I have a huge experience with frustration. I experienced it in so many
ways, at so many times in my life, that I feel like I’m some kind of a
specialist. If you wonder why I have this huge expertise, here’s the answer:
growth ever happens without it. The more frustration you are able to
harvest, resolve and overcome, the more growth you’re experiencing. Avoiding
it, hiding from it, deluding the game, none of these strategies will make you a
better human being. On the contrary.
What follows is a list of tools and approaches I used to solve my own
frustration and limitation episodes.
1. Accept Reality
Yes, something bad happened. Don’t spend your day imagining how beautiful
life could be if it wasn’t for that stupid incident or mistake. This is it. It
is frustrating, no doubt about it, but rejecting this reality will not lower
the frustration, on the contrary, will make it stronger and stronger. Accept
reality.
2. Shift Your Focus
It’s so easy to get caught in a spiral of anger and despair when you’re
frustrated, and I know that first hand. Shift your focus by engaging in small but demanding activities. Get
involved. Do take the necessary steps to get over the frustrating situation,
but do not ignore everything else around you.
3. Talk About It With A Friend
Find somebody you trust and talk about it. Let it out. Don’t let it grow
inside yourself until you explode. Most of the time, when you reach this point,
it’s too late to make a meaningful change that will restore your reality. Let
your worries and your tension fly. After all, this is what friends are for, right?
4. Journal It
If you don’t keep a journal, start now. Write down all your fears, all
your sensations and describe them in great detail. Do it until you feel you
can’t do it no more. You’re going to feel incredibly better. Writing has this
side effect of lowering what you write about, making it more manageable. Just
try it.
5. Write A Letter About It
Imagine you’re on a desert island. Sit down and write a letter to somebody
who could potentially rescue you. Be verbose. Imagine how your life will be after
you leave that desert island. Because if you can’t describe that, you will
never leave the island. Then destroy the letter.
6. Write A Worse Case Scenario
What is the worst thing that may happen to you right now? List everything
from physical loss to emotional imbalances. Try to foresee every little detail
of a worst case scenario. What life will you live if everything will turn out
as bad as possible? Then read it. It won’t look as bad as you thought.
7. Identify A List Of Possible Actions
What exactly will make the situation acceptable again? What are the things
that you could actually do to improve your current status? Make a list. Try to
identify every possible action, as improbable as it may seem, and put it on the
list. At the end of this, you’ll feel much better: you have work to do.
8. Sleep Over It
Most of your unconscious life happens while you’re asleep. Try to go to
bed with a clear thought of resolution. Don’t try to find a solution, just
prepare yourself for getting out of that frustrating circle. During the night
your unconscious mind will find resources to make you stronger.
9. Be Your Own Avatar
Try to look at yourself from “the outside”. Write on a piece of paper what
an observer would see at you. How do you behave? How do you talk, how do you
act? The more you’ll do this exercise, the more you’ll differentiate yourself
from the frustrating persona and take control over it at the same time.
10. Read Something Funny
This will not solve your problem, most of the time it will only switch
your focus to something else, giving you a temporary break. Do not mistake this
technique with avoidance, just use it as a chillout session, then get back on
track and solve whatever you have to solve.
11. Stop Blaming Yourself
Maybe you did something really wrong, and your current situation is the
result of that mistake. Take responsibility but don’t blame yourself. It’s all
in the past. You’re in the present now and you can do something about it. Blame
will only put weight on that past and drag you down. Avoid it at all cost.
12. Take A Walk
Even on the wild side, if you like the wild side, but do take a walk. The
mere action of moving will set you up for action and hopefully will make your
mind a little clearer. Walking always helps me put my thoughts in order
and let off the steam a little bit. And it’s free of charge.
13. See It From The Future
This one goes hand in hand with number 6. Try to describe your current
situation and look at it from the future. 1 year from now, your problem will be
as big as it is right now? How about 5 years? Or 10 years? Putting your
frustration in a larger context will usually weaken it or at least make it
manageable.
14. Cook A Delicious Meal
As simple and mundane as it may seem, cooking is an art. And every time
you perform some sort of an art, you’ll see the world through your intuitive
mind. You’ll summon your way out of frustration rather than find it through
logical inference. And cooking is the cheapest – and tastiest – art one can afford.
15. Go To A Party
Not to be abused and transformed into some sort of escapism but extremely
useful to lower your shirtiness. Go out, mingle and see if you can wipe out
your frown from your face. You can get back to your problems later, when your
body and mind will be more balanced. After the hangover, of course.
16. Write About Your Past Successes
You don’t have to keep a journal for it, you can just sit down at a table
and remember all your breakthroughs. Or only the most important ones. Seeing
yourself succeeding will definitely weaken all that frustration you feel right
now and will also give you some hints about how to completely overcome it.
17. Borrow Some Enthusiasm
Stay around energetic people or get involved in active projects. Choose to
be part of something that exhales a lot of energy. Get involved in fresh
projects. Being around enthusiastic people will lower the frustration to the
point where it can actually become manageable. And it will make you just feel
better.
18. Soak and Dry
Let it flow through you until you’re completely overloaded. Just be sure
not to do something during this stage. Isolate from the world and allow
yourself to be frustrated. Then slowly wait for the frustration to dry out.
Sometimes, this “all you can eat” approach is the only way to deal with it in a
healthy way.
19. Go Watch A Comedy
As an alternative to number 10, “Read Something Funny”. Giving yourself
permission to laugh will lower your anger and hopefully will make things easier
to handle. Also, seeing people in strangely hilarious situations will make your
own frustration seem awkward. Through a good laugh at it.
20. Attack It With The “Why?” Weapon
Another writing exercise, in which you start to find the root cause of
your frustration by asking “why?” questions. “Why am I broke?” – Because I
spent too much. “Why did I spent too much” – Because I’m feeling insecure.
“Why?…” You got the idea. At some point, something will click inside.
21. Volunteer For Something
Frustration is closely related to your ego, or the part of your being that
is concerned with those big phrases starting with “Me…”. If you volunteer to do
work for somebody else, you’ll stop feeding your ego with energy. The weaker
that part gets, the stronger your authentic and powerful part will be.
22. Stand Up And Fight
Be a soldier. Give yourself orders and follow them. Instill some rough and
unquestionable discipline in your life. Get up early in the morning, do your
work as if you’re on a battle field and then go to sleep. Repeat until your
problems become just situations you can solve by following an easy sequence of
new orders.
23. Stop Blaming Others
Similar to number 11, only this time your attitude will turn towards other
people, in a desperate attempt to avoid feeling hurt. Just stop it. Although it
may seem like a relief, blaming others it’s just a temporary hack, it won’t
last. In 99% of the situations, what we experience is the direct result of our
own actions.
24. Do Small, Repetitive Tasks
Borrow the behavior of a machine. Do those tiny little things you avoided
so much because they seemed so boring. Now it’s the best time to start working
on them. Slicing your time and focus will dissolve the pressure. Frustration
will slowly dilute in this sea of tiny, repetitive tasks.
25. See It From The Past
Alternative to number 13, looking at your own frustration from the past
will color it in a new, fresher light. Most of the time, the feeling
triggered by this perspective is: “I’ve been through though times before, I can
get over this”. And this is more often than you think true: we have a huge life
experience, we just don’t trust it enough.
26. Read Similar Stories
You’re not alone. And even if you find it difficult to talk to other
people you can always do this by yourself: just scorch the Internet using
descriptive keyphrases about your own frustration. You’ll discover that you’re
not alone. Somebody else have been there too. And now he’s so over it.
27. Assess Progress
Every second of your life changes something. Look for the small steps
you’re doing and assess them. The first item on this assessment list may be:
“I’m starting to assess my progress and this is in itself a huge step forward”.
The more you write, the bigger your progress will seem.
28. Disguise It
Put a mask on it, make it look like something else: “I’m feeling
frustration right now, but this is a mask for…” and replace with whatever
quality you want to build: discipline, personal power, endurance. Transform it.
I usually use the caterpillar – butterfly image: it’s bad now but look what it
can become.
29. Contrast It With A Worse Situation
Try to identify a related situation but with a significantly higher degree
of damage. If you’re in debt, imagine how it will be to be bankrupt. If you’re
having a relationship hickup, try to imagine how it would be to live on a
desert island for the rest of your life. Be grateful for what you experience,
because it can be worse.
30. Dilute It With Meditation
I don’t preach meditation as an all-in-one cure, but from my personal
experience, it does help. Meditation will not only shift your focus from your
current situation, but it will also clean your thoughts and help your body
regain a subtle energetic balance. Remember you’ll still have to take action,
meditation will only dilute it.
31. Get Physical
Start an aggressive exercising routine. Getting physical will make it
easier to embrace action and to do it with vigor and determination. A side
effect of exercising is the “endorphin effect”: the induction of a well-being
state generated by your own body.
32. This Too Shall Pass
Impermanence is at the core of our human nature, is our curse and escape:
we’re prisoners of time and everything we experience is bound to it. Laughter
and sadness, joy and depression, everything will fade away in time. The same
will happen to this frustrating period too: it will pass.
33. Write A List Of 33 Ways To Overcome
Frustration
This is an incredible exercise. As funny as it may seem in this context,
it’s actually a very powerful standalone approach. Just sit back and try to
imagine 33 ways to get over your current frustration. I bet that around number
20 your problem will seem smaller than you thought it was.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário