Make ugly food.

Happy New Year!

Are you on the resolution bandwagon today or nah?

Well, whether you are or aren't, here's some advice from me to you: make ugly food.

We tend to worry far too much about the end result of something. This means we often never try which is related to my post last week about overthinking. I'm on an overthinking binge lately so I can relate to how you might be feeling if you're there, too. There have been times in my life where I threw total caution to the wind and it felt AWESOME. And then there are times, like lately, where I feel a bit less confident and more hesitant.

I don't worry too much when this happens. It's just the ebb and flow of life. It helps me help you.

How do I get over it? I make ugly food. I recommend you try this.

Cooking is a basic skill we all need to thrive in our lives. From coaching and my own experiences before becoming a coach, I learned that many people have a fear of cooking because they either lack the skills or they worry it won't come out looking very good. Social media feeds this fear with all the perfectly curated profiles of perfect food in perfect pictures. It's enough to send our self-esteem right out the window and make us pick up the phone and call for take-out. And that, right there, is a damn shame. All that perfection is just overcompensation, anyway. Who aspires to that, really?

What if we just decided to make ugly food instead? What if we worried less about how it looked and more about how it tasted and mostly how it FELT TO FEED OURSELVES our own homemade cooking?

Making ugly food is a great way to overcome your fear of messing up. It's also a great way to practice the art of not caring what others think and feeding yourself food that you enjoy because you deserve it, even if you mess it up and it comes out ugly.

I came home and made some black-eyed peas and chard last night to get myself some good luck going into the New Year. It was simmering down just fine and then I forgot to turn off the burner while I working on my new website. By the time I realized it, I had pretty much ruined this dish that was supposed to usher in my 2018. Guess what? I already set this as a topic to write about a few weeks ago AND THEN that happened last night and I realized it was perfect. Totally meant to be. So, it happened to me and now I'm sharing it with you. That was some pretty amazing manifesting, huh?

Make ugly food. Do it as a mental exercise moving forward, starting today. Bring in your new year practicing the art of not giving as many f*%^s.

*PS, totally forgot to take a picture of the mess from last night. But you can imagine it was pretty ugly and tasted just fine. ;)