How to Change Your Life - in four lines.

Leo Babauta

I've been reading the Zen Habits blog for some time, nodding along in agreement with Leo Babauta's ideas on how to find simplicity in the chaos of our daily lives.

“It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, find happiness.”

Zen Habits is one of the Top 25 blogs and Top 50 websites in the world, with about 225,000 readers, and it is uncopyrighted. The blog is 'reader supported', which means it's advert and affiliate free. Leo sells books and ebooks through his blog. 

While I love and agree with Leo's ideas I have yet to put any of them into action. But a recent blog post of his summed up his methods into a manageable nutshell.

The Zen Habits Method

1. Start very small.

2. Do only one change at a time.

3. Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).

4. Be grateful for every step you take.

The full article is here
Leo then clarified the 'single change' method here Make one change

I am a wife and mother, a writer, and a freelance secretary. I have anxiety habits and feel overwhelmed by the amount of things that somewhere in my past I decided I should achieve. My email inbox needs more than de-cluttering – I have simply subscribed to too many blogs, newsletters and job alerts from freelancing websites. I'm a narrowboater so I have extra chores like filling the water tank, moving the boat and getting rid of domestic waste. I'm also a student of the online course Become a Mumpreneur (Affiliate link) I work very hard but lack focus. My new business is not bringing in enough money.

I'm going to start very small. I'm going to make one change. I will be present and enjoy the activity. I will be grateful for the step that I take.

My Zen Habit this week is to begin to transcribe medical letters for an online dictation company. It's not glamorous or creative. But it's a step towards building up a work-at-home business.

I have written it down. That means it will happen.

The End of the Rainbow

10th August

Since having children I have developed an irrational travel phobia. I’ll just nip out to the supermarket in Harlow to get toddler pull-ups I thought – but I don’t have a car or a driving licence, so it was two hours from our boat to the supermarket. Although Harlow is just one train stop away there was a severe train delay and two flat tyres on a three wheeled pushchair. It took one hour and ten minutes to get home from the supermarket by train and walking to and from the stations. It only takes one hour ten minutes to walk there down the towpath, without any trains involved at all.

The laundry run is now a joy not a chore. It is a country walk and a chance to practice my improvised botany. On the way to the lock cottage I see so many nameless wild flowers. I’m no horticulturalist so I have to create my own names for them: purple tufties, cabbage-white butter-flowers, purple pansy clusters, golden grasses sun-bleached and crispy, spiky purple flower’d thistle balls, and lavender look-a-likes shaking with laughter on the towpath. And O’ sweet bushels of pinkle-bells that tinkle with the sounds of summer.

At the lock The Hay Man is leaning over the footbridge railings and chatting to The Husband of the Lady of The Lock. The Hay Man came here as a baby evacuee during the war, and he never left. He lives in one of the chalets on the chalet estate. We see him now and then on his way back from Hunsdon Mead where he collects hay for his horse and then pulls it back home on a trolley.

It rained for most of the day. At home I noticed water leaks in places that I didn’t know we had places. I put a bucket in the corridor and felt miserable about the boat. A narrowboat broker would now call it a ‘project boat’. It has had the hull re-plated but it is old and not big enough or good enough for my two girls. We need more storage space for clothes and toys. If only The Doctor and I could have our own bedroom we would have a writing desk in there... But I wonder what I really want. ..a bigger boat with a washing machine, a caravan by the sea, or a two bedroom semi-detached in suburbia? Should we rent a flat? Could we rent a bigger boat? The Doctor says a caravan will be on some depressing caravan site, all boxed in among too many other caravans and he’d rather live in a house in suburbia. This can’t happen because of my suburb phobia.

I am anxious about our future finances, income and work. Even the willows weep for me, at the bottom of the mead garden. As they drizzle tears into the lesser Stort on the far side of the field, I consider DIY anxiety remedies:

Anxiety Busters

What advice would you give to a friend?
Break down tasks – problem solving
Give yourself more relax time
Listen to a hypnosis mp3 download

The children are in bed and I think it has stopped raining. So I go out on the back deck and see my first ever rainbow sunset! First, I saw the rainbow, arching from the field on the east of the river and stretching to the bow of our boat. It’s huge but seems so near, right here, just across the river, bending and curving over our boat. With meadows ahead of me and meadows behind, I look all around and think I must be the only human to see this enormous rainbow. So, I allow myself to imagine that it was put there just for me. I was unable to capture it in a photograph, it just appeared washed out in the preview frame. I turned behind me to check our heavenly meadow and there is the most amazing sunset I have seen since we’ve been moored here. The clouds are pink, orange and yellow, intensely striking and streaking across the sky. The clouds are rolling and sweeping over the embers of the sun’s golden glow, seeping through cracks in the sky and leaking out, the paper sky absorbing the wet paint colours sponge-like, blurring and fading into one another, lighting up the sky with a passionate intensity. Clouds are sucked into a vanishing point, perspective is speeding away from me across the green field to where the lumpy bumpy shadowy skyline of dark trees meets these heavenly grumblings of clouds that are now already turning ominously red and purple. Fluffy fragile grasses stand silently beside me and share in my awe as we witness the sky.
Yet, in a few minutes it was all over. The sun crept off over the horizon, the sky became a washed out faded denim blue, and when I looked behind me, my rainbow was gone. I’m not religious or even superstitious but if I was looking for a heavenly sign to comfort me in these times when I am prone to worry, then that was it. More than just a ray of hope, a rainbow sunset painting the evening sky was a fierce lightshow competing with the misty transient vulnerability of a vast rainbow, existing for a moment in time.

Later, I remembered that I had said that Hunsdon Mead and Roydon would be the end of the rainbow for us.

Tank Girl’s helpline for boatwomen

Friday 6th August

Sometimes I feel depressed, lonely, isolated, and anxious. Mothering books and internet chat forums reassure me that this is normal and nothing to do with being a boater. Sometimes I forget that I can always phone a friend. I phoned Tank Girl, who runs her own body piercing shop and has a three year old daughter: A Mumpreneur in the extreme. It turns out that I only needed to talk to someone and within minutes I feel much better and I’m laughing. She asked me when I last had a conversation with someone in real life (not on the phone) and I admitted it must be a few days, if you don’t include staff at the village shop.
“I like your blog,” she says. “But how on earth do you find the time to write it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s an addiction I guess. Sometimes I just can’t stop writing. I take a notebook and a biro with me and stop and lean on the pushchair when I need to write something down. Or sometimes you might just find me perched on a lock gate, writing something.” As I go about my business I sometimes stuff a notepad into the hood of the pushchair and keep a pen behind my ear.
“I suppose it’s like me and exercise,” says Tank Girl.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I never know how you find the time to do all that running and spinning and stuff.”
“I just love it! I’m mad I s’pose!” She laughs.


Treat yourself to a bit of Tank Girls’s funky jewellery at http://www.fluxpiercing.co.uk/

Secret House Wish

Thursday 15th July

Big Sister asks for water to play in the bathroom sink. I organise it and she writhes on the floor in a screaming tantrum because she actually wants to play with water in a bucket on the back deck. She asks me to take her for a wee, I ask can she do it herself as I’m eating my lunch? (I’m starving and shaky, I might be having a ‘sugar crash’.) Big sister throws a tantrum again and wees on the floor. I calmly deal with this, clean and change her, and now she wants to sit on her toy box. I move the toy box away from the wee puddle and secure the lid so that it’s ready to sit on. A third tantrum ensues because there is something about this arrangement that she doesn’t like. I lose my rag and scream at her. I begin to seriously consider The Doctor’s offer of looking after the kids – he would love to do it, and I could go out to work.

Changing a nappy in the bedroom I hear the wind blow something off the roof, and I watch from the window as a blue plastic water container floats off down the river. I put the baby in a safe place and put my eldest daughter in front of the computer, watching a film. I run down the towpath with a broom to retrieve the container, then check on the children by peering in the window. The boat is moored at an extremely jaunty angle (forty-five degrees) and swaying in the wind, thudding against the concrete towpath, doing the hull no good at all. So, the ropes need tightening. Struggling against the wind and awkwardly placed bollards this is like re-mooring up on a very windy day and takes me the entire duration of the Baby Einstein DVD. One to add to the list of odd jobs that boat-mums do that house-mums don’t. In a wider sense, it’s all part of my eternal rhetorical question – would I secretly rather live in a house?

I had a lot of negative ‘glass half empty’ thoughts today, but I am very tired. I must remember that lack of sleep is a cause of depression in itself. Maybe my brain just goes into anxiety circles because it’s not functioning on full power. The fact is, I am tired, but things are good. That’s how it is.

First Contact

Monday 12th July

The baby sits upright and commandeers our bed with a growling pirate’s “Aaargh!” Then she blows a raspberry.
Last night I lay awake for two hours until one o’clock wasting time worrying. Then I tried self-hypnosis to get to sleep. Then I began making elaborate plans on how to start my on line business, selling MP3’s through my website www.hypnoticloop.co.uk. Worry is a waste of time. It’s better to channel that energy into something constructive.

However, on the whole I’m much more relaxed now that The Doctor is home. I’m still busy all day but I tend to be doing one thing at a time. For example, I’m doing the dishes while The Doctor takes Big Sister for a wee. I’m sweeping the floor while The Doctor encourages Big Sister to build a village with her blocks. The Doctor makes toast for the whole family while I’m changing the baby’s nappy. It seems to me that childcare and housework is a two person job. Multi-tasking is just stressful!

This afternoon the baby is upset, husky voiced, runny nosed and grizzly she looks at me with pleading eyes and murmurs,
“Mumumumum”.
The Doctor and I are excited, we think she is saying “Mum” for the first time!
“Oh baby, you feel poorly and you want your mum?” I say gently.
“Mum mum mum,” she replies. Big brown eyes, glassy with tears look up at me. My eyes fill with tears too as I look up at The Doctor’s proud face. We are spellbound by our baby’s first word.
“She said Mum!”
Emotion wells up inside me as this eight month old intrepid adventurer achieves her very first communication with language. We have contact, we are connected, we grow instantly closer to her as she takes one giant leap for baby-kind. We could not be more moved if she had walked on the moon. There is a quantum shift in the family dynamic as our tiny fourth crew member begins to speak our language.