What’s for supper? (Not baked beans again?!)

Thinking about making a change, and maybe not just to what’s for supper

What’s on the menu?

Do you find you default into making the same food over and over? Maybe it is lentil curry, or steamed fish and broccoli or (a personal favourite) baked beans on toast, and then one day you think, it really is time to make a change. Maybe you would just like to try something different, but how easy is it to make a change, and make it lasting?

Add a dash of philosophy

What is it that makes real and lasting change so hard? Merleau-Ponty, a 20th-century French existential philosopher, uses the image of a river, winding its way across the landscape, where the riverbed becomes increasingly built up with sediment and so more and more fixed on its course.

Humans are not so very different from that river. Like a river following its familiar course, our established habits can become increasingly automatic and familiar, which can make changing them feel difficult. That sounds quite a challenge, especially if you are reading this article because you are thinking about making a fundamental change in your life. Where do you start?

Being the chef

Don’t despair, back to making supper: you are used to buying certain items from the shops, used to cooking them in a certain way, used to how that feels, what the result will be; it is certain, it is safe. Imagine a different scenario: no more baked beans, but what instead? How hard will the new food be to make? What should you choose? Will you like the result? It is all a bit risky and unknown.

Change requires so much thought and effort. Just like the riverbed dragging the river back to its habitual course, the familiarity of our old habits can draw us back towards what we already know.

Something’s cooking

There is, though, one big difference between us and that river: we have a* choice*. We can give change a go, cook that beef Wellington over and over until it becomes our new habit and as easy as making baked beans on toast (well, nearly).

Some days you will just think, "This is too hard, I’m having baked beans on toast tonight". But that is OK, because no one said this would happen in one day. This is not failure; this is part of the process of change. It happens over time.

Set the table

I’m sorry, this article isn’t one of easy and quick answers. Opting for change isn’t always simple, but the possibilities are endless, varied, exciting and delicious though baked beans are, and easy and cheap, I don’t deny; how exciting to have something different sometimes – a new taste, different nourishment, and the feeling of freedom from not having stayed stuck in that same old riverbed forever.

If you feel you would like to make a change to your supper menu or to something more fundamental, coaching can give you space to explore how you might take the first step. As your coach, I am there to listen, to provide a space where you can freely explore those possibilities and intriguing ideas, and support you as you work out the practical steps that could set you on the way to making that wished-for change.

Bon appetit.