Box Lunch Lifestyle: Using Your Lunch Break to Win Back the Life You Deserve

By Cheryl K. Johnson

"Slow down. Stop multitasking. And savor this remarkable work."

—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

 

MISSING OUT ON THE LIFE YOU WANT IS NOT OKAY ANYMORE.

 

How often do you finish the workday wondering "Really? Is this all there is?" Too many days are spent grinding through the to-do list. And even when it all gets done, those days feel more like a slog than a win. Something is missing.

 

Maybe you feel change isn't possible. Or worse yet, that it doesn't matter much anymore. (Ouch.) But if you're ready to finally do something different—to BE something different—the time to start making progress toward "better" is already on your calendar: it's lunch.

 

With Cheryl Johnson's playful attitude and discipline from a decade of boxing training, Box Lunch Lifestyle delivers totally doable strategies to fuel your body, reclaim your spark, and build a life that'll make you proud. You don't need a gym membership, a new job, or to throw out everything in your pantry to start. You just have to decide to be your own champion.

 

Are you ready to win back the life you deserve? Join the Box Lunch Lifestyle revolution and learn (or relearn) how to look excuses in the eye, show yourself a little mercy, and watch ordinary workdays become something quietly remarkable—one tiny-bit-rebellious lunch break at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Traction Books
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781735085739

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

When the idea for Box Lunch Lifestyle came to me, all I wanted at that time was to feel unstuck. I’d built a decent career researching and creating psychology tests, but the work wasn’t giving me energy anymore. Actually, I felt miserable. My days were full of meetings, where I’d listen to a lot of talk about the potential of the company’s employees and resources, but I wasn’t allowed to be a trailblazer. I spent my time guessing what the bosses in a why-take-risks culture wanted to hear. Surely, I thought, I could find something better. And since assessment had been my area of expertise for twenty years, I looked for guidance from every kind of find-better-work quiz, test, or survey I could put my hands on. I found dozens of them to help me inventory my skills and interests, or place me in the appropriate behavior quadrant, or match me with a color, or identify my spirit animal, or whatever, during my search for job answers.

But while I looked for guidance that was more encouraging than my latest (expensive) career coaching consultation, I found the Paid to Exist website that, at the time, belonged to Jonathan Mead. I was at a point where I didn’t think there was any assessment-type questioning I hadn’t yet explored, so this question he posed in his Offer to the World exercise was kind of a sucker punch:

What kind of change would I really like to see in the world?

What gives? This wasn’t a test-type question. It wouldn’t help me transfer my skills into a new job, or show me how to fix my current one. This question felt unfair. Did other people think they could change the world? I didn’t. I could barely get a grip on my workday, let alone feel like I had any influence over the world. So, to an overly literal, mostly practical, and increasingly desperate person like me, this question seemed especially unhelpful.

But then I wondered if I could answer it—literally and practically. Regurgitating the same lists of skills and interests and hoping to find some fresh point of intersection was getting me nowhere. This question was different, and the answer wouldn’t come from researcher-type analyses of strengths and weaknesses, or systematically testing a list of conventional solutions. I’d have to, like, use my imagination. So I decided to focus on the see in the world part of this question. How would I describe this less-flawed world of mine? It came down to just a few things.

The pace of life would slow down a little. People could sit quietly for a few minutes, at arm’s length from the day’s chores, and not be so distracted by a screen that they missed out on a simple thing like the taste of a strawberry. Instead of consuming more digital information, there’d be more producing: writing, or learning, or talking with someone, or making something by hand. That side hustle or piece of art would finally start coming to life. Things that deserved to be appreciated would get appreciated.

People would be more mindful about what they eat, too. Homemade soup or colorful vegetables would show up at meals more often. A treat like a from-scratch birthday cake would be worthy of anticipation and taste even better than expected. Fast-food drive-through lanes would be empty because who needs a mass-produced burger when you can have the leftovers from last night’s barbeque? Delicious, attractive-looking food would be less likely to just get gobbled down, and choosing what to eat wouldn’t be something to agonize over or apologize for.

This better world would have a little more energy— the kind that comes from people doing their best to build bodies and brains that won’t let them down. They’d feel proud of themselves for making time not just for errands and career goals but for making something quietly remarkable happen nearly every day. Something that brought joy. The heap of photos would slowly turn into a legacy album. Old hobbies would get dusted off to see how they’ve held up over time. That homemade soup, or any homemade food, would help fuel pursuits more interesting than a day job and daily chores. On most days, people would grow a little stronger physically and closer to whatever being a satisfied human means to them. Abraham Maslow called the motivation we all have to be our best possible selves self-actualization. I call it a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

As I thought about Mead’s question, I started to notice things about my workplace that I hadn’t before. When I walked past the gray cubicles, I saw a lot of other grayness. Nothing there popped out as colorful, or creative, or healthy. Even the personal items on the desks had a sameness to them. I saw workers, not people being humans who eat and move and feel pride. And despite most of these people being happy with their work, the way some of them identified with their jobs more than their person-ness made me a little sad. It’s as though their identities had been defined for too long by their responsibilities.

This gray office space wasn’t the only place I saw work mostly draining people’s energy away. Who else had I seen that day who might be grinding it out at work? The attendant leaning on the counter at the gas station? The lineman making repairs? The state trooper scanning my speed on I-94? Even if they enjoyed their work, did it require so much effort that there was no energy left over for other things—like self-expression and growth? Sitting in every chair and standing behind every counter, I started to wonder how many people I saw who were having a day that felt like a little of their precious potential was being left behind. In addition to being responsible, my guess was that they also wanted to be something more. Because I did.

This was the point when my narrow better-job floundering expanded to the broader life perspective that Jonathan Mead was hinting at. Instead of "what I should be doing," I started asking myself what I didn’t want to be missing out on. Maybe that wasn’t a better desk job, or to start trudging up another be-better mountain, like getting a PhD (to help me get a better desk job). What I really wanted was a life that felt—every day—like living, and not just grinding through the to-do list and then wondering where the time went.

Instead of what I should be doing, I started asking myself what I didn’t want to be missing out on.

For me the kind of living I didn’t want to miss out on was made up of small, within-reach things. Very small things—like tasting something new. The last pages of a good mystery. The scratch of a pencil on paper. Color. Writing a letter to my Aunt Jean. Realizing it’s not a plane in the sky, but a planet with a name. A good shoulder massage. Eggs from a friend’s chickens. Or creating anything that was just mine and not built by committee. If I wanted time to experience these things, I’d have to slow down, pay attention, and choose pretty intentionally what brings me energy, and learn to let go of what doesn’t. What gives me that spark of Ooh. Yes. That! and a little feeling of honest pride when I get it? Is it food? (Sometimes.) Is it experiencing something I’ve always wanted to try? (Often.) But whether or not I was in the right job, I would always need to keep work in its place and to keep Me in the center of my life by paying attention to those small, deep-inside things that may mean something only to me.

If I wanted to live in a world where I got to be a person who tasted fennel or read Dennis Lehane, I’d need a system for doing that on most days. It would mean getting back to basics, like enjoying locally grown produce, traditional cooking, and single-ingredient foods, detaching regularly from situations where conformity was king, and more often picking up that book with exceptionally good dialogue that I’d been meaning to read.

My literal and practical answer to What kind of change would I really like to see in the world? turned out to be this:

Everybody would take a better lunch break.

A little time? A little food? That looked like lunch to me.

The way I see it, lunch is essentially a snapshot of two basic decisions that we make every day: what we eat and how we spend our time. It’s an underdog meal that’s been taken for granted for too long despite being so much less pressure than dinner and so much less hassle than breakfast. It’s usually pretty flexible. We often get to pick the time to take that break, we can choose to spend it alone or with coworkers, and people don’t think it’s crazy (and probably don’t care) if we eat somewhere different for a change of pace, like sitting outdoors. Even the amount and type of food we eat at lunch is more reasonable and manageable than other meals. The clear and simple purpose of a lunch break should be to eat and rest. It should be a chance to recharge for whatever’s coming next, which is something a lot of us need these days.

These small food and time choices are, to some large extent, within the average person’s control. But it doesn’t often feel that way. Why, I wondered, do we hand these little decisions over to our work or our bosses, or to trendy diets or any other fill-in-the-blank social pressure, and then feel frustrated as though we have no choice? Because we do have a choice. No matter how chaotic our lives or jobs might be, we have more control than we think. We can take time for lunch. It might be worth saying not now to the world just to see for ourselves that nothing comes crashing down in that thirty minutes. Because we might crash if we don’t take time to eat something good, clear our heads, and give clarity a chance to pop in and say, Hey! There you are: the You you want to be!

Within a few weeks of taking Mead’s question seriously, I decided to see what would happen if I defended thirty minutes for myself every day at work. And when I took back my own lunch break, I began to realize all the benefits that came with it.

First, if work often feels impersonal, lunch doesn’t have to. You can’t eat virtually or digitally. You kinda have to do it yourself—personally—by getting some food, eating it, and hopefully taking time to do something that isn’t just more work. And both the lunch food and lunch time can be a little bit special, whatever that means for you.

There’s also no lunch hierarchy. Worker bees eat lunch. Queen bees eat lunch. Whether you’re a human that works full-time or part-time or too-much-of-the-time, everyone needs a break. Most of the power structures I’d seen in organizations didn’t seem to be doing much to make the workplace culture better, so why not flatten it to we’re all just people for a little while every day? Regardless of job title or parking spot, we all could benefit from simpler, less chemical-laden food and a few deep breaths.

And we need fuel for our afternoon thinking and feeling. A simple meal made by your own hands doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfectly wonderful. Your brain is more likely to be your friend if you give it some quality food, not just a diet soda or a just-add-water noodle bowl.

When work feels oppressive, lunch can be liberating. Lunch is a place where, even if the rest of your day feels out of control, you get to make some choices for yourself. Ah, autonomy! Whether work for you means a desk job, or parenting, or being a student, or any other (or a combination of these) responsibilities, and whether it happens in a factory or in a hospital or at the dining room table, you’re the boss of this food and this time. It’s a small, nonthreatening place to step away from the ordinary or to reinvent what ordinary means to you.

And, finally, lunch doesn’t demand that you take it too seriously. It can be a tiny recess—something to look forward to rather than one more thing weighing on you: a little respite from hard (or boring) days.

Personally, taking back my lunch break was a kind of reckoning. I couldn’t hide from my curious quirky self forever, and pausing to look forward to some midday clarity meant I felt less like wanting to hide. Why? Because if wherever I was in life didn’t fit me that day, it was still possible to carve out a space that did. With time to be Me on the agenda, life would feel a little less empty. And sometimes a person needs to eat just a little bit better and breathe and smile before they can see what’s possible beyond just marking time and making a living.

Imagine a world where everyone doesn’t skip or just squeeze in lunch breaks, but instead lunch is revered. It would be a guaranteed mid-shift break and something to get excited about. It’d be special. A time to eat mindfully and do what we enjoy. In fact, lunch could be damn near perfect, because maybe we can’t control everything in life, but we can own lunch.

This made so much sense to me that I wondered why we weren’t already doing more with lunch. If there’s something unmovable standing in our way, I don’t see it. Lunch is already a thing. It’s small. It’s friendly. It’s not a scary place to make a few changes. I mean, we’re already kinda doing lunch, so why not make a few tweaks, have a little fun, and change our attitude about change? Why not take a step toward those nota-chore things that are possible and worth reaching for, like your first song or some fresh air or your toes? Most of us probably know what that personal something is that’s missing in our lives, and we might even know what to do about it. And if you don’t know yet what’s missing, the typical thirty-minute lunch break is enough space to start looking for it. That more satisfying life we long for could be just that close.

Why not make a few tweaks, have a little fun, and change our attitude about change?

And this kind of satisfaction, a deeper kind,