Ever have one of those frustrating days where you just want to go back to bed and start the day all over again?
Ever have one of those weeks, or months or years?
Sure you have – it’s part of being human.
It seems that no matter how hard we work to bring order into our lives, there is always at least one part of our lives that’s driving us nuts.
If we get our careers going, and our financial situation stabilized, it seems that all of a sudden we run into health problems.
If we get our health and finances in order, now all of a sudden our relationships suffer.
If we get our relationships and health in order, we never get to relax.
If we take a vacation to relax, suddenly our career goes south.
There’s always something that seems to pop up in our lives that frustrates us.
It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, healthy or sick, single or married. If you’re alive, you’ve got some kind of challenges in your life. It’s a given.
Avoiding Frustration and Anger
One of the most common and worst things that we can do when such a situation arises is to go into turtle mode.
Going into turtle mode means retreating into your shell to try to avoid the frustration and anger that you feel.
Anger and frustration are a type of energy. If you try to ignore that energy, it will just intensify and get worse over time.
There are many avoidance patterns we can go into when such feelings/energies arise.
Some of us turn to eating food or smoking cigarettes when frustration & anger show up. Some of us go shopping or to watch a movie to try to distract ourselves.
The challenge is that avoidance doesn’t work. Overeating causes you even more frustration and anger long term. So does smoking, or retail therapy.
Nobody is perfect. To some degree, we all at least sometimes resort to avoidance behavior when dealing with anger and frustration.
Some of us do it all the time, never dealing with the root issue.
How to Deal with Frustration and Anger
If avoidance doesn’t work, then what does?
How do we transform frustration and anger into something useful in our lives?
One of the most effective ways I have been recently dealing with this exact issue is something I learned from a book
The book relates to finances and money, but I have used the same technique for dealing with every situation in my life recently.
Whenever you feel the energies of Frustration and Anger rising up in your life, in any situation, simply follow this formula.
Accept the feelings. Don’t try to avoid them. FEEL the feeling of anger. FEEL the feeling of frustration. Don’t try to downplay them. Trying to downplay them will just make things worst. If you’re angry, BE OK with being angry in this moment. Be honest with yourself and acknowledge the feeling of anger/frustration within you. It wants to be heard. The more you try to ignore it, the louder it will get.
Ask the feeling/energy what it’s trying to tell you. What is the problem / challenge that is “causing” you to feel angry / frustrated. You can either acknowledge it in your mind, or write it out in your journal. Let the feeling / energy be heard. Let it say what it wants to say.
Tell the truth about the situation. Accept responsibility for everything you create in your life 100%. Don’t give away any power to anything or anyone else.
The first two steps in the formula are pretty self explanatory. I don’t think I need to go into any more depth as to what they mean.
However, step #3 is the most important one to understand.
What exactly do I mean by “Tell the truth about the situation”?
Well, the truth about any situation in our lives is that WE are the ones who are 100% responsible for creating it.
That is the truth.
We create 100% of everything that we experience in our realities, no matter how much it seems like someone else or something else might be at fault.
I know that’s not easy to accept, but it’s the truth. It is the ultimate truth.
Let me give you one example of how I have used this process in the recent while.
A few weeks back I called one of my credit card companies to make some changes to my account. While on the phone with the service rep there, I was told that in order to make the changes I wanted I would need to make a payment for a certain amount first and as soon as they receive that payment, they would be able to make that change for me.
Just to make sure that I didn’t mishear the person, I asked them the same question a second time to make sure that they understood what I was asking for. Once again the rep assured me that she understood what I wanted and that there would be no problem processing that change as soon as they receive the payment in the amount they requested.
So I made the payment and I called in a few days later to check if they had received the payment. Once the payment was received I asked to speak to their account reps again and asked them to make the account change that I originally wanted.
Well, guess what happened next? This second rep proceeded to tell me that the account changes I wanted are not possible. That the only way I would be able to make such changes was to close my account and re-apply from scratch for a brand new account with them.
After a very frustrating 30+ minute conversation with them I basically realized that I was lied to by the first rep who told me that the changes I wanted were totally possible just as soon as I made a payment. I don’t know if they make a commission or some kind of bonus based on how much money people send in for payments after speaking with them or what, but basically I was lied to.
The changes I wanted are not possible, and the payment I was asked to make had nothing to do with anything. It had no bearing on the changes I wanted at all. The first rep just wanted me to make a payment, and lied to me in order to get it, most likely knowing that I would make the payment and then when I call in a second time I would be someone else’s problem to deal with.
Now this is a perfect example of being frustrated and angry. I got off the phone with this credit card company and I was pissed. Not because the changes I wanted to make were not possible, but because I was lied to.
If I knew from day one that those changes were not possible, then I would have made other arrangements with another credit card company but instead this rep wasted my time and just lied to me.
What was even more frustrating was the fact that the new rep I was dealing with on my 2nd phone call was not at fault. She didn’t lie to me. She did nothing wrong, so getting mad at her wasn’t going to solve anything.
After I got off the phone, I followed the formula as listed above.
I accepted my feelings of anger and frustration for being lied to. I didn’t try to shy away from them or hide them. I let myself FEEL them.
I asked myself why I was angry. I realized that what pissed me off was the fact that I was lied to and had my time wasted and that I couldn’t really do anything about it. Getting angry with the new rep wasn’t going to accomplish anything, as she wasn’t the one who originally lied to me. Since I didn’t have the name of the person I spoke to originally, nor did I record the conversation, I had no proof that I was lied to. The company does record their conversations so I could have asked to speak to a supervisor and probably could have been able to track down who it was that spoke to me, but that would have wasted even more of my time. And to what end? Even if we found the conversation, all the supervisor would have been able to do is apologize to me. It still wouldn’t have solved my problem, just would have wasted more of my time.
Once I let my mind vent a bit about the situation, I then told the truth about it. What was the truth? The truth is that I created that whole situation. It was 100% my doing. I created this event in my reality. I am 100% responsible for it. Nothing was done “to me”. I did it to myself. Once I accepted this truth, the feelings of anger and frustration dissipated.
I know that #3 is not an easy step to take. It IS the hardest step of them all, but it is the one where you reclaim your power from your anger and frustrations.
There are many levels at which we can accept #3. From a purely physical world perspective, we can say that I am 100% responsible for not recording the original conversation with the operator and I didn’t ask their name.
I am 100% responsible for making the choice to even have a credit card with this particular company. I am 100% responsible for needing the changes to be made to my account in the first place. I am 100% responsible for trusting the phone rep even when my intuition was telling me that what she was saying didn’t sound right.
I am 100% responsible for applying for that credit card 13 years ago.
I have to take 100% responsibility for everything related to the situation in order to reclaim my power from it.
If we look at it from a more spiritual perspective, things get even clearer. From a spiritual perspective, I am responsible for everything in my reality. I’m not just responsible for falling for a lie, I am responsible for creating a reality in which credit card phone operators lie.
My subconscious beliefs create the reality I experience and I am responsible for my beliefs.
Even if we only accept step #3 partially, within the physical world realm and ignore the spiritual implications of it, there is still a lot of power to be re-claimed from our anger and frustrations.
I would encourage you to try out this technique the next time you feel frustrated and angry. Even if you don’t take full responsibility in step #3, but just claim 5% or 10% or 25% of the responsibility, you will still reclaim your power from it and your anger/frustration will dissipate to that degree.
I’ve been doing this for over a month now and I’m really loving this process. Every time I feel angry and frustrated, I go through the process and usually end up laughing at myself with the thought “Oh man, why did I create THIS experience? What a fiasco. Hehehe….”
It is so liberating to take responsibility for your life instead of feeling like a victim of circumstances.
The more we accept that responsibility, the more liberated we feel.
You may ask, “Yeah, but what do we do then?”
Meaning, what do we do once we accept responsibility?
Well, the right course of action – if any necessary – will present itself.
For me, after reclaiming my power from the situation, the course of action involved me closing my account with that credit card company.
I was a client of theirs for 13 years. They lied to me. I took my business elsewhere.
I didn’t do it out of a place of anger or frustration though. It just seemed like the most “responsible” course of action to take after what happened.
This morning I received my first letter from them, asking me to reconsider closing my account.
Of course I’m responsible for creating that too. 🙂
Try this technique out.
It really works.