Hardmentals? VI – You Do Not Feel Frustrated! You Do Not Feel Overwhelmed! You Do Not Feel Rejected!

This picture is pseudo hulk.  He’s not healthy! He stays like that all the time. He’s partially green, partially not.  Never totally hulks out and smashes things, but also never reaps the reward of being at peace with his emotions. The regular hulk has it figured out much better.  He gets mad, knows he’s mad, turns green, smashes, gets closure, returns to life as Dr. Bruce Banner. The Hulk doesn’t feel frustrated. He gets angry.  He’s right because you cannot feel frustrated. Frustration is not a feeling. Hardmental VI – You Do Not Feel Frustrated, You Do Not Feel Overwhelmed & You Do Not Feel Rejected.

While kicking off this topic, it should be made clear that we also cannot feel stressed out or burnt out. If you’re in sales like me, you’ll have to sit down while you read this next statement. “You cannot feel rejected”.   HOLD ON! You can BE frustrated and you can become overwhelmed and you have been rejected. These are outcomes! They are results!   Anger, Fear, Shame, Guilt, Pity, Envy, Anxiety, Indignation – are the emotions that you can feel. (Credit Aristotle with the list, not me).  On the positive side…Joy, Love, Devotion, Pride are also emotions that you can feel.

WE CANNOT FEEL FRUSTRATED!

Why is this important?  Is this really just a semantical argument? NO!  Frustration is a cover. It’s a ruse for hidden emotions that we’re not really attacking or addressing. It’s a life punt or it’s a convenient grey area of emotion that requires us to keep a problem versus solve it.  Why would somebody do that? Solving it likely requires some mirror looking personal accountability or some appropriately placed blame on other important entities or people.  We might also think that it’s just simply easier to hold onto the frustration than to actually break free of the shackles of the problem(s) that we have and comfortably know.  

If you break frustration down, it’s almost always the case that when we’re frustrated we’re really either (A) angry or (B) afraid. The next most likely reason for being frustrated is guilt. Thus, to rid ourselves of frustration we have to identify who we’re angry with and/or why we’re really angry. There may be layers making it even harder to identify the root problem.  Is it a person?  Is it a thing (like your job)?  Is it me?  Were my expectations unrealistic?  We have to ask, “Who or what am I really mad at?”. 

The key to less frustration (and really the predominant driving emotions of anger or fear) is increased personal accountability.  Hardmental II states, “It’s Our Fault”.   Several months ago, I observed a person complaining that the weather in December dropped in one day from the 50s to the 30s. What? Why? This person chooses to live in Illinois and we were blessed with an uncharacteristically warm couple of days. Then it dropped to 30 degrees.  Is she mad at December for being December? December was doing exactly what December is supposed to do.  

This seemingly small frustration could easily be glanced over.  I was curious. I wanted to find out why she was mad at December.  Turns out, she doesn’t want to live in Illinois. She feels trapped in Illinois.  Actually, she’d be OK with living in Illinois, so long as they get to leave the state a couple times a year. She loves travelling and they haven’t been doing any for the last couple years because they started a family. Enter fear – is this how it’s going to be for the next five years, ten years. Unreasonably, she wondered if this is how it’s going to be forever?  She needed to do a little accepting and a little attacking.  There was a compromise!   She needed to identify how important even a little vacation was and that even a small break from the harsh Midwest winters gives her a greater sense of hope. She needed to communicate to her husband why vacation is important. She then needed to take the steps to plan the trip. As soon as this all came out and a plan started to form, you could see the change in her entire demeanor. You could nearly see frustration falling off of her.      

If anger is not at the root of frustration, then its anger’s unattractive second cousin…fear.  For example – I’m frustrated that I’m not making enough money. “I’m fearful that to make more money, I might have to make a change. Change is scary.  What if the risk I take blows up in my face and I make even less money?  I better just stick it out at my job, maybe it will get better.”  

Sticking it out turns to STUCK! Nobody likes to feel stuck in a relationship.  Our enthusiasm for the work drops, which always results in less effort at work and then performance deteriorates.  We get called into the principal’s office, admonished for the less good quality of work that we’re now doing, and become more frustrated (angry).   

It’s not just work relationships or personal relationships that make us frustrated, thus unable to most often accurately source the root.  Mediocre golfers get really frustrated (mad) at their weekend sport.  If you play the sport, you’ve undoubtedly seen somebody throw their club or slam it into the ground.  This act oozes frustration. In fact, it’s a combination of fear and anger.  There’s fear that whatever just happened that produced a shot an entire fairway over is going to continue to happen.  “My round is ruined. I paid $60 to suck. The people I’m playing with will judge me. They may never want to play with me again.  I’m mad at myself for never taking lessons and I’m a little mad at golf for being so dang hard in the first place.”  In truth though, golf isn’t changing. To get better, we have to practice.  If you’re mad that you’re not getting better despite playing a couple times a month and get frustrated with golf are we really mad at golf? Golf didn’t do anything to you.  Deep down our frustration is with ourselves. We’re ANGRY that we haven’t really put in the time and energy needed to improve at the game. We’re fearful that we’ll keep being very mediocre and that all the energy spent into saying “I want to get better at golf” was not sincere.  We’re now afraid we are stuck at this spot and mad that we’ll have to work really hard to improve our score.  I don’t like feeling stuck (outcome) so we’re frustrated (outcome).

So what do you do? There are only two choices: accept it or attack it.  We can accept mediocrity and become very proud of the good shots and the best scores.  We can actually find joy (emotion) when we out perform our level of input into your effort to improve our game. It’s instead our choice to laugh at the moments we fail to even reach mediocrity.  We chose this.  If we really, really want to change our game, we have start practicing and take lessons.  

WE CANNOT FEEL LESS APPRECIATED

What’s the number one source of frustration on the planet of interpersonal relationships?  The sense that “I’m not appreciated” or “I am appreciated less than I previously was”.  OK. You’re frustrated.  Why?  Let’s cycle through the underlying emotions:  Am I angry? Am I scared? Did I expect this person to become more appreciative? Did I expect my job, my dog, my lawn to be more appreciative of the work I’ve put into them?  If we want to feel more appreciated, the only way to control that desire is to GIVE OUT MORE APPRECIATION!  

I worked for an incredibly talented sales professional named Jared.   Now, salespeople are our own breed of challenge because our very vocation is built around getting people to do what we want them to do (for their own best interest).  To spare on the details and offer the short version, situations happen over the course of a year where there were equitable debates over which sales person should get credit for this or that sale.  Jared was usually on the right side of these situations, but got unraveled by the situations that didn’t go his way.  At a high point of frustration, Jared told me that “No situation had ever gone his way, ever!”.  I had the notes and history to show Jared that many more situations had gone his way than not. That didn’t diminish the frustration, those situations were in the past.  Jared felt that with X number of years of service he should have graduated from purely equitable rule based fair outcomes.    Unrealistic, yes, but what had really happened is the rare occasions where Jared didn’t get his way or win, we didn’t help him reach closure. His manager had, on a couple of occasions, even made secret additional exceptions to help Jared swallow what he felt was injustice.  His manager even told him, “Because you do so much, we’re going to make this exception.” We taught him that we show appreciation by making exceptions, so it was no surprise that exceptions became expectations. Fear elbowed its way in because each time he didn’t get his way Jared thought that he may not get his way more often.  He believed his job was getting harder and he wouldn’t perform as well or make as much money (check out Hardmental III). The end result was an inevitable break up of this relationship.             

This was bad management!  Jared wasn’t given the right genuine kind of appreciation in the first place to build a sustainable relationship. In retaliation, Jared intrinsically took home less appreciation from the work. It comes as no surprise, his performance slid the wrong way, Jared (out of fear) started to get frustrated that we wouldn’t remember all of the good years of production and that he would be evaluated and thus treated only as the current less spectacular version.  Jared started to want more appreciation for what he did years ago – that was easier than facing the current reality where, year-over-year, he was deserving of less appreciation relative to the current year’s performance vs. prior year.   

WE CANNOT FEEL OVERWHELMED

The same general philosophy works with “feeling overwhelmed”. We usually become overwhelmed because somebody, who we’re now angry with, asks us to do more than we wanted or than seemed fair. Enter a new emotion…indignation.  “It’s not fair!!”  Are we are angry because we took on too much and didn’t ask for help?  Maybe, we thought that things would get easier over time and we’re mad that isn’t happening. “There has to be a shortcut!”    Further complicating the situation, are we mad that things aren’t getting easier? Is that a legitimate reason to be mad?   We may want to avoid that question which adds frustration to the sense of being overwhelmed.  What a mess!   Oh man, are we sad/mad that things may never get easier and that we may have to grind it out? Are we jealous (eek) that somebody else seems to have it easier?

WE CANNOT FEEL REJECTED

There is one more feeling that isn’t really a feeling. In sales, can we feel rejected? No! Again, it’s an OUTCOME, not a feeling - we were rejected.  There were two possible outcomes.  What’s the real feeling hidden underneath the outcome:  pity, anger, fear? We don’t feel rejected, we fear rejection. We long to be accepted.  Rejection can equate to failure (outcome). We don’t want to feel like a failure. We can also say, “I don’t want to fear like a failure.”   

I have observed hundreds of sales professional successfully tolerate rejection.  Usually they are described as having “thick skin”.  Yet these superior sales people will inevitably crack and, at some point, start to think that they potentially graduated from rejection.  We are in a relationship with our job (see Hardmental IV). We must accept that aspect of the relationship, because the favorable outcomes of the work make it worth it.  Sticking with the sales theme, (assuming we’re selling something we believe helps people), rewards us with pride. We make money, accomplish goals and build relationships.  The good outweighs the bad. We must focus on what we want and what we get, not the singularly less desirable component of the relationship which is how we feel (Hardmental I). It may actually be the case that the relationship no longer makes sense and attacking the relationship could mean ending it, but we must make sure we’ve been fair in our assessment.  If we simply end a relationship because one part is bad before we don’t work to improve the relationship, we build a life habit of jumping ship at any sign of danger.  “This situation isn’t perfect.  It makes me feel ______. Thus, I’m going to find a more perfect situation that will make me happy.” The “situation” isn’t the controlling factor! Our interpretation of the situation is the controlling factor. We are the tip of our spear and at the center of our own universe.

So what’s the key? Is there a solution? Yes! Don’t let these outcomes (frustration, burnt out, stressed out) build up to the point that they reach critical mass because most of us then want an unreasonable solution.  “I want to become “un”frustated, “un”overwhelmed, “un”rejected.”  These OUTCOMES CANNOT BE COMPLETELY UNDONE because there are multiple pieces to the puzzle.  We must pick one piece where positive progress can be made.  It might feel easier just to scrap everything and start over, but if we go down that path we’re teaching ourselves a learned behavior.  Build frustration, create clean slate.  Eeeek!  This reaction will only perpetuate giving up more quickly and increased negative outcomes and experiences!  We can attack one aspect of what is making us feel frustrated or overwhelmed then work backwards and dig out of the valley. Ask for help, don’t be too proud.  We’ve all been there!

Thank you for taking the time to read HARDMENTAL? VI. The HARDMENTALS? are the fundamentals of sustained success that are not really fun, but, in fact,…wait for it…HARD. If you’re new to HARMENTALS? and want to catch up, please review the five prior articles/posts written.  The next will follow soon.