Mise in Place

This summer I took on the largest home assembly job I ever attempted when I built my kids play set. Multiple boxes, hundreds of boards, thousands of bolts, washers, and screws, and one set of instructions in bound volume. Building this play set appeared to be a monumental task and one that had me really questioning whether or not I made the right decision about assembling it myself. I was certainly uncomfortable on whether or not I could achieve this and, even though I had the perfect plan to follow in the instructions, I needed something more to help me execute it.

I started by taking inventory and identifying all of the items that needed to be used, then categorized them and put them together in groups in the backyard. Divided and categorized, the unmanageable mountain changed into a collection of very manageable hills. Throughout each step of the building process, I collected all of the components I needed for that step and moved them to the assembly area. I prepped them into position, and made them readily available for me to add to my play set assembly. This process not only enabled me to put the play set together efficiently, but it brought me security and confidence that I was not in over my head and that I would eventually be successful.

American Chefs have adopted a French saying called "mise in place" for the work they do with ingredients as they prepare them for the cooking process. Following the recipe (or plan), Chefs prep ingredients like meats by trimming and seasoning, they prep vegetables by chopping and slicing them into the correct shape and size, and they prep their spices by measuring them and putting them in temporary containers ready for use. When done correctly, a Chef has all of their ingredients completely ready to go with nothing left to do other than mix and cook.

Chefs go through a lot of steps to prepare for something as simple as executing a dish, yet when it comes to our desire to achieve monumental behavioral changes like overcoming emotional eating, we tend to start process with just a goal in mind. Having a goal will help us find a direction, but in order for us to take steps down the path,  most of us realize that we are going to need some sort of plan. This plan can be as simple as logging our food with a journal, having calorie goals for each day or eliminating certain foods from our diet.

Putting together a plan is an important part of the process, but even if we have the best plan in place, we still need to do more to be successful. This is where we need to follow the principles of "mise in place."

Life Lesson: Do not allow yourself to be setup for failure.

It takes more than a plan to change your behavior. The poor eating habits we have developed are thriving in our environment. Much of what we have done to establish our environment is to develop a way to support our poor eating habits. So if we want to change our eating habits from bad to good, how can we do this without changing our environment?

This is especially true when it comes to food. How can we eat healthy in a house that does not contain healthy food? How can we break the habits of snacking all the time at work when we leave the temptation of food in our desk drawer? How can we expect ourselves to successfully change our behavior when we leave all sorts of challenges like these to overcome in our path? If we don't do anything different with our environment, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

We need to change our environment and get the right things "in place" to support our good habits so we can execute our plan. We also need to remove the temptations and replace them with the right choices. We can do this by filling the house with groceries that support eating right. We can plan meals and measure and prep our food for consumption. We can have things "in place" for ourselves ahead of the time of need, so we don't have to "wing it" when it comes time to execute.

If we take steps like these to put our "mise in place," we will create an environment that supports our new way of eating and make it very difficult to fall back into our old ways. This will help us execute our plan and ultimately help us find success.