Dear World,

Let me start by saying that I am not trained as a baker. Is that even how it’s said?

Candice just enjoys baking and she was taught by the ancestors; who taught her grandma; who taught her mother; who taught her.

Get it? Read that again.

Okay.

My mom and I recently did some night baking and we altered an ‘original recipe’ to yield an increased quantity of the baked goodness. While we altered, it dawned on me that there’s a lesson to be learned.

There’s always a lesson, actually.

---

Principle

For the accumulated time I’ve spent baking, I have garnered some decent skills.

I’ve mastered the “toops of this” and the “toops of that” measurement. After all, who uses actual measuring cups and spoons in passion baking?

Anyways.

In mastering the art of altering recipes – I have learned that in order to get the quantities you want, you determine what is reduced and what is multiplied.

Pretty simple, right?

Not entirely.

In principle, reducing and multiplying ingredients is easy. However, if you reduce too much of ingredients A, B and C and multiply too much of ingredients W, X, Y and Z, your end product will be off-putting.

No one wants a cake that tastes awful. Why would they?

So, the art of altering is about balancing. Whether you add or remove, ensure that all other ingredients balance out for the new measurements.

The Lesson

As the baker of your own life, remember this:

Balance is key in your actions and utterances.

As the flawed beings that we are, we sometimes forget to work towards achieving balance. We get sidetracked with achieving so much that we focus all our energy on the end product and not the individual aspects that add up (the ingredients).

Yes, we want the A-plus product but the ingredients have to be just right.

---

Apply this simple principle to your life and I’m sure you’ll see results.

I don’t profess to be a guru of anything. But I am practising balance.

So, the same way we want the perfect product, we want to be the best version of ourselves. One sure-fire way to achieving that is to balance our life.

We can’t have only vacations. We have to put the work in. We can’t always be easy going. We have to be serious about our work. We can’t always operate from spontaneity. We have to plan.

Get it?

Now go alter the recipe to your life.

Signed,

The Night Baker