Getting outside of our usual mode of operating can yield additional insights or reinforce
things we already know. Driving to the airport multiple times or baking Christmas cookies are two examples that hit home for me over the holidays.
For the past several years, I have baked treats of some sort for our neighbors for the holidays. I am not much for cooking yet I do enjoy baking and look forward to the process of determining the “baked good for the year” and the actual preparation. Yes, it is scheduled on my calendar.
This was the year for the chocolate cookie with chocolate mint chips. First stop – the grocery store for all the ingredients. Store #1 – no chocolate mint chips. Store #2 – no chocolate mint chips. Store #3 – no chocolate mint chips. Okay, I don’t really want to regroup here. Store #4 – chocolate mint chips! Yes!!
Which brings about challenge #2 – the recipe on the mint chip bag makes regular, not chocolate cookies. A quick internet search on my phone in the baking aisle yields a recipe for the chocolate cookies. One extra ingredient and a new baking sheet to accommodate multiple batches of cookies and I am ready to roll.
Time to bake. In my haste to get things rolling I make two mistakes. One, I forget that following the recipe on the back of the mint chip bag will not get me the chocolate cookies I want. Two, there is a reason you don’t just dump all the ingredients in at once. You would think I had not done this before! So the first batch of cookies will be “blonde” or regular chocolate chip cookies with the surprise of a mint chip.
Ready for the oven, I put in my two baking sheets only to discover the new one is too long to go side by side with the old. Ouch! It took a burned knuckle to figure that out. Okay, one cookie sheet at a time.
Now for the second batch of batter for which I follow the recipe found on my phone and mix appropriate ingredients together. Ta-dum! Fabulous chocolately minty chip cookies.
What is the importance of this story to you and your goals for 2015? At what point would you have stopped visiting grocery stores two days before Christmas looking for chocolate mint chips? When would you have questioned your abilities? Would getting burned cause you to give up?
A simple story to share the importance of determination and persistence in any endeavor we undertake. If I can do this for cookies, think of the possibilities for other things I set my mind to!