Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’ve had a horribly frustrating week. It’s been one of those periods of time when everything I’ve tried to do at work just hasn’t come off. I’ve got four pieces of work I’m supposed to be testing, and for one reason or another I wasn’t able to get hold of enough information about any of them, and nothing was working properly. And the people who are supposed to help me and answer my questions either weren’t there or didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered. Or at least that’s how it felt.
I’m sure everyone has times like that. There may be people who feel like that describes the whole of their lives. It can be very soul-destroying, and it can eat away at your sense of self-confidence and self-worth. At times you can feel like the nameless heroine in Rumpelstiltskin, whose nameless father boasts to the nameless king that she can spin straw into gold. The king then gives her the apparently reasonable choice of beheading her if she fails or marrying her if she succeeds. Nobody seems to think to ask her opinion at any stage in the proceedings.
Unfair expectations and straw
I seem to remember a story about the Israelites being expected to make bricks out of mud without any straw. And we all know what that led to. There seems to be a link here between unfair expectations and straw. I have no idea why.
The thing about frustration is that everyone develops their own strategies for dealing with it. Some people get angry and shout a lot or throw things, and others become silent, absorbing it all internally. There are those who avoid the whole thing to the point of leaving jobs or relationships or even emigrating, and there are those who set about changing the cause of the frustration, by means that could be inventive or downright destructive.
Frustration – a force for good
All this has led me to think about what frustration really is. Perhaps that’s one of my own strategies for dealing with it. Frustration is, of course, anger that doesn’t have an outlet, and it’s not good for you when you bottle it all up. But I think it’s a force for good, because it means you care.
I once caught myself shouting at my children when they were children and misbehaving, and I could see they were doing that staring-into-space making-like-a-duck’s-back thing, waiting for the ordeal to be over. But when I stopped and asked them this – ‘Why do you think I’m shouting at you?’ – I had their full attention. ‘I’ll tell you why I’m shouting at you! It’s because I love you!’
Nobody seemed to get it
And it was true, of course. If they had been someone else’s children misbehaving I’d have passed by, muttering under my breath. My anger with them reflected my feeling that things weren’t happening the way I expected them to, and it bothered me. In the same way I got frustrated at work because I actually wanted to do good work and I couldn’t. And nobody seemed to get it.
On the evening of the day of my greatest frustration I was at the gym, running on the treadmill, and I found myself wondering what that was reminding me of. So the next morning I went to work and stopped asking questions. I realised that the things I wanted weren’t going to happen and if I kept asking it would start having the opposite effect. So I kept quiet all day (extremely difficult for me to do!) and bit my lip until it was shredded.
A whole new solution
Today, amazingly, one of the people who I thought was taking no notice, arrived at my desk with a whole new solution which explained everything and made my task possible. I’m rather happy about that. Whether I caused this to happen or just helped it along doesn’t matter. The important thing for me is that I care enough about my work to want to do it well, and that the problem got sorted out without me making a fool of myself.
So my message here is this. When you find yourself frustrated, it’s not necessary to concentrate on the suffering. You should be pleased that you care about something that much. It means you’re alive and believe that things can improve. This is so much better than the opposite.
Their lack of imagination or respect isn’t your fault
You can also, if you think about it, describe exactly what isn’t working properly and how it should be. If you think really hard you might be able to think of a way that this change could be managed. That’s a good thing for your self-esteem, because it shows you can think for yourself and you’re good at imagining and planning changes. Well done.
The other thing is not so easy. It involves explaining all this to someone who’s in a position to make those changes. They may react badly, but their lack of imagination or respect isn’t your fault. On the other hand they may have been waiting desperately for the very solution you’ve just offered them.
How can you tell which it might be unless you try?
Let’s face it; it can’t be harder than spinning straw into gold.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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