Century Park Blog

While cooking is a means to satisfy the body’s need for food, it’s increasingly being recognized as a way of nurturing the mind. The act of cooking improves a person’s wellbeing and is associated with life satisfaction. For some, time spent in the kitchen baking and cooking may be exactly the recipe needed for greater happiness and mental wellbeing.

Getting creative

The kitchen offers endless opportunities to express your creativity and find your flow. If you suffer from anxiety or low moods, cooking could help increase your happiness. Spending time in the kitchen can ease stress and restlessness, and enhance mindfulness.

Make your cake (and eat it)

Not only does the process of cooking and baking improve moods, the feeling of satisfaction gained when seeing the end product naturally enhances happiness. Cooking is a task that requires a combination of several skills – understanding and planning, attention to detail, using memory and imagination, manual dexterity, creativity, and style.

3 steps to bliss in the kitchen:

• Find your confidence first: find something simple you enjoy making and master it. Then move onto more difficult recipes.
• Grow your own ingredients: picking fresh herbs and vegetables and adding them to your dish gives an even greater sense of pride and achievement.
• Cultivate mindfulness: smell the ingredients, feel the texture, notice what happens when you mix different foods together. Take notice of all the senses.