Hey, welcome back to Live On Purpose TV. Today, we're talking about how to
overcome frustration at work.
Frustration has to do with unmet expectations. Notice
that right up front. Where is it coming from? Well, I expect things to be a
certain way, they're not that way.. That leads to feelings of frustration, that
alone probably will give you some ideas of what you can do with this. You
remember, right? That some things you control and other things you don't. Let's
get really clear about that.. We spend time and energy and sometimes money and
resources on things we have no control over. Well that can be by definition
frustrating, it would be far less frustrating to focus on the things that
we do control. Two of those come to mind immediately, we can always regardless of
the circumstances or the context, we can always control our view. By view I mean
perception, our perception of what's going on. Even though we don't control
the event itself, how we see that event is something that is within our control.
We've spent time in other videos talking about perception and why that's so
important. In fact, if you'll go back to that very first video on this channel,
it's the introductory video when you open up the channel about how to stay
positive no matter what. You can link to it right up there. That helps you to see
where your choice is in perception no matter how bad things seem, they could
always be worse. No matter how good things seem they could always be better
or worse, it goes both directions. Realizing that we can look either way to
make our comparison.. Look, where I am right here in the middle
could always be better and it could always be worse so how I view it is a
choice. We always control our view. What else do we control? Our do, our do. What
we're going to do about it. This gets to the creation side of the model that we
shared in that other video. We're going to move forward from here to somewhere
and since it could always be better and it could always be worse than it is
right now, we get to choose which direction we want to go, we control our
do. Colleague of mine pointed out, "Hey, Paul.
That's view do." View do? What does view do? Well it's what you always control. What
if we practice the little view do to manage the frustrations that we're
feeling? We can always change our view, we can always change our do. So starting
with the view part of that, let's become more conscious about our evaluation
process. I already mentioned that frustration is usually tied to a
position, a belief, a perception that things are not the way they should be or
are they? Do you know, for sure? I mean, do you have some cosmic connection to the
grand scheme of everything that tells you for sure that things are not the way
they should be. Why, no, you don't. Do you know that connection tell you that they
are the way they should be. Well you don't have that connection so you don't
know either way. Pick a position. When we take a position, the things are exactly
as they should be. Will you try this just for a moment? Just
wrap your head around that idea for a moment, take whatever it is that's
got you frustrated and think this on purpose. Things are exactly as they
should be. What do you notice? You're going to notice a couple of things one
of those things is you've got a fight on your hands or more realistically in your
mind right because you've been thinking something else like things are not the
way they should be. When you say things are exactly as they should be and I want
you to say it with a little lilt to your voice, okay, raise your eyebrows just a
touch, wrap your head around this in a way that you can consider it, things are
exactly the way they should be and then notice the resistance that comes up from
your subconscious mind. No, they're not. How could this be the way things should
be? It should be different than it is. Pause, take a look. Ask it as a question
not a statement disguised as a question. How could this be the way things should
be see? It's not even a question, it's a statement. Go back to the question. How
could this be exactly the way that it should be? Look back on your experience,
you will find times when a difficult painful challenging frustrating
situation was exactly what you needed to learn that principle, to connect with
that person, to open up that particular opportunity. You can see this in
retrospect. Bring it to the present so that you can see that whatever you're
experiencing right now is exactly what it should be even if you're not sure why
that's true. Take that position, see what happens,
that's the view part. If we're going to practice view do, we need both parts.
Let's look at the do.. Again, thinking of the frustrating situation or context, ask
this question.. What could I do about this?
This is powerful and sometimes there's nothing because some things you control
and other things you don't. If you're in the circumstance, there's always
something you could do about or around or because of or despite whatever the
circumstance is. That's the question, what could I do about or in this circumstance?
That opens up all kinds of possibilities and focusing on what you control not
what you don't, you'll be able to come up with some ideas. Let's say that it's a
circumstance where somebody else is misbehaving. I know that probably never
happens to you but just pretend that for a minute. What can I do about this? Well, I
can't change their behavior and folks, avoid the temptation to think of all the
things that somebody else could, would or should do, that's misleading and probably
more frustrating because you don't control that so put that aside, get back
to asking what can I do about this and it might be as simple as, well,
I can change my view, I can allow this to entertain me rather than frustrate me.
Would that be a choice? I think it might be. I could practice gratitude rather
than guilt. I could learn something from this. Oh, that might be helpful. I could
use this as an example of that point that I'm trying to teach. Yeah, see,
there's no useless experience in life, it could always be used as a an example,
right? So what can I do about this? Puts us back in position where we actually
have some choice and control. View do, that's the way we're going to deal with
the frustrations. This is going to apply in a lot of other contexts, not just
work. I'm so glad that you're here. If this is your first visit to Live On
Purpose TV, click on that subscribe button right down there.