If It Makes You Unhappy, Get Rid of It
By: Viggy Hampton
Tags: Happiness, Self, Self Improvement, Mindset, Education

If It Makes You Unhappy, Get Rid of It

How the Sunk Cost Fallacy keeps you stuck in an uncomfortable holding pattern

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

My husband is currently in an MBA program, which means he’s studying a lot and he often talks to me about what he’s learning. Some of the things he tells me elicit a polite nod, maybe a smile, maybe a comment. But when he told me about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, I sat up and listened closely.

Maybe you’ve heard of the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but I certainly hadn’t. Basically, the idea is that people often make the mistake of continuing on with something they don’t enjoy (whether that be paying for piano lessons, taking back an ex-boyfriend, or finishing that crochet project) just because they’ve already spent so much time/money/energy on it already. In their heads, they’re thinking: I can’t just quit on this now, I’ve already come so far.

This concept makes intuitive sense. I have a closet full of high heels that are a) extremely uncomfortable and b) impractical for almost every facet of my daily life simply because they were expensive at the time and I don’t want to let go of them. In other words, I’ve sunk money into them, so they’re worth keeping, right?

I don’t think I’m the only one with a similar story, either.

Looking for the Sunk Cost Fallacy in your life

Take a seat, just for a moment. Get into a good breathing pattern and think about things that you’ve been doing lately that haven’t made you happy, things that have been weighing you down either physically or mentally, things that make you cringe and then shrug when you think about them.

Got a decent list? Good. Now let’s take a closer look.

Why does that hobby make you unhappy? Is it because you don’t really enjoy doing it, but you keep at it because you’ve already paid for lessons/supplies/joined a club? What about that relationship with an old friend? Do you dislike spending time with her because she spends the whole time complaining, but you’ve been friends for years and she already knows your history?

Let me tell you something: You don’t have to hold on to something just because you’ve already invested in it.

Let’s focus on that last word: fallacy

I was 100 pages into Anna Karenina, dreading every moment I spent dwelling on a page, trying to figure out who was who and how I was supposed to feel as the story unfolded. With that book in my hands, I wasn’t enjoying my time.

So you know what I did? I put the book down and stopped reading. I didn’t come back to it later, I didn’t keep it on my shelf just in case, I just put it in the ‘Donate’ box and started reading a different book, one that actually gripped me and reignited my love of literature.

I was so much happier because of it! I didn’t dwell on how I didn’t finish a book, or how since I’d already invested so much time, I might as well keep going to the end. That kind of thinking is misguided and is sure to leave you feeling miserable. You may think that continuing with something just because you’ve invested in it is somehow the ‘right’ thing to do, or that it will make you feel better in the long run.

The secret? That’s not true at all.

Give yourself permission to avoid the fallacy

Chances are, as you look around, you’ll see examples of the Sunk Cost Fallacy everywhere in your own life. I know I certainly have — my closet full of high heels, my shelves of ‘aspirational’ books that I don’t actually want to read, my sheet music carefully saved because I spent so much of my childhood at the piano.

As I see these things, I allow some self-compassion to creep in. I give myself permission to let go of these things that are weighing me down, and I feel so much lighter. You can do the same — dump the on/off partner, sell or donate the spiky high heels, stop the tennis lessons, give your knitting needles to a friend who actually wants them.

You’ll find that when you let go of these things, when you successfully avoid the fallacy, you’ll have so much more room in your life for things that actually make you happy.