How to Emerge from Frustration

Why frustration is a good thing

      Humans are complex beings. They have feelings, thoughts, a mind and a body...It's complicated because there is a synergy between all of these. One couldn't function without the other properly. Still, the most sensible one is none other than the matter of feelings. These easily get out of our control. They influence our thinking and we distort our focus to them months or even years at a time. 

     Some of these are fulfilling, they make us happy, they make us feel good. But they are not the only ones. There are destructive feelings as well. Those that are manipulating our thought towards negative aspects of life and make us feel awful. When we are sad, angry, frustrated. 

      We are in control

      We are humans, the most advanced spices that we know of. And we still forget something: that we are in control. We can use these negative impulses towards the better. We shouldn't take them as destructive when they can be constructive. They are the drive we can use to evolve. We can use them as a tool or, maybe as an environment if necessary. Just to build up on them. 

      What is frustration?

Scientifically speaking, we can define frustration as a reaction to stress. I wrote in a recent post more about this topic. But I am not here to write about the science and biologic impact of frustration over body. I want to showcase to you frustrations as being the stones in the river. The thoughts that consume you everyday, while everything else flows away. And maybe, the things that lie there, inside your mind, affecting your thinking without you even noticing. 

As I see, there are 2 types of frustrations (I could categorize these in so many ways, but this one seems the easiest way):

1) Internal Frustrations

   You are frustrated about yourself. How you look, your financial state, your health, etc. Somethings about you just consume you day by day, maybe making you cry yourself to bed every night.Which are the easiest to overcome. Three steps: understand, accept and change.
           First step, understand the reason. Maybe you have a physical defect, it's not your fault, it's genetics. You cannot yet control it. Or maybe you are not satisfied with your current financial position. Understand why you are in that point at the moment, maybe the reason is your crappy job and you have control over it.

       Second step, you accept those thing. Convince yourself to accept. If it's uncontrollable, like a genetic disorder, it's hard, but accept it. If it's your crappy job, accept that you have a crappy job and don't consume your energy being frustrated because of it. 

       The final step is to change it, to act upon it. If it's not changeable as the first case, well, you just accept it. You cannot change it. But if it's the crappy job, change it. If you don't have the skills, learn them. Find out what career you want and learn from The Internet the basics, then shadow someone, work for free. Or find an internship.

2) External Frustrations

    These are things you really don't have control over, like your co-workers being imbeciles, the car that almost hit you in the morning while legally passing the street, or the fact that people tell you that you could practice some anger management.You cannot actually control these in the present, yet you can change them in the future or do something else as competition or find a solution to the problem. Go invent autonomous cars, or teach people to shut their mouths if they are throwing shit at people just for breathing when they can mind their own business, you know, as a trainer or influencer or something. The point is you can change these, but on the long term. Which is extremely complicated and necessits a lot of hustle, usually.  Anyways, the steps are the same three. 

Why frustrations are actually good

    If you want to overcome them, you just have to do two things: hustle and take a risk. It's risky to quit your job and work for free a couple of months. Make a strategy and act upon it.
   You wonder why do I think they are good? Because you can evolve, instead of letting them consume you, you should consume them. Take them as opportunities, as problems. It's applicable in entrepreneurship as well.
Let me give you an ancient example I like very much and I find quite funny.
    Thousands of years ago, there was this guy named Socrates. Yes, that Socrates, the philosopher. You know, that guy who never wrote a word and had Plato doing it. I will not write his whole semi-homeless, always questioning things life story. I will say a bit about his death, though. He was executed as a punishment after a trial which he lost. The interesting thing is that he wanted to lose it. He could've win easily, yet instead he mocked the jury and the system and got is head cut off, figuratively speaking. His method of being executed was to drink poison and wait to die covering his face. I don't know why he chose to cover his face, but people have preferences. This is the back story.
    Now the actual story begins. See, after his death, Plato, the disciple got frustrated on Athens and basically thought "WTF?! Not cool, Athens! Imma leave you right now!" And he left. He travelled to Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene. At the age of 40-ish, he returned to Athens he founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western Civilization, The Academy. Years go by, and the best student in there was no other than Aristotle. As Plato's death approaches, he has to name a successor. Which was Xenocrates. Yup, he didn't choose Aristotle. Upon Plato's death, Aristotle got frustrated because he was not chosen as the head of the school so....he left. Basically, his sayings adapted for today would be "C'mon, old man, this guy? Really? Why not me?!...Damn, yo dead now. I've had enough! Imma leave and study rocks, plants and animals. Oh, and also Imma build a pinhole image. I'll show you who's the boss!"  While he was away from Athens, he was the teacher of Alexander Macedon, yes, the conqueror. No, Aristotle wasn't an evil mastermind and did not have much impact on little and innocent Alexander, because he was 13 years old, so it's okay. After some years, he himself returned to Athens and founded The Lyceum.
     For me, this timeline is such an interesting chain of events that had such a great impact on the world. Just because some people got frustrated. This is exactly my point. If there are things that make you frustrated, just learn how to evolve from them. I am almost sure that Plato and Aristotle didn't know at the time of leaving Athens that they will build The Academy and The Lyceum, but they left to study, to explore, to learn and grow out of their frustrations.

Conclusion 

 To conclude, we already know that humans are complex, yet fragile beings. They are very susceptible to both external and internal stimuli which can cause them to deal with frustrations, depressions, stress, etc. The good part is that we can use our reason to overcome these feelings and learn how we can use them in our advantage. We can make breakthroughs. If Aristotle and Plato did this more than 2000 years ago, why couldn't we do it nowadays when we have so many opportunities that we ignore them? Just because we are dealing with stress and anxiety?

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think?

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