Mental Health Life Lessons from Chocolate Chip Cookies
5 emotional/mental health lessons from Chocolate Chip Cookie
Most of you know me as a therapist or coach or Anxiety Expert. But when I am not doing those things or embracing chaos and life with my 5 year old daughter. I am lovingly taking over the world one Chocolate Chip Cookie and Dessert at a time. I love LOVE LOVE baking from scratch. There’s something so empowering and therapeutic taking several separate ingredients and making something completely new - that makes people feel at home.
With that being said, I’ve learned a lot while teaching myself to bake everything from scratch. And there are some powerful life lessons in some of our most favorite desserts. So today I thought I’d share with you the Deep Wisdom from making my “famous” chocolate chip cookies from scratch.
1. Don’t Overmix your “dry” ingredients -
When baking if you over mix the dry ingredients your cookies will end up flat and lifeless. The dry ingredients in life are the physical/material. When we over prioritize the dry side of life we will turn out with life experiences that are flat, brittle, and and lacking the fluffiness of life.
2. Pay attention to the “creaming” (combining wet ingredients)
When making cookies combining your wet ingredients is called creaming and it is one of the MOST CRUCIAL STEPS. It will impact every aspect of your final product (taste, texture, presentation, sometimes even smell). In life the wet ingredients are our emotions and just like with cookies if we don’t pay attention to what we are feeling, when, why, and how. We won’t be able to create satisfying experiences. Processing our emotions helps prepare of to continue creating a life we love. Emotions also help us come alive.
3. Space is IMPORTANT (the bigger the scoop the more space you need)
I am a culprit of not leaving enough space on the cookie tray both while baking and in life. The bigger the goal, project, aspiration, or dream The more space you have to leave for it to bake. In life and in baking when you have bigger goals you have to give yourself the time and space for it to take shape, grow, and cool. If you don’t leave enough space it’ll blend together and you’ll lose sight of what you were baking.
4. Always check the inside while baking
Sometimes when baking larger cookies or making a huge batch you are in such a rush to have the final product or trying to just follow the instructions you forget to check-in. What happens then is you will sometimes end up with cookies that appear cooked on the outside but are actually still doughy and need more time on the inside. You are the baker of your own life. Sometimes it seems like we are ready for things but we need more time and it’s important that we go inward and check with our insides (AKA our emotions and intuition). Do we need more time or just time to cool down?
5. The ingredients you use and what is around you while baking impact the final product
The ingredients you put into your cookies will larger change the final product and the entire process really (have you ever used generic bottom shelf chocolate chips instead of your normal higher grade chocolate - YIKES am I right?It ruins the whole cookie**roll eyes emoji**) The things you surround yourself with and what you are putting into yourself matter and can change or ruin your dreams. Have you ever been excited about something and then someone tells you how hard it will be or that they can’t see something working out? It’s just like bottom shelf chocolate chips - RUINS THE WHOLE THING! Lol
So whatever you're baking up in 2023 - take some life lessons from my crowd favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies and I mean seriously when have chocolate chips ever steered you wrong? Have a great weekend and I’ll see you soon.
