Why most people struggle

Can you guys guess what that might be? And also, what is a belief? Belief is going to be one of the things that cause many people to struggle, myself included. False or limiting beliefs specifically. So that we’re on the same page, what we’re going to do is define what a belief is. Specifically, the dictionary definition.

And we’re also going to be talking about limiting beliefs, which you may or may not have heard of.

Essentially, the dictionary definition of a belief is that it’s an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. That’s the dictionary definition.

In terms of what a limiting belief is, it’s basically a thought or a story that you tell yourself over and over again to the point that you actually accept it as true. That’s a limiting belief, and it’s something that holds people back. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re going to be talking about it specifically.

One of the reasons why people continue to struggle when it comes to cooking healthy, eating healthier is that they have disempowering beliefs.

You guys know that I’m all about empowering you.

And some of the things that I wanted to bring up and discuss today were disempowering beliefs. If you’re one of the people that have them, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just something that you might want to recognize or consider changing so that it’s more empowering for you to help you get what it is that you want in life, and with regard to your cooking.

It’s too late. I’m too old

And if you guys have been following me for any — I guess for the last year, you’ve noticed that I’ve changed a few things that I’ve been sharing with you on my email, on my blog, and my YouTube channel. I don’t think it’s ever too late. And it’s better late than never. And I don’t think that you’re ever too old to do anything.

If you have that belief that it’s too late, that’s a very disempowering way to look at things. It’s too late. That means things are out of your control. And you have to ask yourself, is that really true? Are things really out of your control? And when you say too old, how old is too old, really?

There are people who are 80, 90 years old that are out running around, having fun, exercising, playing sports and staying active, doing gardening, cooking, taking care of themselves.

And if they can do it, so can you. I mean, that’s proof of what’s possible for you, especially if you’re at that older age range. So it’s never too late and it’s never too old. The time is just right. That’s one way that you can reverse this disempowering belief and make it more empowering so that you can actually be motivated or inspired to take action.

I’ve tried this already and it didn’t work

Chances are, if you have been cooking for a long time, or maybe you have been trying to eat or be healthier, you’ve tried a variety of different diets. Things like the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean diet, the keto diet, which is very popular right now, the paleo diet.

And if you consider plant-based-diet — which I really don’t think it’s a diet. I think it’s more of a lifestyle. But if you do classify plant-based as a diet, maybe you think that because you’ve tried other types of cuisines or cooking or approaches, that plant-based won’t work for you.

And that’s not a very empowering way to look at things because what you’re really saying when you think those kinds of things is that just because something didn’t work for you in the past experience, it’s going to dictate what is possible for you in the future.

And we all know that’s not necessarily the case. People change over time, people learn, and things can change for the future. So just because you didn’t do it right the first time where you weren’t successful the first time, it doesn’t mean that the second time that you try it, you can be successful. That’s a disempowering belief. If you tried it already, this is not going to work for me.

The other thing that I was going to talk about here was “What if I’m not good enough?” or “Who am I to be doing this? Who am I to be cooking?” Well, you’re you. And there’s no one else like you on earth, unless you have a twin. But even if you did have a twin, your twin is probably similar to you, but very different in their own unique way.

So who are you to do this? What if you’re not good enough? Well, if you never give it a try, you’ll never know, first of all, if you’re good enough or not. You’re just presupposing whether or not you’re good enough. That’s one thing.
I don’t have what it takes

“I don’t have what it takes. They’re special. I can’t do what they do.” That’s a very disempowering way to look at things. I think you are a person of infinite possibilities and potential. I don’t know if you guys know anything about quantum physics. I don’t know how to describe quantum physics in a simple statement, but basically, in quantum physics, anything is possible.

And if you can imagine, if you know anything about physics or science, if you remember when you talked about an atom and the electrons that are flying around all over the place, there’s an infinite number of possibilities where you can find that electron in that atom.

Anything is possible. That’s what I believe. And maybe you believe it, or maybe you don’t, that’s totally fine. But that’s one of my empowering ways of looking at things is that anything is possible. If you have that mindset where you think you don’t have what takes, we’ll talk about a way that you can reverse that in just a second.

What will people say? What will people think about me?

This is another thing that people might be concerned about. And this very much has to do with the people, your peers, your friends, your family, their habits, and their beliefs.

But the people that you hang out with tend to influence you and affect you. Depending on your situation, your circumstances, perhaps that’s something that is getting in your way. You don’t want to be outcast from your social group, from your family, because you see things differently. You have a different perspective, a different set of beliefs, a different sets of ideas, or ways of looking at things.

I’m just a beginner

I’m just a beginner. I don’t have any experience and I don’t know anything. And that’s not a very empowering mindset to have if you think about it, because you’re really not just a beginner.

Maybe an infant who was just born, popped out of the mom, and has just started cooking. Would be a beginner because they don’t have any experience, but chances are, you have some experience cooking something as it pertains to food, since that’s what we’re talking about.

And so, you can bring those lessons, those skills, those techniques of what you learned in other types of cooking, like American cuisine, if you’re cooking Indian cuisine or any other type of cuisine, and you can bring that to Japanese food. So you’re not just a beginner.

Also, if you’re thinking that you don’t have the experience, you might be not giving yourself enough credit for that. Especially if you have been cooking for a few years. You still have some experience. You’re not just a beginner, you’re not starting with zero experience. If you don’t know anything about cooking, you have to start somewhere.

And myself included, I, at one point in my life, didn’t know anything. But I taught myself and I continued to learn and to better myself, and challenge myself. And we all start somewhere. If you say that you don’t know anything, well, that’s your opportunity to learn and start knowing stuff and to discover things.

Cooking is Time-consuming

Cooking is too much work. Well, have you ever heard the phrase, “What you focus on expands?” For example, if you are talking about your work, you have some person that you don’t like to work with at work, and how it bugs you all the time whenever you have to work for them, and you just hate it so much.

But in reality, when you actually consider and measure how much time that you have to interact with this person, maybe it’s just like 5 or 10 minutes every two weeks is when you have to work with this person. But in your mind, you’re just focusing on how much you don’t like working with that person and how much it bothers you, how much they’re irritating or annoying.

And because you’re thinking about it so much, it expands and it’s going to fill up that time. And it’s actually distorting what the reality is of your situation. Even though you’re just really interacting with them for 5 or 10 minutes because it bothers you so much, you can’t stop thinking about it and it just expands. And the problem or the situation gets sort of distorted or blown out of proportion.

“Cooking is too time-consuming or too much work.” Chances are, the type of person who might be saying that might be distorting exactly how much time it takes to cook. I doubt people are measuring, “Hit the timer. Start.” And then, the timer goes, and then it’s going to measure how much time that they’re taking to clean, cook, prep and all that stuff.

Chances are, they’re just thinking about cooking. Maybe they’re dreading it because they feel like it takes so much time, but in reality, it doesn’t. Cooking is not time-consuming or too much work.

Cooking is Complicated

And I think it really depends on what it is that you’re cooking. Cooking definitely can be complicated, but from a perspective of plant-based Japanese food, it’s actually quite simple because you’re really only using a handful of ingredients. And then you’re going to be doing your prep, and then you’re going to be cooking it or heating it, whatever. And it’s going to be ready to eat.

If you break it down, it’s going to be prep, cooking, and eating. It’s three steps. Very simple. Yes, things like baking where you have to decorate a cake, maybe like a wedding cake, that could be pretty complicated, I would imagine. I’ve never done it myself, but I could see how intricate the designs can get. And that can be very time-consuming.

Obviously, the phrase is situation-dependent. But in general, I don’t think that plant-based Japanese cooking is going to qualify as being complicated. Also, if you are afraid of making a mistake, afraid of change, I know people like to know things for certain.

Uncertainty is never a comfortable thing. If you can imagine the last time that you felt uncertain about something, it’s not a good feeling. People are afraid of change. And if you are afraid of change, that makes it very difficult to make a change in your life because of that. And then, the same thing with making a mistake.

I think mistakes are something that we learned from in school as a bad thing, and that we should never make mistakes. And if you do make a mistake, maybe you’ll get punished. And we have to really, really untrain ourselves to get out of that negative feedback loop where mistakes are bad.

The last set of limiting beliefs is going to be about ignoring the problem. So if you ignore the problem, pretend that it does not exist, that does not make it go away. You probably know that. And some examples of ignoring the problem of giving your power away, not taking responsibility for it, saying it runs in the family.

So I can say, for example, I know that I have a family history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes.

That’s from my dad’s side, I could say it runs in the family. I have bad genes. And so, because of that, I’m not going to do anything. It doesn’t matter. There’s no use. What is the point?

Or the opposite is also true. If you have very good genes or whatever, and you don’t have any family history of any chronic disease, you could say the opposite is true. I’ll never get diabetes. I’ll never have high blood pressure. I’ll never get a heart attack because nobody else in my family has ever had that happen to them.

Ignoring the problem, the problem being eating healthier, taking responsibility for the food you eat, is not going to go away if you ignore it. You have to pay attention to it. And as you guys know, that’s one of the things that I’ve been talking about the past few days of the training.

What we’re going to be talking about now are the empowering beliefs.

A different perspective of looking at some of the disempowering situations that we were just talking about.

If other people can do this, so can I

And that’s one of the reasons why I created the community. That’s one of the reasons why I am part of other communities. To get that inspiration. Proof that it’s not just this one person, this superstar, this superhero, who’s able to get all of these results and nobody else can do what they do. Many people can do what I do. Many people can do what you do.

Empowering beliefs are looking around you, looking for proof of what is possible and seeing that if other people can do this, so can you. That’s an empowering way to look at things.

Your past experiences do not dictate your future performance

This is another thing to consider.

If you look back at your life, however long that might be, maybe you feel like you have had a lot of things that didn’t go your way, maybe things that you wanted, but never got, got things that you strove for, but you never achieved, things that you would label maybe as a failure. And that has no bearing on what you can do today and what you can accomplish tomorrow.

Looking at your past and deciding that that’s going to dictate what you can do today, and in the future, is not a very empowering way to look at things. So your past experience does not predict your future performance. That’s the more empowering way to look at your situation.

You Have What it Takes to Get What You Want

You have everything that you need inside of you and you don’t need anything else.

Change is a natural part of life and you can learn to embrace it

I’m sure you guys have noticed, like with all of the seasonal changes right now, we’re transitioning out of winter, sort of, I guess we’re mid-winter right now. But in California, it was pretty warm earlier this week, we had some Santa Ana winds and it was very warm.

So it kind of felt like summer. And eventually in a few weeks, a few months, it’s going to turn into spring. Days are going to gradually get longer. And then eventually it’s going to be summer and the seasons naturally change. So you don’t really resist those seasonal changes, or maybe you do. And maybe, for example, you’re a snowbird and maybe you live up on the East coast, upper East coast, or like in Chicago, Midwest where it snows a lot. And so you flee the snow to warmer parts, maybe Mexico, or the Caribbean in the wintertime to resist that. But you can’t really resist nature. Change is a natural part of life.

You got to learn to embrace it. Go with the flow. One of the books that I read last year was the Wayne Dyer book, “Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.” I don’t know if you guys have heard of it, but he talks about all the different rules or laws of the Dao, which is a Chinese philosophy.

One of the main concepts in that book was to just go with the flow and not resist. So you might want to check that out if that’s one of the things that you’re interested in. I’d recommend it.

If you’re just a beginner, if you’re just starting out, you have a beginner’s advantage.

There might be things that I do that I don’t see, maybe bad habits that I’ve picked up over the years that I’ve been cooking that you don’t have yet. And maybe you can recognize it and not do it because you can see that I’m doing it.

Maybe you can see a better way of doing things. That’s the beginner’s advantage.

You have enough time to cook and that cooking is simple

That’s the story that I tell myself. And I think in a lot of situations, you tend to get what you expect. For example, if you are thinking that this dish is going to take a long time, maybe it will take a long time because you’re subconsciously going at a slower rate and you’re sort of making it like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, you can think about things as mistakes. Since we were talking about mistakes earlier and mistakes are lessons that teach me what I didn’t know.

That’s one more empowering way to look at things that didn’t work out the way that you wanted to. As a lesson. Something that taught you something. Give it more of a positive spin. Also, it’s never too late. Better late than never, like we already talked about.

Every day is a new opportunity to try and learn something new. Things don’t happen to me, I make things happen.
That is a very empowering way to approach things in life. And it’s one of the things I started to do last year. I think last year was a very awakening year for me. And you’ll be seeing a lot more of that coming out on my content.

Hopefully, you’re looking forward to it, but let me know what you think.