Frustration is experienced whenever the results or goals you are expecting do not seem to fit the effort and action you are applying. Frustration will occur when your actions are producing less and fewer results than you think they should. We have all felt frustration. In fact, we feel frustration countless times in a day especially in our sports endeavors.
It is important to understand that frustration happens to us as part of nature. Relate this idea to animals in nature. How do animals instinctively know how to survive on a daily basis? Animals were not taught to survive. We automatically accept that survival skills for animals are just nature’s way. What if frustration is just the way of nature? Were we taught to be frustrated or did it just happen to us? Take notice of a child that is learning to walk for the first time. Is the child taught to walk or does nature just take its course? Look at the child’s face and see the determination to take those first steps, and the energy that it takes for the child to stand up especially after the first fall. This energy that you see in the child’s face is nature’s energy of frustration at work. Frustration is the misunderstood natural energy that keeps us going. Frustration is the key to learning especially if understood properly. No parent will scold, critique or criticize the efforts of their child when the child is learning to walk. In fact, the parent will not even tell the child not to be frustrated if the child falls and cries. Yet when the child grows older, the parent may see the child struggle with something in particular with the appearance of frustration, this is when those magical damaging words come out of the parent’s mouth, "don’t be frustrated”. From this moment on, the child will associate the feeling of frustration with a failure or struggle with that particular situation. The phrase "don’t be frustrated” probably never goes unspoken in a day. This phrase is used entirely too much. After the child hears these spoken words, the child is being set up for failure resulting in powerlessness, associating the feeling of frustration as a negative energy instead of just energy to keep going. The child will eventually quit in order to regain or feel some sort of control.
Frustration being misunderstood is one of the countless many ways that we remain in a fight-or-flight state. The iZone Formula can help individuals be mindful of this misunderstood energy by being mindful and disciplined to remember to realize that this is simply happening to us. Frustration is just part of nature. Just realize that this energy would not be there if nature did not intend for it to be that way. This realization that we are not the cause of frustration and that this is just part of nature will help us find steadiness in sports and in life. Pretend that the energy of frustration is like the "Force” if you are a Star Wars fan and learn to channel that energy properly to keep going! The iZone Formula book is coming soon in early February and available for sale at The Houstonian.
By Mike May