How to Create Healthy Habits: An Interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits

By: Matt Frazier

“The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, thought and act.”

-Orison Swett Marden

By far, the most valuable lesson I’ve learned this entire year is that habit change is a skill. Learn the skill, and you take control of your actions and life.

Fail to understand your habits, though, and you’re a creature of circumstance — controlled by distractions and a slave to the whims of the present moment. I’ve had plenty of experience with this situation, as most people have. But the important thing to know is that you can learn to change.

You can get a sense of the excitement I felt upon discovering this and putting it into action in my post from the summer called How I’ve Begun Changing My Life, One Habit a Time.

I have Leo Babauta to thank for introducing me to the power of habits, and teaching me to take charge of my own. As most of the internet knows, Leo writes the blog Zen Habits, and I’m grateful today to have the chance to share this interview I did with him earlier this week.

I hope you enjoy it, but more importantly, I hope you use it.

(If you’re reading in email or an RSS reader, you may need to view the video on site or view it on YouTube.)

Simple Fitness Habit: The Fitness Program that Sticks

At the end of the interview, Leo and I talk about his new program, Simple Fitness Habit. Before I say more nice things about it, you should know I’m a contributor to Simple Fitness Habit and an affiliate for it as well. My contribution (so far!) has been in writing the half marathon training section and providing my Marathon Roadmap ebook as a bonus for some membership levels. I’ll also be doing a webinar, a Q&A, and hopefully a lot more with the program in the future.

Anyway, I’m genuinely excited about Simple Fitness Habit, as it’s the only fitness program I’ve ever seen that helps people to change by incorporating these powerful principles of habit engineering, instead of simply relying on willpower to make the changes last. I’m even planning on giving it as a gift to several people I love who have had trouble starting their own exercise habits.

If you’re interested in learning more about what’s inside Simple Fitness Habit, check it out here!

Thanks so much to Leo for taking the time to do this interview and share so much good stuff about how to engineer your habits!