Frustration Is A Useless Thought

Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton

Frustration is normal – but that doesn’t make it acceptable. After all, as we’ll see, psychology has established that normal is crazy! And coming up with some excuse for frustration – like a boss that annoys you or a home life that sucks, like a business that’s failing to perform to your yo-yoing weight – these are not valid excuses at all! As I discuss below, these apparent frustrations are not the cause of your frustration – it’s how you view them and what you think about them that are the root cause of your feeling frustrated. In other words, frustration comes from paying attention to useless thoughts and, as normal people, we’re extremely good focusing on useless thoughts. In fact, it’s how we spend most of our waking hours! One of the big problems with this perceived frustration, however, is that normal people all-too-easily give up on their goals and dreams because of these useless thoughts. As a result, we prove to ourselves that we were right to be frustrated in the first place – and we will spend our lives making the same mistake over and over again.

The normal mind is plagued by fifty thousand thoughts each day. Many of them are harmless, some of them give rise to stupid distraction but some of them are toxic. All these self-limiting beliefs spring from the depths of our subconscious - and, remember, it is our subconscious that creates our view of the world and our own self-image. As a consequence, our subconscious dictates how we bahave. In this way, our subconscious mind actually creates our lives. Our subconscious minds are home to all our imaginary inadequacies and it is these misconceptions that demand the lion's share of our attention. It is from this well of discontent that seriously useless thoughts, like frustration, come to the surface. In other words, it is not outside events or people that frustrate you - you frustrate yourself. This is the key problem that I want to address.

The knock-on problem, however, is very real. Because we get frustrated so very easily, we tend to give up on the idea that our lives can get any better. A classic twenty-first century example of this - one that I read of regularly - is how many people who have just set up an online business throw in the towel after only a couple of months, frustrated by the fact that things aren't happening quickly enough for them. People who find themselves in situations such as this should do just one thing - persevere - and this is how I advise my own personal development and business clients in respect of whatever project they're working on. Research from the Business School at Madrid's university suggests that the most successful business people are the ones who persevered - even when they keep experiencing failure. To quote Calvin Coolidge, it is perseverance and only perseverance that leads to success.

Perseverance comes naturally to a focused mind. And it is focus that will enable you banish your feelings of frustration. I think that most people, however, are confused when it comes to what focus means - thinking that it relates to keeping your mind on whatever target you have set for yourself. Even though we've all got to have some kind of idea of what we want from life, this is not the kind of future-based focus that I want to talk about. Focus - the kind of focus that will change your life - simply means paying attention. To what? To the reality of the present moment, paying attention to the task in hand, whatever that might be. This is the kind of focus that not only develops your ability to persevere. More importantly, this type of focus will completely rid your life of all feelings of frustration.

As I already said, frustration is a trick of the mind - it is the all-too-obvious result of the fact that you've paid attention to the toxic thoughts that create your frustration. The useless thoughts that we all guard jealously in our subconscious mind are the product of the things that we learned about life in general and ourselves in particular during our formative years. As such, these useless thoughts are never likely to simply vanish into thin are - they are simply part of the normal human experience. However, you have a choice. As a responsible adult you can choose whether or not you will pay your attention to these thoughts - in essence, you must own up and take responsibility for the stuff that's going on in your head.

By honing your innate ability to focus, you will no longer have any attention left to dwell on the thoughts that have been giving rise to your frustration - although they will still be present, they will no longer wield any power over you. As such, your primary goal - in life - should be to constantly enhance your innate ability to focus your mind. Focus means paying attention - it is that simple - but, I'm talking about giving your full attention to what is actually happening in the here and now and, as a result, paying no attention at all to the nonsensical things that our subconscious minds create for us.

As a child, you were expert at focusing on the present moment. If you have or know young children you will understand the extent to which they can easily become fully absorbed in whatever it is that they're doing. A three-year-old opening his or her Christmas gifts uses all of their senses to fully experience the moment - the gift is stuck in places it wasn't designed for(!), it's rattled, it's viewed from every angle, it's tasted, it's smelled - the way in which they're immersed in the experience means that there's no attention left for anything else. You've got to go back to how you used your mind when you were a child. You've got to re-develop your ability to feel, hear, see, smell and taste what's really going on right now - even if you think that current events are driving you insane. Remember, those feelings have been added to the real reality of the moment by your otherwise preoccupied mind.

The sooner you start your 'focus training' the better. So, make a little time - a few minutes will do - to sit down and close your eyes. For those few minutes just hear the sounds - all the sounds of the reality of the here and now. Early every morning you should give yourself five or ten minutes to sit down somewhere quiet and work through your five senses - discover what they're telling you. If you do this first thing every morning, you prime your mind for a totally different day from the normal mundane life that the normal mind would otherwise create.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com