“Accept things in life that are completely out of your control.”
Sometimes it’s not always easy to see the bright side of things but a new viral theory is encouraging people to embrace the bad things that happen to them because there’s usually a good reason for them. Coined on TikTok, the burnt toast theory is becoming increasingly popular, with many people now thoroughly embracing it as a means to view the world through a glass-half-full lens.
At its core, TikTok’s burnt toast theory is about reframing life’s inconveniences and failures with the belief that everything that happens is part of a bigger plan for your life. It’s all about optimism, really. It’s about giving reason to the moments of frustration or pain and it’s us telling ourselves that no matter what happens, the universe has our back. In a post that’s been liked by almost 100,000 users, TikToker Ingrid shared the meaning behind it.
Ingrid says in her viral post: “I recently learned about the burnt toast theory and it’s really been helping me accept things that are out of my control.”
Explaining the concept, she continued: ‘Burnt toast theory is the idea that if you burn your toast before work and it adds five to 10 minutes to your trip, it’s actually saving you from something catastrophic.”
“Maybe saving you from a car accident. Maybe saving me from someone who you don’t want to run into. But this is the idea that inconveniences in our lives, or when something releases us in the universe, it’s either saving us from something more detrimental or pushing us in the direction that we need to go in.”
The TikToker added: “I’ve often struggled with accepting things that are out of my control and I’ve struggled with being an anxious person at times.
“But adopting this and really thinking about it when I might be upset about something that is out of my control has really grounded me and allowed me to just have a little bit more peace in my life.”
She said: “Of course, you won’t know exactly what the burnt toast has saved you from, but that’s not the point.
“The point is to allow you to accept things in life that are completely out of your control. Give you more peace and ground you.”
So, is there any truth to TikTok’s burnt toast theory?
While there’s no way of proving that there’s a good reason behind the times when things go bad (and can be a really difficult one to acknowledge in relation to terrible crimes and deaths of innocent people), the theory is more of way to help us view life more optimistically – you didn’t get the job you really wanted because something better was on the way or your partner dumped you because, unknown to you at the time, you went on to meet your soulmate shortly after. Many of us like to find a way to navigate tricky times and having faith in the universe that it was for a good reason helps us accept and move on.
The burnt toast theory doesn’t feel as extreme as the toxic optimism that urges people to view every tragedy through rose-tinted glasses or to blindly claim that lucky girl syndrome will bring you wealth and happiness. There’s still an acknowledgement that whatever happened to you was objectively bad, but that feeling is followed by the movement forward into what good could potentially come from it.
At the end of the day, if the burnt toast theory helps people through tough times, we are all for it.
