Nov 1, 2009 Dec 3, 2025 2009-11-01

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . .I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There was a time when frustration felt like my personal enemy. Not just dislike – I mean pure, visceral hatred. It was instinctive, impossible to control. Every time I found myself trapped in its grip, I felt terrible. You probably recognize that sensation. Arms bound, no clear path forward, and chaos everywhere you look. That’s what frustration does to a person.

Given my nature – constantly launching projects, embracing new challenges almost every single day – encountering frustration was inevitable. It came with the territory. Except I refused to see it that way. I believed I shouldn’t have to deal with it. Why is this happening to me? Understanding took years, but the insight was worth every moment of waiting.

Make Frustration Your Ally

Here’s the truth: frustration can be transformed. I’m not suggesting you avoid it – because whether you believe it or not, frustration plays a crucial role in how you grow as a person. What I’m proposing is a different approach: befriending it. Creating an alliance, declaring a truce. Like every emotional experience, frustration contains enormous energy. And that energy is yours to harness. Letting it dissipate unused is truly wasteful.

Step 1: Face What’s Real

Own it completely. Yes, frustration has you in its grip right now. What’s done is done; time doesn’t move backward. This is your current reality, and you’re frustrated. Not depressed, not furious, not numb. Frustrated. Take a pen and write it down. Locate a mirror somewhere private and tell yourself directly: “I’m frustrated, and I’m looking right at myself.” Pick up the phone, call someone you trust, and say plainly: “I need to tell you – I’m frustrated right now.”

This demands both bravery and practice. Bravery because frustration carries associations with helplessness. In some ways, you have become helpless when frustrated. You’ve genuinely lost control over the particular circumstances you were attempting to manage. But only those specific events – not your whole existence. You retain plenty of power to continue forward. Yes, you’ve lost command over this one thing, so accept that reality.

Facing the truth will halt your current pattern of behavior. Perhaps you’ve been repeating the same actions for weeks, months, even years, without seeing any positive outcomes. Recognizing your frustration will force a stop. And stopping is beneficial. It’s wise to cease doing things that aren’t working.

Step 2: Disrupt Your Current Reality

Once you’ve acknowledged your frustration, begin altering your circumstances. In whatever way possible. Simply accepting how you feel has already accomplished half the work: your pattern of ineffective actions has stopped. You’re no longer repeating mistakes. That’s progress. But it’s incomplete. Forward movement is essential.

Disrupting your reality means undoing some of what you’ve already done, if that’s feasible. When other people are involved, start with genuine apologies. When things are damaged, begin repairs. When there are losses, start finding ways to recover. Somehow.

Disrupting your reality also requires action. Simply do things again. Frustration works like venom from a snake: it paralyzes, makes your body unresponsive, steals your voice. Reverse all of that. Get your body moving. Walk, stretch, even babble nonsensically if that’s all you can manage. Being ridiculous beats staying frustrated – at least you’re ridiculous while moving forward.

Taking action after accepting your circumstances will shift the dynamics around you. The simple act of heading in a fresh direction creates new possibilities. Sometimes it’s just enough to get you back on course; sometimes it exceeds anything you could have anticipated. I can confirm with certainty that some of my greatest victories emerged directly from some of my deepest frustrations.

Step 3: Embrace Your Upgraded Position

After you’ve begun changing your circumstances, your situation will improve noticeably. Sometimes you can completely reverse what caused the frustration; other times you’re simply making incremental improvements. Either way, you’ve escaped the trap. You’re on fresh ground, attempting something different. Remain there.

And most importantly, savor it. There’s this common tendency toward melancholy after conquering major obstacles. “Sure, things are better now, but the past wasn’t really that terrible.” Don’t indulge that thinking. Fully embrace where you are now and leave what’s behind in the past.

Frustration isn’t a trap unless you choose to make it one. It’s actually an elevator – a rapid transit system to reach new heights. You could take the stairs instead, sure, and have a gentler ascent to the summit. But if speed matters to you, you’ll need significantly more energy. Far more energy. You’ll be making jumps rather than taking gradual steps.

What you’ve been calling frustration is actually an elevator appearing exactly when you need it. You summoned it by wanting faster results, and now it’s here. Don’t push it away, don’t use it poorly. An elevator can carry you to extraordinary heights in seconds, or it can descend to the lowest levels. Choose your buttons carefully.

In the end, it’s simply an elevator, and you control where it goes.