Coastal Kitchen Cookbook and Follow Your Effort

Mark Cuban touts one of my favorite pieces of advice, “Don’t follow your passions. Follow your effort.”

I love this advice, because the rationale makes so much sense. Plus, it was a game changer for me during a major life transition.

Rather than trying to explain it myself, I’m pulling from Cuban’s own words in a blog post he wrote back in 2012.

Just because we’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean that we have or enjoy employing the skills necessary to succeed in that passion. Cuban says…

“If you really want to know where your destiny lies, look at where you apply your time,” because time is our most valuable asset and “how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you.”

This is the reasoning behind his advice:

• When you work hard at something, you become good at it.
• When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.
• When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it.
• When you are good at something, passionate [about it] and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.

This brings me to my recipe, which for this reflection is actually an entire cookbook and website of recipes from a colleague I greatly admire..

I met Jenny Shea Rawn many, many years ago at an industry event and since then I’ve been a great admirer of her work. Jenny creates elevated, yet approachable recipes and her photography is stunning. Over time, I observed Jenny focusing more and more on seafood recipes, particularly recipes featuring local seafood near to her Cape Cod, MA home.

I’m guessing Jenny never labeled whether she was following her passion or her effort, or maybe she did.?From the outside looking in, it seems as if she continued to follow where her effort was taking her and doing so made her, what I believe to be, one of the most talented seafood recipe developers. ?She's not trying to be everything to everyone. ?She's following her effort and that's what makes her stand out. This is no doubt connected to her?energy and enthusiasm for the topic, which is palpable.

While I love seafood and it is a part of my everyday diet, it’s not where my effort takes me in the kitchen. Rather than share one of my okay seafood recipes, I thought it better to share Jenny's collection with you. And with it being the start of summer, when seafood is enjoyed most, it’s perfect timing!

You can go to Jenny Shea Rawn’s website to access her blog of seafood recipes as well as her most recent labor of love, her cookbook, Coastal Kitchen: Nourishing Seafood Recipes for Everyday Cooking. You can also follow Jenny on Instagram @jennyshearawn.

Similar to what I observed in Jenny and experienced myself, I am a big fan of the advice to follow your effort, and I encourage you to share it with the people in your life who may benefit from trying it on. It’s the concept I go to when coaching clients or offering advice to friends, who know they are seeking something but don’t know what that is quite just yet.