The 5 Primary Sources of Frustration and Simple Ways to Deal with Them

Last Updated on February 14, 2024 by The Unbounded Thinker

Frustration has led to suicide, chronic depression, and drug addiction. Many people have noticed these and many other disastrous effects of frustration and they are trying to overcome it. However, their efforts are unsuccessful because they deal with symptoms rather than the sources of frustration.

Understanding the sources of frustration will enable individuals to know the root cause of frustration and overcome it.

What are the Sources of Frustration?

Failing to Achieve our Goals/Dreams

Most of us are frustrated because we are not where we expected to be. We thought we would achieve our biggest goals when we reach a certain age. But when we reached that age, we realized that we are still far from accomplishing our dreams/goals. We noticed that despite working as hard as we can, we could not avoid obstacles that impede our progress and challenge our aspirations. These realizations disheartened us and evoked feelings of self-doubt, disappointment, hopelessness, and inadequacy, which eventually led to frustration.

Advice

Failing to achieve your goals doesn’t imply that you’ll never achieve them. Don’t get frustrated, and don’t give up. Instead, keep working and believing, and you might end up getting more than what you wanted. The universe works in a strange but awesome way. It might prevent you from getting whatever you want despite working hard so that you work harder and get more than enough.

Realize that obstacles are ever-present on the path to success and you’ll quickly overcome them when you adopt a positive attitude towards them. Know that the challenges preventing you from reaching your goals quickly will enable you to discover the strength that lies within you. And most importantly, learn about the journey to success and you’ll discover that it is slow and sometimes tiring, and therefore, the failure to reach one’s goals as quickly as expected is normal.

Failing to Accept That Some Things Are Beyond Our Control

Epictetus once said, ‘Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control and others are not.’ Most of us get frustrated because we try to control the uncontrollable. We try to control politics, aging, the future, the weather, and many other uncontrollable factors, and we get angry when we realize that we can’t control them.

Advice

Among all the sources of frustration, this is the main cause. You overcome it by realizing that frustration won’t fix anything and that it’s impossible for an individual who knows the difference between the controllable and uncontrollable to get frustrated.

Failure to Accept That Life is Full of Disappointments

We get frustrated by life’s disappointments because we don’t embrace the fact that disappointments are part of life and everyone experiences them. Although our disappointments differ, all of us experience disappointment, and some get frustrated while others don’t because they understand that disappointments are inevitable, but misery is optional.

Advice

Prepare yourself mentally for disappointments by knowing that they are natural and unavoidable. Also, know that you have the power to overcome disappointment and realize that those who prepare for disappointment seldom get frustrated.

Not Accepting Yourself

Today, many people are frustrated because they hate their bodies, looks, their financial status, and many other factors about themselves. The media is the main contributor to this source of frustration as it promotes an idealized version of success, beauty, and happiness that is almost impossible for many to achieve.

Advice

Learn to focus on the positive and know that you can change yourself completely if you commit to change.

Reduce your exposure to media platforms that promote unrealistic standards of beauty and succcess. If you cannot reduce your exposure, always be aware that the media promotes such standards to encourage the buying of certain products and services.

Besides, create goals that align with your abilities, true desires, interests, and values rather than try to achieve the unrealistic standards of a good life promoted by the media.

Not Accepting People as They Are

Another main source of frustration is that we fail to accept that not everybody will be the way we want them to be. To enjoy life, we have to be who we are. Therefore, we have to let people be who they want to be. You become frustrated when you force people to behave the way you want them to behave because they’ll never do so.

Advice

Learn to accept people as they are by letting go of judgments and expectations and realizing that other people have their own principles and opinions that are influenced by their socioeconomic backgrounds and unique experiences.

Conclusion

There are many sources of frustration but these are the main. I believe you’ll overcome frustration if you follow the advice provided.

Thank You for Reading. Have A Great Day.

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