Weekend Challenge #41: The Art of Not Getting What You Want

What do you think you’ll be up to when you’re 80? Hanging with family, enjoying time away from work, and overall resting on the laurels of a lifetime of work and lessons learned? Maybe you’ll write a book, mentor others, or just chill.

Another option could be leading an entire population out of a place of oppression and into one of freedom. You could even get to spend 40 years walking through a desert and eating the same thing every day. If you’re lucky, the people you lead, won’t really be grateful for you most of the time and will try to deny your leadership at every turn. Sounds like a good way to spend the golden years right?

Oh, and when it’s all said and done, you actually won’t get to go to the land of freedom that the rest of the people will. Wait, what?!? All that work from 80 to 120 years old and I don’t even get what I wanted all along? Nope.

This is the story of Moses, the great prophet who lead Israel out of Egypt after 400 years of slavery, through the wilderness for 40 years while a generation was born to God, and to the doorstep of Canaan. But God only allowed Moses to see the land, not enter it. That would surely be a tough pill to swallow. What we learn from Moses here though, is in his response. Previously, Moses was somewhat of a coward. When called to lead the people he gave and fought for five reasons why he couldn’t do it. But somewhere along his journey, he changed. At the end of his life, just short of the promised land, Moses taught us how to react when we don’t get our way. He stood atop a mountain and blessed the very God who had just taken what many of us would consider to be our right. He gave love to his people, controlled his thoughts, reminded them of the beauty of freedom, and did not complain.

At times in life, you, like Moses will not get what you want. It’s not “if” but “when”. What defines you then is not whether you get what you want, but how you react when you don’t. At a time that our nation elects a new President amidst a generation of entitlement, and we work through a pandemic of fear, not getting what we want is a certainty like never before. This is also personal to me this week because my family experienced a very real, and very difficult moment of not getting what we wanted a few days ago. So yes, the election and COVID are easy examples but these ideas apply all over our lives.

Let’s learn from Moses and others who have taken such moments of defeat and converted them into energy for winning. Instead of the adult equivalent of a tantrum in the grocery store cookie aisle when mom says no to your request for every treat on the shelves, let’s practice the art of not getting what we want. As a nice little blogger that wants to make it easy, I’ll give you four ideas to start:

1. Lean Toward Love

Let me start with a few questions. When was the last time anger and hate got you what you wanted? More importantly, when was the last time you didn’t get what you wanted and responding with anger or hate, turned the outcome in your favor? When your spouse was upset with you about something you said, and you got angry, did that make them feel better and not upset? I’m guessing not.

When you don’t get your way and at a time when you least feel like it, you must gain control of your emotions and lean toward love (cough* LIFE principle #1 *cough). Your lizard brain will tell you to respond with anger and selfishness. But your lizard brain is trying to save you from a physical threat because it equates your frustration with the same survival response as being threatened by a grizzly bear. In 2020, as hard as your life might seem, not getting your way is not an existential threat in 99.9% of circumstances.

If you’re doubting me and want to go with the, “oh but my life is sooo hard” argument, you might be right but let’s take a look at someone first. Nelson Mandela is best known for his leadership in South Africa out of apartheid and into racial reconciliation unlike the nation had ever seen. He was the first Black head of state and first elected president through proper democratic means. Sounds like a guy who got what he wanted, right?

Well, let’s take it back a few years to 1962 when the government of the time imprisoned him for life for leading an anti-government movement. He was released 27 years later only because of the political pressure building across the nation. If you were imprisoned for nearly half of your life for speaking the truth, how would you respond when you were released? Mandela went straight to Cape Town and gave a speech to hundreds of thousands where he spoke to his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the very people who called for his imprisonment decades earlier. He insisted that his main priority was peace and ensuring the Black majority had the right to vote. He didn’t speak to his imprisonment hardly at all. He didn’t recount the past and go through all who had wronged him. He focused on the future, peace, and leaned toward love.

If your life is too hard to lean toward love when you don’t get your way, no judgment from me. But I wonder if Mandela’s hardship and ensuing response to 27 years in prison that he surely didn’t want, can give some perspective on the power of leaning toward love even when it’s difficult to do so.

2. Control what you can control

In a recent article for Esquire, Rich Roll said, “suffering is a product of expectations unmet. Serenity, on the other hand, is calibrated in inverse proportion to one’s attachment to outcomes.” Sounds complicated but I love it. Essentially, Rich is telling us to let go of our attachment to outcomes in our lives. That if we want to suffer, the best way to do it, is to tie ourselves to outcomes that we don’t actually control.

Others have said similar things through the ages. “There is only one way to happiness,” Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” Another famed Stoic, Marcus Aurelius stated, “When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.” A grounding principle of stoicism is to control what you can control. To put energy not into controlling circumstance but rather controlling thought and action in response to those circumstances.

I’ll bring it into the modern age for you, too. In his recent book Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday told us that, “What we need in life…is to loosen up, to become flexible, to get to a place where there is nothing in our way – including our own obsession with certain outcomes.” It would seem philosophers through time have asked us to get out of our own way on the journey to happiness. They have told us that to be happy, we must release ourselves from controlling what is out of our control.

Do your part and control what you can. Control your vote. Control your thoughts. Control your actions. At some point though, the wise person recognizes that she has done what she can, and now her attention shifts to controlling her response to the outcomes.

3. Recognize the beauty

One thing that seems to make accepting not getting what we want, so difficult, is that our society is full of messages that we shouldn’t accept it. Terms like “self-love”, “self-care”, and others of the like have been twisted to mean self-indulgence. On the other end, we have the self-help gurus who tell you that if you don’t get what you want, you just need to work more hours, fight harder, and so on. Some of that is valid but it all negates the truth that there can be a lot of beauty in disappointment if we choose to see it.

Ephesians 3:20 is one of those Bible verses you see more tattoos of than people who actually know what it means. “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is within us, be the glory…” Whew, that sounds nice, right? God can do more than I can even imagine? That’s my guy!

Maybe you missed something there though. If He will do more than you can imagine, guess what the outcomes you imagine mean to Him. Probably not much. This means that sometimes, what you think you want and believe you need; you won’t get. Your imagination isn’t big enough to know what you might actually want and need so you have to trust that disappointment could potentially be what’s best for you.

Now I know that’s tough, especially if you aren’t a Christian but the principle stands true in the secular world too. Consider the most impactful charity you can. I’ll bet if you go look at that charity’s history, there was a moment of disappointment. Someone lost their life to breast cancer, a child died way too early from a disease, or someone watched others suffer from a lack of basic nutrition. That disappointment surely isn’t what anyone wanted, and we wouldn’t want it now, but out of it came beauty that has changed the world.

When you don’t get your way, maybe step back far enough to see that there might be a bigger picture at play. Choose to see the beauty in disappointment when you can. It doesn’t mean to not be sad or upset but it’s about moving that energy, after some time, to beauty.

4. Stop Complaining

Perhaps the most common, and yet least productive, response to not getting what we want is complaining. We complain about pretty much everything. We hope for a job and then complain about it when we get it. We start a new relationship and then complain we don’t have as much free time. We complain about not having money and then about the burdens of doing what it takes to get it. Our ability to complain unites us – we pretty much all are good at it and do it whenever we can.

This isn’t all our individual fault though. There is such a thing as the negative bias that states, “even when of equal intensity, things of negative nature have a greater effect on our minds than those of positive nature.” So, when we don’t get our way, our brain fixates on the negative emotions that come with it and we have to be really intentional to do otherwise.

That intention can take two forms. One, you can move toward gratitude by thinking about and being thankful for all that you do have instead of fixating on that one thing you didn’t get. If your candidate loses the election, pick your eyes up and see that your house is still standing, the family is still around you, and you will eat dinner tonight. Two, you can create productive action. When you complain, you sit still and whine. Instead, figure out a productive action to take now in response to not getting what you wanted. Maybe your candidate didn’t win but it ignited a passion for service and politics, consider what you can do with that now.

Marcus Aurelius said it beautifully. “Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it’s unendurable… then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well. Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so. In your interest, or in your nature.”

Put another way, complaining won’t help you in any situation. Train your mind to endure disappointment and the disappointment loses its grip on you.

Recap

When you don’t get your way, it’s easy to regress a couple of decades to fist-pounding tantrums on the living room floor. I get it, it feels good to let it out. The bigger problem is when that tantrum grows to a lifestyle of complaining, victimhood, and anger. It’s slippery on that side of the fence. I know, I’ve been there. The negative bias we all carry makes us more aware of the bad things in life than the good so when we don’t get our way, the default is ugly.

This weekend, I hope you can start to practice the art of not getting your way. Love first. Control your thoughts and behaviors. Recognize that there is always beauty around you. Leave complaining behind.

I heard from many that this week was incredibly stressful, and it will continue to be as this election cycle and this year, continue. But the next few months are coming at you whether you want them or not. Your only choice is to use them to grow or let them destroy you. Your response to not getting what you want will dictate which way you go.

Weekend Challenge

This weekend reflect on something you didn’t get that you really wanted. Maybe it was an A in your anthropology class in college that you took as an elective that didn’t really matter but you earned yourself that 89.9% and the professor refused to round up (just a random example…). It could have been a date with the popular person in high school who rejected you and dated your friend instead. I’ll bet it’s happening right now as a pandemic and the response to it messes with your plans, your vote maybe didn’t get the result you hoped, or your job can’t give you that annual bonus because of budget cuts.

Whatever it is, take a minute to write down what you didn’t get and then think about how your response could be more productive with 1, 2, or all 4 of the principles above.

The stoics knew it, Jesus preached it, Buddha taught it…can you live well even when you don’t get what you want?

Have a great weekend, all! Share with me how these 4 principles are working (or not working) for you.

Best today. Better tomorrow.