I recently decided to have a dinner party and I thought about preparing a cheese and spinach pie for a few friends I invited over. This is a delicious Greek dish but its preparation is quite challenging as the recipe requires a step by step process and you need to be cautious about the analogy of the ingredients you add.

I’ve never tried to prepare such a dish before, and though it seemed to be complicated to me I decided to go for it… I asked a colleague who teaches food technology at the school where I’m working to show me how to do it (thank you Eleftheria) and then I printed off a recipe I found at the internet. Both of the resources turned out to be pretty valuable to me.

So, I went to the grocery, I bought the material, I went back home and I started cooking. At first I was excited. Later on, the more I was engaging in the process the more confused I was getting. Though I seemed to follow the steps ‘by the book’, it was obvious that something was wrong with the way I was preparing the pastry. I was trying for half an hour at no avail, and this was when I told myself ‘You are not going to able to make it’. In my attempt to fix what was wrong I put the recipe aside and I start improvising, and that made things worse: my kitchen turned to be upside down… And then the quitting zone smiled at me for one more time. Having decided to give up, I took 10 mins away and I focused on other things I wanted to do during that day and then, thinking about the time and the money I spent for this dish, and pondering over the big picture, I realised how proud would I feel if I attained to cook such a dish for my friends, I started over. I found another recipe at the internet, which was quite clearer, I tried to recall more carefully, my colleague’s guidelines and I told myself ‘no matter how difficult it seems to be, you can make it happen’. And this is when I had the ‘aha’ moment and I figured out that I just needed to add more flour for the pastry…So simple. That was the difference that made the difference!

So, I finally made it happen, and as a result, I cooked a pretty delicious dish. I celebrated it with my friends who acknowledged me for my cookery! The resources I had available for help, the fact that I followed carefully a step by step process, the fact that when I faced the quitting zone I gave time to myself to dissociate from disempowering thoughts, my determination to make it happen followed by a positive self-talk, and my ‘plan adjustments’, were the secrets of my success.

The below experience prompted me to follow a similar process when it comes to pursue other goals as well, maybe more important than cooking a meal or organising a dinner party, but that doesn’t matter….Any kind of goal setting is important, isn’t it??

So, is it possible for you to fulfil a goal that seems to be difficult? What can you do about it? How far can you go? What resources do you have available for support?  Can you break your goal into smaller steps? Can you imagine that it might be simpler than it seems? What can you do if you stumble? How could you turn things around? How are you going to feel if and when you will make it happen? How are you going to celebrate for it??

P.S

Whenever you join a dinner party, please remember to acknowledge your host’s cookery.