Why Learning to Cook is Part of my Training and Development Plan at 43?

On 1-Jan-17, I sat in the hotel in Dubai to write down my intentions for this year. Intentions for me is a more powerful word than goals. Intentions are inspired from the inside, while goals are forced upon oneself and have a heaviness about them. Every year, I pick up things that boot me out of my comfort zone. I picked up a new target audience to serve at the price-point that made my heart beat faster. I recognized fear and knew I had picked the right thing to chase. I wasn't excited about the additional revenue and profitability that it would bring on the table. What filled me up with excitement, passion and absolute fear is the completely new human being I would become in order to fulfil on this intention; the number of inner barriers, blind spots & limitations I would need to face-off and let go; the number of times my old self would need to die to become the new me; the astronomical growth that it meant for me as a human being. There was excitement about being a butterfly and yet also the fear of the death of the caterpillar, the fear of having to move out of the cozy comfort of the cocoon.

I also reflected on my life to look at what I had been resisting the most because stupendous growth lies in going in the direction of what you resist the most. It didn't take too long for me to figure out what that was. Yes, it was cooking. I love great food but if I have to cook, I could survive on fruits for months together. That was my relationship with anything to do with cooking and the kitchen has always been on the bottom-most position on my list of favourite rooms at home. I sat there in that hotel room squirming in my seat knowing I had found something I needed to embrace and as yet very uncomfortable at having to do so. So, it landed on my list of intentions for 2017.

The Universe always supports you to fulfill your intentions. It depends on you whether you can really look deep inside anything that happens to you. On the surface, it always looks like a breakdown. If you have the eyes to look deep inside any challenge or a problem, you will always find the gift of the Universe hiding there, supporting you to live your highest potential. So, both my home support staff decided to leave for their village at the same time. 

I dusted the cobwebs off my food-processor and called the service engineer to give me a demo of this piece of technology. Within minutes of his leaving, I had damaged the main jar and locked-jam the machine. I have to log one more support request, more like distress call to the service centre. 

Here are my leadership lessons from the kitchen:
1. Facing your Fear is a muscle. You use it in one area, it becomes available to you in the other areas. Instead of taking Aditya's offer of moving to his parents' house (my usual rescue sanctuary) or hiring another cook, making the choice to dive deep into my fear has somehow released me. I no longer have the fear of not creating customers in the new segment. Infact, I have doubled the price point from where I started at the beginning of the year and that has made the game even more exciting. I am looking forward to serving deeply, committed to making 10 times the impact and failing gloriously numerous times along the way.

2. When there's more to do, efficiency comes easily as long as you remain still on the inside irrespective of the chaos outside. 

I have two coaches, both in the US. I had my coaching call at 3:30 am for an hour and fifteen minutes. Woke up the kids at 5 am for their daily Monday to Friday yoga class, packed Aditya's breakfast as he left for early morning golf, made raagi pancakes for kids' breakfast, packed methi paranthas for their lunch break and another tiffin for their short break. Was at my table at 8:00 am to start my work day, worked for sometime from home, drove to office for a meeting. Spoke to my parents for my daily call with them. My mother still can't believe I am cooking.

I spend 2.5 hours in the morning getting the breakfast and the tiffin boxes ready. Even with my home support staff around, I am busy minute to minute and don't experience the luxury of these 2.5 hours. The terrifying truth of Parkinson's Law is so spot on - work expands to fill the time. Even without achieving anything, we can still be busy being busy lamenting about the paucity of time. How important it is to make each moment contribute to our highest purpose else a lifetime is wasted, even without experiencing a moment's rest.    

3. Parenting is not about telling the kids what to do, how to be but showing them by doing it yourself. The kids have stopped resisting getting up and showering before their yoga class in the morning since I took on cooking. 

Before, the kids would be shouting for a glass of water, demanding the shoes be brought to them. Today, my 11-year old ironed her own school dress and felt great about it. She also helped pack the tiffin boxes. My 8-year old dressed up on his own, ate on his own without being distracted, filled his and his sister's water bottles. 

4. Running something without understanding leads to wastage and inefficiencies. I thought I was managing the kitchen. I have used the same amount of vegetables for twice the number of days. Stems of palak, methi, coriander find their way into the cooked vegetables on the dinner table instead of in the dustbin. Peels get cooked as part of my pet's meals. Potato peels are no longer thrown and end up providing nutrition to the family. Tonight, I am making a vegetable out of the stem of cauliflower.

5. You can bring innovation and creativity only if you understand something at the very core by doing it yourself. My cook would have never thought of pancake with raagi, fennel powder (saunf) and jaggery powder (gur). I left out sugar and baking powder. Kids loved it. I got 9.5 on 10 from one kid and 10 on 10 from the other. 

6. Doing something because you have to do it burdens your heart. Taking on doing the same thing because you have made the choice to do it and doing it with love brings with it tranquility and peacefulness; soothing the heart, mind and body.

It doesn't matter how the responsibility came to you. How you relate to it is what determines the outcome and the experience of the process. 

Dinner time for us is between 5 pm to 6 pm. At 7:00 pm yesterday, I was still struggling with the food processor because the recipe book I was referring to demanded I make a paste out of some ingredients. I realized I was stuck with that recipe. I needed great amount of agility of mind to un-stuck myself and do something else. Number of times, chaos started to rise inside. Being a coach helps. I was able to process myself on the spot and let it drop, staying in the moment in stillness. The dinner was served at 8:00 pm. I was famished and it was the most delicious matar pulao and mixed daal I have ever had in my life. Family said it was nice, which is progress because as soon as our cook declared she was leaving, kids asked her when she was coming back because they couldn't eat mama's cooked food and asked me if they could eat their lunch at the cafe everyday.

7. Happiness is in walking the path of your resistance. Since I rolled-up my sleeves to jump into the big vast ocean of cooking without knowing how to swim; there's a quiet, settled, subtle kind of joy I am experiencing. Its a beautiful feeling, though hidden within layers and layers of other emotions originating in resistance. The way to drop through the layers to touch your joyful source is to be in moment-by-moment awareness and acknowledge each unwholesome emotion as it arises. In that acknowledgement, it will pass. It is when we don't acknowledge and instead push the low feelings under the carpet unconsciously, that the emptiness in the heart and exhaustion in the body builds up; leading to discomfort and dis-ease.

8. Choosing to walk the difficult path leads to maximum deeply fulfilling growth. I could have quietly packed my bags and moved in with Aditya's parents for some time. It's luxury staying with them. Mom takes care of the kitchen and the kids and everything else; leaving me to deepen my craft (of coaching) by reading voraciously which is my most favourite thing to do. I feel I have grown as an outcome of not following the path of least resistance. 

9. Loving something / someone or resisting something / someone are both choices; and only requires Agility of Mind to switch from one to the other. I now actually enjoy the process of cooking and look forward to the experience. Only in jumping right in and doing it with love did the switch happen.

10. Pre-planning your work is the key to having it all - deeply fulfilling successful career, joyful relationships, happy responsible kids and lots of nourishing me-time. Planning the previous day with the kids the spread of the next day, ensuring the ingredients are either there or that the menu is built around available ingredients, figuring out the steps, which cooking dishes are required etc.; is what makes the creation process possible, within time and effortlessly. Without that, there is only the feeling of being overwhelmed. The shortest path from complexity to simplicity is through planning, reviewing and reflecting.

Keep the faith, believe, go beyond resignation and cynicism to live your greatness. That is why you are here.

Love, 
​Jyoti.

PS: In the photo is my younger one holding his orange tiffin box with 2 raagi aloo-methi paranthis. He finished his tiffin-box and said it was good.