This is the fifth of six articles on Transformation: Being New in Our Thinking. The previous article revealed the two key aspects at the heart of this new thinking: 1) value and 2) respect–for food, eating, the kitchen and cooking. Now let’s further explore other key aspects.
The previous Transformation segment ended with this inquiry: The convenience food industry has led us to believe that cooking is inherently tedious and tiresome. But is there actually any “evidenced based,” “scientific study” objectively proving cooking’s lack of value, impossible difficulty or inherently excessive time requirements?
Or is cooking’s negative reputation merely a subjectively created narrative–a myth–created by clever marketers?
“Normalizing” Cooking The more I stepped back from my conditioned way of thinking and considered my kitchen situation from an objective perspective, the more my mind opened to the possibility that maybe cooking was ok. Maybe it was only because my mind had been programmed otherwise that I resented my time in the kitchen so much. That, in turn, made my time there more stressful and aggravating than it needed to be.
Over the years, allowing myself to follow this train of thinking has mellowed my feelings around cooking. Certainly, there are times after a long day when I wish there were some leftovers in the fridge for dinner!
For the most part, however, meal making has become just a routine, normal part of my day. It doesn’t provoke thoughts or feelings much different than those that arise from checking emails, paying bills, taking a morning walk, getting ready for bed or any other part of my day.
In other words, everyday meal making is just not a big deal anymore, i.e., it has become “normalized” in my life.
Fight or Make Peace Interestingly, making peace with cooking and kitchen has led to some surprisingly pleasant discoveries, e.g.:
- It can be a welcome tactile respite from typing on a computer all day.
- Handling living fruits and vegetables adds an aliveness to my day.
- Chopping, stirring and mixing is almost like meditation, helping me de-stress.
- Not having to concentrate on work provides time to call and chat with friends and family while I cook.
- Finally, cooking offers a rare opportunity to exercise a little creativity.
A Thinking Transformation Who would have guessed that cooking could be not just ok, but pleasant and even fun!
But only by thinking for myself, objectively and outside the box was I able to make these discoveries. They liberated me to freely and even enjoyably make the meals that kept me and my family healthy.
I hope my story has given you a good sense of what it means to transform our thinking. I began our healthy eating journey being dismissive of the kitchen and resentful of the time I had to spend making health-giving meals. It was only a change in my thinking that paved the way to turn wholesome meal making into a consistent, manageable, lifelong lifestyle.
Limiting Beliefs My thinking transformation took a few years, since I had no idea how much our beliefs and thinking impact our actions. Nowadays, the negative impacts of our thinking are called “limiting beliefs.” No doubt you’ve heard this phrase and how we have to root out and address limiting beliefs to successfully achieve our goals.
Even if I had heard of the limiting beliefs concept, I would have assumed that this lofty self-help idea had no applicability in the humble kitchen. Yet experience has shown me that there is a very real “thinking-table” connection as shared in an earlier segment.
Actually, the kitchen and cooking are not only perfect but very timely places to apply self-help principles, like the limiting belief concept.
I hope that transforming your thinking and getting past limiting beliefs are ideas that will be valuable on your health journey. Granted, they may sound strange right now since, as mentioned, few people have considered the impact of our thinking and beliefs on our ability to make the health-giving meals our bodies crave.
I further hope that by sharing my story, it will speed your understanding and acceptance of the novel thinking-table connection. Finally, I hope that by having the benefit of my slow and protracted revelations over many years, you’ll be able to make your thinking transformation happen a lot more quickly!
A Radical Proposition So to summarize, here is a radical proposition:
- What if we value our health so much that it inspires us to take a close look at our thinking around meal making.
- And what if we are further inspired to transform our thinking so it supports putting out the time and effort to Be New in Kitchen and Cooking.
- What if, instead of fighting it, we make peace with the kitchen and cooking?
- And what if that turned healthy meal making into something that is entirely manageable, engaging and even enjoyable in our modern lives.
- Is that a worthy area of exploration–and a wonderful result?
A thought to ponder in the days ahead: Is there a valid reason why we shouldn’t honor the life-giving practice of making our daily bread and nourishing our precious bodies?