Every one of us feels frustrated sometimes. Frustration happens when you want something to turn out a particular way or you are trying to accomplish something. You take some action but nothing is working. Or something is working but then it stops working. Something breaks, someone doesn’t do their job, or things just don’t happen like you think they should happen. It is usually mixed with not being able to understand or see why it is not happening they way you thought it would. Things are not going they way you think they should and you cannot understand why.
What if frustration is a form of resistance? At first, I thought that frustration might be a form of attachment. You are attached to an outcome, and when you don’t get the outcome you expected, you feel frustrated. There is an element of attachment there for sure.
But let’s examine the critical aspect of not understanding why. If you really understood why it didn’t go the way you expected, you could accept the situation and move on. Attachment might form a momentary annoyance or frustration. Upon recognizing why it is the way it is, those feelings of annoyance and frustration melt into acceptance and you form a new plan moving forward. When you cannot fathom why the situation is what it is, the frustration runs deep and continuous. The lack of understanding is what prevents acceptance.
So what is stopping you from understanding why your situation is what it is? Understanding is blocked by a hardline belief you are holding about the situation. You can’t understand, because you believe X, but the reality is Y. You are resisting the reality, and attempting to uphold the incorrect belief. Maybe your belief used to be true. Or maybe it never was true at all. It doesn’t matter. It is not true NOW. And NOW is all that exists. You are comparing your situation NOW to a belief set from years ago. You are RESISTING your current reality.
Let’s take an example. I saw a post recently by a man who always dreamed of traveling the world. He was working to save up and create a nomadic lifestyle that would take him all over the world. He daydream about the countries he would visit and the things he would do there. Then the pandemic hit and when it entered a phase of seemingly endless lockdowns and restrictions, he became frustrated. He asked his friends how they stay motivated? He said he stays motivated by those daydreams and blissful visions of traveling the world. But his frustration wouldn’t go away. Why? He is hanging onto the belief that the world, and travel, and things you can do in other countries are a certain way; the way he used to know them. But the world he wanted to travel doesn’t exist anymore. Everything about the world, what travel is like, things you can do in different countries, etc has fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic experience. That thing he wanted no longer exists. He could certainly travel the world today. But the experience he would receive will not be the experience he daydreamed about. But he can’t understand why, because he is holding onto the belief that world travel is the experience he used to know. He wanted to travel the world, but the world he wanted to travel no longer exists. It’s a different world now. He is resisting that fact. He has to reexamine world travel as it is NOW, and ask himself if traveling THAT world is something he actually would enjoy.
The resistance to the current reality is the problem. Things go wrong all the time. But the challenges we face by accepting our current reality quickly find solutions based in that current reality. When we are stuck in old beliefs about an old reality, we craft solutions based in an old reality and then we marvel at why they don’t work in the reality of NOW. So the answer to your frustration is to take stock of your current reality with blunt honesty. What is the reality of your situation that you are resisting? What beliefs are you holding that are no longer true? Can you face the full truth of your NOW? If you start from only the realities of your current situation, what would you do next?
Try writing out the facets of your current reality and see where it takes you. Write it in third person if it helps, craft a character and a story around the reality if you must and ask yourself what that character should do next.
