“I’m a rubbish cook”, I tell myself as I’m eating my overcooked sausage, egg and mushroom sandwich. I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed as a cook. Maybe I’m just not cut out for cooking. I’ve been cooking things for long enough; surely, I’d have improved by now. I felt disheartened.

Instead of leaving it at that, though, I thought “why am I so bad?” My mind wandered back to times when I overcooked food. After a moment of reflection, it hit me. As obvious, as it sounds, the reason I was overcooking food was because I wasn’t following the recipe. I was deviating from the recipe. The result: food that was either overcooked or just bland.

At some point in time, I’d decided that I didn’t need to follow the recipe anymore. Perhaps I thought that I didn’t need to follow the recipe, as I was only cooking an egg; what could be simpler? The next time I was cooking some food, I decided to put my learning into practice. I watched videos of how to properly cook the food I was preparing. I paid a lot of attention to the recipe instructions and the time required for each step. The result? To my surprise, I cooked myself a fairly good meal. It gave me a massive confidence boost. I realised that maybe I’m not a rubbish cook and there’s potential for me to even be a decent cook.

There are some lessons I learnt from my experience. When things don’t go right for us, we’re often quick to dismiss ourselves as being “rubbish”. Often that’s not the case. If we instead asked ourselves “why did that happen?” and “what am I doing wrong?” and called a friend who was a good cook (or even searched videos of recipes on our phones), we might see how we went wrong, and learn from our mistakes. Secondly, after reflecting, the reason I was “rubbish” was so simple; it was because I wasn’t following the recipe. The solution? To follow the recipe! By not following this step, I had written myself off as rubbish.

It was also a humbling experience. The fact is, I don’t know everything, and there’s someone out there who knows more than I do. This is an opportunity for me to learn from them. Before, when I cooked a meal, I’d think “here we go”, hoping for the best while anticipating the worst. Now, I ask myself with a sense of excitement “what can I learn today?”.