Ready, Set, Spinach

Looking for a super quick, delicious, healthy side dish? Ready… set… spinach.

Reality, folks.  I make dishes like this all the time.  Sometimes I feel like I have to share elaborate, complicated, fancy dishes on the blog.  Maybe it’s the overachiever/ perfectionist in me that feels like something has to be over-the-top or perfect to be well-received. But it doesn’t. After all, it’s not how I cook all the time! Whose standard am I following? Why do I sometimes feel like what I share won’t be good enough?

This is a lesson that can be translated across many platforms when you think about health, nutrition and wellness. Every single choice we make about whether to do or not do something to best take care of ourselves stems from the way we see ourselves, what we think about ourselves, and how we talk to ourselves. Let me explain.

While I don’t practice yoga regularly right now, I remember getting a refreshing lesson from a yoga class I took in 2009.  Yes, I remember the year.  I have a crazy weird memory for details of certain moments in life, but I’ll spare you some of the other mundane details from that day.  The teacher of this class was best-I-ever-had at guiding your mind through the class as well as your body. One of the messages I received in this particular class was “you are good enough.”

The teacher said this phrase among others that sounded something like, “wherever you are at today is enough. As you move through the pose, settle into it wherever your body is today.  Maybe you’re not as flexible as you were yesterday.  Notice it, and let it go. Bring your attention right back to where you are. Let go of trying to change it, or judge it. Exhale and let go of wishing anything was different. Settle into your body and feel your feet on the ground. Let the pose be wherever it is today. Just observe it. And be here. You are enough, just as you are.”

Have you heard this message lately, you are enough?  In a world where we are so focused on doing more, more is better, achieving great things, being successful, finishing a triathlon, then finishing a longer triathlon, and faster, or learning more, getting more degrees, it’s so easy to always be focused on goals or expectations.  Being that we are human, we are bound to not be able to live up to all of them or to achieve them on the timeline we’d like.  And when you just always want more, you really are fostering selfishness.  Nothing is ever enough.  You will never be satisfied.  There is and will always be more out there. You will never have it all or be able to do it all.  Someone will always have more, be smarter, or be running farther.  So it’s easy to feel like you’re failing, you’re not your best self.  You’re not good enough.

What aren’t you giving yourself credit for?  What can you be grateful for that you often overlook because you too are focused on goals and expectations? Whose standard are you trying to live up to?

It’s like me with feeling like I can’t post a super-easy spinach side dish ‘cause who’s that going to impress? Who says I have to cook a certain way?  And who says we have to do a certain kind of exercise or look a certain kind of way?

Wherever you are on your journey for health and wellness, take a look at whose standard you are trying to live up to.  Then ask yourself, what is good enough for you? What would make you proud?  What would make you happy?  What can you live with and live without?  What is enough?  When will you be enough?  What if you are already enough, right where you are, just as you are?

As for me, following other food blogs, reading food magazines, or watching food television makes it is easy to get caught up in this high standard for quality of content, photography, and recipes. It’s easy to think that’s the standard and my work must live up.  Never mind that I don’t have a writing staff, professional chefs, project managers, or professional food photographers on my team.  Hello, nice to meet you, I’m all of them at once.

As a practice to be kind and gentle with myself (a way to promote self-confidence, self-worth, and inner peace-joy-and-happiness) I only participate in my blogging hobby when I let go of this unrealistic standard.  (The same could be said for exercise, but that’s another post! Let me know if you’re interested.) When I started blogging again after my six month hiatus (which you can read here) I made that deal with myself.  I asked myself the same kinds of questions I asked you, why are you doing this?  Who is it for?  Whose standard are you trying to live up to?  And here’s what I found.

Writing this blog is my creative outlet.  I’ve always done art since I was in elementary school, and I always loved it.  In middle school and part of high school I even took Saturday morning art classes at Columbus College of Art and Design.  But somehow in becoming an adult, I lost sight of my love to create and make art.

Doing a food blog is my chance to routinely create every time I chop, slice or dice, as if the knife was to cooking what the paint brush is to a piece of art.  Creating a new recipe is all about creativity. So is creating a dish. Composing a plate. Staging the set for a photo. Taking the photos. Editing the photos. And coming soon with the transition of my blog from Paleo Paisan to its NEW name (I can’ttt waaait to showww yoouuu) you will see another creative outlet that Dan and I are collaborating on… VIDEO!  Anyone who worked with me at The Big Food Company in grocery retail knows I LOVE making videos.  Editing video is a super-fun artistic outlet for me.  Time literally flies and all the sudden what felt like 30 minutes was actually three hours.  THAT’S the sign you love/enjoy what you’re doing.

I’ll close with a little summary.  Some food for thought <wink wink>. What activity do you get lost in?  Where does time just fly for you? Whose standard are you living up to? When did you last hear (and believe), you are good enough?