in San Francisco taking them around to different vegan restaurants. And that was an influence on us was just having this vegan experience with two people who are very strongly believing in veganism and yeah when when you see that influence that you have on each other like i said we create each other we co-create each other and they created us who we are today because of that influence that's really it's amazing right it's cool we have we are all influencing each other all the time even sometimes without knowing it and we're just creating the people that we are with this huge network this mesh of influences and it's all one

consciousness exactly no no don't don't don't tell them that no but that's that's my belief is that we're all that we're all constantly co-creating each other um and we wouldn't be the people we are without each other and we're completely enmeshed in this network of human hearts yeah no there's no question about it yeah now now more so than ever because of podcasts and blogs and all you know everything that the internet avails us of we're so intertwined so but yeah that that was my vegan right so you do that and then you talked a little bit about your basic philosophy with your kids is similar to ours. Oh, yeah. Allowing them their own journey.

And then where does the homeschooling and the unschooling come into that? Yeah, again, influenced by someone. It was my sister who was homeschooling her kids. And our kids were in school. One of them was being punished by his teachers because he was reading in class, like a novel. And he was supposed to be doing something that he already understood and was bored with already. And I was like, that school is not meeting our kids' needs. And of course, there are amazing teachers in the world. I'm not saying all teachers are like that,

but it was just like, oh, we can actually meet his needs probably better. And my wife decided to quit her job and unschool our kids. Actually, it was homeschooling at first. And then we went along the unschooling route a couple of years later. Explain unschooling for people that might not be familiar with what that is. It's a version of homeschooling. So you do it at home. But homeschooling often is doing

school in the house just like okay we're doing reading we're doing math we're doing history and often you're following a curriculum with textbooks and you're doing exactly the same activity but just at home which is a great experience not knocking that at all but unschooling is like what if we wiped this entire board clear and started from a clean slate? And like, what would it be if we didn't school our kids? And it's just like taking a new look at teaching, like education philosophy and like, do our kids need to learn X by this grade and X by this grade and Y by this grade and so forth. And like, who came up with that curriculum? Some like, you know, someone with a degree, obviously, but in the education system

who doesn't know my kid at all. And they've decided the perfect route for them to do what? To become ready for college, to become ready for a day job. And so it's like a factory that it puts. And again, I don't want to make people who are putting their kids through school

feel bad about what they're doing because everyone is being the best parent that they can. But for us, it was like, we didn't quite, once you start with a blank slate, you throw out those goals. Like actually what we want to do is make them become good human beings. And how do we do that? And one of the things, one of the problems with school, it's going to sound like school bashing, is it's a top-down approach. Like the teacher has the wisdom, they teach you. And unschooling is about you becoming your own teacher and deciding what your curriculum is.

What are you excited about? You and I are doing every single day. And it's actually preparing them to be passionate creators and human beings and lifelong learners because no one is telling us what to learn these days, but we keep learning. And that's exactly what kids do naturally. And if we can just get out of their way and not force them to learn certain things in

certain ways, they'll learn naturally. And they'll learn what's important to them. And they'll learn how to motivate themselves to learn if they want to build a teepee or something like that. How do you do that? Well, I got to go figure it out. And then you learn to be motivated and you learn to find resources and support and all of the things that we do as adults. That's what kids would naturally do if you get out of their way.

So that's what unschooling is. Yeah. It's amazing. It's, uh, we unschooled, um, we unschooled our daughters until about a year ago. So we had a very similar journey. They're in school now. Which is, I want to say, you can be an amazing parent. Kids can get amazing experience in school. Yeah, again, this is not about school bashing. I've had a bunch of amazing educators on the podcast and we've explored all these subject matters. But I think it is important to stop for a moment and think, use discernment and really think about like our educational system.

Like it's a system that was really erected in the industrial revolution, you know, 1800s, organized around creating a productive workforce. And it's essentially remained unchanged since then. And yet our culture and our society has changed so dramatically, so radically. And the acceleration of that change is something that I don't think we fully appreciate. And I think it's important to take a look at that and understand that maybe it's not for every kid. And that's not such a bad thing. And to ask that question, it's like, it takes a lot of courage because you're stepping outside

one of the most reinforced systems of our culture. And for you to say, actually, I'm gonna, and we all wanna, nobody wants to do wrong by their kid. We all wanna do the right thing. It's scary. It's very scary. It takes a lot of faith and courage to step outside that and say, you know what? I don't know that it

matters for my child if they're at this certain reading level or math level by this certain age, like that rule was established, but I'm going to like look at it from a different perspective. Yeah. It's super scary and there's immense uncertainty. And that is the same exact experience of becoming minimalist and simplifying your life, letting go of the norms of the culture. It's the same thing as becoming a vegan. I mean, for me, I feel a little more certainty with veganism, but I mean, anytime you step outside of the cultural norm, these institutions that you talked about, it's scary. And you'll feel a lot of resistance from family members, friends, people who are, you know,

like if you're doing unschooling, people who are who are sending their kids to school, they become very defensive every time I talk about this, maybe because it sounds like I am bashing schools. But, you know, so you have to fight against all of that in addition to your own uncertainty. And that's on top of, you know, doing stuff for your kids. So it's like understanding that you are innately a flawed human being. Yeah. Right.

And you're sitting on, you know, in charge of this, you know. I mean, that's what we are as parents. We're in charge of some fragile and we're gonna screw them up somehow so right right right but when you put them in school at least there's comfort and that if you're screwing up your kid you're screwing up your kid the way everyone else is screwing up their kid you know what i mean so how long have you you and i know that like doing the same thing as everybody else isn't necessarily... That didn't work out for me.

It's not the path that we want. It didn't work out for me. Yeah. So, I mean, sometimes swimming against the stream is hard, and yet it's so rewarding. So, I'm really happy we've made all the choices we've made. Yeah. So, you've been homeschooling for how long then? Or unschooling?

Gosh. I mean, you have your oldest is your daughter and she's a journalist 24 24 and she didn't she wasn't unschooled so she was a product of them yeah she decided on her own to stay in school and i have another son who's 19 also decided um i would say at least 10 years yeah yeah and Yeah. And if you could like. Nine years maybe. Encapsulate like what that experience has been like for your kids. How would you.

Filled with uncertainty. And actually. Oh that's actually one of the best things about unschooling. Is that they have no certainty that they're going on the right path. And that's what we want. Because you know school can give you some artificial sense of certainty, like you follow this path, and you're going to become some amazing human being, everything will be well in the world. You're gonna have, you're gonna get a job,

you're gonna be fulfilled and get a dream house, and the perfect spouse. And of course, that does work out normally. But with with unschooling you have no certainty there's no one holding your hand you're holding your own hand you have to take personal responsibility you have there's agency right so i think the child learns earlier that you know what's up to them and what's not in a more conscious way actually kids deal with uncertainty in school too and in everyday life so yeah i mean it but in unschooling it's it's a conscious choice to be put yourself in that in that certain uncertain place um i forgot the original question but just how do you you know how is it how have your kids responded to it

yeah what is their experience yeah it's it's um it's a tough thing you know um i i would say that i think they are glad that they did it i'm not that's not um the truth is they are glad they they did it um they've told us so and at the same time they deal with all kinds of doubts put in usually put in by their family members about oh you're not being socialized or you're not learning math you know all these things the socialization thing is the thing you get the most at least that we've gotten the most and that's the thing i'm the least concerned well you're an enlightened human being well i mean just there's a lot of people that come through this how you know all the time like our kids are exposed

to all kinds of interesting people because of you know the people that we tend to invite over. Right. And so they're seeing and meeting and, and eating and communing with all kinds of people from all different walks of life. And I've noticed that, you know, our older boys, like they're so comfortable sitting down and having like really intense dinner conversations with people that are like 20, 30 years older than them. There's not, they don't do the navel gazing thing. And I'm not taking credit for that. Like they're just beings. It's who they are, but you've influenced. But I think, I think sort of taking them out of the structures allowed some of that to blossom in them.

Yeah. You know, and that's the truth is that is how people have been socialized for entire human history. The socialization in school is, like you said, a recent development. We've only decided all five year olds need to go in one classroom and all six year olds their age. Yeah, that that was never the from the tribal days when you're there with the old people and they're teaching you how to weave and hunt and all that stuff to like, you know, the medieval ages where you're in a village. You know, like that's always been a communal thing is socializing kids. And it's not you're just the parent and the father and mother who are doing that. It was always the entire village who cared for the kids. And we've moved so far away from that.

Yeah. So what you're talking about, you've gone back to human nature, you know? I mean, I'm not saying you can't have great socialization in school. There's some amazing schools and amazing educators, but it's not necessary to make a good human being. Right. And it's dependent on each individual, I think. Yeah. If you want to be a lawyer or a doctor

or an engineer or a scientist, you probably might be better off in a traditional school system that's oriented around working you towards that goal. Definitely possible, especially in those ones where you need to get a certain degree and certification. But you can be unschooled until college and then just dive into college the

normal route and we have a niece who did that my sister's daughter she's in normal college now but she wasn't schooled during her high school years for the most part yeah right that's cool all right well we gotta uh we gotta wind this down here. Um, before I let you go, I want to, I want to kind of, uh, go back to something we touched on a little bit earlier, which is, you know, which you related in your own personal journey, but, uh, I think would be helpful for somebody who's listening to this. Who's like, you know what? I'm like, I'm ready for a change. Like I'm digging what Leo has to say. Like, how do I get off the dime here? Like, what's the first thing that I do or what's a strategy that I can take away from this that I can immediately put to work in my own life and start to shift my, whether it's my relationship or perspective with, you know,

the material world that surrounds me or whether it's how I'm communicating with my kids about education or whatever it is like yeah you know what is you know what are what is something that you could leave people with some concrete first steps yeah so the the thing that we did with you where you're feeling that energy and sitting with it I think that's the most important thing that they can do and yet that can be a difficult thing so having some kind of practice container for that, whether it's sitting in for five, 10 minutes of meditation. And actually I recommend people as a habit building thing, start with two minutes of meditation. And yeah, I know you used to use, I don't know if you still do the Headspace app. That's a great one. There's, I use Insight Timer, another great meditation app. There's a great one. Um, there's, I use a insight timer, another great meditation app.

There's some good ones on there that just can give you some guided meditation to start with. Um, I found that meditation to be one of the best, like fundamental habits that, that helps you to build other habits and helps you along all of these journeys. Um, so yeah, I would start with that. And if you can, if you are a procrastinator, I'm actually doing a whole, um, thing with, uh, a program that I have on procrastination this month. And it's just like watching your patterns and the way that I, I, you can, instead of doing meditation, if you want to work on procrastination, it's the same exact thing, but say, okay, before I check my phone, before I check email or Facebook on my computer, all I'm going to do is set aside five minutes, maybe 10 minutes a day, depending on where you are.

If you're super procrastinated, do five minutes. Five minutes a day before I check anything, I'm going to set myself a task. One little task that will take five minutes of writing my chapter. Write five minutes of this chapter. I'm going to set a timer and I'm going to set an intention to stay with my discomfort. And you set that timer and you stay with it and you're going to watch yourself want to run. Like, oh, I'll start the timer in a minute because I'm going to go do my dishes or whatever, you know? And to stay there so you're you're you have two choices sit there and do that task or just sit there and you can't let yourself run and this is a intentional like kind of corralling yourself in and just

watching that urge and then practice with that urge so just sit there and watch the discomfort where is it located in your body not your you're thinking like, oh, you know, there's always stories that are going on. Like, am I going to fail? Like, are people going to judge me? All these stories. But what you want to do is go into that body feeling that we talked about. Where is it located? What does it feel like?

Describe the energy, the physical energy in your body, and then stay with that. And then when you feel like that's, you know, gone to a point where it's not that not overwhelming, go back to the writing your chapter. I'm going to try that. All right. That sounds good. And if you are a, uh, a master at this already, uh, do 10 minutes. And if you're even better than that, do 15 minutes. And if you want, if you get to that level where you can do 15 minutes straight, take a break, have some tea as Rich likes to do and do another 15 minutes after that. So it's like interval training and you don't have to do like, you know, 20 intervals. You can just do two or three, but build up to that.

Start with the five minutes. It's like a workout for your brain, for your consciousness. It's training and staying with uncertainty and discomfort. And because you want to, you're rebuilding those, you're rebuilding those pathways and then trying to reinforce them. Yeah. And the side benefit is you'll do your taxes. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Unless you want to be the guy who just sits there and does nothing. Hey, that's a practice too. Right. I guess so. Right. All right. Well, cool. Well, this was amazing. Thank you for your time. Oh my God. just sits there and does nothing hey that's a practice too right i guess so right all right well cool well this was amazing um thank you for your time oh my god i feel so honored down and

talk to you this was great uh will you come back and do it again i will come back anytime you want me to all right cool and next time i come up north maybe i'll ring you up we could do it again there yeah we will have tea cool awesome well again uh Well, again, uh, you know, thank you for the work that you do. It's a, it's a gift to humankind. And my only wish for you is to continue to do what you do and continue to spread your message. And to the extent that I can help facilitate that or help spread it, uh, please consider me a resource. I really appreciate that. Yeah. It's a beautiful, authentic expression that is profoundly helping a lot of people. that. Yeah. It's a beautiful, authentic expression that is profoundly helping a lot of people. And it's, it's great to be able to talk to you a little bit

about it. That means a lot to me. It's very gratifying. And I, I, the feeling goes both ways. I hope you keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. Thanks, man. So, uh, if you want to connect with Leo Zen habits is the website. That's the best place. You can find him on Twitter at Zen underscore habits. Yeah. Right. The regular Zen Habits was taken. What? Who took it? I don't know. It's just Zen underscore habits is right. Yeah. And you have an online course, right? C-Change? C-Change is actually a monthly membership program where I do online courses. And this month, I don't know when this is coming out, but we do a different one every month. And it's all about what we just described,

but in different contexts, whether it's eating a plant-based diet to exercise to, you know, mindfully procrastinating. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, really cool. All right. So you can check that out. And also you have a retreat coming up April 21 through 27th, 23rd. It's two and a half days is my first one. And it's a key part of that mission that I talked about of ending human struggles. And it's going to be something that I do over and over. So you can catch me when I've refined it to brilliance, or you can catch me now in its raw state and be in on the ground floor.

So I recommend you get the raw stuff because it'll be fun. Yeah, cool. Awesome. Well, I'll put up links to all that stuff in the show notes, but you can find out about all of that at Zen Habits, right? Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, enjoy the rest of your time in LA.

Thank you, Rich. Are you going to hit any more vegan restaurants? Where do you want to go? I just did my first breakfast at Cafe Gratitude. I've been there before, but the breakfast was amazing. We've done... That's like my commissary. Oh my God.

I eat most of my meals if I'm not eating at home. You guys are so lucky down here. Well, Cafe Gratitude started in the Bay Area. And they closed it. The original location. But they have Gracias Madre still open in the mission. Yeah, yeah. But the original one was in San Francisco.

They closed it. Then they closed the Berkeley one. Anyway, so we're down here. We're just taking advantage of this beautiful stuff. There's plant food and wine we went to last night. Oh, cool. Loved it. And we're going to Crossroads tonight oh nice yeah so there's

some amazing ones yeah cool well enjoy man thank you all right peace plants I absolutely love that talk. It was so cool to talk to Leo. I can't wait to have him on again. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to check out zenhabits.net for all of Leo's writing on his blog, as well as his many books, his many offerings. As always, please make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com

for a ton of links and additional resources related to today's conversation to help take your edification and your infotainment beyond your ear goggles. And if you would like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of ways to do that. First, just share it with your friends and on social media. I love that.

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but Amazon enriches us with some commission change and that really does support what we're trying to do here. In addition, we have a Patreon. If you wanna take that extra step and support my work financially, many people have been doing that, and I'm so thankful and grateful for that. So thank you for that. The Patreon banner ad is also on every episode page on richroll.com for this show. If you would like to receive a free short weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's basically five or six tips, tools, resources that I've come across over the course of the week. Generally, a couple

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We got t-shirts. We got tech tees. We got cool Plant Power merch and swag. So check that out as well. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, for production, for help with the show notes. Sean Patterson for help on graphics. Theme music, as always, by Annalema.

So I'm going to leave you with this. In the wake of today's conversation, how can you be more mindful about how you're living your day-to-day existence where is the emotional physical mental and financial clutter in your life that is sort of harboring space in the back of your mind creating a low-grade anxiety how can you address that and begin to clear it so that you can focus on what's most important in your life to create beauty, to more fully express your actualized self. So meditate on that, make a list, start putting things into practice, and I'll see you guys back here next week. Thanks for the love. See you soon. Peace. Rødgrød Thank you.