It is natural to get frustrated and disheartened when things don’t go your way. This is something everyone has experienced, where we react to a situation with frustration only to have our focus and productivity affected. In addition to productivity loss, being angry and frustrated can be stressful increasing adrenaline and cortisol. This is evident form the fact that we don’t ever fondly recall frustrating experiences. Improving self-disciplined: how to break an old habit, integrate a new and better one, and consistently maintaining it, is one of the most frustrating activities I have ever encountered. That made me ask the following questions:
What is the mechanism behind this reaction?
How can one productively handle frustration?
I have come up with the following understanding.
Mechanism:
Frustration is an emotional reaction to not meeting your own expectations resulting into the loss of something that you value. If you value time (hence planned to quickly drive to your destination) getting stuck in traffic may provoke frustration. Believing that that one finish taxes within a weekend before the deadline and getting stuck because the overloaded IRS servers not responding to your submission can be frustrating.
My (lay persons) understanding is that there are two complementary systems always working in our mind at any time. One of them is looking inwards and another looking outwards.
The inward-looking system produces expectations and makes predictions based on your inner model (beliefs about external reality) of what should happen based on experience. This system is autonomous as our brain is constantly adjusting our inner model to provide us with plans on how to reach our goal, keep oneself safe, and what to expect when doing this. For example, this system tells us that on a weekend morning there should be very less commuter traffic so expect to reach your destination quickly.
The out-ward looking system is more sense oriented and it is telling you that this is what is happening right now because it prioritizes the information from the senses. Now if you got stuck in traffic on Saturday morning then it will make you aware of this fact.
Just imagine that if you had prior knowledge that a traffic jam was expected because of a football game crowd then even being stuck may not be frustrating. Similarly, if you got stuck unexpectedly, but were not pressed for time you may not be that frustrated either.
Based on my observation, the out-ward directed mind noticing that you are not meeting expectation setup by the in-ward directed mind triggers a possibility of threat (uncertainty). But threat to what, something that you value in the context of the current situation. Loss aversion is a very powerful motivator invoking fight or flight reaction.
Solution:
My understanding is that our mind is biased towards and constantly on the lookout for detecting threats. This could be physical or threats to our ego and positive belief about our abilities. A threat always invokes flight (offence) or fight (defense) mechanism. High intensity of this response can be unproductive as it zaps our rational mind. On the other hand, if we can control this response (not suppress) it can help us take productive action.
One way to control this could be to prioritize your outward facing over your inward facing mind. Another way to put it is to accept the reality of the current situation, as the outward facing mind may closely see the reality. To make positive progress towards our goals, one must strive to solve the problems presented by the reality of the situation, and not the ones presented by some belief driven expectation of the in-ward directed mind. The faster you accept the reality the better progress you will make in solving the problem.
Now eliminating or always having lower expectations is also not a good idea. As expectations gives us a reference of what we think should have happened. Reality being both either better or worse than expectation is an opportunity to learn something new and develop your inner model. This may also improve your prediction and future success rate as you model will be updated.
I am not a psychologist, this is just my personal idea. I hope is helpful. I invite contrasting suggestions and holes in my understanding.
