YouSaid · the spoken record

Leo Babauta

lines on the record: 76
first: 2020-12-22
most recent: 2020-12-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When Zen Habits took off, is when I met you online, we never met in person that year, but you had come out with for our work week, which was just this powerhouse of a book. And you were starting out with your blog as well. And I was also coming out with a book, which I didn't know how to do. And you were coming out with a blog, which you were new to. And so we kind of crossed paths at that point where I was good at blogging and not good at books. You were good at books and not good at blogging. And eventually you got really good at blogging. Like your blog just took off. And so it was just really cool to see you rise up in that space just because I think anything you set your mind to, you're going to be really good at.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like 20 productivity hacks or something like that. I definitely wrote a lot of link bait type headlines at the time. I tried to put real wisdom, real like useful stuff in there, but I played around with a bunch of types of titles for the posts that were attention grabbing. And eventually I moved away from that because it just didn't feel very good, but definitely was doing a lot of it at the time, just experimenting. I wanted to basically try anything because I didn't know it would work or not. So I tried everything. That was the kind of, like I said, hyperdrive that I went into is I basically tried every single thing because I didn't know what worked. And then by the end of 2007, I figured out the things that worked and the ones that didn't. And so I stopped doing the ones that didn't feel in alignment with me and then really just focused on the important stuff. I think that's the case when we try anything that we don't know how to do it. We try like everything possible and then we narrow it down to what actually does matter. By the way, I want to say that 2007”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard to remember. I remember the first time that I got linked to from a bigger blog. It was a blog called Dumb Little Man. I think they're still around. But they had so many more readers and I had like 20 or something like that. And somehow they had read my blog and linked to it. And I remember looking at the stats and it just spiked up into the thousands. And it was just like this mind-blowing thing.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was almost like I was everywhere. And that was kind of crazy that I could do that at the time. But yeah, I actually had people write to me and say, man, you are just like on every blog that I read. And of course, I wasn't on every blog in the world, but for this particular type of person that I was trying to reach, I was on almost every blog that they were reading.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was already doing freelance writing for magazines in Guam. And so I decided instead of writing for those, which I wasn't inspired to write for, I'd write for the online ones, even if the pay was less. So I looked for blogs strategically that, first of all, they were paying people, freelancers. And second, their audience had some kind of overlap with mine. So there was productivity, there was mostly self-improvement type stuff. So similar audiences. And the effect that I had, and I kind of realized this early on when I started making the switch, the effect was that if you're reading about self-improvement, there was a good chance that you would come across me because all of these self-improvement blogs that were paying me, I was there every week. And then a bunch of other blogs that were doing self-improvement would allow me to be a guest.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was five posts a week for those paid blogs. And then I would do guest posts for other blogs. And I was doing about five of those a week. And so it was like 15 to 20 blog posts a week.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was working for the government in Guam at the time. I think it was the Guam legislature. I was helping with veterans from the legislature. So it didn't take up all my attention. Let's just say that. It was the kind of job where a lot of people will play like solitaire for a quarter of the day. And I realized I didn't want to do that. And so I just used all of my spare time, even when I was supposed to be doing other work, just doing blogging. switch just flipped where I was so passionate about it and I realized like, oh, this could be my calling. And so I had never had that before, this idea that something could be my calling. I was always kind of like just do something for the paycheck. And when I had that switch flipped, I went on this crazy hyperdrive where I was writing a post every day for Zen Habits. I also started freelancing for other blogs where I was writing one post a week for them. So for five different ones.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it really did happen in a matter of months. And part of me that wants to just say I stumbled upon something just had a pure luck. And then another part is said, well, no, you worked your ass off, Leo. So give yourself some credit. Yeah, so I started it really just to blog about a lot of the things I've been learning and changes that I was making. And so it really started partly as accountability. I got some early responses from some readers. There was only a handful in the beginning that really encouraged me and it got me excited. And I remember maybe two and a half months into it, a point where I said, oh my God, like I really want to do this all the time. And I had a day job at the time.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I usually don't let us make a decision at that place. We work through that, and then when they get to a place where they're not wanting to shut down, that's when we make a group decision. So that's the same exact process for myself.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To being able to deal with all of the negative stuff because everything comes with a cost. And so they're going to be heartbroken to say goodbye to people. And I knew that was actually a good thing for them is to learn how to deal with that, even though it was painful. And really, it's the same process as you talked about how I think about this. It's the same process that I think about for myself when I make these decisions. Like, I know I'm going to go through discomfort. There's a part of me, the little kid in me that doesn't want to do the hard stuff that wants to just be in comfort. And there's an adult part of me that has to guide the little boy Leo that doesn't want to do it. And so that adult has to kind of give compassion and reassurance, but also that's the part that needs to make the decisions. When I'm in the little boy Leo state of mind, I don't let myself make decisions at that place because I know that that one wants to hide or run. And when my kids are in that state of mind too.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Went through a process, so doing anything like this with other people, you can't just make a unilateral decision. So we went through a process with them back when we were in Guam and we had a whole discussion about the reasons why. And I think they really were only like 50% convinced what they agreed to it. So that was kind of the idea was we asked them to agree to like this kind of adventure mindset to try something new to explore things that they didn't know. And I think they were hesitant, but they agreed to it. A piece of me knew that they were resisting this. And so part of it is just kind of talking about the adventure and the excitement and all these new things that we'd be able to explore together. And so they're like, okay, well, maybe I can do this discomfort stuff if there is a good reason for it. So there was that. But also part of me knew that I had to guide them.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. So, well, we're a blended Brady Bunch family just to make that clear. So, I have two for my ex wife. My wife has two from her previous marriage, and then we came together and had two more. So we have three boys and three girls. And it's a very blended family. So my two for my ex-wife went to regular school. And then the other four were all homeschooled. In fact, we do a version of it, as you know, called Unschooling. We still have two teenagers in the house now who are being unschooled. And then we have two adults who went through the unschooling process, who are now basically doing the same thing, but as adults.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We sold everything, we moved with like a backpack each to San Francisco. Knew almost no one there. I met you there. That was pretty great. We basically were in a place where it was just completely foreign to us. The kids had never seen a homeless person before or anyone using drugs. They got quite used to that over the years we were there. And so actually it was really hard because they didn't want to be there. And I felt like I was maybe making a mistake. So it taught me a lot about how I questioned myself in those hard moments. But it really taught them a lot about their first reaction, you know, not liking it is not always right because they look back on it and say, oh, I'm so glad that you made that choice, but I didn't want to do it. I was really unhappy for a while. And so that really taught them a lot about how we react to these kinds of things.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We moved in 2010 from Guam to San Francisco. And that time we were a family of six kids, so a family of eight. And we were in a really comfortable place in Guam. We had so much family around us, a huge network. And I knew that we could just go on that way and be fine. But I also knew that it was comfortable and the kids were going to be trained in comfort and that they would then get stuck in that because that's what had happened for me. So I wanted us to move out of our comfort zone into a new place and experience that together where I could help them with that mind shift and see the world and be able to like basically have access to the world and then have choice. They could go back to Guam where we love Guam or they could pretty much move anywhere in the world. It was a hard thing because first of all it's just heart-wrenching to say goodbye to so many people that we love.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It. But if we learn that, oh, this is where growth really happens, then it doesn't have to be anything that we need to get out of right away.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, just having someone to talk to was a big one. I'm screwing this up. I can't do this, having someone else to encourage me. And then I eventually learned to encourage myself. So there's lots of different things we can do to encourage ourselves. And then just learning to ride it out was part of it because it just, it'll go. It'll pass. And then another thing that I learned, this is not right away, but I learned it multiple habits into it, is actually that period is one of the deepest periods of learning that we can have. And so if we can learn to see it in that light where, oh, I can learn a lot about myself in this period, it doesn't have to be a negative thing when the dip happens. It's like, oh, this is actually when I learn what I'm all about. This is how I learn what the negative thought patterns are that happen for me are and how to deal with those. So it's actually a really rich area and most of us don't want to be.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, knowing that it's going to happen is a big one, and then preparing for it. Because usually what happens is we think it's not going to happen. This time it's going to be different. And then when it happens, we're like, oh, crap, like it happened. And so that must mean there's something wrong with me. And so knowing that it's going to happen, that it's just a part of the process is a really big one because it allows you to be mentally in the place where you can embrace this. And then the other part of it is practicing what you're going to do beforehand. So if you know it's going to happen and you know how it's going to feel because it's happened a number of times before, you can say, oh, I'm in it. And then you have a plan and you mentally rehearse this beforehand. And you can practice with it in smaller versions. So I highly recommend practicing anytime you get like a micro discouragement is practicing with that. So giving yourself some compassion, having some kind of way to pull yourself out of that state.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All kinds of motivations. One of the other big one was a dip in the habit. So there's a time with every habit that we feel great, you know, everything's going great. And then at some point we hit this dip that feels like we can't do it. And so we want to give up. So our usual pattern when we get hit by this, it's like getting punched in the face is like, okay, that's enough. I don't want to do this anymore. And so we get really discouraged. And I learned that if you have a plan for when you get punched in the face and you practice with that, the dip doesn't have to be the end of the story. It's just a part of it.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so learning that actually unlocked so much for me because I learned that none of the urges that I thought I needed to act on were actually commands, but they were just feelings in the body. So that liberated me a lot. I learned about rewards. I learned about”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really zoomed in on those things, stress and anxiety and feeling bad about myself and being overwhelmed. All of these things really, I got clear that they were the things that caused me to smoke or triggered me to want to smoke. I also learned to just recognize when I had the urge and then sit with that urge. So it was a form of meditation. It's just sitting with a physical sensation of needing to smoke without needing to actually smoke. So I learned to separate the urge from the action before that, whenever the urge happened, I had to take action. It felt like a command. Like there was no choice and there was no separation.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was such a pivotal moment in my life, so I'm really glad you're zooming in on this one. A number of things change, but the first one was that I had a very meaningful reason, something that mattered to me. And again, I mentioned my wife and my kids making a promise to my daughter. I think before that, it was only promises to myself, which I never really keep, or I didn't at that time. I didn't trust myself to keep those promises. And so making a promise to someone else and really feeling like this was for something that mattered saving their lives as well as mine. So I really got clear on that and felt it in my heart. And that really started everything else because it motivated me to make a big commitment. I joined a forum online so that I had some social accountability was turned out to be a big one, not only for this, but for all future habits. I learned about triggers. And so what are the things that triggered me to smoke?”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“30 pounds in a year. My whole life was different. And I ran a marathon at the end of 2006. And I felt like such a huge success. And I had learned a bunch of things that changed those habits along the way. One after the other, I applied the same ideas to changing those habits. And that's when I started Zen Habits to share all of those things that I've been learning.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For smoking, for stress. So I started meditating. I started running because I needed to do something when I felt like I needed to smoke. And so I finally, I actually made the smoking habit stick that I'd quit smoking for the first time in my life. I had tried like seven times before. And that felt like a huge success. And so I felt so much encouragement from that. I felt like I could take on the rest of the things. And so one thing at a time, I started changing everything about my life. I started eating healthier. I started running more, ran a 5K, I committed to running a marathon. That's how optimistic I was after running the 5k. I started waking up earlier, started writing after wanting to write for years, procrastinating lest my wife and I made a plan to get out of debt and one small debt at a time. We started paying them off until like a year later, my entire life was changed. I lost.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think that was the realization I am killing myself in a lot of different ways and I'm failing myself and failing my family. That was the most heartbreaking part was that I was failing my wife and kids. And so from that heartbreak and feeling of despair and like I was killing myself, I realized I had to reach for a lifeline. I had to do something to save my life and my family as well. And so I decided I couldn't change all of these things at once. I was trying to multiple times. So I decided to just change one thing. And it was smoking. So I committed to that in a really big way to a lot of different people, to my daughter, to my wife, made a promise that really felt meaningful to me. And I did a bunch of research, found out a bunch of different techniques, and tried them all. That's when I tried meditation as a replacement.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, people say sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can climb out of it. So I hit a number of really deep low points from myself. One of them was, as I talked about debt, just not being able to put food on the table for my family. And I remember at one heartbreaking moment of that depth was when I had to break open my kids' piggy bank to be able to put some milk and cereal on the table. And so that was a real dark point where I felt like a failure as a father. Smoking as well. My wife was pregnant, so she quit smoking while she was pregnant, but I knew that she was going to start again as soon as she gave birth. So I had to quit in order to set an example for her. But I also knew that my kids were much more likely to smoke. And so I had to quit for them as well. And there were just a number of points where I just felt despair and like a failure. And I felt like I had to save my life.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was definitely a difficult period in my life, and really, it feels like a whole different lifetime ago, different person. But 2005, I was married with a huge family, mixed family, five kids with one more on the way. In a job I didn't like, I was overweight, I was a smoker, sedentary, kept trying to change a lot of these habits. I was a big procrastinator, very deeply in debt and really not being able to pay my bills and just really felt stuck and felt really bad about myself, which I think a lot of people can relate to some aspect of that story. It was just really tough for me having to provide for people, but not being able to make ends meet, feeling terrible about myself as a father, not a good example, and just feeling really discouraged about my ability to make any change stick in my life. So that's where I was in 2005.”
2020-12-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #488: Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, Antifragility, Contentment, and Unschooling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT