How to Turn Brussels Sprouts Into Gold

by Marina Martin | Filed under: Introspection

If you put the same amount of the same ingredients in a pan and cook them for the same length of time at the same temperature each and every time, you will end up with the same cake, each and every time.

After eating it day in and day out, even the most moist and delicious of cakes will rapidly lose its flavor. If the outcome of your recipe isn’t a moist and delicious cake, but rather broiled brussels sprouts, life will start to get pretty bleak, pretty quickly.

What’s a person to do?

Buy new ingredients.

Your life is, after all, a compilation of what you put into it, and if you’re running on auto-pilot, you may as well be eating those brussels sprouts.

Today, I encourage you to change up your ingredients.

Start small:

The next time you want coffee, ask the barista to surprise you with her favorite drink.

Stop by the bookstore and pick up a book you’ve never heard of from a section you rarely frequent.

Drive home without taking the highway, and listen to a radio station you’ve never played before.

Eat cereal out of a coffee mug. With chopsticks.

Or, if that stuff sounds old hat, be more adventurous:

Call in sick — right now — and drive until your fuel light comes on. Stop and photograph five things that start with the letter H.

Open the dictionary to a random word. Determine which numbers on a telephone keypad correspond to the first five letters. Make plans to visit that zip code.

Drive until you get tired. Move there. (This is actually how I first found myself in Portland.)

The point is, change something. Change your hair, change the layout of your living room, change the order you go down the aisles at the grocery store. You never know what a little change might turn into.

Feel like there are never enough hours in a day? Try a one-hour Efficiency Quickstart to see how many hours you can save!

First posted on September 18, 2007