When you’re doing - or being, or experiencing - something for the first time, do you reach for an existing recipe?
I know I do, it’s been my default.
It can feel easier to look to someone else for the ‘right’ answer or approach.
After all, they’ve done the hard work and figured out the solution - surely if it works for them it will work for me?
Especially if it’s a proven formula, or it seems to be working for other people, or it’s simply the way it’s always done.
And yet so often, it hasn’t worked out that way. The results have been a mixed bag.
My learning?
It can be really effective to follow someone else recipe when we need a practical fix, or there really is just one way (it’s a complete gift to have an available solution when actually cooking, or solving all kinds of technical challenges!).
It can be a great place to start if we take the parts that work and then tailor the rest to meet our needs, our preferences, the situation, the people we are in it with.
And sometimes we simply need to start from scratch and create our own recipe from our own ingredients. Especially when it comes to things that are deeply personal - what gives us energy, what lights us up, what really matters, how we show up when we have a sense of purpose, and more.
Are you trying to follow someone else’s recipe?
Is it a situation where it would be useful and helpful to?
Or one where you really need to create your own?
Wishing you all a week of choosing when to follow, when to adapt, and when to create your own,
