Letting go of creative control

When I was in Thailand recently I was responsible for cooking lunch for a group of twenty people each day. It was really fun but I was feeling challenged working with others, as I've just spent the last two years working closely with people and now have a strong urge to do something on my own. Because I'm attached to that idea, having to cooperate with others was pushing a few of my buttons!

So anyway, one night I lay awake and carefully imagined a beautiful meal based around hummus. What eventuated was something different; the girl making the hummus decided it was better kept til dinner and there was no hummus in the meal at all! Although it seems insignificant now, it rankled at the time because I was attached to my idea of how the meal should be. It made me feel grumpy towards her which made us both feel bad.

So the next day I thought I'd try to do things a bit differently. I decided to have no vision for the meal at all and to just provide the ingredients, fire and a clean environment for it to be created in. I chopped and washed vegetables and when someone asked my opinion about something I tried to counter with something like, "whatever you feel" or "just go with your intuition."

In the end the lunch was one of the yummiest we'd had and I did not cook at all! We had onion, pumpkin and chickpea stir fry by Jaun, savoury snake beans and morning glory by Letitia, an enormous salad by Ami covered in a garlicy sauce whipped up by Lucas. All this was followed by the gooey chocolatey goodness of Kokko's banana and sticky-rice bliss balls. OMG!!

The benefits of letting go of creative control are self-evident!