Know What You Like to Know What You Want
Re-discovering yourself is a monumental task. It is hard, difficult and in some cases painful, but sometimes you don’t have any choice. When I say “re-discovering myself” I don’t mean meditating under the sounds of chimes and the chants of Buddhist monks, I mean to find what you really, really like and enjoy in life. I was stuck in a deadend job, having worked it for over 15 years I didn’t see any point in what I was doing. I was unmotivated and in general not a good team member. At one moment my career consisted of me pretending to be working and my employer pretending to be paying me. Suffice it to say I was unsatisfied and depressed almost constantly.
This had its effect on my family, but the light of my life – my wife, stuck with me through the hardest parts. After I was laid off, I got the feeling that my boss was giving me my last papers with an almost visible sigh of relief. The strange thing was that I was almost as relieved as him, probably more so.
We didn’t have financial problems, so I wasn’t worried too much. I had some savings and my wife was also working so our family of 3 wasn’t put in a corner.
And then the great breakthrough came. While I was returning from yet another job interview I happened to pass by several exhibition trailers, promoting French culture, or France as a tourist destination I can’t remember clearly. The thing that is important is that one of the mobile showrooms was a kitchen where a French chef was demonstrating different, recipes and people around it were given the chance to taste everything he made.
I was entranced by his swiftness and his ability to transform the simplest of products into works of art. I had never stayed more than 3 minutes on a cooking channel on TV before that, but I started watching with something that bordered on religious fever.
After a long talk with my wife she agreed to let me try something new. I started attending chef courses, classes, anything that I could afford including experimentation at home. And as it turned out I was a natural.
After 7-9 months and with the help of some of my friends I opened a small Caf?�, where we would offer French atmosphere, French coffee, a large variety of sandwiches and cakes and if you had the patience to wait you could order a meal for home from a different set of menus.
And after an initial calm week we were flooded with customers and orders. I had to hire new people just to be able to keep up with the orders. I am happy as never before, I am making more money and providing for my family. And I created a successful business. I just had the luck to discover in what I am good and what I like and to be successful at it.