How to Overcome Frustration

We all have experienced different levels of frustration. The reasons that provoke this feeling might vary greatly, but it is an unpleasant experience in every case.

We feel frustrated when things feel out of control, when the cards that life deals are not what we want or what we expected and when we hold the belief that there is nothing we can do to change our hand. A sense of frustration is closely related to feeling powerless.

For many people, myself included, frustration is a very volatile emotion, meaning it can surge easily throughout the day. Other negative feelings like anger, fear or hopelessness are not so easily evoked, and usually it takes a very meaningful event to provoke such feelings; but frustration can strike at any time, for the most mundane reasons. This doesn’t change the fact that it is a negative emotion, and even when it might not have a great impact by itself in our life, it can become the door to other negative emotions that can affect our well-being significantly.

How to Overcome Frustration

“Controlling” our emotions is not a very effective way of dealing with negative thoughts. This approach usually becomes fuel for the fire and we end up feeling even worse.

Telling yourself “Do not feel frustrated…” when you are frustrated, it causes even more frustration. This is how people smash their phones into a wall…

So after acknowledging the negative effects that frustration can have on my life, I struggled with finding a way to solve this, until I inadvertently realized that frustration has a short burning time. It usually fades away when we stop poking it.
Unlike other negative emotions, frustration usually has a very clear and defined source. When our frustration reaches a boiling point to the extent that interferes with our daily life, chances are that the source is very clear and defined: We didn’t get THAT promotion, or that person forget an important date (once again!), or I just can’t make that stupid X thing work!

The fact that our everyday frustrations usually have a very defined and clear root. And this is a good thing. It allows us to handle the sources of our frustration directly. Yet, the best way to overcome frustration is by ignoring the source. I know, we all have heard that problems don’t go away by ignoring them, but in this case they actually do.

Sleep Your Way to Success

The funny thing with frustration is that while you feel frustrated you won’t be able to achieve a new outcome. If you keep trying to get a promotion from a f emotional vibration, you won’t succeed; if we remain frustrated about how others behave, it’s unlikely that we will able to communicate the reasons why their behavior is important to us and we won’t be able to motivate them to change the way they act; and if we keep messing around that annoying phone while we are already frustrated, chances are the phone will end up in pieces.

The first thing to do when we feel frustrated about a task or situation is to stop and step back. Nothing good will come from keep hitting our head against the wall. Go to sleep and come back the next day, or take a nap if you can’t wait until the next day. Do whatever you have to do in order to replace the frustration with a neutral feeling at least, or with a positive feeling, if possible. Watch a movie, listen to music or go talk to a friend about whatever, except about the things that makes you feel frustrated. The point here is to forget about those things in order to let frustration fade away.

Once you feel better, re-assess the issue while maintaining a neutral or positive emotional vibration, or feeling. Try to see options or paths you might have missed before, try to see the problem or issue from a completely different point of view.

You will soon realize that your ability to see things different have improved considerably. In many occasions the answer to your problem will show up in a few seconds or minutes and will feel so basic and logic that you will wonder what were you thinking before. But you see, we cannot think very clearly when we are deep in negative emotions.