About Feeling Frustrated - The 3 Principles Understanding & You!

“Errant expectations, mistaken meanings, etc.”

Introduction

This page will attempt to help you with questions like: What do I do about feeling frustrated? What should I think about it, and what does it mean? (Quick answer: frustration is simply a misunderstanding of how life actually works, of how you actually work – a form of impatience, and a misunderstanding of how long things ‘should’ actually take.)

Another three minute guide to a common thought/feeling (a la The 3 Principles).

My Thoughts About Feeling Frustrated

As I say in the video below, I had a very frustrating day a few days ago. And this is what my frustration looked like (in terms of situations):

Updating my SMNash.com homepage was taking ‘too long’ – I couldn’t get a JavaScript to work properly (to insert random ‘feelings’ onto the page) and for the life in me I couldn’t see what was wrong

I was (frustratingly) doing too many takes whilst recording my frustration video – usually I record in one take

A coaching client was cancelling his session with me. Again.

What was really going on, though, was this:

“I should not be taking this long to do this!”
“I am not very clever, sometimes, and I should be (don’t like feeling a fool)”
“I ought to be the sort of person that no-one cancels on (in terms of procedures, policies, or just my personality or ‘coaching prowess’)”

The frustration, then, comes from some meaning we give to the moment or event – a made up meaning, of course (see Inside-Out understanding, below).

Frustration, Like All Forms of Suffering, Can Teach Us Something…

The gift of that day’s frustrations, though, were that I was able to have something to share in the video I recorded.

Which got me to thinking about the gift of frustration, or the gift of any feeling for that matter – there is ALWAYS a gift, in any feeling we experience. Frustration, for example, can be used to remind us that reality is reality.

Feelings of frustration can simply be a time for us to think about something else.

Or.. Or, what other gifts might there be when it comes to feeling frustrated?…

About Feeling Frustrated – The Inside-Out Understanding

I don’t usually feel frustration too often, these days. The feeling – a tightness in my body, perhaps – usually tells me I’m believing my thinking again. (Oh dear, fancy me – a certified transformative coach – believing my thinking again.)

For the fact is that what is happening IS what is happening – we can like it, we can dislike it, or we can simply notice it.

And this goes for feeling frustrated, also. It is not a bad feeling, or something you have to do anything about. Just notice it, find out where in your body you can feel it, and breathe into it.

Our feelings are simply reflections of our thoughts – frustrating, or otherwise; conscious of, or otherwise.

And we can notice this, be with what we notice, or we can not notice and believe in what the thinking is telling us.

So frustration is another barometer giving us feedback about our experience of life. And our response to our frustration is also a barometer of our experience of ourselves. And on and on it goes – the noticing.

Just Notice The Frustrations, That Is All…

The more you ‘notice’ the less personal you take of what is noticed – including feelings of frustration.

As for expectations – of how life should be, of how we should be – well, they are just that: expectations, made up, as we make everything else up. Remember, the future really does not exist. And we really do not know how things should be turning out.

It’s the grandest guessing game of all time, to be honest – life: a game of make believe, where it is even possible to feel frustrated that the make believe that’s here is not the make believe you wanted it to be. Perfect.

I can help you with your feelings of frustration, if you like, or any feeling that seems to be getting the better of you. All that, and more, is on offer with my transformative coaching.