We love the Forrest Gump line. Life is like a box of chocolates.
We quote it when things go sideways. When the deal falls through. When the hire doesn’t work out. When the meeting turns into something we didn’t see coming.
But here’s what we don’t say out loud: we’re not surprised by the chocolates. We’re surprised by the ones we specifically told ourselves wouldn’t be there.
That’s not surprise. That’s an expectation meeting reality.
In business, this pattern shows up every day. The leader who rewards agreement and punishes dissent. The founder who hires for culture fit and then wonders why no one challenges them. The executive who needs validation to move forward and calls it “alignment.”
Tell me what I want to hear and we call it culture. It isn’t. It’s appetite management.
Emotional regulation is the only edge we fully control. Markets shift. People disappoint. Plans break. But the space between stimulus and response, that’s ours. Viktor Frankl called it the last human freedom. We’re still figuring out what to do with it.
If the disappointments keep coming, at some point the honest question isn’t about the chocolates.
It’s about who packed the box.
