Lessons to Learn from Reality TV

There is something I love about reality TV, you know, those programs like “Your Wife, My Wife” where wives are swapped to see how life is within another family with different styles, habits and belief systems.

Getting to peak inside other people’s lives, seeing how they deal with every day issues and how a few weeks with other people can actually change the way they do things at home amazes me at times and does make me chuckle or grumble. But either way, it has me glued to the screen because there is always something personal to learn and walk away with.

Sometimes it is like looking in a mirror and all of a sudden being shook awake, having to face up to mistakes I am guilty of committing myself as well, although many other times I am amazed by how other people do and see things.

Last night I was watching Kitchen Nightmares by Gordon Ramsay, where this totally successful world famous chef visits different restaurants which are on the edge of going down completely, many with huge debts, about to lose their home and more, because of bad management among other reasons.

This time he was visiting an absolutely gorgeous building, completely restored by the owner himself, who had spend 2 year bringing back on old mill in it’s original state so he could use it to run a successful restaurant.

4 Years after starting the restaurant, he found himself in huge debt, well over half a million, 2 mortgages on his house and his wife was completely oblivious to all of this. In the beginning of the show, he is filmed saying things like “being a great entrepreneur”, “good at running his restaurant” and proud of the products he offers his clients, who by this time are almost only residents of a neighbouring home for the elderly.

He ends by saying that he absolutely has no clue as of why it is there aren’t more visitors coming to his excellent restaurant.

Being familiar with the screaming fits of Ramsay, you can feel what will be next, Gordon actually having a taste of all specialty dishes and if the situation weren’t as sad and alarming as it is for the owner, it would be completely hilarious. Here is this Michelin start chef, owner of several successful restaurants all over the world, eating things like a shopped salad squashed into a funnel in order to make the presentation something special, opening a disgusting looking paper bag filled with beef to get a taste of the signature dish, which looks more like a filthy diaper, almost choking and disgusted by the presented food.

So the owner is asked to join him and taste some of that “fantastic food he is so proud of to offer to his clients” and instead of actually admitting the food sucks, he goes well out of his way to defend it, saying Gordon has no f****** idea what he is talking about anyways and that he is full of sh*t.

This is where you start wondering why these people actually get somebody like Gordon in to help them save their business (and in many times, their complete life) and what made them so blind to the mistakes they are committing, but the program continues of course, showing all the steps to make in order to turn around the whole ordeal, with a lot more screaming and unhappy faces, even tears and fits and people wanting to throw in the towel and send Gordon to hell.

But then, you can see the attitude switches, during a conversation between the owner and the top restaurateur, talking about the fear of change.

Some people keep going on and on, doing the same thing getting the same lousy results, but they keep going because they are in their safety zone, knowing what will come from their actions and they prefer it to be that way, even though their actions won’t get them anywhere but have them drowning.

This guy actually said he’d rather continue what he was doing because he did not want to lose his customers by making too many changes. He did not want to startle and lose the few customers that he had left.

He did not see that every crappy product he was sending out into the world was breaking down every chance of success.

He knew he was going down, but became paralyzed in his ways.

Taking the actual steps to break that thinking pattern and stepping out of the safety zone, is very hard at times and last night’s program just got to show me how weird the human mind is at times

It does make me realize again just how important it is to put your energy where it brings the best results. Improve the good things you already have by giving them more attention and evaluating the lesser things, deciding whether to remove them from your to-do lists or make sure to turn them around in something positive.

Sometimes all it takes is opening your eyes and really see what lies in front of you.