درسنامه اصلی

Cooking – Coaching Lesson

Hi, this is AJ, welcome to this month’s coaching video. Now, cooking is a difficult topic for me to coach you about so I’m going to talk about some more general topics because I’m not very good at cooking. I don’t cook very much and when I do, I cook very, very simple food.

But this topic of cooking for me is connected to something bigger, and that bigger topic is really materialism. Like we all know, we live in a materialistic culture. What does that mean, a materialistic culture? Right, it means we’re obsessed with buying stuff. Getting more and more and more and more stuff. So material…material are things, physical things like this is a material thing, right? Sure, it’s clothing. Food, anything you buy, anything you can touch, feel, etc., materialism.

And, of course, now we use the word materialism to mean really consumerism, right? To consume is to get something and it comes from the word consume with the idea, the image of eating, but now it really means buying stuff, buying stuff, buying, buying, buying, buying, buying, shopping, that kind of thing. So that’s the more modern, bigger meaning of materialism.

And see, corporations have taken over. They’ve taken over our minds. They have invaded our minds with their corporate media propaganda and advertising. They’ve taken over every aspect of our lives. They have us convinced that we need to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy the newest stuff all the time. They have us convinced that we need lots and lots and lots of money to enjoy our lives, to have freedom.

But, it’s all an illusion. It’s all a game. It’s all a lie. Because when you think about it, if you really think about materialism, in other words, what are the actual physical things we need to live…to live decently well? Well, I mean it’s really three basic material things. Now there are relationships and love and spiritual things that we need but those don’t cost money.

The material things are food, clothing and shelter. That’s all. Food, clothing and shelter, right, if we boil it down, meaning if we get it down to the essence, the essentials, it’s still…it’s the same three things that human beings have needed for tens of thousands of years. And here’s the other truth. Now in our modern technological age surrounded by all of these technological marvels, it is super, super, super, super easy to satisfy those three things. It can be done so easily and so, so, so, so cheaply.

The truth is, to live well we need very, very, very, very little money and very, very, very little effort. This is why this is connected to cooking because if we go out and we eat at restaurants all the time, yes, then you’re spending quite a lot of money. If you go to the store, the grocery store, and you buy lots of packaged stuff, processed food, right, things in boxes. Well, the prices again go up, up, up. It can be expensive.

But if you cook your own food at home, you can do it very, very, very cheaply and it’s much, much, much more healthy. I mean, think about it…to be healthy, in fact, to have peak health, we all know what we need…fresh vegetables, fresh fruit. If you’re a meat-eater then, y’know, good quality meats and fish, maybe some nuts. I mean, that’s really it. Maybe some spices and some herbs to add some taste.

None of those things are expensive, right? They’re not processed, which is great. I mean, they’re just…they’re the basic ingredients, the simplest, most basic foods, and they’re pretty much the cheapest foods to buy. So if you just ate a very simple super-healthy diet of fresh vegetables, produce we call it, and fruit, so fruit and vegetables together that are fresh, that’s called produce, right? There’s a produce section of your grocery store probably, or your market.

So fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, it doesn’t get cheaper than that. And then again, like I said, meat and fish, again, you can find things that are local that again are not super expensive. If you want to eat beans or grains, you can buy a huge bag of rice or beans or something for almost nothing, super, super, super cheap again. And then again you can also find fresh herbs or dried, even dried herbs and spices, again quite cheap.

So eating healthy, if you cook at home with basic fresh ingredients, it’s actually the very cheapest way to eat and it doesn’t really require much money at all. Y’know, sometimes I hear people complaining, “Oh, it’s so hard to be healthy. It’s so expensive.” No it’s not. It’s not. It’s cheaper…it’s cheaper than going out to restaurants and eating. That’s expensive.

I mean even cheap restaurants are still more expensive than cooking at home. So satisfying this basic need, this material need that we have…that we all have as humans…food, we all have to eat. It’s actually pretty simple.

What’s the other one? Shelter…shelter. Well, y’know, again we’re brainwashed by the media and society and everybody, which really means corporations because corporations are what’s controlling all that stuff, they brainwash us to think we need all these huge places to live, right? We need houses and big nice apartments and all these modern conveniences.

But what is shelter, really? What’s the purpose of shelter? It just…it keeps you out of the rain. It keeps you out of the extreme sun, heat and cold. So basically it’s just to keep you warm but not hot and dry, and safe. Safe from people, y’know, who might, criminals or something who might just…if you were sleeping outside as a homeless person, people might bother you more. If you have some kind of shelter

with a locked door, it’s more secure at night where you sleep. That’s it. That’s the purpose of shelter, that’s all.

And yet, in America, for example, oh my god, people they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these massive houses and it’s crazy. And why it’s crazy is they make themselves slaves to jobs that they don’t even like. Or maybe they used to like their jobs but not so much anymore. They become slaves to work to pay for this big, expensive house. Or in a lot of cities, y’know, even apartments have become so expensive. And in many ways the apartment or the house owns the person.

But what do we really need? So just simple shelter. The truth is…the truth is, you could live comfortably in a tent. People have done it, human beings have done it for tens of thousands of years. They’ve lived in tents made from leather or cloth or whatever, and have been perfectly comfortable and fine. I like camping and many times I’ve gone out camping with just a small little tent. Totally fine, no problem. A tent and a sleeping bag.

If it’s cold, the sleeping bag keeps me warm and I’ve got some warm clothes, too. If it rains, the tent keeps me dry. I mean, that’s it. That’s all you actually really need. Now we may want a little more comfort than that but we don’t need a lot more than that. Many of you may know the story of me, that I lived in my van and a car for a whole year.

And, y’know, I don’t know, some people think maybe I suffered during that year. I didn’t. It was fine. I was comfortable. I was fine. I had a good sleeping bag. Y’know, the van kept me dry. If it rained, I didn’t get wet. I just had a few basic, y’know, comfortable clothes and things in there. I slept perfectly fine. And I paid zero rent, none, zero, zero, zero for a whole year.

So we don’t really need that much. It’s actually quite easy to satisfy our basic shelter requirements. But we’re kind of brainwashed. We think we need more, more, more. Oh, it’s got to be pretty. It’s got to be new. It’s got to be…but really even the most basic little small apartment, one-room apartment, is plenty. It meets our needs, our basic needs, our material needs.

And then what do we have? Then clothing, of course, clothing. Clothing, again, serves the purpose of protecting us from sun and cold. That’s all we really need clothes for. That’s it. So, y’know, again we’ve got corporations and advertising brainwashing us all the time that we need to follow their corporate fashions or else you’re not cool. You’re not fashionable.

And so we go out and we spend so much money on all these clothes. And, of course, the fashions change every year. They do it on purpose so that you constantly need to be buying stuff. It’s a big brainwashed game. What do we really need in terms of clothing just to meet our basic material needs? A few sets of…what, maybe four, five sets of clothes if you don’t feel like washing much. If you just want the basic basics, like two sets of clothes.

When I walked the Camino de Santiago, y’know, it was one month walking through Spain. I only had two sets of clothes. Every day I washed one. I wore one set of clothes, washed the other ones and dried them and I just switched back and forth between them. That’s all. That’s all I needed. It was perfectly fine.

Now, of course, y’know, but I go out and because of fashion, because of our society, though, sometimes we have to go and spend more money on these things. Like, for example, I got this suit. Now this suit is not really very functional. I only wear this thing when I’m making a video or speaking on a stage. And it’s just because there’s this expectation in society that, y’know, this is more respectable.

It shows that I’m serious, that I’m respecting the audience, respecting you. But otherwise, I’d never wear this thing. It’s not functional. It’s not functional. I just wear basic, simple, cheap, functional clothes most of the time.

So what is the point of all of this that I’m talking about? The point is this. We can be free. Our material needs are actually very, very, very, very low. Most of us, even poor people, even poor people in Europe, in the United States, in most countries, there are some exceptions right now, but in most developed countries, even poor people live lives of luxury.

They live better than kings did 500 years ago. They have electricity, running water, cell phones. All these, this amazing technology. And yet, are we happy? Do we feel like we have all this luxury? No, we don’t. We still want more. Why? Because, again, we’re brainwashed. We watch television. We read on the internet. We’ve got all this media and what do we hear about? People who have more than us.

Oh, some billionaire somewhere has his own private jet and lives in a mansion with 20 rooms and has four Mercedes Benz and wears $5,000 suits. Oh my god, compared to him, I have nothing. I need a bigger house, right? Or even just the neighbors or the person you work with. They’ve got a newer car. They’ve got nicer clothes. They’ve got nicer…oh, we need more. We need more. We need more.

The magazines in grocery stores, all the advertisements. We need more. We need more. We need more. We’re never satisfied. It will never be enough. That’s why you see celebrities, people who are super rich. It’s never enough. It’s ridiculous. This is what keeps us trapped. This is what keeps us enslaved.

Because for most of us our basic needs are easily met with very little money. We all have plenty of clothes. In fact, most of us have too many. Most of us live in places much bigger than we actually need. And with food, too, I’m guilty of this. I’m lazy. I go out and I eat out all the time. But I’m spending much more money than I need to. It’s not necessary.

This is actually great news. It’s fantastic news because what it means is that you can be free. It’s easy to be free. You don’t need to feel like you’re a slave to your job. You don’t need to feel like you’re a slave to money. Because your basic needs are actually very simple. If you learn how to just meet your basic needs and be happy with those, then your time and your money become much more free.

If you’re still making the same amount of money then it’ll feel like you’ve got lots of it because you have so much extra that you’re not actually needing to spend. Or if you don’t want to keep working so much, you can cut back and work less. It’s fantastic.

So here’s what I want you to do this month. Just focus on the basics of life. Number one, on food, just focus on cooking your own food. You don’t have to do it every day but just to cook one meal per week. And just using basic fresh ingredients, not stuff from a box. You can find recipes on the internet. You can find cookbooks online and Kindle, e-books, whatever. There’s tons and tons of them out there that are free. So just pick something that is fresh ingredients and just try cooking one meal. Try something different. It can be simple. In fact, simple’s probably better.

And with your clothes, really look through the clothes you have and ask yourself how much of your wardrobe, a wardrobe means all of your clothes, how many of those clothes are necessary? Are there a lot of them that you just never wear anymore? Throw them away, get rid of them. It’s unnecessary clutter. And ask yourself how many did you buy just to be fashionable? How many are just functional?

And then ask the same thing about where you live, your apartment or your house. Ask yourself, could you actually live someplace smaller and cheaper? Is it necessary to live in the place you’re living? Do you really need that much space? Do you really need to be paying that much? Does it add happiness to your life? Is it worth the price you pay? I don’t know, only you can answer that, but think about it.

So we’re going to think about materials and we’re going to be materialistic this month but we’re going to be honest and materialistic. We’re not just going to do what all the corporations are telling us to do, brainwashing us to do all the time. We’re going to look at our real material needs, food, shelter, clothing, and just be honest with ourselves, what do we really need and what is excess, unnecessary. What has been brainwashed into us to think we need, to think we want, but really not worth the price.

That’s it. So have fun cooking. Have fun examining your true material needs and I will see you next month. Bye for now.