You’re busy, there is a lot happening, communication is fast and from multiple sources. The choices you face everyday about where to put your focus and what gets done seem to multiply. Increasingly getting things done relies on your connection and collaboration with others, who have the same plethora of choices and options and make completely different decisions to you.
Outcome = frustration.
Frustration with yourself and the choices you did or didn’t make. Frustration with the situations and contexts in which you find yourself. And frustration with others for all of those reasons too.
This week I had consecutive meetings with two long standing coaching clients who shared similar but different stories of their frustration. I noticed again how frustration quickly affects attitude and mood and sets up an expectation (see last newsletter on expectation) of more frustration. You feel drained, perhaps at times angry and bitter and it just doesn’t feel good.
I have continually proved to myself (and to a lot of clients) that when I feel good I perform better, think faster, more creatively and attract more opportunities and desirable events (which make me feel good!). So my challenge for the frustrated clients was to shift to a more empowered state.
Here’s a method you can immediately use to neutralise your frustrations.
Grab a pen, find a new page in the back of your notebook and write down on the left hand side the top 5 things that are frustrating you. Just the frustration, not the why.
Alongside each, begin a new sentence using the same subject description replacing “frustrated by” with “it’s great that” … and allow you creative brain to come up with the reasons why the situation is great.
How does it work? It shifts your mood and attitude to at least neutral, from there you will feel better and probably come up with more and more compelling reasons why things are okay. Chose the serene response.
And to be frustration free? Firstly give yourself clear and unambiguous permission to be frustration free (some of us are addicted to it). Secondly, stop talking about them (in effect fuelling them and bringing them to life). Third keep working with the neutraliser method.
Good luck and keep it simple.
Simon