How to manage frustrations?

The first step to managing frustration is to recognize you are starting to feel frustrated. The second step is to understand what preconceived expectations led you to feel frustrated. The third step is to adjust your expectations, ideally, before it's too late. If you expect things to go one way and they don't, you are likely to experience frustration. We actually have quite a bit of control over how frustrated we might get in the future by preemptively imagining that things can and will go differently than we expected. Once we do this, we have adjusted our expectations to be more flexible, and in turn, you will likely feel much less frustrated if things don't go according to plan because you didn't expect them to in the first place. Try this out the next time you are about to enter a scenario that has brought up frustration for you before. Pre-imagine things going differently than you would like. With practice, being better able to anticipate the situations that usually frustrate you and adjusting your expectations can allow you to waste less emotional energy on unnecessary feelings of frustration and instead spend this repurposed energy on the important things in your life.

When you’re feeling frustrated you can take a moment to pause and breathe. Focusing on your breath and breathing deeply from your diaphragm can help reduce negative feelings and ease any tension you may have in your body. The next time you’re feeling frustrated stop and ask yourself what may be causing you to feel this way. You can notice your emotions as they arise. Putting a name to how you feel might help you to decide what productive steps to take to soothe your frustration. Taking the time to get your feelings down is a great way to help make sense of them. Consider spending a few minutes when you’re feeling frustrated to journal your thoughts and feelings, this can help to decrease your mental distress as well as have a positive impact on your well-being. You don’t have to engage in a full-body, lengthy workout to reduce frustration. Try short, quick movements, like 5–10 minutes of crunches, jumping jacks, or pushups. By cooling down your body, you can lower your heart rate, which can reduce your feeling of frustration.