Learning from frustration

Sometimes we become frustrated, impatient, or angry with something. In a quick world where every appetite or desire can be satiated almost instantly, I suspect the occurrence of these feelings may become more prominent when things that usually work well fail to perform as expected. It may be that people become short with one another when demands are not, like demands made to functioning machines, met instantly.

This is just as true, though not nearly as noticeable, as when the demand is made of ourselves. For example, I have experienced frustration many times when, having asked myself to be creative, I instantly found my mind devoid of relevant thoughts. Indeed that harder I tried, very often the poorer the result.

In other cases I've asked my body to perform a particular workout, only to find that my response proved less-vigorous that my conscious mind expected. The resulting frustration almost always produced a further diminishment in performance, and still more frustration thereby. The negative cycle can form from this type of activity, and it's spiral is often difficult to break.

Why these negative cycles occur is not always clear, but I suspect they result in part from a mis-match between expectations and reality. Sometimes this mis-match can be reconciled by sheer will, such as discussed in an earlier post on expectation and athletic performance. Experiments discussed in that post suggested a modest-but-measurable capacity for people to exercise beyond their previously-perceived limits because, given the information they'd been give, they believed such a mis-match should not actually exist. Later experiments showed the effect of this belief has limits, but is effective to a point.

It would seem then that will alone cannot overcome major instances in which our expectations do not accord with reality. This can be frustrating, but also instructive. Unmet expectations reveal aspects of our thinking and performance of which we might not have otherwise been aware. For example, if a runner expects to run 15:00 for the 5k and runs 16:40 instead, the experience is a potential treasure-trove of information. Why did the runner have such high expectations? Were they warranted or were they made without regard to evidence and other factors? If warranted, what factors undermined the performance? Was it a poor pacing strategy, unexpected weather, psychological stress, or nutrition? The questions one might ask are numerous, and the answers, given honestly, may prove helpful in planning for the future, minimizing frustration, and remaining positive.

The same method may have wider application when expectations do not match reality. A person who treats me poorly might be a jerk, or they might be having a bad day. I relationship I expect to flourish but instead sinks like a stone may be the result of actions made by one or both parties, but may also be the result of deeper levels of incompatibility that have driven the two sides, however imperceptibly, further apart.

The point is that un-matched expectations can be frustrating but also instructive, illuminating aspects of reality that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. In some cases the factors involved may be simple, and in others quite complex. Remaining positive through it all requires many things, but a healthy understanding of how the pieces fit may be a good start. Something to consider anyway.

Happy Tuesday, friends :)