Picture this: you’re in your living room and you smell burning food. What’s the first thing you’d do? You’d probably get up and check your kitchen, right? You’d check that the burning whatever-it-is wasn’t coming from your own home. Makes sense. Unless you’re me. Or unless you’re someone like me, who rarely cooks. In fact I cook so rarely that when I am cooking – I sometimes forget that I am.

After about 15-minutes of wondering why the neighbors weren’t rescuing their burning dinner, it hit me. It’s MY burning dinner! The rice was black, the pan was black, luckily the ceiling wasn’t.

(If you find yourself in situations like this, I highly recommend pan cleaner, Barkeeper’s Friend…)

Nothing happens on the outside without there being an inner belief that precedes it. In my case a part of me that believed that healthy living meant cooking food. Being healthy is a high priority for me, and therefore I attempted to make the time to cook. Unfortunately, health is high and cooking is extremely low. Which leads to burning or wasting food; neither of which I want.

It struck me that I was trying to be a chef when really I wanted food that was instantly ready to eat. I was congruent with my high value of health, but the method (cooking) I chose was incongruent with my other values: there are many other things I’d rather spend time on before cooking – contributing to other people’s lives, spending time with friends, going to the gym, eating out…

My shopping trip that day was completely different! I went for the usual chicken, veggie sausages, and un-prepped vegetables – and then stopped myself, remembering that cooking equals waste for me. Instead I chose healthy foods that I could eat instantly: avocado, prosciutto, crackers, hummus, apricots, yum, yum, yum.

Leaving that store, I felt great and more at ease. With some awareness, I had found a way to honour my value of healthy eating in a way that fit with my other values – i.e. that matched my lifestyle.

So if you find yourself ‘burning the rice’ – check for the inner value you’re honouring and ask yourself: What’s another way I can honour this value of XXX that would fit my lifestyle better?

If, on the other hand, you love to cook (or whatever the equivalent is for you) then it’s time to look at what values are in place that are getting in the way of including cooking in your life. What’s the overriding value that pushes something you love to the back-burner? And where else does this show up in your life?

Inner awareness and shifts in perception can change anything and everything. I invite you to check in with yourself daily, get familiar with your self-talk, and start to notice the things that you deeply care about – are they in your life to the degree you want? How would your life be if they were? What are you willing to do to incorporate them? How about starting now?