The 7 Habits of Calmness

Babauta says modern life produces stress, anxiety, and a lack of peace, and that calmness comes from habits rather than one-time changes in surroundings or work patterns. Since other people and events cannot be controlled, the key is to control response.

Reading notes

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• Build a calm morning ritual with meditation, yoga, writing, exercise, and quiet before the day gets noisy.
• Watch your response when something stressful happens, whether it turns into action, anger, overwhelm, or self-pity.
• Do not take events personally; treat them as the other person’s issue or as a non-personal event.
• Practice gratitude during conflict, complaints, rude behavior, or disappointment, and let that replace anger and anxiety.
• Replace unhealthy stress coping habits such as junk food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, procrastination, and time-wasting sites with tea, exercise, yoga, meditation, a walk, water, or talking with someone you care about.
• Single-task instead of multitasking so everyday actions like eating, walking, writing, reading, and email can be done with less anxiety.
• Reduce noise from clutter, notifications, social media, news, and constant reading demands to make space for quiet.