making room

I am continually telling friends, family and strangers that they need to follow their dreams and “do what they love”.  For me, doing what I love means designing homes, my own and yours, using feng shui principles.  In addition though, I love to cook.  My grandmother and I used to bake together when I was young and she gave me my first cookbook when I was in school.  The recipes were easy, they were fabulous and seemed to be endless options to choose from within the same book.  Twenty plus years later, I had collected almost two hundred cookbooks by that same author.  I purchased a beautiful bookshelf and displayed them all, in the creativity area of my home.  I was so proud of my collection and I am to this day, but I started noticing that these were not the books that I was going to, for recipes anymore.  I found that I wanted to expand my cooking repertoire and challenge myself beyond those easy, fabulous recipes contained in my collection.  I wanted to try eating “clean” (see Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean books if you’re interested, at http://www.eatcleandiet.com/) and I wanted to challenge myself to reproduce authentic meals from various different cultures and expose my children to the same.  So, I decided to create that in my life.

I went back to my beautiful bookshelf and removed my collection, leaving behind a few favourites, including the first one I received.  I have stopped collecting those same books now, though I admit I still find it difficult to pass by a new one without purchasing it.  I still love cookbooks and I read them as if they were novels (I’m much more like my grandmother than I ever had realized).  I have begun choosing books that challenge me and allow me to think outside the box and I am once again finding endless options that are exciting to me, just as I did years ago.  The moral of this story about my cookbook obsession is this:  by holding onto the past, we often have difficulty moving to the place where we want to be.  Think about what it is that you keep and why.  If it still serves you, keep it and cherish it.  Put it in a place of honour and leave it there.  If ever there comes a day where it no longer represents where you want to be, find a new and wonderful home for it and make room in your life for something new.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”  “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.  “What do you say, Piglet?”  “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.  Pooh nodded thoughtfully,  “It’s the same thing,” he said. 

A.A. Milne