Frustration is something we all experience it at some time in our lives. That feeling that no
matter what you do or try it just isn't working. The want to pull your
hair out, want to runaway and hide until its all over. You know that
feeling, right?
You can get frustrated with things like
your job, your writing, your life, your situation, your finances,
you're not succeeding, and people around you (some you don't even know).
There are a thousand things in this world to frustrate you and trip you
up in your Christian walk.
Notice
one thing that is repeated in the above paragraph? It's Y-O-U or a
variation of it. It's your frustration. It's all about you and things
not going the way you want it to. How you feel about things. How you
interact with situations around you. The only one who can change that is
Y-O-U. Even with the help of the Holy Spirit, you can't change overnight...it takes time.
Isn't that the same thing as self pity? No,
it's different. No, it's the same thing. So get off the pity pot already
somebody else wants to use it!
I hear you. I've spent
considerable amount of time on the pity pot myself with trying to get a
handle on the feelings accompanied by my stroke and life in general.
I've had a pretty hard reality setback with my stroke, but there are
stroke survivors who have it much worse than me out there. My
grandmother was stricken with seven strokes throughout her life. It
gradually took everything away from her until she was almost in a
vegetative state before she died with the seventh over five years in the
progression.
Now
for the fix, or some ways to stop frustration. This worked for me and
it was years in the learning. God is teaching me patience with this
added malady.
- Step away from what is frustrating you. Even if it is going into another room.
- Do something else not related to what you were doing. Continuing to
punish yourself by keeping at it just makes the frustration worse.
- Remember it can always be worse. For me when I feel myself slipping
into a rut I'll remember a friend who is in worse financial, physical or
emotional straits than me. You'll smaller after feeling frustrated by
such petty things that frustrated you in the first place.
- Find the root cause of why you are feelings frustrated. It may be
something deeper than what you are frustrated with at the moment.
- Make your expectations smaller. A lot of times we expect too much from ourselves and set ourselves up for failure
- Focus Smaller. Stop trying to fix the world's problem. Settle for a smaller thing you can do to make it better today. Just today.
- Simplify.
Don't try something that takes fifty gazillion steps, if you've never
done it before. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. When you were putting one
together for the first time you didn't start out with a 1000 piece
puzzle or a 3-D. You worked up to it.
- Allow yourself to fail attempts. Recognize that the first ten times
you are not going to get it perfect. Learn from the failed attempts and
make all new ones.
- You are not alone. Take a look around you. There will be others.
- Be kinder to yourself. Think of all the muscles it takes to frown,
how blotchy your face looks after a crying jag, How your screaming and
yelling scares the neighbors, and how you will have to replace whatever
you break.
I've
just given you ten ways to stop frustration in its tracks. I don't
expect you to do all of them at one time. Make a conscious effort to do
one a week. In ten weeks you will be frustration free. Well maybe not
totally, but you will be better armed against those feelings when you
feel it start to well up inside you.
May the peace of the Lord be with you.
