What to Do When You’re Dissatisfied: Part I

Although for the most part I’ve had a happy life, I’ve been in many situations I’ve been dissatisfied with (a bad experience at a restaurant a few weeks ago, several jobs I’ve had in the past, and the last 10 years of my first marriage all come to mind). What to do?

The first thing is to pause and give thanks for the gift you’ve received. If sounds too Buddhist/New Age for you pretend you didn’t read it and skip down a paragraph.  Dissatisfaction is a gift because it gives you an opportunity to handle a situation, learn from it, and become more adept at handling such situations in the future. Framing the situation that way moves you from the irritation and anger you’re probably feeling to a calm sense that this is a situation you can master and transform. If you want to explore this idea further I recommend Naikan, by Gregg Krech.

You have two paths to handling your dissatisfaction. They’re not mutually exclusive; you can often follow them both simultaneously. The first option is to challenge the external source of your stress, and the second option is to change your internal response to the stress. For example, as I’m writing this I’m in Wheeler, Oregon and it’s starting to snow really hard. Tomorrow I was planning to get up early and drive two hours over winding roads and a mountain pass to get to two meetings I’ve scheduled in Portland. One of my options is to challenge the storm; I could leave now before it gets worse, or I could go buy chains for my rental car. Or, I can accept the storm, change my plans, and spend another day or two where I am.

Changing your internal response works best in the following situations:

• The aggravation is trivial in the grand scheme of things.
• The aggravation isn’t trivial, but it’s not likely to be repeated (a stranger sneezes on you on the bus – irritating, but you’re not likely to ever see him again).
• There is nothing you can do to change the situation (you are snowed in, there is nothing you can do, you might as well enjoy it).

Even as children we are all familiar with the idea of riding it out, grinning and bearing it, going with the flow, etc. I never thought seriously about this approach until I read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology Sisyphus committed multiple offenses against the Gods, and in punishment was given the task of rolling a huge boulder to the top of a hill. The twist on the punishment is the task is impossible; before Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill the boulder always slips away and rolls back down. Pointless, repetitive tasks are referred to as Sisyphean tasks. Camus’ essay suggests Sisyphus can attribute his own meaning to the task and take pleasure in the struggle (instead of defining success as reaching the top of the hill).

But what if you don’t want to change – what if you want the situation to change? I’ll discuss that in Part II.