Just because you are not working in a restaurant, it does not mean you cannot cook like a chef!
EDIT:
So yesterday I was at a neighbourhood eatery with Charles. I commented how the dish would be very different if they had sliced the cucumber thinly. Then we half commented that it is not a restaurant after all. I’m not sure if it is such a mindset or sloppiness that welded the chef’s knife yesterday, but It dawned on me that we can have such fixed mindsets at times.
We box ourselves up into fixed roles that we identify with and become limited by such identification. The only thing that comes from this is that we restrict our own growth.
But we didn’t start off this way mostly. Sometimes, it start off due to external factors. When we were young, or when we first started work, bright-eyed, we may have tried to do things and try things like there are no boundaries to what we are capable of doing. Then we hit our first brickwall. Our
first “No”. Our first “rejection”. The first “do what you are SUPPOSED to do”. There. The first block of the impenetrable stronghold of I-Cannot-Do-It is laid.
Instead of trying our best, and besting even our best, we tell ourselves “I am just an ABC, so I can/should only do XYZ”. We do that for one day, for two days, for three. We do that to ourselves for one week, for two weeks for three. We do that to ourselves for one month, for two months, for three. We do that to ourselves for years on end. In the end, we fulfill our own prophecy, that we can only do XYZ.
At some point, we unknowingly tell others that as well, that they should just stick to known territories and not try anything beyond. “Don’t rock the boat”, “Don’t spoil the market”, “The overgrowth gets trimmed”. Or so they say. So we may end up perpetuating the very negative limiting cycle that got us boxed in at the first place. But it does not have to continue this way.
Every day is a new start. Every moment, the old mind and body ceases and a new mind and body is born. With each new arising, there is a possibility of change.
Ready?