Pursuit of Everything…in Geneva

It isn’t often that remarkable people casually drop by Geneva for a chat around beer and pizza at Le Scandale…So of course, when Nathalie organized a Misfits meet-up with AJ & Melissa Leon, I was thrilled to participate.

AJ Leon is an ordinary guy who decided to leave his plush New York career to choose a life of meaning and adventure. Five years on, he owns several companies, has written a book and is traveling around the world with his lovely wife, Melissa. You can read more about their philosophy on their website, the aptly named, Pursuit of Everything and you can even download a very inspiring PDF with AJ’s writing about living life with intention, doing meaningful work and changing the world – highly recommended!

One of the things I loved most from what AJ said was that the people we admire are always heroes or adventurers. Don’t we all admire characters like Frodo or Luke Skywalker, heeding their call to adventure? He urged us to start looking at ourselves in the same way, as adventurers or heroes in our own life story, living this one precious life that we have. How awesome is that?

In his words:

Shake up your eating habits!

Do you find yourself on automatic pilot when grocery shopping, buying more or less the same foods every time?

Do you always have the same ‘staples’ at home, things like bread, milk, bananas, tomatoes all year round?

When was the last time you ordered something new at a restaurant?

Do you have more or less the same breakfast every day of the week?

I am not saying you are lazy. On the contrary: As humans living in the modern world, we need to make hundreds of choices in a single day – from what to wear to where to park. It is completely normal that our minds go on ‘automatic pilot’ rather than actively making a decision for every little thing we do – this is what makes activities such as driving possible – we no longer need to think about every little step involved.

Sometimes though, shaking ourselves out of automatic pilot can be very enriching. It can allow us to see what we do with different eyes or to simply try something new.

Here are some ideas to help shake up your eating habits!

♦ Vary your grains – try a whole grain that is new to you such as quinoa, millet, buckwheat or brown rice.

♦ Buy a new vegetable you’ve never used before next time you are grocery shopping then google to find a recipe for it.

♦ Do NOT buy your staples next time you are shopping – restrictions can make you more creative, forcing you to find alternatives.

♦ Buy a different brand of your favorite food.

♦ If you always go to the same restaurant, try a new kind of cuisine you have never tried, like Ethiopian food.

♦ Buy something that is in season right now in a big quantity and then figure out what you want to do with it. For example, I bought a large quantity of zucchini which is currently in season and made zucchini muffins, a vegetable stir fry with buckwheat noodles, a tomato sauce with zucchini and added it to a lentil salad.

♦ Buy a type of herb and put it in a glass of water when you get home then add it to everything you make over the next few days. You can even add herbs like mint to water to jazz it up a little.

What about you, do your eating habits need to be shaken up? Which of these action points are you willing to try over the next week? I would love to hear from you in the comments below!

Start where you are

Inspiration

Inspiration from Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is my absolute favorite childhood writer. His writing is simple yet contains such profound human truths for children and adults alike.

I love the entire quote this is from:

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

– Roald Dahl

Inspiration from Julia Child