DELICIOUS WISDOM: 10 Life Lessons on BALANCE Inspired by Food
Before jumping into the 10 lessons, let me begin with providing some context for balance. Balance, as we see it here at Harmonious Balance, comes from proper energy management, as in physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and spiritual energy. Balance is the INPUT not the OUTPUT. And my interactions with food, both in consuming and in cooking, has provided some great metaphors for life.
In no particular order, here are 10 life lessons that food has illuminated for me that relate to achieving balance.
Change things up. Avoid stagnation. This week I was tired of bread. So my menu for the week did not include bread. When we are routinely consuming the same foods, we may be creating some deficiencies. It’s kind of like over-training, under-training or even neglecting certain muscles. Some of our emotional, mental and spiritual “taste buds” need to be awakened and activated. Life becomes much less boring and way more interesting when we changes things up.
Build resilience. This specific lesson comes from the desire to increase my heat tolerance. I realized that one of the reasons I’m a little wimp with heat is that I don’t consume it consistently enough to graduate my heat levels. Not that I’m trying to appear on Hot Ones, but I don’t want to be skiddish with heat, as it would open up some new flavor profiles for me. We have to build resilience in order to grow and experience all that life has to offer.
A well balanced diet always wins the day. With all the diets out there, it’s very easy to become confused about what we should eat. But barring any medical conditions, a well balanced diet best provides what we need. Holistic approaches to our well-being usually serve us best. We are multi-dimensional individuals with multidimensional needs. Ignoring a single dimension creates imbalances that can cause greater problems if left unaddressed for a prolonged period of time.
Unlikely pairings produce the most amazing flavors. One of my first LinkedIn articles used food and cooking to demonstrate effective teamwork. Many individual ingredients may not fare well on their own but in the right amounts and when paired with the right ingredients, magic can happen. We must be willing to learn new things, step outside of our comfort zones, presume less, be curious and not fear what’s different aka diversity.
Determine your baseline of security/peace. Every time I restock my refrigerator and pantry, I feel a sense of relief and at peace. If all else fails, we will be able to eat. What does it minimally take for you to be comfortable or at peace? That’s why people fought over toilet paper early on in the pandemic. Our minimal comfort was at stake. We should assess are our true “must-haves,” what truly brings us peace, even what will disturb our peace and then not be swayed by anything else. Below is a 7-second Instagram reel I posted a while back after going to the grocery store and feeling at ease (70% responded ‘YES LAWD’).
There are no small ingredients. Every ingredient has impact. When I first started cooking, if a recipe called for a small amount of salt (or any ingredient), I thought it was negligible and I could ignore it entirely. Then one day in my made-from-scratch pancakes, I realized how that small amount of salt made a world of difference. Small often packs a punch. In fact, what we often say we miss the most are the little things. Those little things leave great voids.
Dosing matters. I decided to incorporate beans into my bread-less week. But I’m not the biggest fan of beans. I do not like to eat them on their own but I don’t mind them mixed into other dishes. Some people are hard to take on their own but are great with a group. Some circumstances are too much to bear alone but feel more manageable when shared. Sometimes we have to tackle the things we don’t care to do in steps or batches.
Food is pleasure not just a necessity. While food provides us with the necessary nourishment to survive, it is also one of life’s simple pleasures. I feel bad for people with stagnant or limited palates. They are truly missing out on some pleasurable experiences. Likewise, there are some aspects of life that feel like hum-drum necessities. It can be easy to fall into a rut unknowingly because we treat these necessities as rote and boring when it is within our wherewithal to liven them up and turn them into something more fun and more interesting.
Refuel consistently. Our bodies signal when we need to eat with hunger pangs. We can ignore those hunger pangs but for so long. Similarly, there are other signals that let us know we need to refuel or completely reset physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We need to heed the signals and act accordingly.
Live on our own terms. One of the reasons I like to cook is being able to tailor or even create dishes to my liking. I’ve pretty much decided that when I go to restaurants I will only order food that I’ve never had before or would probably never make at home. If I make the same dish at home, my version of it will be my favorite and there’s no point in paying for something I could do better on my own. We often try to replicate exactly how someone else does something. We often make decisions based on someone else’s experiences. We follow along just because. Instead we should experiment to discover what we like or what we’d do differently to find what would be most suitable to us. We are not meant to be imitators. We should design our lives the way we want and live out our lives on our own terms.
Onward to good eating and Harmonious Balance my friends,
Johanna
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