Greg McKeown:
Meet Leo Babauta. He’s a renowned author, he’s a blogger, he’s a speaker whose journey from chaos to simplicity has inspired just countless individuals, millions of people. He has an enormous passion for mindfulness for minimalism but combines that with personal development. He’s transformed his own life, I think that’s fair to say, but maybe even more importantly, has empowered others to live purposefully and intentionally. He’s the founder of zen habits, which is a blog that’s become like a sanctuary for those seeking simplicity and clarity in an unbelievably cluttered world. He’s drawing from his own experiences and studies in Zen Buddhism, but he’s also masterfully blended principles and practical strategies, among other things, for habit formation. But it goes way beyond that. So, in a society that is consumed by consumerism, Leo advocates for a completely different life, to find joy in less. He’s authored books like The Power of Less and Essential Zen Habits, which guide readers on the path to decluttering their lives, both physically but also mentally, emotionally, and beyond. He has a new podcast now called Zen Habits Podcast, which, of course, you should listen to and subscribe to. What podcasters want you to do in your life is to subscribe to their podcast so that it makes it easy and effortless for you to be able to take that wisdom forward in your life, and this is wisdom.
My goal here is to help to make Leo’s wisdom viral, to be able to help you to be able to make more progress in a gentler way in your life, to find a different path. So join us on this journey as we go through something like the best life teachings from Leo, explore his profound impact, and be able to have a magical conversation. This is part one of a two-part conversation.
Leo, welcome to the podcast.
Leo Babauta:
Oh man, that was so good. I should hire you as a hype man. Every time. Every time I enter a room, I want you to say exactly what you just did.
Greg McKeown:
Well, that should happen. We need to, we need to have. I’ll be your hype man and certainly somebody that can just, you know, it’s like the president when he walks in, and there’s the presidential theme, and we all. You need
Leo Babauta:
A trumpeter.
Greg McKeown:
I will be that trumpeter. Whatever you can have, say whatever you want, as long as it’s in my accent and my genuine enthusiasm for you. So it’s lovely, it’s lovely to have you here and thank you, and really what I want to do is something I have done occasionally, but with people who I think of as being teachers first, and that is to ask you to just share. Let’s start with one principle, and we’ll just keep going Like the best of principles. So what is one principle, one teaching, one idea that you really want all of us to understand from your work?
Leo Babauta:
I would say the art of slowing down, the power of slowing down. I think we all have a sense of what that is and how helpful that can be in our lives. Because we’re rushing. You know, I’m speaking to people who are doing a million things a day and are jumping from one tab to another, one message to another, yes to another, yes, and so slowing down. I think there’s something intuitive about it that we are; there’s something really nice about that. It sounds like that would be nice, and I don’t know how to do that, but I think there’s an underlying power to it that I think we often miss. To speak to the power of slowing down, if I might.
Greg McKeown:
So let’s just speak, just respond to that, and then I want to hear you just kind of riff on this. For us. Teach us. It’s one of those pieces of advice that’s quite nice to hear because it’s not a do one more thing, add another thing, do this thing better. We go, “Yes, someone needs to say it, right, someone no one’s saying it to me. Slow down.” But what you’re saying is that even beyond that surface appreciation- right, there’s something for something more that you’re trying to get to. Please share with us. Teach us.
Leo Babauta:
Okay. So, at the surface level, I say definitely go to the surface level. If you can just move slower in your day, just take a pause between things, take a breath, and just appreciate the space between things, which we usually don’t do because we’re rushing from one thing to the next, It’ll give you a sense of spaciousness in your day, Even within the tasks themselves.
So if you’re doing something with a sense of rushing and I need to like get it done, and you know I forget this thing done, then my life is going to be solved.
Greg McKeown:
I recognize it’s in my life. Go ahead.
Leo Babauta:
Yeah. So, if you could slow down with that task and create a sense of spaciousness in the task itself, which is a mental spaciousness, like it’s okay to just focus on this one thing right now as if this was the only thing that mattered in the whole universe, just really give yourself over to like devoting to yourself, to this devotion. So spaciousness within a task, spaciousness like clearing out some of your calendar. At the surface level, all of this stuff, I think, is really, really amazing. But beyond that, there’s more.
So, for example, one thing that I really work with with people is resistance. So if you are, let’s say, you want to write a book, is a really a common one. So I’m resisting it. You know I want to write the book, but you know I’ll do it tomorrow, and so you keep putting it off till tomorrow, until right. Finally, you say, “You know what? I need to actually commit myself to this and actually face this.”
And so if you start to face your resistance, well, the first thing that people will notice is like it’s almost like a magnetic force that pushes you away from the task. And so, all of a sudden, you’re cleaning your kitchen instead of writing your book, or you’re checking your emails.
Greg McKeown:
A big, big, procrastinated, important task is like the best way to get me to clean my closet. Clean up, tidy up. It’s like, anything but that.
Leo Babauta:
My house gets so clean. So we’re we’re procrastinating on a task, but the thing is that we rush past that moment. So, at this moment, I have a choice between facing it and turning away. And it’s almost invisible; I just turn away without even noticing it. And so the power of slowing down at this moment would be really interesting because you just slow down this pause, take a breath, and notice like what’s happening in your body, what’s happening in your mind that has you wanted, wanting to turn away from it? Is there some kind of anxiety? Is there some kind of contraction in your chest?
And if you can slow down, I really believe that this moment of resistance, which we don’t want to have and want to get away from as soon as possible, is actually a really sacred moment. It’s a moment that we take for granted and that we don’t, we judge, we don’t want, but actually really slow down with it. This is the moment where you could move deeper into your resistance, into the unknown, into meaning in your life, into purpose, and we just completely miss it because it just feels like it’s just invisible to us. So if we cab slow down with it, It’s actually a very rich, rich moment.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, that’s the first time that I’ve heard someone describe resistance and going into resistance as being sacred, but it certainly feels true immediately to me. It’s resonant because I think most of us are not just trying to avoid the task; I think we’re trying to avoid that resistance as well.
Leo Babauta:
Exactly.
Greg McKeown:
It’s uncomfortable, that’s right. We don’t want to admit it’s there. We’re like, okay, you know. So we’re afraid, or Something, of the resistance. Can you talk to us more about that? And, yes, sacred, not something to avoid.
Leo Babauta:
Yeah. So, we’re definitely afraid of the task itself or afraid of what lies beyond the task. So, if we’re writing a book. I’m afraid of people judging it later. We’re already in the future. Besides, we’re not in the moment of actually writing a book, yeah, so we’re afraid of that.
But then, yeah, that fear has this resisting, which is just a protection mechanism. It’s like I need to move away from the thing that’s. That’s scary again. It all happens invisibly, and and then we judge ourselves for having resistance. We’re like, ah crap, I haven’t been doing this thing that I said I was gonna do, and so we don’t like that we have it, and so it’s something we just don’t want to be with. We don’t like being in this moment of fear and resistance and judgment, and you know who would be right. This is not a fun moment, and so it, like you said, it’s uncomfortable. The reason why I talk about it as sacred is because if we hold it as sacred, which I think it is, if we hold it as sacred, it changes our relationship to that resistance. We can be outside when the sun’s going down and just feel the sacredness of that sunset.
Everyone’s had an experience like that, of like looking out at mountains or just something, you know, at the ocean. We can have a connection to something spiritual like that. It’s sacred. But we Don’t have that when it comes to this moment of resistance. And what if we could find that, ah, at this moment, which I think is just as beautiful as the sunset, but we just don’t, we don’t look at it in that way, we don’t even dare to look at it in that way, and so if we do, it’s just like, “Oh my god, this is what it’s like to step into the unknown with something meaningful, something that I actually care about.”
So if you didn’t care about it, there’d be no resistance. And so, like, well, I could understand more about the resistance, get curious about it, which we are not curious usually and like what is what’s happening in my mind, what’s going on in my body? Like how do I work with it? How do I, you know, move towards it instead of away from it? It’s like learning to get curious about fire, which you know could be really scary but, you know, can actually be an incredible tool, and resistance is the same thing.
Greg McKeown:
Okay. So I want to talk a little more about this. So we went to Iceland, which is a big, big mistake. And then, and then we went to there’s a place where the tectonic plates collide, right, and you can go, you can go snorkeling there. Basically, okay, they have these; they have what they call dry suits, which is what gets you to sign up.
And then when you arrive, and you are completely freezing already before you’re wet and before you’ve put this on, and then the guides, genuinely laughing, are like, “Well, they’re mostly dry suits.”
You know, okay, so now this is the situation, and anyway, we go, and we swim there, and I don’t know, I’m trying to find the right mix of metaphors here, but there’s something about what you’ve said with this. You know, this idea, that resistance, you know, the place where the tectonic plates are meeting, and then there’s something about going deep. You know, like we swim deep there. There’s something deeper below the resistance.
And so you’re saying, at first, the first thing to do is to reframe that resistance as sacred, which I just think is beautiful. And then what you said, and I want you now to go deeper on, is the idea that what you find there, below the surface of that resistance, is meaning and that there’s, there’s lots of richness there, just like, and literally what did happen.
I was laughing and joking, but when we went swimming, it was freezing before we got into the water. And when you get into the water, every single part of you that isn’t covered, which isn’t much, is immediately ice cold, like sharply cold, and every little crevice that they said would be, you know, dry in the advertising, like we actually do it, you know it’s like water’s coming in, and so your feet are suddenly freezing in that. But what amazed me is that the water was so clear, and you could see so far down and you can see the light refracting at different levels, that from that point to the point we’re finished, I could not, I could not be distracted in any serious way by the cold. You sort of still kind of aware of it. But my goodness, you, I was absorbed in the magic of it, and so I’m trying to give a truthful account of that whole story. The bad and the beauty, but maybe there’s something there, for what you’re describing is there’s something under the surface. That’s right. That’s important. Can you talk about what we’ll find?
Leo Babauta:
That’s such a great illustration. So if we use your beautiful, detailed metaphor, the cold water that has you like, every particle of your body is just freezing with that cold, and I imagine that your body retracted from it because of the cold. So, the cold in this metaphor is the unknown that we’re resisting. Stepping into the unknown with writing a book or really anything like stepping onto a stage and speaking is the unknown. Leading people in any way is unknown. Putting yourself out there in any way is stepping into the unknown. So that’s the freezing water that we resist, we retract from, and we think is not only uncomfortable but maybe even dangerous, and so yeah.
Greg McKeown:
All of this was literally true. So yeah, keep going.
Leo Babauta:
Yeah, putting on a dry suit would be a good good idea, but at the same time, if you could actually move into it. Well, you’ll discover, if you can let yourself go into the discomfort of that, is that the unknown is actually an amazing place because that’s where anything new gets discovered. Anything new externally, you know, as we go out into the unknown, but also internally and in a creative process. You know, a book is not just like, let me just state all the things that I know; it’s a discovery process. It’s like trying to, you know, create something new. That’s where anything is not only discovered but also created. We can’t create in the known. That’s the known is. It’s just the opposite of creating. It’s the known is what we’ve already created, what’s already been created. Creating is something that’s new, and that has to be in the unknown.
Greg McKeown:
I also believe that meaning is in the unknown.
Leo Babauta:
If you know, for example, people find meaning in helping others who are in need. You know, if someone’s gone through a disaster and you’re out there reaching out to them, putting your heart out there, seeing what you can do, rolling your sleeves up, that’s meaningful. But that requires you to step out of your comfort zone into the unknown and, reaching your hand out vulnerably and say, “I’m here to help.”
That only happens in the unknown, and really, any kind of meaning you and I being here on this podcast is us being willing to be vulnerable and step into the unknown. That’s meaningful to me. You know, if I was just doing something that I already knew how to do like this would be boring. So, this is where meaning gets created. Relationships. Love is in the unknown, like any real love is in the unknown. If you are only willing to love to the extent that it’s safe, you’re not really loving. You’re only like, you’re not willing to risk anything. So, any kind of risk is in the unknown. That’s the cold water that we’re talking about, and that’s where there are miraculous depths.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, I just love it. I’m gonna build one more piece of this metaphor now, which is what is also happening at this one particular place in Iceland is, you know, where these tectonic plates meet is also what at least the Icelanders believe and claim the oldest known Parliament in the world. Like the birth of Parliament’s system, they the birth of democracy or whatever, something like this, and I’m not knocking that, although, of course, there are different ways to think about it. But this was where, you know, people, leaders at the time, you know, an ice age ago, met to make the first set of laws that people would live by in a large-scale way, and so this is how they think about it. But I think that I think that metaphor holds, for what you’re saying is that it’s space. What the resistance is. Under the resistance, the unknown under the unknown is space, and in that space, all creativity exists in that space. It doesn’t exist; you know you’re not creating when you’re doing this stuff you already know how to do. You’re repeating, you’re continuing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to create, you have to find the space, and that space lives right in or under the resistance.
At first, we were thinking about that, or at least I was, more like individual creativity, like you were saying, with writing a book. But as you were talking, I thought, “Really, that is true for relationships.”
Where you mentioned a relationship in love. So you said that. But I think about it very literally because it’s the research that I’m working on right now, and it’s like there is space between agreeing and disagreeing, and in that space is all possible interpersonal progress, all of it. All of it exists there. But I hadn’t thought until this conversation that what makes agreeing and disagreeing safer territory is because that’s what you know.
Leo Babauta:
That’s right.
Greg McKeown:
If you agree with somebody, well, now, that’s the easiest known, because now you agree and I agree and okay, great. And if you disagree, even though that inherently is conflict, it’s still. You’re still holding on to a position you already have, and you’re expressing it. You know, it’s like, “Okay, well, I don’t see it that way.” But the understanding, like, “Let me hear how you see it; let me share how I’m seeing it.” But we’re open that space in between to understand, not to listen, to agree or disagree, is that same unknown. It’s the same thing we want to avoid, and yet it’s the heart of all the creative possibilities that exist in that relationship.
Leo Babauta:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that’s a willingness to let go of what you know and step over into the other side and explore with the person. It’s like trying to get, get what they’re going through, get what they’re what their understanding is, and that’s only possible if we let go of our understanding.
Greg McKeown:
And then vulnerability, sharing, too, what you don’t yet know about your own views. You know, not just repeating what you already know, the things you’ve repeated before many times, but where you suddenly are going, “Well, my goodness, this is how this makes me feel, and I don’t know where this is going, and this could be.” You know, it’s like on the edge of chaos, that the breakthroughs with other people it could sometimes it does go to kind of into something not good, but you, you’re risking all of that for the possibility of growth. Well, this is amazing. So the sacred resistance.
Okay, I love it. What’s number two? Give us a number two pillar of of your thinking for our conversation here. Teach us again.
Leo Babauta:
So, number two would be around creating change. You just talked about the possibility of growth, creating change using structure. I think people often have a sometimes difficult relationship with structure because it’s been taught to us as like this is the thing that’s going to hold me down and restrict me, so and so. But I believe that the deepest growth habit change would be one example. Transformative change would be another, that this is only possible with structure. So I’d like to talk about that.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I would say maybe, especially in our lifetimes. I’ve got to think about whether I stand by exactly what I just said, but I think that there has been this sort of maybe, it was sort of the 60s, or 70s before, but it got repeated in different ways like, “Oh, the man and the structure and the system, and it’s all bad.”
I think we do live in a time where, if it’s an institution and if it’s a system, there is a percentage of people who are so distrustful of all systems they’re like, “Oh no, it would be better if we burned the whole thing down.”
And that, I think, can then apply to other things, not just, not just big government systems or international systems or structured entities above us or that we interact with, but just our own structures and our own life. I think sometimes people can be like, “Oh yeah, well, routine is going to keep you limited and controlled.” And so you have the only freedom is to blitz out of all of this. And I think what you’re saying is, “Yeah, don’t be so fast about that, there’s a different kind of freedom and so on, to be able to. You know, these things give us.”
Leo Babauta:
And well, actually, there’s. So, there’s a couple of different difficult relationships that people have to structure. You just named one, but the other one is, like, I need structure, I need to have like, my routine down and control, like you said. That’s actually that actually can be really limiting, because it’s just like I need things to be predictable and controlled and go the way that I need them to be. Or if I do structure, it’s going to make me into a better person. You know, a lot of people reach for structure to like make themselves a better person, and I don’t think that works. Okay.
Greg McKeown:
So you’re actually arguing the kind of the opposite of the point I was making.
Leo Babauta:
Well, I’m saying there are two sides, and both of them can be problematic.
So the one that you just made is the other side, which is like, “Okay, I’ve tried a bunch of structure, and it’s really restricting. I don’t like that, I want, I want freedom.”
So I throw out all structure, right, and I just want to like flow with my day and not have goals. And the problem with that is you’ve given yourself freedom, but you’ve really restricted yourself because you can’t actually grow beyond where you are, and so you’ll stay there, and you just kind of hang out in your comfort zone without any structure, and you’re just kind of resigning yourself to the way things have to be or the way things already are, as opposed to like creating something new. So that’s that, that outside also can be problematic.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so it sounds like we could have a meeting of the minds between those two extremes that we’re discussing. This is, you know, this is the Yin and the Yang. Unless I’m sort of misunderstanding it. Right? You know, the Yin and the Yang are opposite, complementary forces. You know, one sort of stands for the symbol of chaos, the other for order and structure, and both the principle and the really amazing graphic. Right? We’ve all seen the graphic, but it’s worthy of, yeah, it’s worthy of, like, of emphasizing, because it so beautifully captures in a graphical form. I mean, I really value expressing ideas in graphical form, and, in a sense, unless I can express things graphically, I don’t think I understand them yet. And so the Yin and the Yang diagram right expresses this duality. You have to have both. If you have no structure, you will tilt toward chaos, and that’s not going to help you. If you have all structure, then you become so steady-state you’re not going to grow, and so it’s how do you maintain a combination of both? How do people do that? I mean, what’s the actionable insight that follows what you’re sharing?
Leo Babauta:
Well, let’s talk about the why for structure in the first place. So, what we’re trying to create is growth or change or transformation, something that will take us beyond where we are to some other place. So we have to have a why for that. Like it’s not that we need to change, like maybe you’re great as you are and you know, just be happy, so there’s nothing wrong with that. But what if I wanted to create societal change or some kind of, you know, change in my neighborhood or, you know, right?
Greg McKeown:
Just change in my own life, even just just make something better.
Leo Babauta:
Yes, yeah, let’s say, I want to run an ultramarathon right. Right now, I’m running three miles a day, so it’s quite a, quite a big leap, but it could be. I want to, you know, change something really big in society. You know, Martin Luther King and Gandhi and those types. So you set this like vision for yourself, something that is outside of your current possibility. So right now, I can run three miles, and maybe, if I really push, I can run six miles, but you know, a hundred miles or 50 miles is just completely imaginable.
Yeah, and it’s the same thing as like shooting for the moon when you know the farthest we’ve flown is like right up there where the clouds are. Right? You know it’s outside of our reach, and so we, and it’s something that we care about, something that’s meaningful. So, if you set that for yourself now, like how do I actually get there? So this is the why for structure. If you’re like, “I’m going to reject structure, and I’m just going to like see, see how it get there, and just kind of like kind of try and get there without it.” What happens is you’re going to just hit that resistance that we talked about earlier, and you will just be like, “Huh, it’s not worth it. You know, I’ll just kind of like, you know, I’m just going to you know, sit down to meditate, or…”
Greg McKeown:
You know, I’ll just float away from it.
Leo Babauta:
Exactly, there’s, no, there’s nothing that’s going to actually have you moving through it, and if you want to actually have that transformative result that’s outside of your reach, then you would need to actually move through this resistance. So that’s, that’s the first problem with that side.
And the other side is the side that has too much control. Right? That control is really to keep you safe, and so the structure that people usually come up with is something that’s going to keep you safe and routine, and like I’m going to know how to do my life, and if I can do that, then I’m all good, right, but that is going to keep you at the airplane level, like you can, or maybe reaching to your roof, but you’re not going to reach for the moon at using what you already know, and so structure the yin yang that you asked about how do we marry the two?
Structure would be creating, creating a structure for yourself so that you could actually reach that which is going to move you. It’s going to have you set things for yourself that you can’t do yet. So if I said I was going to, you know, write that book, well, let me. What if I could write, you know, 20,000 words this month, you know that’s you know well beyond what I’ve written ever before.
So what’s going to have me do that? Well then, I’d have to divide the month by, you know, divide that by how many days there are, and start to like to create some focus sessions for myself, to like to write those, and I don’t even know if I can do it. So if you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to write five words a day.” Great. I know I can do that. There’s no structure required; there’s nothing transformative there. But if you set something that you don’t even know if you can do, like it’s, you know, maybe a 20% chance in my mind that I’m going to actually reach that. And what happens is you’re going to set structure that you’re going to miss. And the relationship to structure that people have is that if I miss my goal, there’s something bad I am, there’s something wrong with me, I failed. I suck I should just quit the whole thing. I don’t know why ever shot for the moon.
And so you know, sometimes you’re going to hit the target, but a lot of times you’re going to miss, and when you do, the good thing about structure is that it helps you to now to like again, slow down and examine, like, “What had me miss there?” What’s, what is, what’s the way that I’m showing up that’s having it miss? Maybe I’m showing up, but I’m constantly distracted, or I’m watching YouTube while I’m writing, or I’m like pushing it back because you know there’s so many other things that are important to me that they’re more important than that. Whatever it is, there might be a story I’m telling myself that’s having me show up in a certain way. Now, what if I could slow down and see what is it that’s having me? You know, miss that. That read that stretch goal, and so structure gives you a place to look at, like what’s going on. That would have to change for you to start to transform yourself.
Greg McKeown:
So you’re saying a couple of things, I think, here. One is that the right, essential intent, something that’s beyond what we know how to do, is inherently disruptive. It’s a good thing to do; it’s a good thing to engage in. It will disrupt your previous patterns and structures and routines, and that’s uncomfortable. But you’re saying welcome it. But then you’re also saying don’t just blow it all up, and now you have no structures. You have to build new structures because that’s what you’re actually evaluating on an ongoing basis. You’re looking at the system you’ve built and going, “Okay, if I’m not hitting these, well, why not? What’s wrong with the system? Do I need more resources? Do I need more people to help? Do I need to spend more time on this?”
Like you have something to adjust rather than just throwing out the end goal that was at one time so meaningful. Am I hearing you right?
Leo Babauta:
Yeah, and throwing out the whole structure is saying, you know, screw it, I’m not going to do this at all. You mentioned the patterns that we have. Every human has patterns that we’ve formed over the years, and they kind of, like, you know, ossify. They like harden over time and so, and that’s just like how we are. We just believe that this is just who I am. But what if we could use the structures and this stretch, you know, this reaching for the moon to see these patterns, to bring into our awareness something that was previously invisible.
Greg McKeown:
Invisible to us?
Leo Babauta:
Yeah, and then say, well, what if I didn’t have to do it that way? What if there’s another way that I could do it? Like throw out the pattern and try something completely different. If I’m used to, you know, if I always walk down the street with my head down and my shoulders hunched and I’m always looking at the ground, I can’t ever see the horizon, and I’m like, “Well, there’s just no horizon, it’s just, it just looks like ground all the time.”
But what if you’re like, “Well, what if you tried not looking at the ground?”
You’re like, “Okay, it sounds weird, but I’ll try it.”
You know, all of a sudden, there’s like a sunset over there. You know, like, that’s a little bit of a silly example, but this is actually what we do every day. We do the way we know how to do things?
Greg McKeown:
Yes, so, I think, in summary, the idea is to not be chained down by the current structure and routines and systems and ways of thinking that you have, instead of going, instead of doubling down on them going, “No, I just need,” as you said before, “control over everything.” And, just depending on what is most known to me, most comfortable to me, you really are willing to look at it and notice and say, “Well, these the patterns that I most want, these the habits I most want, is this what? Or is there, is there something? Could I design something that gets me to a completely different level of contribution and achievement?” Yes?
Leo Babauta:
Yes. Could I give you a real example because we’re talking a little abstract right now. So let’s say someone says I want to, you know, hit this huge goal. And then you ask them, you know, they set some structure, and they say by the end of this month, I’m going to do this to move me towards that and at the end of, the month.
You ask them what happened, and they’re like, “Well, you know, I couldn’t. I was like sick all month, and I was just tired, and I felt I feel like I just needed to take care of myself and throw out throughout the structure, throughout the goal.”
Greg McKeown:
Yes.
Leo Babauta:
And I’m like well, “You know, that’s totally fine, but what’s what’s having you be sick and tired all the time?”
Well, and then we dig into it, and what turns out, if you really spend some time with this person, is they are afraid of the structure and afraid of the goal. And so they are feeling anxious and tight the entire day, which has them exhausted by the end of the day and then has them much more likely to get sick. And so they’re just walking through the day with this tightness and anxiousness. And I’m not blaming them for that. We can imagine there are good reasons they have this anxiety and tightness, but they are looking at the structure and at the goal and at the activity itself of, let’s say, writing as scary. There’s a threat detector that’s gone off. And so they, because they have their threat detector, say, oh, that’s scary, this is dangerous, and I now need to like be tight, and I’ll do it, I’ll force myself to do it, but it’s like forcing yourself to like hold on to an electric fence.
It’s not going to be fun. It’s going to be exhausting and painful.
And so what if this person could transform, if they took a look at that and saw like, “Oh, that’s how I go through my day?”
What if they turned off the threat detector and said, “What if I could just play? What if I could find joy in my day? What if I could be relaxed and just kind of like make a mess like it didn’t have to be anything perfect?”
And all of a sudden, this person is going to be practicing a whole different way of being that is totally foreign to them? But it could be relaxed, it could be fun. It could not have them be exhausted at the end of the day. Now, that structure then that we looked at, like why didn’t you hit your target? Now becomes a way to see what’s going on underneath their initial reasons, which are just like I was sick and tired, and it can’t do this anymore.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so I’m getting part of it, and I want to make sure I get the whole of it. So when I wrote Effortless, I distinguished this idea of sort of being in an effortful, stressed, anxious, fearful state and an effortless state.
Leo Babauta:
Exactly.
Greg McKeown:
You’re definitely talking, as far as I can see, about how do you shift into an effortless state
Leo Babauta:
In this example.
Greg McKeown:
Yes, for sure, yes, in this example. And we might say the difference between a strained state, maybe in a striving state, but are you saying we still hold on to that new goal? Right, so we keep using the book idea? Right, like writing a book, we still hold the goal, but instead of being so rigid about the process that we are strangling our own ability to execute. It was so tense about, I don’t know, like I say, it’s so tense about having to do it in the perfect way that we don’t get started. And so this is another idea from Effortless, but I think it’s what you’re saying. Is the courage to be rubbish, like, hey, no, we’re just going to be playful through this, we’re just going to, we’re doing draft zero, we’re not doing draft one, we’re not doing perfect writing from the beginning, we’re just starting with rubbish, we’re just going to start, and then we can always improve over time. Is that the idea of what you’re saying?
Leo Babauta:
Yeah, for this particular person in this example, that would be transformative If they could allow themselves to just be rubbish, like, just embrace the rubbishness of what they’re doing and have it be much more effortless. And so, instead of strained, it’s committed but effortless, which is, I think, the middle ground for a lot of people. It’s like, instead of being effortless, but just like laying there and doing nothing like sloppy or being really strained. There’s a committed but effortless.
Greg McKeown:
Yes, okay, I like it. I think that’s a nice place to tie up episode one, the first part of this conversation with Leo Babauta. It’s been a pleasure to have you. For those who are listening, what is one thing that stood out to you in today’s conversation?
Leo Babauta:
One thing that I love about this conversation is how fascinated you are. It was just really fun to be in a conversation with someone who is just fascinated and really is trying to wrap their head around something and using incredible metaphors and different ideas. It’s just a fun conversation to be in.
Greg McKeown:
I love that, Leo. Next question what is one thing people should do immediately, like within a 10-minute increment, that they could do as a result of today’s conversation from your point of view?
Leo Babauta:
If they write down the words, slow down and put that somewhere just as a reminder. Put it on your bathroom mirror and a few other places around your house just as a reminder to slow down with your life with resistance.
There’s a Japanese phrase from the tea ceremony called Ichi-go ichi-e or something like that. It basically means one chance in a lifetime. That means that every time you pour tea, it’s the only time we ever get that chance to do that with this person in this moment because the next time we do it, it’s going to be a completely different thing. I really love that idea. If we could slow down, we’re missing all of these moments of a lifetime. Just take these moments of a lifetime and take them as sacred things to really appreciate in each day
Greg McKeown:
Really really like that. And then, this question: Who should people be working with as they try to apply this in their lives? Do you have any guidance for who should they start with? What would the criteria be of who they could pair up with to be able to continue this conversation now that this part of this conversation has comeing to a close?
Leo Babauta:
I think it’s important to have someone outside of you who can see stuff you can’t see, the stuff that we just talked about A coach or someone, a therapist or someone outside of you who can see what’s invisible to you and reflect it to you. And second, to have some kind of community, even if it’s a community of two people, other people to do this with because otherwise it feels alone and it’s really hard to do on your own.
Greg McKeown:
Leo, a pleasure to have you. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Leo Babauta:
Thank you.
