1 year at a time
We all have someone in our life that we admire because we feel that they can do all the things we wish we could do. Sometimes it can feel that we will never be able to do all the things that they can do effortlessly. It can make us feel like we’re not good enough, but everyone had to start somewhere. And you really are never too old to start something new or learn something new.
I started off with a vision
Many years ago, I had a vision for what I wanted my life to be. I would have my garden en from that garden I would produce food, that food would be served on a table that I had built. But not just that, I also wanted to spin my own yarn and knit it into cardigans and socks. The wool for that yarn would come from my own sheep that I had hand reared. In a word, I wanted a smallholding.
But as you can imagine, for a girl that lived in a town and in an apartment no less. This felt like an impossible dream, and I felt overwhelmed by the number of skills I would have to hone and learn. So I decided to write down all the skills that I would have to learn, at first in rough categories like gardening, cooking, baking, butchering, carpentry and lastly honing my needle skills.
So if you feel like you need to learn all these different things in order to live the life you had imagined. Write everything down that you want to be able to do. Then start off with the one that seems easiest and the most doable for you at this moment.
Picking your skill
I looked at these skills that I would have to at least be competent in and decided to start with the one that would be easiest to master and possible while living in an apartment. This could be different for you, but for me, it was cooking.
At this stage, I still couldn’t make sure that the potatoes and vegetables were ready for serving at the same time. Which always resulted in either cold potatoes or cold vegetables on my plate. At this point, I didn’t eat meat but my partner did and because my mother had not taught me how to make anything but meatballs, so I made a lot of those. She had taught me how to make our family recipe of meatballs (that are about half oatmeal) before I decided to not eat meat. After that, we didn’t feel it necessary to learn how to prepare meat.
Honing that skill
I started off small with first getting the cooking times down with the veggies and the potatoes. Then I went on to learn how to make pasta sauces that would always turn out the same. Before this, I would just throw different vegetables in a pan with a pre-made sauce and called it a day.
I only had a very out of date computer at this time and smartphones weren’t a thing. I looked at the ingredient lists for all my instant mixes and pre-made jars, to figure out what I was supposed to put into a pasta sauce. I also started reading all my cookbooks from cover to cover, and whenever I was in a secondhand shop, I would go to the cookbooks and try and find good cookbooks that had from scratch recipes.
Slowly and over time, I felt like I was getting pretty good at cooking, but this took roughly 2 to 3 years.
Going on to your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.
I like to choose a new skill or an area of a skill for every new year, instead of a new year’s resolution being about exercise, I wanted to better myself differently. So that every year I would be one step closer to my end goal of being able to do all the things. If you choose to also pick a skill a year, then you will find that some of the pressure is taken off. Because when you give yourself an entire year to learn how to bake cakes, you are bound to succeed. After all, if after that year you have only mastered the plainest of cakes, you still have succeeded in your new year’s resolution.
So, after I felt confident with my cooking, I went on to the next skill on my list. Which was baking, first simple cakes, but quickly, I moved onto biscuits and cookies until I felt confident enough to try out some bread recipes. Then for a year, I tried to focus on dairy, which was a bit more challenging, but after a year, I had managed to make yoghurt, mascarpone and butter. The yoghurt wasn’t always as consistent as I would like and the butter felt like more mess than it was worth. But the mascarpone that I loved to use in cheesecake recipes was there to stay. Nothing made me feel prouder than at birthday parties to be able to say that I had made the cheesecake completely from scratch.
So pick your skills and slowly, year by year, you will see improvement. You will feel so proud, and by giving yourself plenty of time to master a skill you will stay motivated.
Appreciate your own capabilities
You might not see how magnificent you are. But I guarantee you that plenty of your family and friends admire you for qualities that you take for granted. You might have a strength of character or a beautiful sense of humour, You mightn’t appreciate how rare your skills and qualities are, but there are plenty of people where such skills and capabilities are on their improvement list. So, create your list and make a plan, and one day you will be able to live that dream you have and in the meantime, you are working towards it. Let me know in the comments what your dream is, and what is going to be your first step on your list.
So like Greg Reid said:
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.”
