Think about all those times that you become frustrated where things are not going as you expected. It can make you annoyed and angry at not being able to do things correctly. This could result in wanting to figure out what's going on, how can you get better at what you’re doing, or it might go in the complete opposite direction, where you might say, I'm going to move on to something else, it's not worth my time. We all experience frustration throughout our lives and how we handle it can be critical turning points in deciding to move forward in our pursuit or wanting to retreat to safety.
Most of the time retreating to safety is not going to benefit you. It could be a temporary solution to help figure things out but staying there is not going to make you stronger. Frustration is there to trigger an emotional response where it causes you to want to act to what you're facing. You can choose to let those negative emotions of disappointment and sadness get to you where you decide to go with what's easier. Or it can be a motivator to help you seek change and growth. Either side of this frustration is when you become uncomfortable, and this is done because it is trying wake you up to the fact that things need to be done better.
Frustration comes down to when we lack the knowledge skills or resources to execute our objective, our goals. Whatever it is that we're striving for, in our heads we like to play things out almost in absolutes, where it's either it's all going to play out very smoothly or it's going to be a miserable experience filled with so many let downs. If you're thinking that things will be a disaster then one of the obvious choices is to not even do it at all, that kind of saves you from all the headache of going through that process.
If you decide to go through with it anyway and you're still having those negative thoughts, you're already setting yourself up to not give your best. It's almost as if you're looking for all those reasons for why things are not going to work out. But if you expect things to just go smoothly then that also is going to set you up for a bigger surprise of disappointment which can be also difficult to be able to navigate through. By being able to have that balance between the two of that optimism and pessimism you can combine them to give you a sense of what you may expect that acclimates you to when frustration does kick in.
Recognize what you are lacking
Frustration begins when knowledge ends. That you don't have the answers to the problem or situation that you're facing currently. You want to resolve things immediately and when you don’t, it can trigger feelings of not being enough. The longer it takes you to resolve what is annoying you, the more daunting it feels, like it is weighing on you mentally. This is that competitive side wanting to get back up and figure out a way. A simple example would be I want to perform as well as those athletes I seen on tv, where I envision myself having the same type of success. Then when I do not perform as what I saw, it's very natural for me to become frustrated.
But how can I expect to succeed at a level that I saw where I might be lacking the players knowledge. I don't know what training regimen they were on or what exercises they've done to mentally prepare themselves for what they positioned themselves for. I'm only seeing the final product, all that allure attracts me to what they did, wanting to emulate them. So once that frustration kind of settles down and we're more into that evaluation mode there could be a tendency to ask ourselves what do I need to do to get at where I want to be. What knowledge or resources do I need to close that gap from where I am now to where I want to be.
Being able to ask yourself these types of questions is going to be crucial to get past the frustration. The first step in anything is being able to recognize what is going on, having that objective view where you can find the truth instead of trying to justify your actions. In finding the truth, it's going to be very important to not let those emotions get in the way of evaluating things properly so this means not watering things down so it eases the pain but also not being overly critical where it makes you timid going forward.
Sometimes we can find ourselves in a situation to protect our confidence or ego. We might say, I did do that right so why am I not getting the results that I expected when really, we got to come to ask ourselves, did I really do that correctly, did I do everything in my power to execute with excellence. What you're going to realize over time is that there's always going to be room for you to get better, that good is not just good enough, that you need to consistently be making progress. When you can get to this type of thinking, frustration will still be present but it's going to be a lot more manageable where it's not going to dissuade you from wanting to retreat to safety.
Embracing this outlook is going to continuously be seeking for more and more knowledge, to the point where you enjoy it that it becomes about growing and not so much the result. This breaks free from that thinking that the destination is it, but it's always about improving ourselves. This is only going to increase your confidence going forward because each time that you hit a wall and you become frustrated that things are not unfolding in a certain way, you have experienced enough frustration that it only becomes a motivator to you. It forces you to be more resourceful to find a way to climb that wall, break through it or maybe just go around it.
Handling frustration
One of the first things that you're going to ask yourself is what's wrong, why are things not happening as expected. It's very natural to want to find an excuse or blame others for what's going on, that the lack of results is because they're not understanding or following what you want. If those thoughts happen to cross your mind that means that anything that you do is irrelevant so that means you don't have the power to do anything about it. Instead, make it a point to say that was on me, that I came up short because that signals, I can do something about it going forward. If it's in the hands of somebody else, you become powerless to affect the outcome. The more that you're able find how you can improve the more accountable you hold yourself.
After you've experienced this initial emotion of annoyance or anger make sure to get through your session. Avoid immediately quitting at the first sign of things not working out correctly. It's OK to fumble through some things but make sure to correct in whatever way you can. Keep going forward even if it's just making small improvements here and there. This might require you just to take a step back and evaluate things to see what is the first thing that I can do right now to make this go a little bit smoother. It could be that you slow it down where you take those baby steps of actually walking through things.
Focusing on the fundamentals helps ensure you can do things better each time. This could be a homework assignment, work project or sports in general where you break things down in their simplest form so it does not look like one big obstacle to overcome. Think of it as a puzzle, some puzzles only have a few pieces while some have hundreds or thousands of pieces, but the concept is still the same it's one piece at a time. And the main difference between the puzzles with a few pieces and those with thousands of pieces is that it just requires patience and the ability to sort through so many different shapes and pictures on each piece.
Exercise patience
The next thing that's needed when you're experiencing frustration is patience. That's the antidote to frustration because it helps to bring those emotions back down to where it's not running your way of thinking that's going to make you act in an erratic way. What patience gives you is the time to figure things out, where you understand that the moment that you're feeling right now is not the end and it is just a moment in time. If you actually kept the scorecard of all the times that you were sad and angry and disappointed you might be surprised at how often you experienced it, but you've probably forgotten about most of them.
Maybe only a few of them actually resonated with you but for the most part they become irrelevant months and years later down the line. We might get disappointed if we didn't have our favorite foods on a certain day, or if the item that you wanted to buy for so long hasn't been available or that time you spilled a drink on one of your shirts. All these little things that we might have gotten flustered about are largely not important so we shouldn't let just a little moment in time dictate our perspective. Now this is different from some pivotal moments that we have that can change the course of our lives but for the most part frustration will pass.
Patience is going to help you see things through and gives you enough time to find that information, that knowledge that you really need to close the gap on what you're lacking. We're not born knowing so it takes time to find what it is that we're looking for. Sometimes it can be relatively quick to find that information you need and other times it's going to take a while.
When you can find that right knowledge that fits you it can feel very invigorating where you gain so much more confidence and even enthusiasm for how you're going to go about things going forward. That you can use your experience of what you did wrong and combine that with how to do things right and say I know what to avoid for the next time and do this instead. Sometimes the mistakes that we make are merely just tearing down the walls of being timid and gives us greater perspective and builds that resilience.
Price to gain knowledge and not gaining it
Take that initiative to gather that knowledge because it is a powerful force that will determine how well you execute. There is a price to pay when seeking that knowledge because it requires time and commitment, but it will be worth it. It’s going to open you up to a whole new world of resourcefulness that gives you the confidence that you can pursue new things even when you lack knowledge. That it just means that you've been down this road of unknown and you’ll work to figure out what information you need to get yourself going.
We grow when we are pushed to our limits and when we can stretch ourselves past what we think we can we come to find out that we're capable of so much more. The process can be long and difficult at times, but it just means that it's furthering your desire to learn. Start by looking and searching for whatever knowledge is going to empower you. We have so much more information at our disposal than ever before, and it just requires a little bit of figuring out what questions to ask ourselves such as what information do I need so I can execute at a high level or at least to get me going.
Ask those around you, ask people who are on that same path you are on or who've been on the path on that path before. They'll be able to point you in the right direction and offer great advice on what worked for them and what didn’t. It's almost like getting months and years of experience in a condensed version to save you time from having to experience certain hardships but also to speed up the process so you can reach new heights. That knowledge that you need is not going to come and find you so you got to make it a priority to by all means find as much useful information as you can and apply it so you can be more effective.
There is also a price to pay in not finding that knowledge which is missed opportunities that are more costly because it means wondering what could have been, possibly living in the past. What this leads to over a long period of time is frustration with yourself whether you know it or not. That frustration is going to spill over into different parts of your life where maybe you're mad at everybody, mad at the world, looking for reasons why you can't catch a break. When frustration leads the way, it clouds us from being able to find effective solutions. Where every single problem that is faced is seen as a nail where the only action that is known is to hit it every time with a hammer.
What we'll come to find out is that our problems are not a one-size-fits-all where if you do things only with brute force or only using the tools you are familiar with, you limit the outcomes that possible. Sometimes it can feel that frustration is not worth it but that is only in the short term, it's trying to trick you into thinking that it's much better to be comfortable in that state of everything is fine. But what is forgotten is in being comfortable is when weakness sets in.
Think about if you mostly sit on the couch and just watch TV, over time your body is going to get weak, your bones are going to lose its density, your muscle is going to lose its mass so from a physical standpoint you are getting weaker. The negative side of frustration is that it wants you to only be in that comfortable state where you're just sitting on the couch distracting you from making progress in your life. If this happens to cross your mind where you say I'm going to give in to frustration and not do what's difficult, remind yourself that it is the road to becoming weak. Instead see what difficult as short-term pain is to get to a new level of resiliency.
Process of theory to practical knowledge
Once you acquire the knowledge that you need to make progress and things are still not coming together as you expected you got to know that it takes time to go from that theory stage to the practical stage. If we remember from learned behaviors, we learn our behaviors through cognitive learning and habitual learning. In this state of using that information that you gain it's about that cognitive learning where you're trying to figure out how exactly you're going to do it. If you happen to watch instructional videos, we're only seeing the final edited version when probably they filmed it, there were a lot of mistakes that they had to correct because it didn't work out on the first try or maybe even the second try.
Remind yourself as your working to get better that it gradually improves. Now there are sometimes where it just clicks right away, and everything just falls into place but that is rare. When you can embrace the process of these things takes time it makes handling the frustration that you experience so much more manageable. It might be helpful when you're taking in a lot of information to simplify it in a form where you can act instead of trying to overthink every little thing.
Focus on one thing at a time to where it just sticks before moving on to something else. So don't just practice it until you get it right but practice it until you can't get it wrong, where that muscle memory just takes over. If you ever found yourself really excited after you just made a breakthrough in that frustration that you were struggling with that same excitement can cloud us from remembering, how exactly did I do that. So then we forget all the fundamental things that it took to make it happen and we got to start all over again instead of building on what was learned.
In the beginning when you're applying that information in a practical sense it's going to be lumpy where you're not in rhythm and it might seem like sometimes you miss, sometimes you hit sometimes you continue to miss and then you hit. Just keep consistently at it and eventually you're going to find a rhythm that works for you. Just like riding a bike or throwing a ball or learning how to write, all these things in the beginning requires focus where you look at the results or even the process and it just looks very sloppy.
Avoid feeling bad and just know that just means you're willing to stick with it. It takes time to refine things where you’re getting the hang of it. Where in the moment it might seem like you're not making progress but being able to just withstand that uncomfortableness and look towards tomorrow where you tell yourself I will be better or saying I know where I improved today. It might even help to write down the specifics of what you're going through so that self-doubt you might be experiencing or the frustration that you're going through is less overwhelming to help you evaluate things to get in the solutions mode.
You might say I'm not good at this because I'm not understanding a specific part of the process and when you read it back to yourself it's going to help you see what exactly is preventing you from catching on. The more that you're able to do this and the days go on you can reflect back on day one to day 2,3,4 and 5 and you're going to see a noticeable difference where maybe from day 2 to 3 you've made a significant change but from day 1 or 2 it was very small. But what is small does not mean it's insignificant those small steps are enough to get that momentum going where you can build on it.
Final thoughts
Frustration is a natural emotion that we will experience, and it is up to each one of us to figure out how we're going to use it to our advantage. Are we going to give into it and give up in our pursuit of what we're aiming for or are we going to use it as a motivator to see what knowledge is needed to overcome this wall that we’re hitting right now. Figure out what mistakes or what you need to do better for the next time, see how you can practically apply the knowledge that you gain so you can build that momentum.
Be accountable to yourself by taking that initiative to find what it is you need; the information is not going to come and find you so it's on you to figure out what you need and how you're going to get it. Have the patience to be able to stick with things as you’ll better be able to manage that frustration from taking over. Knowledge truly is power so make it a priority to gain more.
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