I felt constantly exhausted. There was a time in my corporate career where I didn't understand why I had no energy to do anything although I spent most of my day sitting at a desk.
The one thing that brought me joy, cooking, seemed like a chore.
It took months and a whole lot of self-reflection to understand what was really going. You see, the term work-life balance is a bit misleading.
It's misleading because it made me think that the balance aspect was going to come from balancing my time or my efforts across work and life.
The question is even if you devote ample and effort to life, are you really present with your life outside of work?
Some turn to yoga and meditation to cultivate presence. My productivity obsessed mind turned that into a self-improvement project so it didn't help much.
So, I turned to something that I had to do most days anyway which was cooking.
I realized that the reason why cooking felt like a chore was because I wasn't present with the current moment. I just wanted to be done, have dinner, plop myself on the sofa and mindlessly scroll through social media.
Honestly, it made me feel terrible. It wasn't relaxing.
It really came down to changing my perspective about how I approaching making dinner every night.
I spent some time the day before or that morning picking a dish I was interested in eating rather than the ones that were 'easy'. That made shopping more enjoyable.
I focused on using the proper technique with the knife while prepping which meant that I had to focus on what I was doing with all my attention. Chopping is repetitive task and if you're present, it can be quite meditative.
I focused on what was happening in the pan rather than what I needed to do next which helped me create a better dish and positively reinforced the habit of presence that I was trying to build.
Not only did cooking help me cultivate presence, it also helped me appreciate the joy in every day things. It allowed me to slow down and truly let my mind rest.
So, what will you cook to cultivate presence today?
So beautifully described. It resonated to me for my journey with a lot of things.