7 Fail-proof Ways to Rev Up Your Fat Burning and Get Lean

Article by Leo Babauta. (Follow me on Twitter.)

If you’re like me, you can eat healthy much of the time, exercise a lot, and still find your fat-burning efforts at a plateau.

It seems easier to lose the first 30 pounds than the last bit of fat around your middle.

How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life

“Balance is beautiful.” -  Miyoko Ohno, Japanese bridge designer

Article by Leo Babauta

I have a close friend named Norm who is a great photographer and a great person in general … recently he was telling me that all he does is work.

That might sound familiar to some of you — I’ve certainly been there at different points in my life, although these days I have to say that I’ve found a pretty good balance between all the important things in my life, including work, family, and other things I’m interested in.

Norm asked me to write a post about work-life balance, because although I think Norm is pretty happy with his life, he’s interested in expanding his life beyond work. I think it’s an interesting question that most of us have to address at some point or other.

Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog (or Yourself) Like the Big Guys Do

Over at Write To Done, I’ve written a post that is ostensibly aimed at blogger, but can really be applied much more widely:

Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do

It shows how I was able to build up the readership of Zen Habits within a matter of months. And while the bloggers among you might find this article interesting, I think it can also be useful to many more of you. You can use these concepts of branding to:

• Promote your website, product, or service
• Promote yourself — often we have to be self-promotional in order to get ahead
• Promote your charity, non-profit organization, or other good cause

This post takes the lessons of the advertising world and shows you how to apply it to your life. I hope you find it useful!

If you like the post, please bookmark it on delicous.com to share it with others. :)

Ask the Readers: What Habit Changes Are Your Top Priorities?

I’ve written a lot about habit changes but I’d like to address specific habit changes more directly … and talk about more specific strategies for changing habits that all of you care about.

So I’d like to hear from you:

What are the top 1-3 habits you’d like to change or create?

These can be anything, from exercise to eating healthy to quitting smoking or alcohol to doing yoga every day to waking early to putting things away when you’re done with them to being nicer to others. Anything.

I’d love to hear from all of you! Share in the comments.

The Simple Joy Of A Beating Heart

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Eric Hamm of Motivate Thyself.

The average human heart beats around 100,000 times per day. It’s one of the most common occurrences in our human existence.  And yet for Liz and I, hearing that tap-tap-tap was the only thing on our minds.  As we waited in that room, Liz on her back in that awkward position once again, the tension grew while we anticipated the findings.  We were 9 weeks pregnant and all we wanted in that moment was the assurance that our little baby was alive and kicking.