On Sept. 11, 2001, my cousin had overslept and missed his usual ferry to New York City. That commute had him walking through the lobby of 1 World Trade Center in order to get to his job in downtown Manhattan. He boarded a later ferry, and rather than walking through 1 World Trade Center at the time that it was struck by a plane, he saw the whole thing unfold from that later boat.
While I imagine seeing the impact was devastating on its own, it certainly wasn’t as traumatic as it would have been to be in the building.
I often roll my eyes or get angry at the trope of things happening for a reason, but it’s clear that my cousin hitting snooze that day could have potentially saved his life. I’m sure he was irritated at the time—knowing he’d be running late, wondering how that would impact the rest of his day—but that irritation was a tiny price to pay for his safety that day.
This is the premise of the “burnt toast theory” that’s taking over TikTok right now—something that’s incredibly upsetting or frustrating might actually be setting you up or clearing the way for something better.
Tell Me More About the Burnt Toast Theory…
The burnt toast theory is a way of making sense of setbacks and trusting that they are clearing the path for something better to come. It comes from the idea that you can see burning your toast as a colossal wrench thrown in your morning that is going to ruin your day and then your life—or you can see the burnt toast as keeping you out of harm’s way or even putting you in the right place at the right time instead.
What happened to me in 2013 is what made me a personal believer in this theory. I was laid off and then had a grueling and demoralizing job search. An introduction from a friend helped me score an interview to run social media for my dream company.
It comes from the idea that you can see burning your toast as a colossal wrench thrown in your morning that is going to ruin your day and then your life—or you can see the burnt toast as keeping you out of harm’s way or even putting you in the right place at the right time instead.
As you can probably guess, I didn’t get that job. I was devastated, and it felt like an even bigger setback at the time. However, a few months later, that company had a major brand crisis, which I would have had to oversee, running their social media. By then, I was already at my dream job.
Had I gotten that first “dream job,” I never would have gotten the actual dream job. Not only that, I managed to dodge a major crisis by working for the less controversial brand. I was able to see the burnt toast theory only in retrospect in this case, but I’ve since applied what I’ve learned to my own life and my work with clients as a therapist.
What the Burnt Toast Theory Isn’t
I may be a therapist in Los Angeles now, but at my core, I’m still a cynical journalist and New Yorker, so I do not subscribe to toxic positivity messaging. The burnt toast theory doesn’t apply to traumas. It’s more relevant to things like breakups or job loss, in my view.
How the Burnt Toast Theory Can Help You Cope with Life’s Hardships
The idea of the “burnt toast theory” is that we’re all going to face setbacks in our lives. We can’t control these setbacks, but what we can control is how we respond to them. Learn how the burnt toast theory can help you through the hard times.
It Teaches You Self-Compassion
I don’t know about you, but I’m more likely to blame myself for something like burnt toast than I am to blame the toaster or the bread. (Sweet, beautiful carbs would never do anything to hurt me.) But I have news for you: you are smarter than the toaster, and even geniuses have burnt a piece of toast or two in their day.
The idea of the “burnt toast theory” is that we’re all going to face setbacks in our lives. We can’t control these setbacks, but what we can control is how we respond to them.
I believe that sometimes we do need a pity party, and it can feel good to indulge in those feelings—and then let them go. But after you’ve had your pity party telling yourself that you’re the only idiot who would really mess up their own morning by forgetting your work laptop at home, I want you to take a moment to remember the common humanity of these frustrations.
The burnt toast theory is so popular on TikTok because clearly many people can resonate with thinking that they’re alone in feeling disproportionately angry by small things. But a key piece of self-compassion is realizing that your feelings are completely normal—and that most people in your shoes would likely feel the same way.
It Encourages Mindfulness
In the face of a small inconvenience or setback, many of us are likely to catastrophize and make a mountain out of a molehill. You’re obviously not alone because you’ve probably seen many mountains, but have you ever seen a molehill?
Jokes aside, when we are catastrophizing, we are blowing a situation out of proportion. Sure, there’s some extraordinarily bad luck where missing the train means missing the meeting, which means losing your job, but that kind of bad luck is rare.
Taking a moment to consider how the burnt toast theory can help you be more mindful and see the reality of your situation for what it is rather than what you’re afraid of it being.
Sometimes a piece of toast is just a piece of toast.
It Can Help You Find Clarity
To use the burnt toast as a literal example, maybe you burnt your toast in the morning, AND it was the last piece of bread you had. You’re really disappointed, but then you remember that you actually have a big tub of yogurt in your fridge, and it’s about to go bad. You have the yogurt, and you realize that you’re more satiated by its protein than you would have been by the toast, anyway.
Sometimes you will realize that what you thought you wanted wasn’t what you really wanted at all.
And while we all want the power and ability to make these decisions for ourselves, some of us (me) need to be hit over the head in order to realize this.
In the case of my “dream” job, the company I thought I wanted to work for was a fashion brand. I had no professional experience in the fashion industry, but my social media skills were transferable, and I thought it would be so cool to work for a brand I’d loved for so long.
However, it took missing out on this job to help me hone in on the fact that I wanted to take my experience in the fitness industry from my side hustle into my main gig, and this helped me find the actual dream job. And my connections at that job led to many other things, such as writing on this site that you’re reading.
It Can Help You Move Forward
So often, my clients are looking for closure in a given situation. And I don’t blame them—many endings leave us with more questions than answers. I also believe that closure is usually a fallacy, though, and most attempts at closure only bring up more questions.
They want to know why they were dumped or why they lost that job. They often believe that having the answer to that question is what will help them move forward. The problem is that, in doing that, you’re stuck in the past.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s value in examining the past, just as long as you’re simply visiting it, not dwelling there.
Choosing to believe that being passed up for the promotion or being ghosted by that guy is clearing the way for something better that can help you move forward. The reality is that you may never get the answers you need, so it’s more helpful to forge ahead on your path rather than searching for clues in the sand. You can start planning what you need to do in order to move your career forward or think about how you want to alter your dating strategy in hopes of a different outcome next time.
But at the end of the day, meaning-making is a way of coping with grief, and it can actually be really healthy as long as you’re also dealing with the feelings.