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    Passion People Profiles

Omid Roustaei, Personal Chef "I went to cooking school to learn to cook, but I walked out of it more in tune with who I was. One of the key things my teacher taught me was that it's OK to be in the unknown. It's the process that you have to enjoy, but you never have to know what the dish is going to look like at the end. I translated that into life. I have some tools to get me through today. I don't have to know what tomorrow is going to look like. But I ultimately know I'm going to be OK." - Omid Roustaei, Personal Chef Ten years into his career as a biotech scientist, with a "dream job," more money than ever before, and a career that his family was proud of, Omid Roustaei seemed to have it made. There was just one small detail gumming up the works…he was miserable. Omid realized that he was off track. Bit by bit, he sank into dissatisfaction and depression, until one day his paycheck catalyzed a change. "I picked up my check from my inbox," recalls Omid. "And as I walked it to my desk, I thought, 'This is the reason for all my misery. This piece of paper has got me attached to this job. It's the most money I've ever made - yet I'm most miserable.'" The change finally came in 1998, when he left his identity as a biotech scientist behind to pursue a career in which he would ultimately become a personal chef, cooking instructor, and yoga teacher. The end result was a much happier Omid. How it began: The seeds of change were planted when, in taking cooking classes as a distraction from his job dissatisfaction, Omid realized that each of the chefs had switched to cooking from a different career. The decision to abandon the only career he had known wasn't immediate or easy. "It took a while, "says Omid. "Lots of should I…shouldn't I…I don't know. I took a few seminars, started reading books, etc." Eventually, he took a class with a philosophy of cooking that touched him at a deep level. It went beyond cooking to a philosophy of life. He called the cooking school that had offered that class, the School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, CO and became increasingly fascinated with the idea. The transition: Once he made the decision, Omid spent months laying the groundwork. "I had to save up the tuition for the school," says Omid. "I also wanted to prove to myself that I'm capable of walking away from my job and the salary. I had to prove to myself that I can live off of half of what I make, so I started putting half my salary away. I did that for four or five months. That made enough money to pay for the tuition of the school, and then I put in my two-week notice." While he had his expenses in Seattle covered (mortgage, etc.), Omid still needed to cover his expenses in Boulder. The solution? A job at the deli counter in a grocery store making $6 an hour. Back in Seattle, he began building a clientele for his personal chef business. "I just had to do a lot of word of mouth, telling everybody I knew what I'm doing. Initially it was a lot of work. Once I started getting my clients, they started doing my advertising for me. There was a time when I just sat back and watched it grow on its own without my doing anything. "I got to a point where I had a waiting list. And that to me was the ultimate success. In my head I was thinking another ultimate success would be for me to match what I used to make, salary-wise. And I did that last year." The impact it made The transition has had an incredible impact on him. "Most friends say I'm much more pleasant to be with," says Omid with a chuckle. Not only is life more enjoyable, but doors have opened to parts of him he didn't even know were there. "It's made me a more well-rounded person. I was quite shy at one point. And all of a sudden I'm put in a place where I'm out meeting people socially, and I'm out in front of people teaching cooking classes." "All my life," he adds, "I've been a left brain person. A = B = C. If you couldn't prove it with a formula, it didn't exist. "Cooking is creativity. I don't use recipes. It's all created in the heat of the moment. To rely on my right brain to pay the mortgage a) was frightening b) was incredible. Some of the stuff that has come out of my mouth, people have stopped and said, wow, I've got to write this down. And that really didn't happen to me before." "Doing this has made me more relaxed," notes Omid. "More in tune with myself. What they taught me in the school in Colorado was really was about developing your own intuition. Developing your own creativity. Expressing it through food, but if you got in tune with what that really meant, you translated that into your life. I became more creative with my life." Fears and doubts Omid readily acknowledges that fears are part of the process. "I wake up sometimes and I wonder, what if half my clients upped and left? What if my cooking classes got cancelled? What if my right hand fell off? What if? "I get the sinking feeling - what was I thinking? I had a good job, but I was bored. What's wrong with you? Why couldn't you have toughed it out? Those thoughts come in, but somehow miraculously, soon after that fear somebody makes a comment that is a reaffirmation of what I have done. "I practice yoga about two hours a day in the morning before I start my cooking. That usually realigns me with where I need to be before I start chopping…my fingers off. (laughs) "Other than that, I talk myself out of the fear and just say, whatever. I can't let it come in. Or just accept that fear is just another natural human expression. We have these feelings for a reason. I may not know what they are, what they're for, but I should just accept that they're there, and as long as I don't stay in it, I'll be all right." If you would like to know more about Omid's services, you can visit his web site at http://members.aol.com/wholefoodschef. You can e-mail him at chefomid@yahoo.com.