My summer has definitely had its moments of frustration. A wrist fracture in June prevented me from riding on my family mountain biking trip in early July. Then too much trail running on the vacation resulted in a knee issue that has limited me further, while I’m also still healing the wrist!
We all prefer it when things go the way we like. Yet life is filled with small and big inconveniences and frustrations. There is so much in life that is out of our control and can surprise us in unsettling ways: health setbacks, changes at work, unforeseen home repairs, challenging relationships, navigating a pandemic, etc.
Some days we can roll with it. Other days it wears on us and takes away our energy, focus and joy.
Why Do We Get So Irked?
If you are anything like me you might wonder at times why frustration is such a part of our mental/emotional landscape. While it varies from person to person, here are a few things we share that create this experience:
1. Uncertainty and a Lack of Control. Our ‘survival brain’, that older part of our nervous system that evolved to protect us from threats, doesn’t like uncertainty. If we can’t predict our future, if we don’t have the control we might like, we feel a sense of unease.
2. Negativity Bias. We are wired to pay extra attention to threats and changes that affect our: i) status, ii) ability to predict the future, iii) autonomy, iv) relatedness, and v) fairness (David Rock, Your Brain at Work). In the past, our safety and survival depended on feeling secure in these areas. Today, we are still very sensitive to them.
3. Our Mental/Emotional State. If we are calm, relaxed, feeling fulfilled in life, and secure in ourselves, we tend to be far more agile and adaptable to changes in our world. But when we are tired, overwhelmed, experience a loss, feel afraid, or have not been taking care of our own needs first, even little things get to us. We tend to overreact and take things far too personally.
Start with Mindset
If you have ever experienced white water rafting, you know the feeling of relinquishing some level of control. The force of the river, particularly through the rapids, is too powerful to resist. You look ahead and navigate the rocks and rapids as best you can, while undeniably submitting to the flow. Then, you catch your breath and relax momentarily in the quiet water that follows the rapids.
In so many ways, life is like white water rafting. The flow of life is undeniable, as we are pulled along, whether we like it or not. With every corner of the river (and every new day) there is a new experience. Depending on the river we are rafting (or the circumstances in our life), these experiences can span a wide range of emotions, including excitement, fear, anxiety, joy, overwhelm, pride, calm, frustration and a host of others.
The more we approach life like white water rafting – where we shift our mindset to one where the journey is everything – the more we can relax and feel less frustration through it. As I’ve written about before, in the flow of life we never get to some mythical ‘there’! But our ‘survival brain’ can easily become obsessed with thinking it will someday get there if we just work a little harder.
“The size of the gap between how we think the world should unfold, and how it actually unfolds, is proportional to how stressed we are.”
Aziz Velji, author of Calm Brain, Powerful Mind
Five Tools to Deal with Frustration
Whether you are navigating the white water on the river, or the inherent difficulties in life, the goal in both cases is to face these experiences with confidence! Confidence that you are up for the frustrations and challenges. Confidence that you have the skills you need to come out the other side. Confidence that you can potentially even thrive, despite the fear you might feel at times. Your ‘survival brain’ will argue for more control. Confidence comes from focusing on what genuinely is in your control and letting go of the rest.
Here are five tools that will allow you to deal with frustration in life, big or small:
1. Be Present. When we are not in the present moment, our ‘survival brain’ has us obsessing about various fearful futures or ruminating on both the glories and traumas of the past. Both of which diminish our ability to respond with agility to what is coming at us now. It also makes it harder to see and appreciate the good all around us.
2. Practice Acceptance. Rather than resist or deny our current circumstances, we learn to practice acceptance and embrace the whole journey. Life has difficulty and pain - it is part of the package. Resistance to the pain (in whatever form it takes) is what our mind does on Autopilot. But this only creates more suffering.
3. Be Patient. Our ‘survival mind’ likes things to happen ‘now’! This goes back to our desire for certainty and control. What if you could use the frustration you feel as you go through times of difficulty as an opportunity to build patience? What if you could remember that nothing worthwhile comes without some difficulty and that much of what we are most proud of in our life was hard won?
4. Practice Gratitude. These days gratitude is big part of my work. Why? Gratitude works on so many levels. It remains one of the quickest circuit breakers to move past frustration, judgment, anger and most of the negative emotions.
5. Meditate. Meditation and mindfulness practices are tools that help us get better at all of the above. They are a form of mental training and personal mastery. There is a reason that modern science has arrived in the same place as ancient wisdom when it comes to meditation. It works!
Conclusion
How about you? Where are you experiencing difficulty or feeling frustrated these days? How about the people on your team? Know that difficulty is part of the journey and that frustration is to be expected.
Shift your mindset to expect difficulty and reframe how you see it. Practice these five tools and see if they don’t allow you to navigate life with more calm, clarity and ease.
To find out more how meditation and mindfulness training is helping brilliant people like you go further, reach out to me at scott@mindfulwisdom.ca. You can also visit www.mindfulwisdom.ca to learn more about the work I do and what’s possible in your world.
Image Credit: Cynthia Andres, Unsplash