Sharp knives and life lessons!
Who would have thought that one small tip passed on from mother to daughter would have such a profound effect?
The Background
About 5 years ago, I got the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with my parents in the last years of their lives.
It was an opportunity for me to go to the UK and look after them, cooking for them and helping them pack up their home to move into a smaller apartment.
On my first few trips, my mother was still able to be in the kitchen and preparing some food.
Throughout her life, she was an amazing cook and entertainer.
Growing up, I was never interested in joining her in the kitchen. I would excuse myself from kitchen duties saying that I was needed by my father helping him with house renovations, gardening or fixing things!
However, in 2016 I finally learnt a few tips and tricks from my mother.
I was in her kitchen, which she was using less and less, and I was cooking my parents some lunch.
I took out a knife and it was ridiculously sharp! It made such a difference to cutting through the vegetables in front of me.
I then noticed that ALL my mother’s knives were sharp. Curiosity got the better of me, plus I was in awe of how good using a sharp knife was!
I asked her how she kept them sharp.
“Simple”, she said, “Before I use a knife, I always sharpen it first!”
This was such a revelation for me, I had been sporadically sharpening mine and from time to time getting them professionally sharpened!
Now, I sharpen my knives before I use them.
My knives still aren’t quite as sharp as hers, because I haven’t yet trained the other members of my family to do the same!
The other benefit of sharpening my knives… every time I do, I think of my mother – another way to connect even though she isn’t with us anymore.
What About Sharp Knives and Life Lessons?
There are so many lessons in that story. The one that is standing out for me today as write this, is that it is true about everything in life.
How many things do we not practice? Do we let get a bit dull like those unsharpened knives?
Sometimes we might dust off the knife sharpener and do a quick whip around the knives we use to sharpen them up.
They are great for a few uses, but soon they become dull again.
Is the effort really any more to get the knife sharpener out each time?
Not really.
What is the benefit of having a sharp knife all the time?
Well, it makes light work of the cutting for one! We use less effort, it’s more efficient, faster and we are ironically less likely to do any serious damage with a sharp knife by accident.
So, why don’t we all sharpen our knives every time we use them?
Because they still do their job. It may not be as efficient or fast or as easy, but it still does the job. We fall into that zone of comfort.
We only think to sharpen the knife when it becomes so dull that we think – Ah! I should sharpen it.
What else do we not sharpen every time we use them?
What skills do we not practice?
What conversations do we not improve and just go with the flow?
Where else do we take the seemingly easy road, which ends up being the hard road?
What made me put the two together, was a recent experience where I was not showing up as connected as I usually do.
I realised that I had failed to prime myself properly before this particular first-time activity. I had not set myself up to win and it became increasingly harder and harder to dig myself out of the place I found myself in.
Upon reflection, I realised just one little mindset reminder and tweak would have made all the difference.
It’s much harder to sharpen the knife when you are in the middle of cutting. And it takes a lot more effort to get it back to sharp if you let it go really blunt.
The Moral of The Story
Sharpening your knives before you start cutting is much easier than letting them go blunt.
Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe is quoted as saying: “Everything is hard before it becomes easy.” I like to rephrase this as…
What is easy becomes hard. What is hard becomes easy.
The life lesson is to set yourself up to win by priming your mind, sharpening it every day. Be that with a morning routine or a set-up ritual before you do something specific.
Do you have a morning or set-up routine? If you don’t you may be interested in learning more about mine through my free training.
LIVE, LOVE & THRIVE
Angela R