I’ll be honest, I’ve been pretty frustrated lately. Not even about the turmoil in Austin or Washington, the economy or any of the other thousand soundbites floating in the media — rather, in the past few months, I’ve had the usual growing pains of a new business, a recent cancer scare that turned out being a benign golf-ball-sized lump in my chest and family drama that has taken my ‘eye off the ball’ to an extent.
I’m learning the hard way that as a general rule, you can’t control your initial reaction to something. But you can control what you do about that reaction. I think if you were to ask me this time next year how I was feeling now, I think I would respond, “stymied.”
I know I’m not the only one feeling this way so far this year, but I am trying to be wary of when I feel it. Frustration is one of those emotions that can really sting with a negative feedback loop — it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or a newlywed starting a family — frustration has a nasty way of compounding, especially when we can’t show that we are frustrated.
All that to say, trusting in God’s timing is difficult. I have been described as extremely patient and I even struggle with this quite a bit. We all are on the edge of our seats to close a deal, buy a new car, get our test results. But at the end of the day, frustration — and eventual anxiety — won’t make reality come one second quicker. Easier said than done, right?
One thing I’ve found true through all of life is that frustration is a symptom of success. It means that our current situation is at odds with where our momentum is headed — the biggest trick for us is to not get distracted from that momentum. For me, I have to tell myself that as almost a self-affirmation — and it’s often reinforced for me in prayer.
It’s okay to sit with those emotions sometimes, not just to let emotions subside, but to genuinely understand yourself better. Frustration eventually fizzles into action and anxiety eventually distills into clarity, but acting on it in the climax of your emotion generally is counter-productive to where you’re heading. Every emotion is fleeting — especially frustration. Yes, action does fix frustration but unless you take the time to understand that emotion, it’s doomed to repeat itself.
My advice is to remember the old adage, ‘this too shall pass.’ Take those emotions to God in prayer and take the opportunity to learn something about yourself. When the Bible says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” in Proverbs 3:5, it means on any ground and in any heart. Remember that, and you may start building momentum too.
See y’all next month.
