[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Frustration is unavoidable because things do not always go as we would like. Actually, throughout life, we will experience many situations which will make us feel frustrated. Examples in our professional life can be:
- You prepare a presentation with enthusiasm and someone picks it apart raising objections.
- You believe that your proposal offers the client exactly what he needs. He says he will think about it and finally rejects it without explanations.
- Maybe you think you have a fantastic idea but your boss’s reaction is quite the opposite of excited.
- You work on a project for months with enthusiasm and in the end the result is not the desired.
- Perhaps you want to save somebody from upset with an advice but they disregard it.
- You put yourself an objective but however much you work towards it, you do not seem to accomplish it or at least not the way you wished.
How does frustration appear
We can get frustrated when our desires are not fulfilled. When we live situations that do not fit with our desires and expectations, frustration can also appear. We feel frustration when we do not get what we want or what we obtain does not seem to correspond to the effort made. This feeling expresses itself in the shape of discomfort, annoyance, anger, anguish, anxiety or sadness. We might feel that we have failed. Our self-esteem can suffer. We may feel like giving up or even burned out.
Moreover, we live in a consumer society where marketing aims at making us feel dissatisfied. It creates the desire for a certain thing that will help us be happier, more desired, more successful. Once the momentary gratification of having the object has passed, we feel unsatisfied and frustrated again.
When we have low frustration tolerance, we react to any setback exaggeratedly. We may consider it just another failure to add to the list. We might feel that our desires never fulfill, that we are ignored, that we never reach our goals.
“#Frustration is caused by a society which asks us to be what we are not and blames us for being what we are.” #AlejandroJodorowsky #frustrationtolerance Click To Tweet
Frustration tolerance can be learned
As kids, we do not know how to tolerate frustration. We believe that all our desires should be fulfilled, and instantly. Through experiences where our parents refuse a wish or promise it for later, we learn to postpone gratification of desires. Not only that but we also learn to differentiate between needs and desires.
As kids, we should learn that there are wishes whose gratification will not be immediate and will be greater if we work for it ourselves. That we often need patience. We also develop the empathy that our desires and needs are not the only ones but that others also have theirs. And that their aspirations might not be correspond with ours.
All these learnings depend on the education received and the experiences made with our parents, family, teachers and friends.
As kids, we have a hard time dealing with #frustration. It requires a learning process to postpone #gratification of our desires. #FrustrationTolerance Click To Tweet
How to improve frustration tolerance
In daily life we experience frustrations or possible frustrations. The question is how we deal with them. Do you get angry? Do you get depressed? We do not like to be argued with, criticised, discredited or ignored. We do not like not to obtain what we want. Frustration is therefore normal, however we can learn to deal better with it.
Learn to deal with negative emotions
There is nothing wrong with feeling negative emotions. Anger or sadness have their reason for being same as happiness. But how long do these emotions last and how intense are they? Are you blinded by anger and cannot continue working because you cannot think about anything else? Do you sit at your desk on the verge of tears like a lost soul? Do you stop talking to people for hours, days or more? Or do harbour a grudge for a long time?
Pay attention to your emotions. In the moment of frustration, become aware and accept the negative emotion. Breathe slowly and profoundly for a couple of exhalations until you feel calmer. Consider the consequences an emotional outburst might have. Think about why the situation causes you so much discomfort and which ways out and solutions you have. We tend to believe that there is only one way to achieve what we want. However, many roads lead to Rome and also to achieving our objectives.
Discomfort and negative emotions are a warning that something displeases us and is improvable. Therefore the solution is neither to ignore them nor looking for instant gratifications to distract ourselves from the situation. If we avoid the issue, we will not learn to control how we react or to look for solutions.
“#Frustration is an interesting #emotionalstate, because it tends to bring out the worst in whoever is frustrated.” #DanielHandler #frustrationtolerance Click To Tweet
Differentiate between needs and desires
Needs are physiological and require to be satisfied at the earliest possible. Examples are hunger, thirst, sleep, the need for protection from cold. Desires are things we want in order to improve our situation, comfort and life. It is not a matter of life and death to satisfy a desire. If we want to improve our frustration tolerance, we need to learn to distinguish between needs and desires. We need to learn that not all desires will be fulfilled or not in the way we imagine.
Learning to relativise failures is also helpful. How serious is the setback really? Is there another way to reach your goal? What can you learn from this failure?
Accept what is
Accept that things are not always as you would like. Situations will not occur in a certain way just because you want them to. This also depends on other factors and people. The resistance to what is just causes stress and frustration. Therefore, we ought to learn to differentiate between what we want to occur, what probably will occur and what really happens.
This does not mean we cannot try to improve a situation or try for others to understand our point of view. But if we do it out of frustration instead of acceptance we will neither be very imaginative and creative looking for solutions nor very convincing.
Acceptance allows us to observe better, assess the issue from a different perspective and consider alternatives. Acceptance and empathy also help us consider the others’ points of view, why they make a certain decision, why they reject our idea, why they do not fulfill our desire. That way we can learn from the situation.
As Spanish mentalist and speaker Javier Luxor said in a talk I attended:
“Be humble to accept that there are more points of view. Be generous to accept that other points of view can be better.” #JavierLuxor #acceptance #frustration Click To Tweet
Train patience and perseverance
As we have seen before, desires are not always fulfilled immediately; if they are at all. Actually, the big desires and dreams require quite some patience and perseverance; patience to continue working towards our goals; patience to wait for the right moment. Persevering means motivating ourselves to continue, being tenacious and not losing heart when faced with the first obstacle. It also means to turn our desires in reachable and feasible goals.
“Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” #JoyceMeyer #frustration #frustrationtolerance Click To Tweet
Check your objectives and expectations
If you often feel frustrated, I suggest you check your expectations. What do you expect from life? What do you expect from the people around you? Consider whether your expectations are realistic. If you feel disappointed frequently you probably expect too much.
This also goes for your objectives. The objectives you have set yourself are realistic and attainable goals? If they are actually mere desires, you will have a hard time reaching them if you do not translate them into goals. Perhaps you have planned an objective deciding on deadline, desired outcome, milestones to reach and steps to go. If you see that you do not get closer to your goal you might want to check what could be wrong. The SMART model is very helpful with that.
Do you often feel #frustrated? You might want to check your #expectations and #objectives. #frustration #frustrationtolerance Click To Tweet
Do you have a good frustration tolerance?
Do you think you tolerate frustration well? Which situations or things do frustrate you particularly? What do you do to deal with frustration?
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