Unlocking Your Creative Potential: How to Cope With Frustration

From Frustration to Flow

I am late in your inbox.

And I don’t feel good. I wanted to write and hit publish yesterday.

Instead, I am doing it today. And I feel sorry and a bit shitty.

But even more, deep inside me, I feel frustrated.

Frustrated for not having managed my time and energy better. For not being as consistent as I’d like. Not performant enough…

The list goes on.

The same when you spend hours writing or making a video and don’t get any feedback (likes or comments or even views).

That hurts your ego and leaves you unsatisfied.

Frustration hits us hard as creatives. It is even an intimate part of the process. Can’t avoid feeling like that at some point.

But then you can decide what to do about it. That’s your freedom.

You can stop and stall for days, weeks, or months. Even give up.

Or you can go on. Maybe even harder to put this nasty feeling away.

Dealing with frustration is essential for success.

You will still feel it, but if you can cope better with it or use it as a fuel to create more and better, you’ll find success.

The good thing with emotions is that they fade away. And there are ways help the process.

Know your why

When you know why you are doing things, you are more resilient to setbacks. They become small obstacles between you and something that drives you deeply.

It acts like an inverse magnifying lens and reduces the size of the perceived obstacles (because it is only a matter of perception).

You can always rely on your inner purpose to propel yourself above the inevitable difficulties inherent to any venture.

Stay focused on your goals, not the outcome

That’s the whole importance of setting goals and forgetting them.

Let’s say you take your car to go somewhere. A shop, holidays, whatever.

Once you know the direction, like in your car, you want to focus on avoiding other cars, turning the steering wheel, and changing gears.

If you only think about where you are going, you may end up having an accident or taking the wrong road. And not reaching your destination.

You need to focus on the immediate actions and take them one after the other, consistently.

You don’t want to get sidetracked. Or stop because you feel overwhelmed by the distance or the number of turns to take.

The same for when you sit down to create.

Your goal can be to get an article published. But if you focus on that, you will be distracted from doing a great job at outlining, researching, drafting, and editing the article.

Or you will take shortcuts with the risk of getting lost, neglecting the quality of the final version.

Taking a Break and Gaining Perspective

5 minutes can be enough to lower the frustration. Enough to allow you to keep going.

Whereas if you force it, you will amply it further and reach a point where you can’t do anything.

Another way of taking a break is doing something you enjoy.

For instance, I was frustrated by a project that moves on too slowly in my opinion. So I took my laptop and went to write this newsletter. Because I enjoy writing.

I’ll get back to this project before finishing writing but I will feel better.

Frustration as a motivator

Instead of feeling bad, you can shift your mindset and feel fueled by this gap between where you want to be and where you are.

You can observe and find what is missing and double down on that.

You can learn more, find inspiration, and feel excited to close this gap.

This is the growth mindset as depicted by Carol Dweck in her book “Mindset” (good book to read!).

Takeaway: From Frustration to Success

Feeling frustrated is normal and inevitable.

You cannot do any creative work or significant progress without meeting this emotion. This is a good sign.

It means that you are on track and you are wise enough to know that there is a gap to close. This is a sign that you reached a point where you need to overcome obstacles to reach a new level.

You’re about to become better.

Cool, right?

So breathe, let it go and go back to work.

You got this. I believe in you.

Be great,

Frank