The title of this blog is "Living it". The field in which I am developing expertise as a graduate student is stress and decision-making. One of my own best stress management tools is what mothers, grandmothers, or somebody-who-cares-somewhere, have always said: Have breakfast.
Fuel up to give your self-regulatory abilities a chance
Good management of daily demands on our time and energy include acknowledging that we need to put the energy in if we plan to pour the energy out. So many of us feel at the start of a day that there is so much to do that the sooner we get started, the better. This is not always the case. I'm working on it, but I find that when I spend a decent amount of time preparing breakfast—a nice breakfast—and make a point to slow down as I sit down and enjoy it, then my day starts with peace and confidence. My sense is this is the product simply of having a healthy routine in the morning, but a good breakfast gives these feelings and attitudes some staying power through the day.
Why am I writing this apparently food-oriented blog entry? It is simply because in trying to deal with the stress of daily life, sometimes we neglect to attend to the little things that end up being the scaffolding necessary to building up a very good day. Roy Baumeister and colleagues have done work outlining how when people have a 'hungry brain', one that is depleted or low in stores of energy, we have more difficulty in inhibiting unwanted behaviors and responses: a tendency towards self-regulation failure (see Baumeister and Alquist, 2009). To put it bluntly, in terms that millions of us with food issues can relate to intimately: When we're starving it's hard to control our behaviour. So even if you don't feel hungry in the morning consider a decent, varied breakfast as a preemptive defense against minor insanity later in the day.
The ancient Greek story of Oedipus and the Sphinx relates how he solved the riddle whose answer is Man. The question the Sphinx would ask those entering the town of Thebes was: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the day, and three legs in the evening?" Oedipus solved the riddle by stating that Man walked on four legs in the 'morning'—as a toddler, on two legs in the 'day' —as an adult,—and on three legs in the 'evening', as an elderly person (with a cane). Let me share my point directly: Your morning is the childhood of your day—feed it well and it will shine for you when the rest of your day (life) is having trouble.
Have breakfast—it is good to have a good start.
Baumeister, R.F., and Alquist, J.L. (2009). Self-regulation as a limited resource: The strength model of control and depletion, in Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology, J.P. Forgas, R.F. Baumeister, and D.M. Tice (eds), New York, NY, USA: Psychology Press).
